Behind the Scenes With Kennedy and Marshall

Collaborators share their favorite anecdotes about the Thalberg recipients

FROM THEIR STARTS as lowly showbiz assistants, this year’s Irving G. Thalberg recipients Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall have helped bring an impressive array of films to life. Together and separately, they have worked on movies from “The Last Picture Show” (Marshall) and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (both) to the upcoming “Star Wars: Episode IX” (Kennedy), with the likes of Steven Spielberg, Harrison Ford and George Lucas.

Their films have raked in billions, earning the pair 13 Oscar noms between them.

But what’s it like to work for Kennedy and Marshall, married since 1987? Ask some of their famous collaborators — Ford, Matt Damon, Laura Dern and Lucas included —and a theme emerges.

They say the producers have come to the rescue of their productions almost as often as the heroes in their movies for Amblin Entertainment, founded with Spielberg in 1981, the Kennedy/marshall Co. a decade later, and mostly separately since Kennedy became chairman of Lucasfilm in 2012. (Kennedy has also produced films Marshall has directed.)

Much like Indiana Jones, Ford pulls no punches when talking about his longtime friends. “There’s a lot in this business that doesn’t make sense. Kathy and Frank are one of the things that do,” says Ford, who also had a deleted cameo in “E.T.,” Kennedy’s first producer credit. “They work hard, they’re good people with good ideas, they have a real understanding of how the movie business works and they know how to get shit done.”

Ford is now working with Kennedy — the first female Thalberg honoree — to develop Spielberg’s long-gestating fifth Indiana Jones film, which they hope to begin shooting “at least a year-and-a-half before my death,” he quips.

“Their job is to deal with the impossible every day,” says Lucas, long-time exec producer on the franchise. “One of the most challenging situations was when Harrison hurt his back on ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.’ I had to be the one to say he had to go back to California and have an operation. Steven, with the help of Frank and Kathy, worked things out to where [they’d only lose] one out of the nine weeks Harrison was gone. They made sure the production didn’t shut down for nine weeks, which would have cost a fortune.”

Matt Damon credits Marshall with saving the day on “The Bourne Identity.” “Frank was a replacement, because our