As the now Academy Award-winning Everything Everywhere All At Once actor Ke Huy Quan pointed out, his entire life has been like “a story that only happens in the movies”.
Given the fact that he arrived as a refugee from Vietnam in America in the late Seventies, became a child star in Eighties blockbuster movies, and had an almost 20 year career gap before winning an Oscar aged 51, he’d better expect one of the streamers to approach him with an eight-part dramatisation of his life right about… now.
However, while his emotional acceptance speech on the night had many people in bits, it was Quan’s reunion with his former co-star in Indiana Jones And The Temple of Doom, Harrison Ford, that truly broke everyone.
If you remember, Ford and Quan starred in the second Indiana Jones movie together in 1984. Ford, obviously, was Jones while Quan played Short Round, an 11-year-old orphan in Shanghai, who helps Jones escape from Lao Che.
According to Empire, 6,000 actors auditioned from around the world for the part. Director Steven Spielberg took a shine to 12-year-old Quan – his brother was actually the one auditioning – and when he set up an improv session with Quan and Ford playing out the scene in which Short Round accuses Jones of cheating at a game of cards, it created such on-screen magic, that it turned out being "in the finished film, played out round the campfire.”
While filming, Quan later told The Guardian: “It was one of the happiest times of my life”. When splashing around in a hotel pool off-set, Harrison realised Quan couldn’t swim and he offered to teach him. “That’s how we bonded,” he explained.
After Quan’s stint as a child star, he didn’t see Ford for many years, until recently, when he bumped into him at fan expo. As detailed in the same interview, “I hadn’t seen him for 38 years. As I got closer, my heart started pounding because I didn’t know if he was going to recognise me. He looked at me and said: ‘Are you Short Round?’ I was immediately transported back to when I was a little kid. I said: ‘Yes, Indy.’ He said: ‘Come here,’ and gave me a big hug.”
The Oscars’ producers were obviously primed for this golden moment to happen again, as Harrison was set up as the person who presented Quan – and the rest of the cast – with their best picture award, completing the full circle of Ford and Quan:
Everyone, everywhere promptly lost the plot:
“Ke Huy Quan freaking out with Harrison Ford on stage has ruined me,” one Twitter user said, while another added: “Low key crying over the full circle moment of Harrison Ford giving an Oscar to Ke Huy Quan.”
A true Oscars moment for the ages: we love to see it.
