‘Raiders!,’ or how three Mississippi teens made the ultimate fan film

First, some context and back story: Starting in 1981, three Mississippi boys – Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala and Jayson Lamb – started a shot-for-shot remake of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” It seemed like a goofy, make-your-own-fun way to kill a few months.

It took all seven summers of their childhood, and then some.

Using the real movie’s script and shot out of sequence, actors in “Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation” – as it came to be known – appear at different ages from scene to scene. They made their own special effects. They nearly burned down a house.

“Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation” looks like nothing else in the world, but they certainly didn’t know that at the time. Their movie premiered in 1989 in a Gulfport, Mississippi, auditorium, and everyone went their separate ways.

The movie attained legendary status over the course of the 1990s, a tape-trading classic before being given a proper theatrical premiere in Austin in 2003 at Harry Knowles’ Butt-Numb-a-Thon after filmmaker Eli Roth passed him a copy. Eventually, even Steven Spielberg gave the thing his imprimatur.

But they never did get one last shot, the famous exploding airplane sequence.

Until now.

In 2014, the filmmakers, now in their 40s, raised money on Kickstarter to film that last shot. Directed by Jeremy Coon and Tim Skousen, “Raiders!,” which made its world premiere at the South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival last year, is the story of “The Adaptation,” the filmmakers and that elusive final scene.

“Raiders!” toggles between the past and the present, from the unsupervised summers that yielded this hunk of classic American outsider art to contemporary struggles that stand in the way of their oddball-yet- incredibly-awesome dream.

Zala, a comics nerd “driven to make films,” directed “The Adaptation.” Strompolos, who said he had a largely interior life after his parents’ ugly divorce, played Indy. Lamb, the “creative oddity,” did the effects – as one might imagine, he is upset when his interest in doing the last shot with miniatures is, well, shot down, and still doesn’t think he received enough credit.

As one cast member puts it, the filmmakers often found adults to work with who were even less responsible than the kids were. And they didn’t exactly keep their parents well informed about what they were doing in the woods, either.

Eventually, 11 years after “The Adaptation” screened in Austin, they decide it is time to do the final scene, the famous airplane sequence where Indy fights the giant German guy while dodging rotors. As you might recall, the plane eventually explodes. It is a very, very dangerous shot for professionals, let alone amateurs. Our heroes are undaunted – they want to shoot it with something like a real plane. They raise enough money, and they have nine days to get 124 shots. It’s on.

It’s clear that some wounds remain. All three were young men looking for decent father figures; making “The Adaptation” became emotional sustenance. Strompolos and Zala both had a crush on Angela Rodriguez, the gal who played Marion, whom they convince to reprise her part in 2014.

Time treated them all differently. Zala has to beg his job for time off to pursue this weird dream, and those scenes are particularly wrenching, especially when day after shooting day is rained out, throwing their production wildly off schedule. Strompolos struggled with drug and alcohol abuse – and being in what looks like a fairly terrible metal band.

Discussion about the brilliance of “The Adaptation” by Alamo Drafthouse owner Tim League, Roth, Knowles and others pushes the run time a little long, but “Raiders!” is mostly a blast, a solid story-behind-the-story about both pursuing your dream no matter what and how nobody has any idea how the art they make will live on after they have left it behind.