In what is an absolutely fascinating conversation – more of a snapshot of the meetings between interviewer Ryan D’Agostino and Harrison Ford than a standard Q&A – Ford touches on a LOT of topics (and swears like a (Storm)trooper while doing it) and in there he explains why he was so keen for Indiana Jones to feel the years and the mileage in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, out later this month.
Why make another Indiana Jones movie, filmed when he was pushing eighty? “I wanted an ambitious movie to be the last one,” he says. “And I don’t mean that we didn’t make ambitious movies before—they were ambitious in many different ways. But not necessarily as ambitious with the character as I wanted the last one to be.”
Early in The Dial of Destiny, there’s a scene in which Jones is riding a horse on a subway platform in Manhattan. As Ford finished the scene, he felt hands all over his legs and, he says, “I thought, What the f***? Like I was being attacked by gropers. I look down and there’s three stunt guys there making sure I didn’t fall off the stirrup. They said, Oh, we were just afraid because we thought, you know, and bah bah bah bah. And I said, Leave me the f*** alone, I’m an old man—”
He’s raising his voice now.
“Sorry.” He lowers his voice, but his fingers are drumming like mad. “Leave me alone, I’m an old man getting off a horse and”—loud voice again, he can’t help it—“I want it to look like that!”
Ford also reveals the scene he famously injured his shoulder, a moment from the trailer for Dial of Destiny.
There’s another moment in The Dial of Destiny: Indiana Jones is in hand-to-hand combat with the villain on a speeding train, and he holds his famous hat over the villain’s face before punching him, as if to take him by surprise. It’s a brilliant bit of Jonesian theatrics, and it was Ford’s idea—the kind of thing only he would think of, having inhabited Jones for so long.
Over a fifty-year career and an eight-decade life, Ford had banged himself up from time to time—snowboards, horses, stunts. Something must have weakened his shoulder, because when he held his hat in the face of actor Mads Mikkelsen and pulled his hand back to demonstrate the punch—someone was in the way and he had to adjust mid-strike—Ford pulled the subscapularis muscle off his right shoulder. Production shut down for two weeks, and Ford had to sit out an extra six weeks after that.
“Well,” I offer, “you’ve always been known for doing so many of your own action scenes.”
“Yeah, well, I’m also known for shutting movies down because I get hurt, which is not something you want to be known for. But hey, sh*** happens.”
Be sure to read the full and absolutely engrossing interview.
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