A letter I wrote to Steven Spielberg in 2008

12/V/2008

Dear Mssrs. Spielberg, Lucas, Ford, and everyone else in the Indiana Jones production team,

My name is Greg, and I am a huge Indiana Jones fan. I was born in 1982, so I was seven when the last film came out in the theaters in 1989. I remember that my parents' friends went to see some adventure movie that I was too young for and had little interest in. However, a few years later, when I was nine or ten, I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark on TV, and from then on I was hooked. Indiana Jones became a fixation in my life, one in the series of transient fixations that young kids are wont to have—dinosaurs, Superman, obscure zoo animals, etc. Except I never got over Indiana Jones. I wanted to be a hero like him. He was better than any superhero, because he was a normal person, a guy who used his intelligence to solve riddles and get out of tight situations (barely). On top of that, he had a more plausible version of the superhero's alter-ego. He was a professor, an absent-minded, bookish type in his everyday life. And he saved the world on numerous occasions from a more plausible version of supervillains—Nazis, the ultimate evil, one of the only real historical groups of people that it's okay to shoot up with no remorse in a film.

My mania for Indiana Jones knew no moderation. I named my dog Indy (he died just last week, 15 and a half years old!). I was Indiana Jones for a number of Halloweens, with a plastic fedora, a worn leather jacket, and even a kid-sized bullwhip I got at one of those living-history farms.

But my devotion to Indy went beyond childish, passing things. I longed to know as many languages as he knew, I wanted to live a life doing good, saving the world while having adventures and seeing new cultures. Through Indiana Jones (and later the young Indy series, which expounded on his origins and how he got to be such an amazing person), I was inspired to learn about the 1930s, the Second World War, Germany, Biblical artifacts and the Fertile Crescent, Latin America and pre-Colombian peoples, India, Venice—basically I became a geography and history nut. I was long tempted to become an archaeologist (even more so than most kids' typical archaeologist phase that falls between phases of fireman, paleontologist, and veterinarian), and I observed the ethnographic and archaeological artifacts at the Field Museum in my native Chicago with more concentration and understanding than the typical ten-year-old.

And this love for the Indy movies hasn't faded with time. Today, sixteen years after my first exposure to the series, I have probably seen each movie over a hundred times, and I continue to enjoy them. I am one of those nuts who has noticed things like the fact that in the musical scores of the three movies no theme repeats itself between movies, except for the main theme, and a brief snippet apiece in the second and third movies (towards the end of the second when Indy reaches for his revolver to shoot a swordsman as he did in Cairo in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and in the Venice catacombs of the Last Crusade when he sees a graffito of the ark of the covenant).

But now as in my childhood, this obsession with Indy has imbued me with more than trivia facts and entertainment. I still have a fascination with archaeology. In the end I didn't become an archaeologist, but I have maintained a radical people-focused life philosophy. For me, my interest in Indy and archaeology came after a phase of wanting to be a paleontologist, but it was watching Indy that convinced me that as important and interesting as old bones and pure science may be, the human world and its difficulties and glories were what I wanted to dedicate my life to. I wanted to learn about and intervene in the human drama, always on the side of good. And in fact I took it one step further—instead of studying ancient artifacts, I decided to become an agronomist/anthropologist, to study the traditional practices and lifeways of current societies. I wanted to work with people in the here and now, to learn directly from them how they live and why they do what they do, instead of piecing together evidence about past societies from their cryptic traces. In the end it was also sort of a practical choice—if I wanted to have adventures and save the world, it seemed like it would be difficult to do so in the field of archaeology. There are no more Machu Picchus or Valleys of the Kings to discover, much less any Arks of the Covenant or Holy Grails, and there were certainly no more Nazis to defend these finds from. In a growing, hungry world, I figured agronomy would be more promising as far as yielding big adventures.

After many childhood, schoolday years of dreaming and scheming about being a new Indiana Jones, and four long years of college to become an agronomist, I found myself sort of lost. I had always had a plan for the big picture, but I didn't know in the short term exactly how one should get started with being a modern-day adventurer/do-gooder. Finally I found a masters program in Third World Agricultural Development, and I studied for two years in Spain and France. I was finally on my way to my dreams! Just like Indy, I was seeing the world, balancing between the academic and the adventurous, Old World and New, learning new languages (by now I speak three fluently and two more passably, though it'll take considerable effort before I can fall out of a plane in an air raft in a random part of the world and be sure I'll speak the local language). As the final step of this masters I am currently doing a four-month internship in West Africa, and that done I will present my thesis and hopefully really begin my life as a professional, do-gooding adventurer.

And that is how I find myself in the town of Kandi, in far northern Benin, doing an investigation on the collateral social effects of various development projects. I'm all grown up, and miraculously I'm actually doing what I've always dreamed of. I've gotten an education in Europe, and now I'm pursuing adventure in far-off, exotic locales. And I still think of Indy. In the past few hectic years, when I'm reluctant to uproot myself from some place where I've stopped long enough to catch my breath and feel a bit settled, I sing Indy's theme song in my head and get inspired by seeing myself in my own adventure movie. When I'm zipping down dusty savanna roads on my motorcycle or scrambling up termite hills, notebook in hand, to get an idea of the lay of the land, I think that Indy would be proud of me. And when I'm hot, sweaty, exhausted, lost in a strange new culture, I think, “Well, this is what you've always wanted, right?” Indy never got tired or gave up, so why should I?

So I'm very happy with my life now. I'm thankful to you, the makers of Indy, for having inspired me in part to be here, and I'm thankful for having gotten the opportunities in life to follow my dreams. There's only one thing that could stand improving...

I've never seen an Indiana Jones movie in the theater. As I said, I was seven when The Last Crusade came out, and I didn't really get into Indy until I was nine or ten. I had never dreamed of actually seeing Indiana Jones on the big screen—I assumed that the Last Crusade really was the last, and almost twenty years without a film seemed to confirm my suspicions, despite the occasional rumor of a fourth film in the works. My friends and I have been ecstatic ever since a year or so ago when we heard of the new Indy movie, and when the trailers came out in February, I couldn't wait until May 22nd.

However, there's a problem. Because I'm in Benin right now, I don't think I'm going to be able to see the new Indiana Jones movie in the theaters. There are almost no movie theaters in all of Benin, even in the capital (the DVD pirates have devastated the cinema industry here). Ironically, the very lifestyle that I've been inspired to lead thanks to Indiana Jones prevents me from seeing the newest film in his series. Sometimes I feel sorry for myself, remarking that I'll never have the chance again to see Indy in his bigscreen glory. But then I think to myself that now I'm living my own adventures, so it's not a big deal if I miss Indy's latest. So it's not a terrible fate, after all. In fact, it's sort of a poetic irony.

That said, I would still be thrilled to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in a theater. That would be the best of both worlds for me—to live my real-life adventures and also enjoy Indy's on the big screen.

And that brings me to the ultimate point of this letter—a favor I ask of you. I have fantasies of your flying me to LA for the grand premier, a special invited guest, “the biggest Indiana Jones fan in the world”. Or holding a special Benin screening for me, as well as to expose French West Africa to this hero they've been denied for 27 years (almost no one knows Indy here). But given time and budget constraints, as well as the fact that I realize that for the rest of the world I'm neither Indiana Jones nor as big of a VIP as I am in my own head, I have a more humble request. Could you inform me as to the nearest theater in West Africa showing the new Indiana Jones? Are there indeed any theaters in West Africa that are going to show Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? If not, could you tell me of any theaters in France that will still be showing the film in mid-late August? That's when I'll be returning from my research in Benin. I imagine that somewhere within your reach must be a database of all the theaters in the world that have bought first-run rights to the film.

Thank you very much for your attention, and for having provided me with some of the stories and images that have most shaped who I am today. I'm sure that even if my introduction to the Crystal Skull is via a rented DVD, it will be a cherished addition to these stories that have entertained me and inspired my dreams during the better part of my life.