The Greek Creator of the Famous Indiana Jones Adaptation Movie Talks About His New Plans

He is the guy who made the “Raiders of the Lost Arc” adaptation. Together with his friends Eric Zala and Jayson Lamb, in 1982, one year after the movie was screened in the theaters, three kids at the age of 12, decided to make the remake of the original Indiana Jones movie. After a few years, when they had finished shooting the movie with their friends, they never imagined the impact that the movie would have.

The movie was first screened in an auditorium at a local Coca-Cola plant in 1989. Tucking the film away for almost 15 years,  a VHS tape of the movie fell into the hands of Ain’t It Cool News guru, Harry Knowles, who played it at his Butt-numb-a-thon festival. That’s when it all started. Strompolos, Zala and Lamb’s phones began to ring.

Spielberg congratulated the young filmmaker and was greatly honored by the movie. “Raiders of the Lost Arc Adaptation” continues with the screenings today in several film festivals around the world while the profits are donated to charity because of legal issues. We had the pleasure speaking with Chris Strompolos, the Greek creator and protagonist of the remake who is currently developing news projects after having created a film company together with his friend Eric Zala.

Tell us about what you are working on this period.

The current project we are both working on with my partner Eric under our production company Rolling Bolder Films, is a gothic  action movie, set in a southern city. We are trying to brand ourselves to the place we grew up and show what we know. It’s a classic mythological movie cycle of a son trying to find his father and the troubles at the Mississippi river through a banch of adventures. We are working on financing on that and also there’s another project that we are still working on. Unfortunately I can’t get into much detail yet.

Is it an original screenplay?

It’s an original play. Basically when our Raiders movie got discovered, we were really trusted in the spotlight and then did a lot of meetings travelling around the world. At that time, Eric and I were working normal jobs. I came to Erik with an idea saying to him: “let’s quit our normal jobs, form a production company and make movies again for real!”. So we thought about it and that’s what we did.

How have the things been rolling since then?

Well, it has been changeling. I mean this was a number of years ago. Basically our film got discovered in 2003. And so from 2003 to 2009 Erik and I we are allegedly trying to do travelling, speaking, writing and doing researching and development on this project and then the economy really took a tank and then we were both pretty financially stretched because we hadn’t got to the financially place we thought we were going to get to with our project. So, we both had to go back to our traditional work. From 2009 until now, we have been working for the paycheck. Eric is the executive director at an arts center on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

How is it working together with Eric so many years since the making of the Raiders movie?

We’ve been known each other for many years. He is in Mississippi. I am in Los Angeles. Currently I am working at Sony Pictures and again I am just trying to pull a paycheck. But again we are still training our project along, talking to people, trying to put together the business documents to start, bringing the money in the project and wait to see what happens. But yes. It’s very exciting to working together again and focusing on these projects.

Any other projects that you are into?

We are working on a book with a writer who is based in Los Angeles and his name is Alan Eisenstock. Alan has written 12 books and he was executive producer and writer on a bunch of classical 70s and 80s TV Shows. Everything from “Welcome Back Kotter” to “Sanford and Son”, “Mork & Mindy” and all those classic sort of TV shows. He did that for years and then went off to become a writer. We met him through a book agent in New York and we teamed up with him and he is now writing the book about our Raider story. The book now is sold to Saint Martin’s Press in New York and is set for publication next year in 2012. When the book is published, we will start to go on tour and creating the movie.

Any recent updates regarding the course of the Indiana Jones Adaptation movie?

To bringing you up to speed there is nothing explosively new. We continue to screen our film and we continue to raise money for charity with our film. We just screened at The Seattle International Film Festival, we screened in Tupelo Mississippi and we are planning to do a small tour in NY, in New Jersey later in the year. So, we continue to screen and speak. The film about us that was set from Paramount has sort of cooled off. But we are considering the possibility of that with the new book that is going to be published next year, turning our story into an actual feature film. So, that’s exciting.

Do you continue to do a lot of screenings?

Not exactly. We book very selectively. We do a couple of screenings here, wait two months do a couple of screenings there and it goes on like that.

Any thoughts showing the film in Europe?

There has been a lot of discussion to screen our film in Europe. We did a successful tour in Australia. That was really fun. We had also a smashing premiere in London and in Germany.

How has the people reacted so far?

Amazing. It struck everybody in the same way.

Did you feel any disconnection from the movie at some point?

I did. I think in the beginning when it was rediscovered I felt a disconnection from it because I didn’t think it was that a big deal. I didn’t think that anybody would care. Eric and I spent our entire childhood remaking “Raiders of the Lost Arc”. And I just thought that who would be interested in seeing kids play Indiana Jones? But it turns out, it really struck forward people and it made people incredibly inspired, nostalgic and I think that was when I started to kind of open my eyes after our screenings in Austin when we had like 3-4 nights of screenings  in a row in staffed houses. It was very exciting and over the next 6 years when we started touring I felt really connecting and I felt revisiting the thoughts and memories of my childhood all over again in a positive way. So, that was exciting. To be able to see basically my whole childhood on screen through the eyes of other people. So that was pretty exciting. So, now we are synonymous with our little Raiders movie and now people even call us the “Raiders Gods”!  It’s funny.

Tell us about your relationship with Greece.

Both my parents are Greek and both their parents are Greek and on and on and on. Unfortunately I never learned the language because my parents never taught it to me which is a shame. When I was in Greece I had more than one person kind of shake their finger on me saying to me “Shame on you Christos! Shame on you. You never learned Greek!”

Do you understand when people speak Greek or know any words?

It’s so limited. I can understand though when people ask me “Hey can you speak Greek?”. And I can say some of the basic words like thank you- efharisto- and others. It’s like it’s in me but I just have to go back and learn it! (laughs) My mother is fluent. My dad not so much. He never bothered to learn it.

When was the last time you were in Greece?

Last time I was in Greece was in 1994. When I was there, I spent around 3-4 months going to the islands and visiting the villages where my family was from.

Do you have any Greek relatives?

I do. Though I don’t have a strong connection with them. My father and the other parts of my family have a strong connection with them. But I have a strong family. I have some relatives in the islands and if I remember correctly to a village called Ziropigado in the coast of Peloponesus. It’s a coastal area and my Grandmother is from Dervena. My father’s mother. My mother’s father is from Patmos.  I visited all those places. Patmos, Zinopigado and even Dervena. Although I didn’t find anyone there probably because it was off season, they had all gone to the beach or something like that.

What were your first impressions?

Being Greek in the States might be overstating.  It’s still kind of exotic though. And the Greek culture is something exciting. So, I always knew myself as a Greek person to my family and to the other people I knew. It was so excited to go to Greece and literally I just felt like “Oh! So this is where I am from..”. I just remembered looking to everybody’s eyes and seeing my family. It was this resident quality. Looking all these people and feeling a kind of a connectivity. Like, oh OK. This is where the culture comes from. This is why I do this. There was a cultural connection for me. It was frustrating to not knowing the language and I was frustrated with myself.

What have you heard so far about the economic situation in Greece?

I think the collapse has definitely cooled off. I am sure it’s an ongoing problem. The last thing I heard from the news was that Greece was undergoing economic collapse in regards to credit, mortgages and debt and that Greeks were pretty mad about it and that they hit the streets and started rioting. That there was a feeling of anger. Anger at the government and anger at the banks.

What are your hobbies?

I am married. I have been married for ten years. I have a daughter who is going to be turning four in July. Her name is Diana and then with working and my projects, being a husband and a father.. (laughs) I watch as many movies as I can. I love movies and I watch as many movies as I can of any type. I love watching any kind of movie I can get my hand on.

Do you have any projects set in Greece?

Actually I wrote one that is based in Greece and it’s about my grandfather. My grandfather’s name was Kostas. But I call the script Gus. It’s about his immigrant journey. Growing up in Greece extremely poor, working hard traveling from Greece to the US and actually starting the restaurant and night club culture in Mississippi. He was the first person to start a night club on the Golf coast of Mississippi. He became very successful and very well known. He has passed away now but he became very famous in the Mississippi for starting one of the largest night clubs in the South. And it was a classic nightclub in the 50’s and 60’s where world class entertainers used to come through. It had a lot of gambling and drinking. He was an uneducated man who never went to school. He just basically relied on himself and he became sort of a king in Greek. So, that’s the story. It has flashbacks, filtered with some part of Greek mythology and becomes metaphysical in some aspects. This is a project I would really like to do.