After two weeks of binging on movies, what better way to bring the Milwaukee Film Festival to a close than a movie about a movie recreating another movie?

That’s at least the hope with the festival’s closing night pick, "Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made." That subtitle isn’t exaggerating either. A bunch of young Mississippi kids in the ’80s wanted to make a home video remake of "Raiders of the Lost Ark"; seven years and loads of insanely dedicated effort later, it was completed … save for one scene. 30 years later, they finally got their scene and called their fan film a wrap – with a final product worthy of Spielberg.

Co-directors Jeremy Coon and Tim Skousen are the men behind the documentary behind the movie, and the former is partly responsible for bringing "Napoleon Dynamite" to the big screen. Before his movie starts rolling the end credits on the Milwaukee Film Festival, OnMilwaukee got a chance to chat with Jeremy Coon about bringing some legendary film geeks – as well as possibly the ultimate geek – to the big screen.

OnMilwaukee: What really got you into film, and considering the subject of your film, what movies got you interested in it? 

Jeremy Coon: So my dad took me to go see "Aliens" in the theater when I was seven, which I guess he always looks back at it as a questionable decision. But for me, that was the moment where I fell in love with movies: that seven-year-old sitting in a theater watching "Aliens" and like all of James Cameron’s movies. That led to "The Fly" and "RoboCop," and after that, I could not consume enough movies. I was into Hong Kong cinema … anything I could get my hands on to watch on video.

Initially, Roger Ebert was my idol, so I was like, "I want to be a movie reviewer! I can watch movies and review them!" But that was more like a wanting to be a baseball player type of dream, so I got to college and figured I’d be a business major. They recommended I get something else as my undergrad, so I decided to do film, because I thought it would be easy and I’d do well at it and I enjoyed it. And that’s what got me on the film track where I actually started making movies and learning how to put things together.

OnMilwaukee: You were one of the primary figures of bringing "Napoleon Dynamite" to the big screen as an executive producer. What about that movie appealed to you – and do you think appealed to so many people to become such an indie breakout?

Jeremy Coon: I guess the short answer is I just thought it was funny, and it was different. And I believed in Jared (Hess) as a filmmaker and director. If I had to make one bet, that was the people and the script I wanted to make the bet on.

We had no expectations. I was thinking about this the other day, because I forgot about it, but when we made it, we made it for college kids and even then more for Utah-Idaho, that region college students. We thought they would find it funny so we’d at least have somewhat of a market and make it on the cheap. We had no expectations that high school kids and younger would like it. I remember we had high school screenings during Sundance, and that was the first time we ever played it to someone that wasn’t a festival 20-to-30-year-old crowd, and it did really well. I thought it would be too close to home for people in high school to find really funny, but fortunately we were proven wrong.

I talk to people know whose kids have watched it and weren’t even born when it came out.

OnMilwaukee: How did you come upon the story of "Raiders!" and these guys making this movie?

Jeremy Coon: I heard rumors of this. I read Ain’t It Cool News regularly back then, and somehow this story had kind of slipped by me, but I heard rumors about it, these kids doing a shot-for-shot remake of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in their backyard. But I couldn’t find it online anywhere, and I never got a chance to see it, so I didn’t know if it really existed or if it was just an urban myth.

So about two and a half years ago, there was a small kids film festival here in Utah, and they were showing the "Raiders" adaptation they’d made on like a Saturday afternoon at 3. So decided I’d check it out, more curious than anything. I called a friend and checked it out; if it sucked, we’ll find out, but it’d be fun.

Within 15 minutes, when the bar scene happened and everything was on fire, I just turned to my friend and was, like, almost offended that I didn’t know more about this. This story needed to be told. The whole time I was thinking I needed to talk to this Chris guy after this and see what the deal is. I wanted to do a documentary on this, but if I didn’t get to do it, I wanted to push them to make sure somebody does. That was my pitch, that their story needed to be told much wider than it’d been told thus far.

OnMilwaukee: What about this story made you want to step behind the camera for the first time?

Jeremy Coon: To me, one, it’s just bizarre. You tell people, and they’re like, "What?" On the surface of it, it’s ridiculous, but after I read the book, there’s so much backstory, and it works on a lot of different levels.

The story itself – the underdogs finishing up this impossible task they started as kids – is a really good story, but then you also can wrap in my own childhood with growing up with "Raiders" and "Star Wars" and that nostalgia, kind of feeling like I wasted my own childhood because I never would have spent seven or eight years of my childhood remaking a movie. I wouldn’t be that committed to do anything. So just the fact that someone is that driven to do something – especially at that young age – I find incredibly interesting. I just want to peel the onion back and learn more about what makes these guys tick. There’s not a lot of people who would be even capable of doing that. I think that’s pretty miraculous.

OnMilwaukee: What about their particular story really captures the public’s attention? Because all sorts of kids make their own home movies and stuff, but why is theirs so fascinating to people?

Jeremy Coon: The first reason is that "Raiders" is just one of those movies that, if you’re of a certain age, you grew up watching it and know every frame of it. I think that’s one aspect of it. That source material really makes the story engaging. If this was about even "Back to the Future," I don’t think is held as high of regard as "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Even though it’s one of my favorite movies, there’s very few movies on that list that warrant this kind of attention.

Another one is that they did this back in 1982, before the film was even on video. Just getting a video camera to go shoot something back then was difficult; it wasn’t like it was today. Today, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal.

And another one would be that they did an amazing job. A lot of these remakes are just crappy remakes; this one seems to transcend that where it’s something more. It’s still a childhood remake, but there’s just so much meticulous love behind it that comes through watching it. I think that really resonates with people when they see it. You see that these kids are doing it just for the love of it, and they did the best they could on every step of it.