The iconic scene Harrison Ford regrets shooting: “I’m not sure that helps”
Harrison Ford has been one of Hollywood’s most iconic leading men for nearly 50 years. Throughout his career, he has made many movies that have stood the test of time while always remaining a straight-shooter in his opinions on the ins and outs of the movie business. This means he has occasionally been open and honest about some of his regrets, such as turning down George Clooney’s role in Syriana and hating the voiceover he was forced to record for Blade Runner. However, he also regrets one of his most famous scenes – and it’s not for the reason you’d think.
In 1980, Ford found himself in the arid, stiflingly hot deserts of Tunisia while shooting Raiders of the Lost Ark. The production had begun in La Rochelle, France, before moving to Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, and then decamping to North Africa. To director Steven Spielberg’s chagrin, large swathes of his cast and crew soon became sick with dysentery from eating and drinking the local food and water. Ford became so ill that he could barely leave his trailer for ten minutes at a time, while Spielberg managed to avoid it simply because he ate his own imported food and water. As Ford grimaced to Entertainment Tonight in 2000, the director showed up “with a full case of SpaghettiOs” and made sure to gaffer tape “his mouth every time he took a shower”.
As he tried to stay as close to a toilet as possible, Ford realised with horror that one of the movie’s biggest set pieces was due to be filmed. Described as “the ultimate duel between sword and whip”, the script called for Indiana Jones to battle a deadly swordsman dressed all in black. The fight sequence was scheduled to take two or three days, and Terry Richards, the British stuntman playing the masked killer, had been practising his moves for months.
Ford was feeling sick as a dog, so he began to imagine ways to get out of shooting the scene. He believed it was redundant, for one thing, considering they had recently shot a whip-based fight scene when five bad guys attempted to kidnap leading lady Marion Ravenwood, played by Karen Allen. On the day of the shoot, Ford finally realised what he had to do.
“We had about an hour and a half ride into our location,” Ford revealed. “By the time I got to the location, I was convinced that it was too much. I went up to Steven as soon as I arrived, and I said, ‘Steven, why don’t we just shoot this sumbitch?’ And Steven said, ‘I was thinking that, too!'”
So, Ford and Spielberg broke the news to Richards, who was gutted that his big scene was being scrapped. Ford admitted to feeling “terribly sorry for him”, but when they shot the scene, everyone realised it served the film better than another fight scene. After all, Jones giving the flamboyant swordsman a withering look and shooting him as soon as he draws his blade is perfectly in keeping with his character, and it raises one of the film’s biggest laughs.
The scene and its backstory soon went down in cinema legend, and Ford is still asked about it regularly to this day. In his opinion, though, this mightn’t necessarily be a good thing. In 2008, he told The Los Angeles Times, “Yeah, I guess the black swordsman has become a bit of a Hollywood story. I almost wish it hadn’t. I’m not so crazy about the audience having that much awareness of the process that went on. I just want to enjoy the movie, and I’m not sure that helps.”
On the one hand, this might seem like just another example of Ford’s well-known propensity for grumpiness in interviews. But, if you look at it another way, it raises fascinating questions about the barrier that used to exist between movie fans and the people creating the films. This barrier barely exists anymore, as modern fans have near-constant access to behind-the-scenes information and rumours on the inner workings of film shoots. Some people love this, but others feel it torpedoes the suspension of disbelief in films and removes an important element of movie magic that used to exist. Ford may be a card-carrying member of the latter group.
