WHERE DID I COME FROM? WHERE AM I GOING? WHY DOESN'T SHORT ROUND CALL? I read today that the leaked title of the new Indiana Jones movie is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I can only suspect that the plot of the movie involves the getting of said skull. I must admit I'm still quite bitter about my own script being rejected. I think Indiana Jones and the Search for Tenure dealt with some important questions raised by the first three films, such as: With all of his swinging around in temples and shooting Nazis and being dragged behind trucks, when did he find time to publish? Surely Jones' global adventuring on the History Department's dime made him some enemies in the administration? Think about it: The Ark's in a government warehouse, the Shankara Stone he gave back to the village, and the Grail fell down a big crack in the temple floor. What does Jones have to show for all his time away, other than enormous expense reports, various scars, and a thousand-yard stare? While my film was perhaps not as exciting (on the surface) as the other films, I think the viewing public is ready, nay hungry, for a three-hour deconstructionist epic, a meditation, a tone-poem, if you will, in which an aging, arthritic Dr. Jones ruefully ponders a life wasted on travel, adventure, and saving the world, when he could have been burrowed in a cramped office, drinking coffee, and attending long meetings with other faculty. I'm telling you, this script wrote itself! In my many, many letters to Steven Spielberg, I even offered to add more speaking parts, as my first draft featured only one: Jones, in a deadened internal monologue which cleverly echoed Deckard's in Blade Runner. Oh, well, I guess Spielberg just doesn't trust the American viewing public's ability to deal with the emotional wreckage of their beloved cinema heroes as much as I do. Not to worry, I'm reworking it as a Bond film. --Matthew Duss
