As we get ready to bring home Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Lucasfilm shares the story of Mitch Hallock and Ed Dolista, two fans from opposite sides of the world that came together over all things Indiana Jones for the IndyCast podcast.
Driven by his passion for uncovering ancient mysteries, Indiana Jones travels the world and makes friends wherever he goes. Likewise, the passion of Indiana Jones fans creates friendships that cross oceans and hemispheres. For American Mitch Hallock and Australian Ed Dolista, their individual journeys as Indy fans converged when they decided to pool their talents on a new idea: a podcast celebrating their love for the adventurer-archaeologist that has become a gathering place for a worldwide community of like-minded fans.
Both Hallock and Dolista’s stories begin in 1981 with the debut of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. “There was a show on the Australian government broadcast station called Four Corners, which had a little entertainment section at the end,” says Dolista, who grew up in the town of Geelong not far from Melbourne. “I was watching the show, and they spoke about this new film called Raiders of the Lost Ark starring Harrison Ford. I thought, ‘I know that name.’ They showed what felt like the entire opening sequence of Raiders, though it probably wasn’t. It was Han Solo, but it didn’t look like Han Solo. It just blew my mind.”
Only 11-years-old at the time, Dolista convinced his parents to take him to the local cinema where he was “absolutely mesmerized,” as he puts it. “I loved Star Wars, Superman: The Movie, and Flash Gordon,” he explains, “but this wasn’t sci-fi or fantasy. It was grounded in reality and I’d never seen anything like it.”
Over in America that summer, a 13-year-old Hallock was another Lucasfilm fan who convinced his grandmother to take him to a preview screening of Raiders in their hometown of New Haven, Connecticut. “My Italian grandmother was deathly afraid of snakes, and literally ran out of the movie theater during the Well of Souls scene,” he recalls, “but I couldn’t leave! I saw it 13 times that summer. Anybody I could drag to the movie theater…I couldn’t get enough of it.”
For both adolescents, it was the character himself who struck a nerve. “Everyone loved Indy, whether you were five or 90 years old,” says Dolista. “Raiders can be pretty scary, but like James Bond, lots of people could relate to the character, even more so in some ways. James Bond was a rich spy and nothing would phase him. Roger Moore was my James Bond, and he’d give a little quip and be alright, whereas Indy felt every punch. You could relate to him even more.”
By 2007, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was in production and the anticipation from fans was steadily growing. Dolista had begun listening to fan-run Star Wars podcasts, and when one program started discussing Indiana Jones, inspiration struck. “I thought, ‘Hang on a second, that’s what I can do. I know Indiana Jones,’” he explains. “So I wrote in and offered to do a little segment for them.” This would quickly spin off into a full-fledged program that Dolista called the “IndyCast.”
Halfway around the world, Hallock was also enjoying the buildup to Crystal Skull’s release, and he didn’t have to go far for excitement. The Lucasfilm production had set up camp in his own hometown, filming scenes for the movie at Yale University and other locations in Connecticut. The lifelong fan was enjoying every minute of it.
“You don’t know what surreal is until you’re in your hometown – where you grew up and went to the store and went to school and saw movies – and there are the people who made those movies that you loved,” Hallock explains. “I’d go down and watch the filming every day. I’d never been on a movie set and had no idea what the protocols were. They’d taken over Yale and the streets of New Haven to make it look like 1957. I started doing spoiler-free set reports for a fansite called TheRaider.net.”
These reports would finally bring Hallock and Dolista together. When the former began listening to Dolista’s new podcast segments, he recognized that the host was using his own set reports to help share the latest news. “So I wrote him an email and we became friends and I started helping,” Hallock says. “Ed offered me the chance to come on and do my own reports for the IndyCast. I didn’t know anything at first. I had a horrible microphone. Things kept getting bigger and bigger in the lead-up to Crystal Skull. There was so much going on in 2008.”
As Dolista puts it, “It got a lot better when Mitch emailed and offered to contribute. The more people, the better. You can record this in a vacuum, but it’s great to have the feedback and interact with each other.” Their partnership became the center of a growing team of correspondents from multiple countries, each sharing their own insights, research, opinions, and stories about all things Indiana Jones. It also marked a significant confluence for both Hallock and Dolista. The skillsets and experience that had been inspired by their childhood passion were now being used in the service of that very material.
Read the story in full at Lucasfilm.com. Preorder Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny on 4K, Blu-ray and DVD from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, arriving on December 5th and 4th respectively. The film also arrives on Disney+ from December 1st.
You can listen to our thoughts on Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and the UK premiere on RADIO 1138.
