Teenagers of the Lost Ark

Oldish news, but here's a great article on those kids you've probably heard of who did a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark over the course of eight years.

... The first thing they had to do was make a plastercast of Eric's head, so that they could film it exploding later on. They read from Eric's worn copy of Derek Taylor's 1981 book, The Making of Raiders of the Lost Ark, to see how it was done. Then Eric sat on the back porch of his house with two straws up his nose. Jayson wet his face with soapy water and slathered on three inches of industrial plaster, making sure to cover his eyes and mouth. Almost immediately Eric started squirming. Chris fetched a pen and paper. "Hot," Eric wrote.

The air going in and out of the straws suggested panic. The plaster was already hard. Chris poked at it with a screwdriver to no avail. He got a hammer and banged. Nothing. Even a hacksaw couldn't break through. Their big mistake, they later realised, was using industrial plaster, which heats on contact with moisture. Eric again gestured for the pen. "Hospital," he wrote. At the hospital, as the doctor removed the plaster before a small audience of amazed residents, Eric learned just how far eyelids can be stretched. For weeks afterward, he went around with no eyelashes and one and a half eyebrows.

NPR's Morning Edition recently did a bit on the movie, which you can find here (scroll down almost all the way to the bottom to "A Teen Quest to Remake Raiders of the Lost Ark").