A little while ago, while researching a new jacket to double-check my personal fit, I went through the whole movie shot-for-shot and frame-by-frame to test my hypothesis on a few things.
Obviously, it isn’t possible for individual jackets to be identified within every single shot, but there are many shots within each scene where something is identifiable to tag a specific jacket as one of the 4 noted. Nothing suggests there were more. If anything, the fact that every jacket (on a stuntman or Ford) where we see enough detail has markers from one of the 4 does tend to confirm that there were only 4 jackets.
The only “mystery” jacket I had encountered was in the truck – and was identified as the BW in the other thread. But the BW jacket opened a can of worms. The whole way it presented was significantly different to the other 2, but there was a key difference between scenes that otherwise looked like the same oddball jacket. - The yoke.
Discussing this with others and being really picky about what we were seeing made me sure there had to be 2 of these weird jackets. There was no other way to reconcile what we were seeing.
Here is a collage of where these "Coopers" appear. I've kept it tagged as the "Bantu Wind jacket" here.
They have very specific characteristics and markers that, in combination, are mutually exclusive to the other jackets in the film, and to each other. There is NOTHING in any of these shots that looks like shrunken lamb. I could buy that these were made of something else.
Although I’ve gone through the whole movie, it’s impractical for me to go shot-for-shot with screencaps here, so will illustrate the depth and style of my reasoning with a few specific scenes & shots. So, starting at the infamous Bantu Wind shoot, we have the first appearance of a jacket in the shooting order. It isn't seen in much of the movie. This jacket MAY have a low yoke, but I actually think the lighting may well be creating an illusion of that. Anyway, I won't repeat my other thread re the markers of this jacket other than to say it's zipper gap is very specifically tall, the collar stand highish, and the collar and the way the jacket flays open is very consistent. See the top left image to really get a sense of how different that gap is to the main jackets used.
In fact it presents as pretty much identical to this jacket in the Imam's House scene, which was shot next. Note the markers showing that it has a high yoke.
So, high yoke, big zipper-to-collar stand gap, and that wavy transitional bit you see at the join. But hang on, check this out from the La Rochelle shoot:
Definitely a low yoke. Can't be the Imam's jacket. (It's possible that this specific photo COULD be the "PoS" jacket and it was never used in the footage seen in the film.) However, that aside, all the other markers are identical, and they show up on Ford at the Bantu Wind, at Imams, in one shot in the truck chase, and all of Terry Leonard's footage, both in the film and in the making-of footage. The ONLY inconsistency is the yoke. Ford tends to wear the high yoked one, Leonard the low.
OK, so how are therse jackets definitely different to the main jackets we see? Let me lay it out by using the next scene shot.
Now, that whole next week after Imams was spent filming the Peruvian Temple scenes. The first scenes shot involved the spiders and the booby-trapped corridor. All of a sudden, a new jacket appears – the one that evolves into the Main Jacket, with some brief reappearances of the Bantu Wind (Cooper?).
In the temple when he says "Stay out of the light", it's the BW.
Same collar, zipper gap. SQUARE collar stand. It then switches to the Main "Hero" Jacket. You'll notice that's the one with the high yoke in these sequences, and the start of the droopy collar. So then he goes over the ravine to the Idol area, all MJ. Then they come back, under the collapsing door, yanks whip - still main jacket, then cutaway, then reveal of dead guide - Boom - BW again. Same section of set (and time of shooting) as when it was last seen. Back to main jacket for rolling ball entrance.
So, rewatching very slowly there are 2 jackets in this section of the set - the BW and the "Hero" - based on collar presentation / folding / start of droopiness vs. concaveness of the BW (Cooper) jacket. After this, neither of the Coopers is worn by Ford again until a single shot in the truck chase. He switches to what we would assume are jackets made by Leather Concessionaires, the Main Jacket, and the Hawaii. It next turns up on Terry Leonard's back.
- To digress for a moment, another interesting thing I discovered in analyzing this footage was the start of the MJ’s “droopy collar” – which is this jacket’s most easily distinguishable feature. The cut of this collar is no different to the HW, but it is folded differently. (I covered this in a thread about a year ago about “collar training”) Here’s how it happened. In the whole first week of the jacket being worn, Ford’s wearing the collar “popped”. Very ‘70s / ‘80s look.
Anyway, in doing so, the RH collar develops a convex shape at a point beyond the collar/collar stand seam. The leather gets broken in along that line, and we end up with the effect you see on screen, and it gets worse and worse throughout. The bad cut of the jacket exacerbates this effect. Much has been discussed about the “off the shoulder” effect of the Nowak HW jacket duplicate, and anyone who has owned a Nowak Indy1 will tell you how much it wants to move around on you – it feels unstable rather than sitting on your shoulders. I believe the fact that we see the jacket pulling down off Ford’s RH side points to the same pattern at work here. It’s come from a combo of collar “training”, Ford’s posture and the way his other costume items – bag, gun holster, etc. nudge the jacket around on him.
- Anyway, as I noted in the other thread, from this point until the truck chase, the jacket we see is exclusively the Main Jacket, with the exception of the one worn by Martin Grace when riding the collapsing statue in the WoS scene.
- If you watch the film with the shooting order in mind, you can see the evolution of this Main Jacket. It goes Peruvian temple, Well of Souls, Raven Bar, Bantu Wind cabin, Indy’s house (MJ striations visible in suitcase), Tanis horse theft, the flying wing, and the truck chase (where all 3 jackets are used).
So, what are the markers of the Main Jacket that I and a few others have identified? How is it different from the 2 Coopers (Bantu Wind / Imams House / Terry Leonard jackets) and the Hawaii jacket that Nowak replicates?
Main Jacket (MJ):
- Droopy RH collar. The shape is the same as the HW but fold creates the illusion of difference.
- Tony Nowak confirmed from screen grabs that like the HW jacket he examined, the RH zipper of the MJ has been “crammed”, and this results in the permanent curve at the top. This curve pops inwards as well as out, but the effect is most noticeable when it pops outward. The BW jacket does not do this, as you can see above.
- Versus the Hawaii, the RH gap to the Zipper stop is a little larger. This same gap of the BW is even further, and is curved, as noted above.
- The variety of shrunken lamb on the MJ is arguably different to the HW. The MJ is definitely striated, with markers visible on almost every panel of the jacket; the most prominent being the front RH chest panel. (The HW jacket may also have these striations, but they just aren’t noticeable in the shots we see it in.) None of these are evident in the BW jacket, which presents as far more cow-like graining and general "crustiness" as you can see.
- There are numerous imperfections visible on the MJ. For example, there is a diagonal line-shaped leather gathering bubble about 5" down LH side facing. Other areas of consistency are the pockets. (The HW jacket has similar gathering on the lower LH storm flap.)
- One key imperfection is a dimpled collar stand that is rounded off with a "Butt Crack" shaped surface. The rounding is not an illusion. A row of stitching is clearly visible. Neither the HW or BW jackets have rounded collar stands, and the HW’s surface has multiple dimples.
- The HW jacket has what might be backing tape behind the pocket flaps. This makes the surrounding rectangular area wobbly-looking. The MJ does not.
- The anchoring of the BW straps seems to be different.
That’s it for now. I’m sure I’ve left stuff out, as I came up with most of this stuff and discussed it with a few friends a while ago. But frankly, I think it's all pretty straightforward, and you all have the DVD. If anything's really contentious, I'll put more pics up. If you disagree or need clarification, please feel free to throw up any questions or grabs that don’t jive. I’m in this for the fun of the analysis, so it’s all good.
Cheers, Yojimbo
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