While Star Wars is galactic, the love for Indiana Jones is truly international, and American Mitch Hallock and Australian Ed Dolista are prime examples of that. From opposite sides of the pacific, Hallock and Dolista delved deep into their love of the intrepid archaeologist and Lucasfilm take a look at this deep affection for a character and world that has mesmerised fans for over 40 years.
Both Hallock and Dolista’s stories begin in 1981 with the debut of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. “There was a show on the Australian government broadcast station called Four Corners, which had a little entertainment section at the end,” says Dolista, who grew up in the town of Geelong not far from Melbourne. “I was watching the show, and they spoke about this new film called Raiders of the Lost Ark starring Harrison Ford. I thought, ‘I know that name.’ They showed what felt like the entire opening sequence of Raiders, though it probably wasn’t. It was Han Solo, but it didn’t look like Han Solo. It just blew my mind.”
Only 11-years-old at the time, Dolista convinced his parents to take him to the local cinema where he was “absolutely mesmerized,” as he puts it. “I loved Star Wars, Superman: The Movie, and Flash Gordon,” he explains, “but this wasn’t sci-fi or fantasy. It was grounded in reality and I’d never seen anything like it.”
Over in America that summer, a 13-year-old Hallock was another Lucasfilm fan who convinced his grandmother to take him to a preview screening of Raiders in their hometown of New Haven, Connecticut. “My Italian grandmother was deathly afraid of snakes, and literally ran out of the movie theater during the Well of Souls scene,” he recalls, “but I couldn’t leave! I saw it 13 times that summer. Anybody I could drag to the movie theater…I couldn’t get enough of it.”
