“You’re not the man I knew ten years ago.”
“It’s not the years honey, it’s the mileage.”
The original name in the script was Indiana Smith. It was changed to Jones on the first day of shooting. Tom Selleck was originally cast as Indiana, but was unable to take the role because he was committed to Magnum, P.I. (1980). Amy Irving (Spielberg’s first wife) and Debra Winger were both considered for the role of Marion. Sean Young played Marion in all the screen tests for casting Indiana, including with Tim Matheson and John Shea. Nick Nolte turned down the role before Harrison Ford was cast less than three weeks before principal photography began. Spielberg originally cast Danny DeVito to play Sallah, but he dropped out due to scheduling conflicts with Taxi (1978). When the role went to the much larger John Rhys-Davies, the character was rewritten based on Shakespeare’s Falstaff. Spielberg wanted Giancarlo Giannini to play Dr. Rene Belloq, then considered French actor/singer Jacques Dutronc before deciding on Paul Freeman. Klaus Kinski was offered the role of Toht, the sadistic Nazi interrogator, but said the script was “as moronically shitty as so many other flicks of this ilk”. Indy’s line to Marion on the ship, “It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage”, was an ad lib by Harrison Ford. Originally conceived as a low-budget adventure, production costs tripled to $22 million. Paramount financed it with producer George Lucas owning over 40% and getting half of the profits after the studio grossed a certain amount. It was 1981’s biggest box office. Indy’s kangaroo-hide bullwhip went for $43,000 at Christie’s in London in 1999.
