10 Movie Moments IMPOSSIBLE To Watch Same Way After This
4. The Village Shaman's Dramatic Pauses Are For One Specific Reason - Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom may be the messiest film of the original trilogy, but it's also full of ludicrously entertaining moments and totally unforgettable characters.
One minor character you'll surely remember is the shaman who recruits Indy (Harrison Ford) to retrieve his village's stolen Shiva lingam stone, played by distinctive Sri Lankan character actor D. R. Nanayakkara.
During his initial scene with Indy, you might recall that the shaman makes numerous pauses as he speaks, which most viewers understandably assume are simply for dramatic purposes.
But as Steven Spielberg himself explained in a making-of documentary about the film, Nanayakkara couldn't actually speak English, and so Spielberg had to speak every line aloud to the actor for him to copy during shooting.
Every time you're hearing a few seconds of "dramatic pause," Spielberg's actually speaking the next line on set for Nanayakkara to mimic. And yet, the end result feels so natural and perfect that you'd never know otherwise. Reality shattered.