Young Indiana Jones Chronicles Update (1 Viewer)

Hey all,

Just got this from an Ohio newspaper...GREAT news.

http://www.ohio.com/mld/beaconjourn...ing/8064049.htm

Lucas series inches to DVD

UA archivist takes part in `The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles' disc
By R.D. Heldenfels

The works of George Lucas have crawled on DVD. But one of his biggest and best projects is finally in the works.

That's the TV drama The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, a major labor of Lucas love that showed Indy at various ages.

There was Indy in his 90s (played by George Hall), whose recollections flashed back to tales of 10-year-old Indy (Corey Carrier) and an Indy in his teens and older (Sean Patrick Flanery). There was even one episode where Harrison Ford reprised his movie character.

Of greater note was the way the series wove in real-life characters -- from Theodore Roosevelt to musician Sidney Bechet -- so that viewers got both an adventure and some history lessons.

Sadly, the Chronicles ran only one season on ABC, in 1992-93. But there were some later TV-movies and a VHS release of TV episodes in the late '90s.

I loved the show. So did my sons. I've been carrying around videotapes of some episodes for years.

So it was good to hear that University of Akron archivist Dave Baker was involved in a DVD release of the Chronicles.

Director of the university's Archives of the History of American Psychology, Baker said he was contacted awhile back by Lucas' people looking for material for a documentary on psychology.

Baker talked with them about the differences between psychology and psychiatry. (``Psychologists are concerned with the human condition in the broad sense,'' he said. ``Psychiatrists are physicians first, concerned with the treatment of mental illness.'') He also talked about the development of psychology between the world wars.

``The thing I appreciated was that I was able to have some input,'' he said. ``I'm a very passionate historian of psychology.

And apparently an impressive one. Baker was flown out to Lucas' Skywalker Ranch facility for an interview to be included in the documentary. Which turned out to be a companion piece for the DVD release of a Chronicles episode featuring Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

Baker did not really know the series. ``I had seen it once and it was a long time ago,'' he said.

Nor was he sure when the DVD will come out. Baker guessed it will be tied to the release of the fourth big-screen Indiana Jones, which had been expected in 2005 until reports of Lucas' dissatisfaction with the original script.

``I didn't see that they had a hard and fast marketing plan,'' Baker said. ``It's a very ambitious project. It looks like they're doing something like 50 or 100 of these documentaries.''

Still, it gave him a look inside Lucas' empire.

``The ranch was way cool,'' he said, adding that it is featured in the latest issue of Architectural Digest. But did he see Lucas himself?

``No, I didn't,'' he said. ``I was kind of snooping around, wondering where is he? I was told he was very busy with Star Wars.'' Another film is due out in 2005.

thanks for the update and looks like this will be a very big boxset with lots of great documentaries

That does sound great! I'm thinking that for the box set, they'll do just the re-edited versions of the ABC episodes into the longer segments, disavowing the "old Indy" bookend clips.

Yet it's interesting that if you go check out www.indianajones.com and look up the information for Chapter 7, you'll find that the actress who played the elderly Vicky, Jane Wyatt, is listed, though in the re-edited version of that episode she is never seen, only her younger version is represented (as played by Elizabeth Hurley - va-va-va-voom! ). So it's like GL is saying, "Yes, she appeared in the episode, but we're not showing the bookend with her in it."

For that matter, the very first telecast was a 2-hour segment that featured the little boy in the first hour then the teenaged Indy in the second hour. It was bookended with segments of old Indy talking to kids in a museum.

I'm hoping that they'll also include the option of viewing the original hour-long segments with the bookends instead of just giving viewers the re-edited versions that have been on VHS and TV.

I for one would gladly buy these if they are unedited, but if you edit out the bookends, I'll pass.

I'll just be glad if they include the bookends as extras that aren't played with the episodes themselves because I think it would raise costs too much for them to provide both versions of Young Indy episodes on DVD. You have to balance a DVD set with cost and how much you want to sell.

Be Seeing You,
David Blackwell

Me too. Wasn't Harrison Ford's appearance in one of these "bookends"? It seems pretty stupid to cut these segments out.

That's right. In Chapter 20, "Young Indiana Jones and the Mystery of the Blues", Harrison Ford appeared as a 50-year-old Indy at the beginning and end of the episode. He filmed this segment prior to his filming "The Fugitive" (which explains the shorter beard in the segment and his longer beard in the opening scenes of "The Fugitive"), and he talked about his love for music, which explains young Indy's association with the blues music scene in 1920. They even adapted some of John Williams' original "Raiders" music for the bookend segments of the episode.

To date, this remains the only episode of the series to be released on VHS with its original bookends intact.