First off, there needs to be a frame of reference here regarding the ‘bad mood’ of Harrison Ford. In 1983, not only had Ford completed the original Star Wars trilogy, but had also had a taste of life away from the blockbuster world of Lucasfilm with Blade Runner (despite his infamous run-ins with director Ridley Scott, and the film being a critical and commercial failure in its day). He married his second wife Melissa Mathison, co-writer of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, but also suffered a crippling back injury while making Temple of Doom, so…enter director Spielberg who – according to Short Round actor Ke Huy Quan in his recently published memoir, Never Say Die – sent young Shorty to cheer up their leading man.
“Whenever he was in a bad mood, Steven would tell someone, ‘Send Ke over.’ I had no idea any of that was happening. I just knew that whenever I walked up, Harrison softened a little or said, ‘Hey, kid,’ in that warm way he had. I didn’t think of it as cheering him up. I just liked being near him, and he made me feel like he liked having me around too.”
“Harrison had a different type of presence. He had a calm, steady way about him, like he was never in a hurry. The way he handled the heat. The long days. The chaos of filming. He made all of it look simple, like being Indiana Jones wasn’t something he had to act. It was just who he was.”