Making a brand new Indiana Jones movie was going to be a significant undertaking for everybody involved no matter who those people were. But for James Mangold, the pressure had to be significant, as he took over the director's chair from Steven Spielberg. Luckily, while Spielberg may not have been the director, he was apparently always available to Mangold proving his opinions and offering some key advice to Mangold about just how to make an Indiana Jones movie.
Speaking with SiriusXM, James Mangold spoke about the working relationship that he had with Steven Spielberg, who continued to work as the producer of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny after making the decision that he wouldn’t have the time to direct the already long-delayed film. Mangold said one of the big pieces of advice had to do with how to shoot and edit the film, keeping the pace moving by making the movie as if it were a feature-length movie trailer. Mangold explained…
That was one of the great pearls from him, was just thinking of an Indiana Jones film in its entirety as a kind of two-hour trailer. That no scene can last too long and as everyone here knows I was probably following that to the…always looking to try and kind of keep things moving.
Having re-watched the Indiana Jones movies streaming recently in anticipation of the new movie, I can understand exactly what he’s talking about. There is very little “downtime” in these movies, as Indy’s adventure takes him from one set piece to the next. It certainly works to keep the audience engaged, and Mangold apparently embraced this idea very strongly.
But that one piece of advice was hardly the only advice that Steven Spielberg gave to James Mangold. In fact, it sounds like Spielberg provided so much advice that it would be impossible to include all of it. Mangold talked about the frequency with which the two would talk, with Spielberg giving his thoughts while the script was in development, and while Dial of Destiny was shooting. Mangold continued…
Steven and I spoke probably every two weeks, at the longest. When I was shooting he was shooting Fabelmans when we were making the movie and he’d be watching our dailies and we’d be talking and he was involved obviously as Jez and John-Henry Butterworth and I worked on the script. So his advice was neverending, meaning it was an ongoing relationship and was one of the main reasons I wanted to do the film. Separate from my friendship with Harrison and my admiration for him, was the idea for me of working with a hero of mine. You know working together is a very different thing than meeting someone and you really get to know people working together.
But it turns out that Steven Spielberg’s advice still didn’t even stop there, in fact, the way James Mangold sees it, Spielberg’s advice on filmmaking started when he started to watch the director’s films. So in fact, Spielberg has been offering advice since Mangold was a teenager. As Mangold said…
For me, the opportunity to collaborate with Harrison, with Steven, with Kathy Kennedy, with John Willians, was talking to someone who at 13, 14 years of age was lying on his bedroom floor with the Star Wars soundtrack playing reading Cinemagic magazine about all these guys and what they were up to, to find myself not only being a movie director, but actually collaborating with these people was enormous. Steven in particular has been giving me advice all his life without me knowing. I’ve been watching his movies closely.
When Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny hits theaters next week, I guess we’ll see just how well James Mangold learned from Steven Spielberg.
