Raiders of the Lost Backyard; When 10-year-old Chris Strompolos and 11-year-old Eric Zala decided to remake Raiders of the Lost Ark, shot for shot, in the summer of 1982, they never imagined it would take 7 years-and emerge, two decades later, as a minor cult phenomenon.(filmmakers)(Interview)

BYLINE: By Jim Windolf

Chris Strompolos was a rowdy, pudgy kid who craved attention. He once bit a classmate, and he had a habit of barking at his teachers, which didn't go over very well at the Episcopal schools he attended in southern Mississippi. In their efforts to get him to behave, teachers made Chris sit on his hands, copy pages from the Bible, and stay in a dark room for hours by himself. On one occasion, Chris recalls, he even got paddled in front of his classmates. More and more, he drifted into a fantasy world-the world of his favorite movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Ever since seeing it in the summer of 1981, he had idolized the film's hero, the swashbuckling archaeologist Indiana Jones. Chris loved Indiana Jones. He wanted to be Indiana Jones. Cracking the bullwhip. Rescuing the girl. Making wisecracks all the while. Whenever he could, Chris slipped into the swampy woods near his hometown of Gulfport, and he swung from vines and pretended to be Indy in a world of adventure far from the awful reality (whap) he had to endure (whap) as that wooden paddle smacked his behind (whap).

When he wasn't playing Indiana Jones, Chris often pored over his Raiders of the Lost Ark comic book. It was a good way to pass the time during the hour-long school-bus rides. One day on the bus, the 10-year-old Chris showed his prized comic book to a skinny older boy, a sixth-grader named Eric Zala, who was known in school as a comic-book collector and talented graphic artist. Eric, 11, seemed impressed. It turned out he was a Raiders fan, too.

During a school assembly that spring, Chris noticed Eric again: he was up on the screen, playing a Gestapo-type villain in a super-8 movie made by a group of sixth-graders under a teacher's supervision. Chris loved every minute of it-and it wasn't lost on him that Eric had modeled his character after Toht, the sadistic Nazi from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

After the school year was over, in June of 1982, Chris called Eric. He had an idea. Eric was surprised to be hearing from a kid he barely knew, but invited Chris over to his house anyway.

What ensued was halfway between a playdate and a Hollywood pitch meeting. The two boys sat in Eric's damp basement, listening to a sound-effects record and brainstorming about doing their own shot-for-shot remake of the movie they loved. Chris planned to play Indiana Jones. Eric said he would take the Toht role.

For most kids, an afternoon spent daydreaming out loud about taking on some grand project would have been enough. But for Chris and Eric, it was just the beginning. As partners, they would prove to be strangely suited to the huge task they had begun. And so their little undertaking became something that occupied them for the rest of the 1980s.