[Edit]

This article is about the film; for the classification, see Close encounter.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind         Plot Overview         Trivia         See also

Name Close Encounters of the Third Kind image Director Steven Spielberg Producer Julia Phillips Michael Phillips Clark L... Writer Steven Spielberg Starring Richard Dreyfuss François Truffaut Music John Williams Cinematography Vilmos Zsigmond Editing Michael Kahn Production Company Columbia Pictures Distributor Columbia Pictures Released 16 November, 1977 Runtime Various, including: Original 70MM Versio... Country USA / UK Awards Academy Awards Language English Language Budget $20,000,000 Gross Domestic $116,395,460 Foreign $171,7... Amg Id 1:10031

top

A group of scientific researchers including Lacombe (Truffaut) and Laughlin (Balaban) investigate UFO reports worldwide, and discover a lost squadron of World War II aircraft (see Flight 19) in a Mexican desert.

During a motorized pursuit of several UFOs that was probably modelled on the Portage County UFO Chase, Indiana electrical lineman Roy Neary (Dreyfuss) experiences a close encounter of the second kind (a sighting that leaves physical evidence) and thereafter becomes obsessed with UFOs, to the great dismay of his family. He begins making endless models of a distinctive mountain or hill - a place he has never actually seen, and with which he is unfamiliar. At one point, he and his wife (Garr) attend a meeting featuring both patronizing and skeptical government officials, and an archetypal crackpot ("I saw Bigfoot once!")

Jillian Guiler (Dillon) witnesses a UFO landing, in which her son Barry (Guffey) is abducted by aliens who appear to invade her home. Soon after, Guiler also becomes obsessed with the mental picture of a unique-looking mountain.

top

Spielberg was given an unprecedented budget of US $20M (1977). However, the film lacked the merchandising and sequel potential of Star Wars, hence the drive to extract extra earnings by releasing 'Special Editions'.

When the original director of Jaws 2 was fired, Spielberg considered taking over. However, his contractual obligations to Close Encounters of the Third Kind meant that production on the sequel would have been delayed by an expensive year.

The motif woven through the film (the five tones that the space ship plays back and forth with the humans) is re - mi - do - do (octave lower) - so(l). These tones all lie on a major pentatonic scale. The motif has shown up in later movies and TV shows, notably as a code entered on a pushbutton keypad in Moonraker of the James Bond series and in the Power Glove sequence of The Wizard. The five notes were also rearranged for the theme to Jurassic Park, also composed by John Williams. In one episode of the short-lived animated series The Oblongs, the tones are used for the doorbell of an alien masquerading as a teenage girl.

At the climactic scene, François Truffaut and the alien use Kodály Hand Signs to express this motif. The alien smiles after doing so; Spielberg was slightly surprised and pleased that the prop could muster the facial gesture.

Astronomer J. Allen Hynek, a UFO researcher who coined the term "close encounter," was a consultant for the film, makes a cameo appearance as a scientist smoking a pipe near the end of the picture.

When Roy removes all the UFO articles on the walls, a miniature model of the U.S.S. ''Enterprise'' and a Klingon D-7 ship from Star Trek can be seen.

UFO researcher Dr. Jacques Vallée served as a model for the character of the French scientist Lacombe played by François Truffaut. Vallée met Hynek while studying for his Ph.D. at Northwestern University.

Spielberg initially wanted the mothership to be very dark, but later on decided to make it extremely bright. A model of the mothership used during filming is on display at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Northern Virginia; the model includes a number of easter egg hidden objects integrated in and around the ship's antennas, domes and other structures. Examples include a 1930s automobile, a cemetery, a VW Bus and a small model of R2-D2.

During an interview years later, Richard Dreyfuss was asked whether there would ever be a sequel to Close Encounters. He responded that, "The sequel to Close Encounters was E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial."

Spielberg would finally resort to the "evil alien" with his 2005 version of War of the Worlds.

To those familiar with the filming site, there is some geographic license taken in the famous scene in which Richard Dreyfuss' character Roy Neary is on his way to investigate the blackout. He is on Cornbread Rd. and he stops on a railroad crossing, and becomes enveloped in light from the UFO. Cornbread Rd. exists, however the railroad crossing does not. Cornbread Rd. runs mostly parallel to the CSX Transportation line that comes close, but never crosses.

The synthesizer used to communicate with the aliens at the end of the film is an ARP 2500 modular system. Phil Dodds, a tech from ARP Instruments Inc., is the man playing the keyboard.

Melinda Dillon takes some photos of Dreyfuss's departure with the aliens using a Rollei 35 B compact camera.

Steve McQueen, Gene Hackman, Jack Nicholson and James Caan were all considered for the main role (McQueen was a recluse at the time, Hackman passed for unknown reasons, Nicholson was deemed too old and Caan's price tag was too high).

French house band Daft Punk memorably opened their 2006 U.S. performance, their first in 8 years, at Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival with the theme music from the movie - comparing their performance as something "out of this world"

The coordinates for the Devils's Tower in Wyoming as given in the movie are incorrect. While the longitude is correct (104 deg, 44 min, 30 sec), the latitude is 04 degrees south of where the Devils' Tower National Monument is located (44 deg 36 min 10 sec).

The film was parodied on That '70s Show. On the episode "Who Wants It More?", Kelso (Ashton Kutcher) tells of seeing a UFO. Hyde (Danny Masterson) later mocks Kelso by sculpting the Devil's Tower out of mashed potatoes and saying "This means something", just as Richard Dreyfuss's character did in CE3K.

The movie is also spoofed in two epsiodes of The Simpsons. In the episode "The Springfield Files", Homer sculpts his mashed potatoes into a shape similar to the Devils Tower after he encounters what he believes to be an alien. In another episode called "Homie the Clown", Homer forms a large mashed potato circus tent after becoming obsessed with a billboard advertising a local clown college.

In the film UHF, George Newman (%22Weird Al%22 Yankovic) sculpts his mashed potatoes into the Devil's Tower and says, "This means something, this is important."

The mashed potato sculpture is once more spoofed in the film Muppets From Space, where a fan of Gonzo presents Kermit the frog with a mashed potato sculpture of Gonzo's head.

Close Encounters was parodied in an eighth-season episode of the British comedy The Goodies entitled "U-Friend or UFO?". Steven Spielberg was a fan of The Goodies and in 1979 he considered making a film with the British trio.

top

The Day the Earth Stood Still, an early classic science fiction movie with benevolent aliens.

Serpo.org, The Zeta Reticuli Exchange Program is a conspiracy theory website that purports that the US Government has been secretly involved with an extraterrestrial civilization since 1965 and has been covering it up. Among other "activities", it claims that personnel exchanges like the one seen in the film have been occurring on a regular basis. See Serpo for more.

List of films recut by studio