Indiana Jones' hat

The fourth Indiana Jones movie is almost here! I still remember being wildly excited when I saw the first one. My Dad took us, and when we got home, my brother and sister and I ran to tell Mom how great it was.

The world is obsessed with this movie. No detail is going to go undiscussed. The LA Times ran a story today about the man's hat. On the front page of the Calendar section. Haberdashery as iconography. God bless the costume designer, in this case a guy named Bernie Pollack (Sydney's brother).

You're probably thinking, what's the big deal? It's just a hat. Oh no. You don't just go to a hat store and buy one of these off the rack. You make it from scratch. How seriously do these people take this stuff? Pollack describes Spielberg's reaction:

"Steven said, 'Oh, thank God -- I lost sleep wondering if you were going to be able to come up with the look of the hat that I wanted.' "

If Spielberg can sleep easy, I can sleep easy.

And it's not just one hat. There is more than one. What is something happens to it? What if some vicious commie dog chews it up (I assume the bad guys are good old-fashioned communists this time around)? There is a backup. And a backup for the backup. And a backup for the backup for the backup. How far does this backing up go? For this movie, they made:

* 30 identical fedoras
* 30 leather jackets
* 60 pairs of khaki pants
* 72 shirts

And I assume that's just for Harrison Ford. This is just one reason that movies cost many millions of dollars. And it's just one reason costume designers win Oscars.