Filmmaker Jeremy Coon knows a thing or two about cult hits.
In 2004, the Richardson native turned a little project into Napoleon Dynamite, which might have the cult-est of cult followings. Today, he's promoting his 2015 documentary on Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, a film that's had a longtime indie following.
Coon's documentary, Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made, tells the story of how three Mississippi preteens were so enamored by the 1981 release of Raiders of the Lost Ark, they recreated it. Scene by scene. Shot by shot. Word for word.
The movies are being paired at Alamo Drafthouse in Richardson through Wednesday.
Coon first saw The Adaptation in 2013, 10 years after its official release. Coon admitted that he was late to the game when he finally saw a screening at a children's film festival.
"Like 15 minutes in, I just fell in love with it," Coon recently told Sportsradio KTCK-AM (1310) and KTCK-FM (96.7). "When they did the fire scene in the bar, I turned to my friend next to me and I said 'I gotta do a documentary on this. I have too many questions and I have got to know more about this.' "
Coon successfully persuaded Chris Strompolos, who was at the screening, and Eric Zala -- two of the former preteens -- into providing about 35 to 40 hours of raw footage.
Two months later, Strompolos and Zala greenlighted the project. Coon then transformed a box full of Betamax and VHS tapes into the documentary.
Coon told The Ticket that he knew had a story on his hands.
"All the stuff that happened in-between the shots, it's kind of like a Boyhood-type experience," Coon said of the 2014 movie that was filmed over 12 years. "We really get to see how these kids grew up and how much fun they had making their movie."
As the story goes, Strompolos and Zala enlisted their pal Jayson Lamb and spent seven summers recreating Steven Spielberg's big-budget movie at Spielberg's blessing.
{"type":"Event","title":"Raiders! A Fan Film Double Feature","_id":277751,"html":"
","providerType":"guidelive","providerLink":"http://www.guidelive.com/oembed"}
"The great thing about remaking an established film is that it holds your feet to the fire," Strompolos told Rolling Stone. "You can't just remove that boulder scene because it's difficult. It held up a target to hit. First two years in, we're filming and it was terrible. But we kept on reshooting certain scenes over and over again, and we picked up things about shot composition, lighting, blocking. That was our film school on the fly."
Strompolos, Zala and Lamb are in the middle of a nationwide tour to screen their movie and Richardson's Alamo Drafthouse is in Coon's old neighborhood.
"There's a tremendous sense of love behind what they did," Coon told Rolling Stone. "As adults, there's something about harkening back to childhood that reminds you of a time in your life when you were that passionate about something.
"To see that represented onscreen, the sincerity hits you right in the heart."
