Last night at a screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark hosted by the Los Angeles Times, director Steven Spielberg brought along a special, unannounced guest – Harrison Ford! The two talked about the movie and dropped some interesting behind the scenes bits of info.

The director opened the Q&A, speaking about how the franchise was born. In Hawaii, George Lucas had gone into hiding, afraid of what the public reaction to Star Wars might be. He asked Spielberg to accompany him and build "good-luck sand castles." When Star Wars went on to be a phenomenal success, Lucas pitched the idea of a serialized adventure film starring an archeologist to Spielberg. Indiana Jones was born.
 
The big question was if anything new would surface regarding Indiana Jones 5. Spielberg simply said he’s hopeful the movie would come together though Ford quickly interjected, "But I ain’t going to Mars." Ford added that he would be delighted to play the character again.
 
Speaking of characters, Spielberg informed the crowd that he had offered the role of Dr. Grant in Jurassic Park to Ford, but the actor turned it down. Sam Neill ended up playing the role. Ford simply shrugged his shoulders as the audience gasped.
 
 
Spielberg talked about reading French reviews of Raiders and saw that a lot of them mentioned something called Tintin. Having never read the comics, Spielberg immediately sought out the books and after reading them wanted to adapt Tintin to the big screen. "Tintin has been 30 years in development." The Adventures of Tintin opens in theaters December 23rd, 2011.
 
Much to the crowd’s relief, Spielberg mentioned that he had no intention of going back and tinkering with his older films. He regretted "fixing" E.T. saying he got a little sensitive about criticisms he had received from the Parents’ Council during E.T.’s initial release, so he removed the "penis-breath line," and the G-men’s guns, but after doing so he realized he’d, "robbed the people who love E.T. of their memory of the film." The director is not keen on making the same mistake twice.
 
The evening closed with Spielberg talking about the lasting impression of the Indy movies.
 
The director said that he doesn’t revisit his films very often but admitted that Raiders is the only movie on his extensive film resume that he can watch all the way through.
 
“Of all the movies I’ve ever made, Raiders is the only one I can watch from beginning to end. Same with The Last Crusade; those are my two favorites in the series.”