I'm sure by now you've read in the Bee (or on The Fresnan) that filming for Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull did indeed take place at Fresno's Chandler Airport yesterday. It was just as cool as I knew it would be. I'm trying to play it cool myself, but you should know that I am not cool - I am, in fact, one of those people who squeals and freaks out at the idea of movie stars in her hometown. That is exactly what happened yesterday.

I was sure that I would not be able to get to the airport to see the action, but as it turns out, there is this thing called "a long lunch" - I just took one of those (and paid for it later, believe me. Still worth it!)

I picked up fellow Beehiver Mike Oz and we went to the airport to scope out the scene. We saw a couple of cars trying to get into the airport's main gate and one of Fresno's Finest dutifully blocking the way. We kept going.

Further down the road we started to see trucks and trailers, a sure sign of film making. And then we struck what we thought was gold: the blue tents of a catering service, and a group of crew members and extras in costume enjoying lunch:

As promising as this was, we kept going. And that's when we found the Holy Grail.

Winding our way along the frontage road, we saw a spot where a couple of cars were parked. We knew this had to be the place. Standing along a chain link fence were about a dozen or so people. We crawled through the trees to join them, and that's when we saw the set. It wasn't close enough to see clearly who was there (where was the Big Name Actor ABC30 promised?), but it was closer than I thought we'd get.

We had missed some of the good stuff, apparently. Smoke and things like that. We thought maybe we'd missed filming altogether, and then we heard it. The Voice. Steven Spielberg himself directing: "Very good, Shia." Holy crap, Shia LaBeouf is here! "Very nice, Harrison." HOLY CRAP, HARRISON FORD IS IN FRESNO!

Yeah, I lost it. When I heard Steven freakin' Spielberg mention Harrison Ford's name while filming an Indiana Jones movie while on my lunch break in my hometown, I started jumping up and down, squealing and clapping my hands like I'd just been released from my stint as a child slave laborer in the Temple of Doom. I lost it. And I didn't even see anything.

We hung around watching them film for awhile - it was still really too far away to see anything - and then left when a giant water truck pulled in front of the chain link fence to block our view. We circled the airport once, and as we were preparing to drive away for good, we saw that people were leaving the set. Two giant SUVs left and headed toward where the trucks, trailers and catering was set up (Harrison? Steven?) and then we saw a group of about 4 or 5 walking away.

One of them looked awfully familiar to me. I had seen this photo that's been on the 'Net for some time:

so I knew immediately that we were looking at Shia LaBeouf walking to lunch. Mike, who seemed very nonplussed about the whole thing in his typical Mike Oz kind of way, half-heartedly tried to get me to scream out his name to get him to turn and look at us, but I couldn't do it, mostly because I was worried I'd mispronounce it. The picture is far away, but it's him:

So there it is. It may not be The Greatest Thing Ever in Fresno History™, but it is, by far, the greatest thing that has ever happened on my lunch break.

[Photo at top right taken by John Walker, The Fresno Bee]