Carolyn and I went to a special, one-night-only 30th anniversary screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. A very enthusiastic audience packed the place for that and what followed. My pal Geoff Boucher of the L.A. Times interviewed Steven Spielberg and Unannounced Surprise Guest Harrison Ford about the film we'd all just seen. Clips, I'm sure, will abound so I'll just say that the biggest applause probably went to Spielberg's promises that that the forthcoming Blu-ray of Raiders will not involve any tampering or "improvements" on his part, and that the next DVD/Blu-ray release of E.T. will be the original version and not the later, slightly-sanitized version. Best part of the evening for some was probably the warm banter between Spielberg and Ford, and the latter's announcement that he's quite willing to do another Indiana Jones film. One does not however appear to be on any horizon.
It was largely a show-businessy crowd, it seemed. We were sitting next to Damon Lindelof of Lost and Cowboys and Aliens and glancing about the lobby, it seemed like a good place to use Gary Belkin's joke: "I'm the only one here I've never heard of." When I used the men's room, I found myself standing between two guys who were each dressed as Indiana Jones. They were talking across me, discussing where they'd purchased their hats and leather jackets. and which of them had the best ones…and for a minute I had a sense of what it must be like to be in a gay bar.