Jonesing for Indy

When Indiana Jones swings on screen with his signature bullwhip and fedora for the first time in 19 years tonight at the Edwards Big Newport theater, it will be like the return of a long lost friend for superfan Ralph Perez.

“I want to experience it with people who are as excited as I am, up on the big screen as it was meant to be,” Perez said.

Perez and about 10 other die-hard Indy fans have been camped out in front of Edwards Big Newport since Friday awaiting the first screening of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” at midnight tonight. With its 40-by-80-foot screen, Edwards Big Newport was one of the last large-screen theaters to be built in Southern California. Film buffs flocked to the movie house in years past for the premieres of the last three “Star Wars” films.

Perez, a YMCA director from San Diego, is using his vacation time to camp out in front of the theater with his collection of Indiana Jones action figures and other film memorabilia.

The fans braved temperatures that threatened to boil into the 90s as they camped out in front of the theater over the weekend. Menacing storm clouds hung over the theater Tuesday. Organizers of the campout expect all 1,100 seats to be sold out tonight for the midnight screening of “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

Much has changed since Perez camped out in front of the theater awaiting the premieres of the Star Wars films beginning in the 1970s — and later for “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”

Back in the day, fans would scrounge up large cardboard boxes from trash bins the night before a film debut and sit and wait, he said.

Pup tents instead of cardboard boxes line the side of the road outside the Big Newport today and fans show up days in advance to watch film screenings projected on the side of the building in their pajamas and mingle with other film devotees.

Fans will gather to watch the independent documentary “Indyfans and the Quest for Fortune and Glory” outside the Big Newport at 9 tonight.

The documentary, which examines the legacy of the Indiana Jones film franchise and its die-hard fans, was an Official Selection at this year’s Newport Beach Film Festival. Twenty-five-year-old filmmaker Brandon Kleya, who directed and edited the documentary, is camped out in front of the Big Newport with the rest of the fans.