John Hurt on 4 Indiana 4 Jones and George Lucas

The plot of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has been a closely guarded secret, but star John Hurt, a legend in his own right and likely playing the father of Marion (Karen Allen) in the film, wasn’t afraid to talk to Premiere about his behind-the-scenes impressions. Here are some of the interesting things he had to say.

I want to be careful here, because I don’t want to make it sound as if I’m anti- the film — I’m not at all. But if I was asked what I would choose to do, it would be lightweight for me, at least for that sort of time commitment. But having accepted it, I enjoyed working with Steven hugely, and we had a great cast. I just wish we’d had something of fabulous interest between each other to act!

[Steven Spielberg] has the extraordinary knack of being able to make you feel as though you’ve worked with him ten times before, as though you’ve known him all his life. That’s a great quality for a director to possess. And his notes are very good — very simple, but very good. He doesn’t hang about. When he’s got it, he’s got it.

George [Lucas] is a bit socially crippled really. Not good with people. So I just left him alone.

They shot as much as they possibly could, but they had some massive blue screens. There will be CGI, but it’s based on a lot of the stuff that we shot, so it’s not pure CGI. It’s overlayed and so on. Steven does shoot as much as he possibly can and that’s impressive. I mean we shot on five major Hollywood studios. We shot at Downey, Sony, Paramount, Warners, and Universal, either in their studios or the outside lots. We’d do two days here, then trot off and do a week there and then back to this one, while the other sets were being prepared. And the sets were fantastic, full of moving parts and things that all worked. You suddenly realized that you’re almost a puppet. You come on and do your bit, and then you’re off to the next one.