Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Encyclopedia
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (sometimes abbreviated to CE3K and often referred to as just Close Encounters) is a 1977 science fiction film
written and directed by Steven Spielberg
. The film stars Richard Dreyfuss
, François Truffaut
, Melinda Dillon
, Teri Garr
, Bob Balaban
, and Cary Guffey
. It tells the story of Roy Neary, a lineman in Indiana
, whose life changes after he has an encounter with an unidentified flying object
(UFO). The United States government and an international team of scientific researchers are also aware of the UFOs.
Close Encounters was a long-cherished project for Spielberg. In late 1973, he developed a deal with Columbia Pictures
for a science fiction film. Though Spielberg receives sole credit for the script, he was assisted by Paul Schrader
, John Hill
, David Giler
, Hal Barwood
, Matthew Robbins
, and Jerry Belson
, all of whom contributed to the screenplay in varying degrees. The title is derived from ufologist J. Allen Hynek
's classification of close encounter
s with aliens, in which the third kind denotes human observations of actual aliens or "animate beings".
Filming began in May 1976. Douglas Trumbull
served as the visual effects supervisor
, while Carlo Rambaldi
designed the aliens. Close Encounters was released in November 1977 and was a critical and financial success. The film was reissue
d in 1980 as Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Special Edition, which featured additional scenes. A third cut of the film was released to home video (and later DVD) in 1998. The film received numerous awards and nominations at the 50th Academy Awards
, 32nd British Academy Film Awards
, the 35th Golden Globe Awards
, the Saturn Award
s and has been widely acclaimed by the American Film Institute
. In December 2007, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry
.
n Desert, French scientist Claude Lacombe (François Truffaut) and his American interpreter, mapmaker David Laughlin (Bob Balaban), along with other government scientific researchers, discover Flight 19
, a squadron of Grumman TBM Avengers that went missing over thirty years earlier. The planes are intact and operational, but there is no sign of the pilots. An old man who witnessed the event claimed "the sun came out at night, and sang to him." They also find a lost ship in the Gobi Desert named SS Cotopaxi
. At an Air Traffic Control
center in Indianapolis, Indiana, a controller listens as two airline flights almost have a mid-air collision with an apparent unidentified flying object (UFO). In Muncie, Indiana, three year old Barry Guiler (Cary Guffey
) is awakened in the night when his toys start operating on their own. Fascinated, he gets out of bed and discovers something or someone (off-screen) in the kitchen. He runs outside, forcing his mother Jillian (Melinda Dillon) to chase after him.
Investigating one of a series of large-scale power outages, Indiana electrical lineman Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) experiences a close encounter of the second kind with a UFO on a dark country road and is soon caught up in a police chase of four UFOs. Roy becomes fascinated by UFOs, much to the dismay of his wife, Ronnie (Teri Garr). He also becomes increasingly obsessed with subliminal, mental images of a mountain-like shape and begins to make models of it. Jillian also becomes obsessed with sketching a unique-looking mountain. Soon after, she is terrorized in her home by a UFO encounter in which Barry is abducted by unseen beings.
Elsewhere in the world, the pace of UFO activity is increasing. Lacombe and Laughlin investigate a host of occurrences along with other United Nations experts. Witnesses report that the UFOs make distinctive sounds: a five-tone musical phrase in a major scale. Scientists broadcast the phrase to outer space, but are mystified by the response: a seemingly meaningless series of numbers repeated over and over, until Laughlin recognizes it as a set of geographical coordinates pointing to Devils Tower
in Moorcroft, Wyoming. Lacombe and the U.S. military converge on Wyoming. The United States Army evacuates the area, planting false reports in the media that a train wreck has spilled a toxic nerve gas, all the while preparing a secret landing zone for the UFOs and their occupants.
Meanwhile, Roy's increasingly erratic behavior causes Ronnie to leave him, taking their three children with her. When a despairing Roy inadvertently sees a television news program about the train wreck near Devils Tower, he realizes the mental image of a mountain plaguing him is real. Jillian sees the same broadcast, and she and Roy, as well as others with similar experiences, travel to the site in spite of the public warnings about nerve gas.
While most of the civilians who are drawn to the site are apprehended by the Army, Roy and Jillian persist and make it to the site just as dozens of UFOs appear in the night sky. The government specialists at the site begin to communicate with the UFOs by use of light and sound on a large electrical billboard. Following this, an enormous mother ship lands at the site, returning people who had been abducted over the years, including Barry, and the missing pilots from Flight 19. The government officials decide to include Roy in a group of people whom they have selected to be potential visitors to the mothership, and hastily prepare him. As the aliens finally emerge from the mothership, they select Roy to join them on their travels. As Roy enters the mothership, one of the aliens pauses for a few moments with the humans. Lacombe uses Curwen hand signs that correspond to the five note alien tonal phrase. The alien replies with the same gestures, smiles, and returns to its ship, which lifts off into the night sky.
J. Allen Hynek
and Stanton T. Friedman
make cameo appearance
s at the closing scene. Spielberg's friends Hal Barwood
and Matthew Robbins
cameo as two World War II
pilots returning from the mother ship. Real life ARP
technician Phil Dodds
cameos as the operator of the ARP 2500 synthesizer
communicating with the alien ship.
and his father saw a meteor shower
in New Jersey
when the director was young. As a teenager, Spielberg completed the full-length science fiction film Firelight
. Many scenes from Firelight would be incorporated in Close Encounters on a shot-for-shot
basis. In 1970 he wrote a short story
called Experiences about a lovers' lane in a Midwestern United States farming community and the "light show" a group of teenagers see in the night sky. In late 1973, during post-production
on The Sugarland Express
, Spielberg developed a deal with Columbia Pictures
for a science fiction film. 20th Century Fox
previously turned down the offer. Julia
and Michael Phillips
instantly signed on as producers.
He first considered doing a documentary or a low-budget feature film
about people who believed in UFOs
. Spielberg decided "a film that depended on state of the art
technology couldn't be made for $2.5 million." Borrowing a phrase from the ending of The Thing from Another World
, he retitled the film Watch the Skies, rewriting the premise concerning Project Blue Book
and pitching the concept to Willard Huyck
and Gloria Katz
. Katz remembered "It had flying saucers from outer space landing on Robertson Boulevard
[in West Hollywood, California
]. I go, 'Steve, that's the worst idea I ever heard." Spielberg brought Paul Schrader
to write the script in December 1973 with principal photography
to begin in late-1974. However, Spielberg started work on Jaws
in 1974, pushing Watch the Skies back.
With the financial and critical success of Jaws, Spielberg earned a vast amount of creative control from Columbia, including the right to make the film any way he wanted. Schrader turned in his script, which Spielberg called, "one of the most embarrassing screenplays ever professionally turned in to a major film studio or director. It was a terribly guilt-ridden story not about UFOs at all." Titled Kingdom Come, the script's protagonist
was a 45-year-old Air Force Officer named Paul Van Owen who worked with Project Blue Book. "[His] job for the government is to ridicule and debunk flying saucers." Schrader continued. "One day he has an encounter. He goes to the government, threatening to blow the lid off to the public. Instead, he and the government spend 15 years trying to make contact." Spielberg and Schrader experienced creative differences, hiring John Hill
to rewrite. At one point the main character was a police officer. Spielberg "[found] it hard to identify with men in uniform. I wanted to have Mr. Everyday Regular Fella." Spielberg rejected the Schrader/Hill script during post-production
on Jaws. He reflected, "they wanted to make it like a James Bond
adventure."
David Giler
performed a rewrite; Hal Barwood
and Matthew Robbins
, friends of Spielberg, suggested the plot device
of a kidnapped child. Spielberg then began to write the script. The song "When You Wish upon a Star
" from Pinocchio
influenced Spielberg's writing style. "I hung my story on the mood the song created, the way it affected me personally." Jerry Belson
and Spielberg wrote the shooting script
together. In the end, Spielberg was given solo writing credit. During pre-production
, the title was changed from Kingdom Come to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. J. Allen Hynek
, who worked with the United States Air Force
on Project Blue Book, was hired as a scientific consultant. Hynek felt "even though the film is fiction, it's based for the most part on the known facts of the UFO mystery, and it certainly catches the flavor of the phenomenon. Spielberg was under enormous pressure to make another blockbuster
after Jaws, but he decided to make a UFO movie. He put his career on the line." USAF and NASA
declined to cooperate on the film.
Principal photography
began on May 16, 1976. Spielberg did not want to do any location shooting
because of his negative experience on Jaws and wanted to shoot Close Encounters entirely on sound stage
s, but eventually dropped the idea. Filming took place in Burbank, California
, Devils Tower National Monument
in Wyoming
, two abandoned World War II airship
hangars at the former Brookley Air Force Base
in Mobile, Alabama
and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad
depot in Bay Minette
. The home where Barry was abducted is located outside the town of Fairhope, Alabama
. Roy Neary's home is at Carlisle Drive East, Mobile, Alabama. The UFOs fly through the toll booth at the Vincent Thomas Bridge
, San Pedro
, California. The Gobi Desert sequence was photographed at the Dumont Dunes
, California, and the Dharmsala-India exteriors were actually filmed at the small village of Hal near Khalapur
35 miles (56 km) outside Mumbai, India. The hangars in Alabama were six times larger than the biggest sound stage in the world. Various technical and budgetary problems occurred during filming. Spielberg called Close Encounters "twice as bad and twice as expensive [as Jaws]". Matters worsened when Columbia Pictures experienced financial difficulties. Spielberg estimated the film would cost $2.7 million to make in his original 1973 pitch to Columbia, but the final budget came to $19.4 million.
Columbia studio executive John Veich remembered, "If we knew it was going to cost that much, we wouldn't have greenlight
ed it because we didn't have the money." Spielberg hired Joe Alves
, his collaborator on Jaws, as production designer
. In addition the 1976 Atlantic hurricane season brought tropical storms to Alabama. A large portion of the sound stage in Alabama was damaged because of a lightning strike. During filming, cinematographer
Vilmos Zsigmond
remembered, "Every night Steve watched movies and got more ideas. He added more shots to the shooting schedule, pushing it back. One crew member said, 'Steven, if you would stop watching those fucking movies every night we would be on schedule.'" Zsigmond previously turned down the chance to work on Jaws. In her book You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again
, producer Julia Phillips wrote highly profane remarks about Spielberg, Zsigmond, and Truffaut. She was fired during post-production because of a cocaine addiction. Phillips blamed it on Spielberg being a perfectionist.
was the visual effects supervisor
, while Carlo Rambaldi
designed the aliens. Trumbull joked that the visual effects budget, at $3.3 million, could have been made to produce another film [in addition to this one]. His work helped lead to advances in motion control photography
. The mother ship was designed by Ralph McQuarrie
and built by Greg Jein
. The look of the ship was inspired by an oil refinery Spielberg saw at night in India. Instead of the metallic hardware look used in Star Wars, the emphasis was on a more luminescent look of the UFOs. Many of the model makers attempted comical objects in the UFOs. One was an oxygen mask with lights, while Dennis Muren
put an in-joke from his work on Star Wars
, using an R2-D2
toy. (The model that was the mother ship is now on display in the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Annex at Washington Dulles Airport in Chantilly, Virginia.) Since Close Encounters was filmed anamorphically
, the visual effects sequences were shot in 70 mm film
to better conform with the 35 mm film
. A test reel using computer-generated imagery
was used for the UFOs, but Spielberg found it would be too expensive since CGI was new technology in the mid-1970s. The small aliens in the final scenes were played by local girls in Mobile, Alabama
. That decision was requested by Spielberg because he felt "girls move more gracefully than boys." Puppetry was attempted for the aliens, but the idea failed. However, Rambaldi successfully used puppetry to depict the larger alien that communicates with Lacombe near the end of the film.
and Spielberg. Their relationship continued for the rest of Spielberg's films. When Kahn and Spielberg delivered the first cut of the film, Spielberg was dissatisfied, feeling "there wasn't enough wow-ness". Pick-ups were commissioned but cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond could not participate. John A. Alonzo
, László Kovács
, William A. Fraker
and Douglas Slocombe
worked on the pick-ups. Lacombe was originally to find Flight 19
hidden in the Amazon Rainforest
, but the idea was changed to the Sonoran Desert
. This was an important scene added in the re-shoots. Composer John Williams
wrote over 300 examples of the iconic five-tone motif
before Spielberg chose the right one. Spielberg called Williams' work as "When You Wish upon a Star
meets science fiction". Spielberg wanted to have "When You Wish upon a Star" in the closing credits
, but was denied permission (though the song's signature melody can be heard briefly just before Roy Neary turns to board the mothership). He also took 7.5 minutes out from the preview. Post-production was completed by June 1977, too late for the film to be released as a 'summer blockbuster'.
was composed, conducted and produced by John Williams, who had previously won an Academy Award for his work on Spielberg's Jaws. Much like his two-note Jaws theme, the "five-tone" motif for Close Encounters has since become ingrained in popular culture (the five tones are used by scientists to communicate with the visiting spaceship as a mathematical language as well as being incorporated into the film's signature theme). The score was recorded at Warner Bros. Scoring studios in Burbank, California
. Williams was nominated for two Academy Awards in 1978, one for his score to Star Wars and one for his score to Close Encounters. He won for Star Wars, though he later won two Grammy Awards in 1979 for his Close Encounters score (one for Best Original Film Score and one for Best Instrumental Composition for "Theme from Close Encounters").
The soundtrack album was released on vinyl album
(with a gatefold sleeve), 8-track tape, and audio cassette
by Arista Records
in 1977, with a total running time of 41 minutes (it was later released on compact disc
in 1990). The soundtrack album was a commercial success, peaking at #17 on the US Billboard album chart
in February 1978 and was certified Gold by the RIAA for 1 million copies shipped. It also peaked at #40 in the UK album charts. Although not included on the original soundtrack album, a 7" single, "Theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind", was also released and was a chart hit, peaking at #13 on the US Billboard Hot 100
in March 1978. The single was later included with the vinyl soundtrack album as a free bonus item, and added as a bonus track to the cassette. Track listing:
Side A:
Side B:
† 1978 reissue - bonus track (cassette), free bonus 7" single (vinyl album).
Following the release of the "Collector's Edition" of the film in 1998, a new expanded soundtrack was released on compact disc
by Arista. The "Collectors's Edition Soundtrack" was made using 20-bit digital remastering
from the original tapes, and contained 26 tracks totalling 77 minutes of music. The CD also came with extensive liner notes including an interview with Williams. Cues were given new titles, and it also contained previously unreleased material, as well as material that was recorded but never used in the film. Track listing:
archetype
s and motifs. The film portrays new technologies as a natural and expected outcome of human development and indication of health and growth.
Other critics found a variety of Judeo-Christian analogies. Devil's Tower parallels Mount Sinai
, the aliens as God and Roy Neary as Moses
. Cecil B. DeMille
's The Ten Commandments
is seen on television at the Neary household. Some found close relations between Elijah and Roy; Elijah was taken into a "chariot of fire", akin to Roy going in the UFO. Climbing Devil's Tower behind Jillian and faltering, Neary exhorts Jillian to keep moving and not to look back, similar to Lot
's wife who looked back at Sodom
and turned into a pillar of salt. Spielberg explained, "I wanted to make Close Encounters a very accessible story about the everyday individual who has a sighting that overturns his life, and throws it in to complete upheaval as he starts to become more and more obsessed with this experience."
Roy's wife Ronnie attempts to hide the sunburn caused by Roy's exposure to the UFOs and wants him to forget his encounter with them. She is embarrassed and bewildered by what has happened to him and desperately wants her ordinary life back. The expression of his lost life is seen when he is sculpting a huge model of Devil's Tower in his living room, with his family deserting him. Roy's obsession with an idea implanted by an alien intelligence, his construction of the model, and his gradual loss of contact with his wife, mimic the events in the short story "Dulcie and Decorum
" (1955) by Damon Knight
.
Close Encounters also studies the form of "youth spiritual yearning". Barry Guiler, the unfearing child who refers to the UFOs and their paraphernalia as "Toys", serves as a motif for childlike innocence and openness in the face of the unknown. Spielberg also compared the theme of communication as highlighting that of tolerance. "If we can talk to aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind," he said, "why not with the Reds
in the Cold War
?" Sleeping is the final obstacle to overcome in the ascent of Devil's Tower. Roy, Jillian Guiler and a third invitee climb the mountain pursued by government helicopters spraying sleeping gas. The third person stops to rest, is gassed, and falls into a deep sleep.
In his interview with Spielberg on Inside the Actors Studio
, James Lipton
suggested Close Encounters had another, more personal theme for Spielberg: "Your father was a computer engineer; your mother was a concert pianist, and when the spaceship lands, they make music together on the computer", suggesting that Roy Neary's boarding the spaceship is Spielberg's wish to be reunited with his parents. In a 2005 interview, Spielberg stated that he made Close Encounters when he did not have children, and if he were making it today, he would never have had Neary leave his family and go on the mother ship.
success, grossing $116.39 million in North America and $171.7 million in foreign countries, totaling $288 million. It became Columbia Pictures
' most successful film at that time. Jonathan Rosenbaum
refers to the film as "the best expression of Spielberg's benign, dreamy-eyed vision." A.D. Murphy of Variety
gave a positive review but felt "Close Encounters lacks the warmth and humanity of George Lucas
's Star Wars". Murphy found most of the film slow-paced, but was highly impressed with the climax. Pauline Kael
called it "a kid's film in the best sense." Jean Renoir
compared Spielberg's storytelling to Jules Verne
and Georges Méliès
. Ray Bradbury
declared it the greatest science fiction film ever made. Based on 39 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes
, 95% ("Certified Fresh") of the reviewers have enjoyed the film and the site's consensus states "Close Encounters' most iconic bits (the theme, the mashed-potato sculpture, etc.) have been so thoroughly absorbed into the culture that it's easy to forget that its treatment of aliens as peaceful beings rather than warmongering monsters was somewhat groundbreaking in 1977."
Spielberg's 1998 Collector's Edition was given a limited release as part of a roadshow
featuring select films to celebrate Columbia Pictures' 75th anniversary in 1999. It was the first and only time this version of the film has been shown theatrically.
, Spielberg was dissatisfied with the film. "Columbia Pictures was experiencing financial problems, and they were depending on this film to save their company. "I wanted to have another six months to finish off this film, and release it in summer 1978. They told me they needed this film out immediately," Spielberg explained. "Anyway, Close Encounters was a huge financial success and I told them I wanted to make my own director's cut
. They agreed on the condition that I show the inside of the mother ship
so they could have something to hang a [reissue marketing] campaign on. I never should have shown the inside of the mother ship." In 1979, Columbia gave Spielberg $1.5 million to produce what would become the "Special Edition" of the film. Spielberg added seven minutes of new footage, but also deleted or shortened various scenes
so that the Special Edition ended up three minutes shorter than the original 1977 release.
The Special Edition featured several new character development scenes, the discovery of the SS Cotopaxi
in the Gobi Desert
, and a view of the inside of the mothership. Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Special Edition was released in August 1980, making a further $15.7 million, accumulating a final $303.7 million box office gross. Roger Ebert
"thought the original film was an astonishing achievement, capturing the feeling of awe and wonder we have when considering the likelihood of life beyond the Earth. This new version is quite simply a better film. Why didn't Spielberg make it this good the first time?"
In 1998, Spielberg recut Close Encounters again for what would become the "Collector's Edition," to be released on home video and laserdisc. This version of the film is something of a re-edit of the original 1977 release with some elements of the 1980 Special Edition, but omits the mothership interior scenes which Spielberg felt should have remained a mystery. The laserdisc edition also includes a new 101-minute documentary, The Making of Close Encounters, which was produced in 1997 and features interviews with Spielberg, the main cast, and notable crew members. There have also been many other alternate versions of the film for network and syndicated television, as well as a previous LaserDisc version. Some of these even combined all released material from the 1977 and 1980 versions, but none of these versions were edited by Spielberg, who regards the "Collector's Edition" as his definitive version of Close Encounters.
The film was released on DVD in June 2001 as a two-disc set that contained the "Collector's Edition". The second disc contained a wealth of extra features including the 101-minute "Making Of" documentary from 1997, a featurette from 1977, trailers, and deleted scenes that included, among other things, the mothership interiors from the 1980 Special Edition. James Berardinelli
felt "Close Encounters is still unquestionably a great movie. Its universal appeal gave movie-goers something to be excited about during 1977–78 as the first in a wave of post-Star Wars science fiction films broke. Today, the movie stands up remarkably well. The story is fresh and compelling, the special effects are as remarkable as anything that CGI can do, and the music represents some of John Williams
' best work." Emanuel Levy
also gave a highly-positive review. "Spielberg's greatest achievement is to make a warm, likable sci-fi feature, deviating in spirit, tone and ideology from the dark, noirish
sci-fi films that dominated the 1950s
and Cold War
mentality. He ultimately succeeded."
Close Encounters was given a second DVD release and a Blu-ray Disc
release in November 2007. Released for the film's 30th anniversary, the set contained all three official versions of the film from 1977, 1980, and 1998 and a new interview with Spielberg, who talks about the film's impact 30 years after its release. The set also includes the 1977 featurette, various trailers, and the 1997 "Making Of" documentary – though this is now split over three discs rather than as a single feature as with the 2001 DVD release. In addition to these features, the 2-disc Blu-ray set also included storyboard-to-scene comparisons, an extensive photo gallery, and a "View from Above: Editor's Fact track" highlighting the different scenes in each version of the movie.
or prequel
, before deciding against it. He explained, "The army's knowledge and ensuing cover-up
is so subterranean that it would take a creative screen story, perhaps someone else making the picture and giving it the equal time it deserves."
The film was nominated for nine Oscars at the 50th Academy Awards
, including Direction, Supporting Actress
(Melinda Dillon), Visual Effects
, Art Direction
(Joe Alves
, Daniel A. Lomino
, Phil Abramson
), Original Music Score
, Film Editing
, and Sound (Robert Knudson
, Robert Glass
, Don MacDougall
and Gene Cantamessa
). The film's only win was for Vilmos Zsigmond
's cinematography, although the Academy honored the film's sound effects editing with a Special Achievement Award
. At the 32nd British Academy Film Awards
, Close Encounters won Best Production Design
, and was nominated for Best Film
, Direction
, Screenplay
, Actor in a Supporting Role
(François Truffaut), Music
, Cinematography
, Editing
, and Sound
.
Close Encounters lost the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation
to Star Wars, but was successful at the Saturn Award
s. There, the film tied with Star Wars for Direction
and Music
, but won Best Writing
. Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon and the visual effects department received nominations. Close Encounters was nominated for Best Science Fiction Film
. The film received four more nominations at the 35th Golden Globe Awards
.
When asked in 1990 to select a single "master image" that summed up his film career, Spielberg chose the shot of Barry opening his living room door to see the blazing orange light from the UFO. "That was beautiful but awful light, just like fire coming through the doorway. [Barry's] very small, and it's a very large door, and there's a lot of promise or danger outside that door." In 2007, Close Encounters was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress, and was added to the National Film Registry
for preservation. In American Film Institute
polls, Close Encounters has been voted the 64th greatest film of all time
, 31st most heart-pounding
, and 58th most inspiring
. Additionally, the film was nominated for the top 10 science fiction films in AFI's 10 Top 10
and the tenth anniversary edition of the 100 Movies list. The score by John Williams was nominated for AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores
.
Alongside Star Wars and Superman, Close Encounters led to the reemergence of science fiction films. In 1985 Spielberg donated $100,000 to the Planetary Society
for Megachannel ExtraTerrestrial Assay. In the 1979 James Bond film Moonraker
the five-note sequence is heard when a scientist punches the combination into an electronic door lock. In the South Park
episode "Imaginationland
", a government scientist uses the five-note sequence to try to open a portal. In "Over Logging
", a government scientist uses the five-note sequence to try to get the central Internet router working. The "mashed potato" sculpture was parodied in the film UHF
, the film Canadian Bacon
, an episode of Spaced
, an episode of The X-Files
, an episode of That 70's Show, and an episode of The Simpsons
. The "headlights passing the parked truck by going straight up" sequence was parodied in an episode of Flo
.
American Film Institute
Lists
In 2011, ABC
aired a primetime special, Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time
that counted down the best movies chosen by fans based on results of a poll conducted by ABC and People. Close Encounters of the Third Kind was selected as the #5 Best Sci-Fi Film.
Science fiction film
Science fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that are not necessarily accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception, and time travel, often along with futuristic...
written and directed by Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
. The film stars Richard Dreyfuss
Richard Dreyfuss
Richard Stephen Dreyfuss is an American actor best known for starring in a number of film, television, and theater roles since the late 1960s, including the films American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Goodbye Girl, Whose Life Is It Anyway?, Stakeout, Always, What About...
, François Truffaut
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
, Melinda Dillon
Melinda Dillon
Melinda Rose Dillon is an American actress, perhaps best known for her roles in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the holiday classic A Christmas Story.-Early life and career:...
, Teri Garr
Teri Garr
-Early life:Garr was born in Lakewood, Ohio in 1947. Her father, Eddie Garr , was a vaudeville performer, comedian and actor whose career peaked when he briefly took over the lead role in the Broadway drama Tobacco Road...
, Bob Balaban
Bob Balaban
Robert Elmer "Bob" Balaban is an American actor, author and director.-Personal life:Balaban was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Eleanor and Elmer Balaban, who owned several movie theatres and later was a pioneer in cable television...
, and Cary Guffey
Cary Guffey
Cary Guffey is a former American child actor. He is best remembered for his debut in the role of Barry Guiler in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind .-Biography:...
. It tells the story of Roy Neary, a lineman in Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
, whose life changes after he has an encounter with an unidentified flying object
Unidentified flying object
A term originally coined by the military, an unidentified flying object is an unusual apparent anomaly in the sky that is not readily identifiable to the observer as any known object...
(UFO). The United States government and an international team of scientific researchers are also aware of the UFOs.
Close Encounters was a long-cherished project for Spielberg. In late 1973, he developed a deal with Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
for a science fiction film. Though Spielberg receives sole credit for the script, he was assisted by Paul Schrader
Paul Schrader
Paul Joseph Schrader is an American screenwriter, film director, and former film critic. Apart from his credentials as a director, Schrader is most notably known for his screenplays for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Raging Bull....
, John Hill
John Hill (screenwriter)
John Hill is an award-winning American screenwriter and television producer.He got his start in Hollywood when he penned the 1976 TV movie Griffin and Phoenix, starring Peter Falk and Jill Clayburgh. In 1980 his film Heartbeeps was released, starring Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters.He wrote the...
, David Giler
David Giler
David Giler is an American filmmaker who has been active in the motion picture industry since the early 1960s.He started his career as a writer, providing scripts for television programs such as Kraft Suspense Theatre and The Man from U.N.C.L.E....
, Hal Barwood
Hal Barwood
Hal Barwood is an American game designer and game producer best known for his work on games based on the Indiana Jones license.Born in Hanover, New Hampshire, he studied art at Brown University and later attended the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television, where he met and...
, Matthew Robbins
Matthew Robbins (screenwriter)
Matthew Robbins is an American screenwriter, film producer and director. He is good friends with Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Guillermo Del Toro and Walter Murch and has had cameo appearances in THX 1138 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind...
, and Jerry Belson
Jerry Belson
Jerry Belson was a writer, director, and producer of Hollywood films for over forty years.Belson's writing credits include the Steven Spielberg films Always and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, several episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. and I Spy...
, all of whom contributed to the screenplay in varying degrees. The title is derived from ufologist J. Allen Hynek
J. Allen Hynek
Dr. Josef Allen Hynek was a United States astronomer, professor, and ufologist. He is perhaps best remembered for his UFO research. Hynek acted as scientific adviser to UFO studies undertaken by the U.S. Air Force under three consecutive names: Project Sign , Project Grudge , and Project Blue Book...
's classification of close encounter
Close encounter
In ufology, a close encounter is an event in which a person witnesses an unidentified flying object. This terminology and the system of classification behind it was started by astronomer and UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek, and was first suggested in his 1972 book The UFO Experience: A Scientific...
s with aliens, in which the third kind denotes human observations of actual aliens or "animate beings".
Filming began in May 1976. Douglas Trumbull
Douglas Trumbull
Douglas Huntley Trumbull is an American film director, special effects supervisor, and inventor. He contributed to, or was responsible for, the special photographic effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner and The Tree of...
served as the visual effects supervisor
Visual effects supervisor
In the context of film and television production, a visual effects supervisor is responsible for achieving the creative aims of the director and/or producers through the use of visual effects...
, while Carlo Rambaldi
Carlo Rambaldi
Carlo Rambaldi is an Italian special effects artist who is most famous for designing the title character of the 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and the mechanical head-effects for the creature in Alien...
designed the aliens. Close Encounters was released in November 1977 and was a critical and financial success. The film was reissue
Reissue
A reissue is the repeated issue of a published work. In common usage, it refers to an album which has been released at least once before and is released again, sometimes with alterations or additions....
d in 1980 as Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Special Edition, which featured additional scenes. A third cut of the film was released to home video (and later DVD) in 1998. The film received numerous awards and nominations at the 50th Academy Awards
50th Academy Awards
The 50th Academy Awards were held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, California on April 3, 1978. The ceremonies were presided over by Bob Hope, who hosted the awards for the eighteenth and last time....
, 32nd British Academy Film Awards
32nd British Academy Film Awards
The 32nd British Film Awards, given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1979, honoured the best films of 1978.-Best Film: Julia *Midnight Express*Star Wars*Close Encounters of the Third Kind-Best Actor:...
, the 35th Golden Globe Awards
35th Golden Globe Awards
The 35th Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and television for 1977, were held on January 28, 1978.-Best Actor - Drama: Richard Burton – Equus*Marcello Mastroianni – A Special Day ...
, the Saturn Award
Saturn Award
The Saturn Award is an award presented annually by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films to honor the top works in science fiction, fantasy, and horror in film, television, and home video. The Saturn Awards were devised by Dr. Donald A. Reed in 1972, who felt that films within...
s and has been widely acclaimed by the American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
. In December 2007, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
.
Plot
In the SonoraSonora
Sonora officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 72 municipalities; the capital city is Hermosillo....
n Desert, French scientist Claude Lacombe (François Truffaut) and his American interpreter, mapmaker David Laughlin (Bob Balaban), along with other government scientific researchers, discover Flight 19
Flight 19
Flight 19 was the designation of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared on December 5, 1945 during a United States Navy-authorized overwater navigation training flight from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Florida. All 14 airmen on the flight were lost, as were all 13 crew members of a...
, a squadron of Grumman TBM Avengers that went missing over thirty years earlier. The planes are intact and operational, but there is no sign of the pilots. An old man who witnessed the event claimed "the sun came out at night, and sang to him." They also find a lost ship in the Gobi Desert named SS Cotopaxi
SS Cotopaxi
The SS Cotopaxi was a tramp steamer named after the Cotopaxi stratovolcano. She vanished in December 1925, while en route from Charleston, South Carolina, USA, to Havana, Cuba, with all hands.-Description:Cotopaxi was a cargo ship of 2,351 GRT...
. At an Air Traffic Control
Air traffic control
Air traffic control is a service provided by ground-based controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and in the air. The primary purpose of ATC systems worldwide is to separate aircraft to prevent collisions, to organize and expedite the flow of traffic, and to provide information and other...
center in Indianapolis, Indiana, a controller listens as two airline flights almost have a mid-air collision with an apparent unidentified flying object (UFO). In Muncie, Indiana, three year old Barry Guiler (Cary Guffey
Cary Guffey
Cary Guffey is a former American child actor. He is best remembered for his debut in the role of Barry Guiler in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind .-Biography:...
) is awakened in the night when his toys start operating on their own. Fascinated, he gets out of bed and discovers something or someone (off-screen) in the kitchen. He runs outside, forcing his mother Jillian (Melinda Dillon) to chase after him.
Investigating one of a series of large-scale power outages, Indiana electrical lineman Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) experiences a close encounter of the second kind with a UFO on a dark country road and is soon caught up in a police chase of four UFOs. Roy becomes fascinated by UFOs, much to the dismay of his wife, Ronnie (Teri Garr). He also becomes increasingly obsessed with subliminal, mental images of a mountain-like shape and begins to make models of it. Jillian also becomes obsessed with sketching a unique-looking mountain. Soon after, she is terrorized in her home by a UFO encounter in which Barry is abducted by unseen beings.
Elsewhere in the world, the pace of UFO activity is increasing. Lacombe and Laughlin investigate a host of occurrences along with other United Nations experts. Witnesses report that the UFOs make distinctive sounds: a five-tone musical phrase in a major scale. Scientists broadcast the phrase to outer space, but are mystified by the response: a seemingly meaningless series of numbers repeated over and over, until Laughlin recognizes it as a set of geographical coordinates pointing to Devils Tower
Devils Tower National Monument
Devils Tower is an igneous intrusion or laccolith located in the Black Hills near Hulett and Sundance in Crook County, northeastern Wyoming, above the Belle Fourche River...
in Moorcroft, Wyoming. Lacombe and the U.S. military converge on Wyoming. The United States Army evacuates the area, planting false reports in the media that a train wreck has spilled a toxic nerve gas, all the while preparing a secret landing zone for the UFOs and their occupants.
Meanwhile, Roy's increasingly erratic behavior causes Ronnie to leave him, taking their three children with her. When a despairing Roy inadvertently sees a television news program about the train wreck near Devils Tower, he realizes the mental image of a mountain plaguing him is real. Jillian sees the same broadcast, and she and Roy, as well as others with similar experiences, travel to the site in spite of the public warnings about nerve gas.
While most of the civilians who are drawn to the site are apprehended by the Army, Roy and Jillian persist and make it to the site just as dozens of UFOs appear in the night sky. The government specialists at the site begin to communicate with the UFOs by use of light and sound on a large electrical billboard. Following this, an enormous mother ship lands at the site, returning people who had been abducted over the years, including Barry, and the missing pilots from Flight 19. The government officials decide to include Roy in a group of people whom they have selected to be potential visitors to the mothership, and hastily prepare him. As the aliens finally emerge from the mothership, they select Roy to join them on their travels. As Roy enters the mothership, one of the aliens pauses for a few moments with the humans. Lacombe uses Curwen hand signs that correspond to the five note alien tonal phrase. The alien replies with the same gestures, smiles, and returns to its ship, which lifts off into the night sky.
Cast
- Richard DreyfussRichard DreyfussRichard Stephen Dreyfuss is an American actor best known for starring in a number of film, television, and theater roles since the late 1960s, including the films American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Goodbye Girl, Whose Life Is It Anyway?, Stakeout, Always, What About...
as Roy Neary, an electrical lineman in IndianaIndianaIndiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
who encounters and forms an obsession with unidentified flying objectUnidentified flying objectA term originally coined by the military, an unidentified flying object is an unusual apparent anomaly in the sky that is not readily identifiable to the observer as any known object...
s. Steve McQueenSteve McQueenTerrence Steven "Steve" McQueen was an American movie actor. He was nicknamed "The King of Cool." His "anti-hero" persona, which he developed at the height of the Vietnam counterculture, made him one of the top box-office draws of the 1960s and 1970s. McQueen received an Academy Award nomination...
was Spielberg's first choice. Although McQueen was impressed with the script, he felt he was not specifically right for the role as he was unable to cry on cue. Dustin HoffmanDustin HoffmanDustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters....
, Al PacinoAl PacinoAlfredo James "Al" Pacino is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy, Tony Montana in Scarface, Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice in Dick Tracy and Carlito Brigante in Carlito's Way, though he has also appeared...
, and Gene HackmanGene HackmanEugene Allen "Gene" Hackman is an American actor and novelist.Nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two, Hackman has also won three Golden Globes and two BAFTAs in a career that spanned five decades. He first came to fame in 1967 with his performance as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde...
turned down the part as well. Jack NicholsonJack NicholsonJohn Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...
turned it down because of scheduling conflicts. Spielberg explained when filming JawsJaws (film)Jaws is a 1975 American horror-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. In the story, the police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a giant man-eating great white shark by closing the beach,...
, "Dreyfuss talked me into casting him. He listened to about 155-days worth of Close Encounters. He even contributed ideas." Dreyfuss reflected, "I launched myself into a campaign to get the part. I would walk by Steve's office and say stuff like 'Al Pacino has no sense of humor' or 'Jack Nicholson is too crazy'. I eventually convinced him to cast me." - François TruffautFrançois TruffautFrançois Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
as Claude Lacombe, a French government scientist in charge of UFO-related activities in the United States. Gérard DepardieuGérard DepardieuGérard Xavier Marcel Depardieu is a French actor and filmmaker. He is a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur, Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite and has twice won the César Award for Best Actor...
, Philippe NoiretPhilippe NoiretPhilippe Noiret was a French film actor.-Biography:Noiret's father was in the clothes trade. Philippe was an indifferent scholar and attended several prestigious Paris schools, including the Lycée Janson de Sailly. He failed several times to pass his baccalauréat exams, so he decided to study...
, Jean-Louis TrintignantJean-Louis TrintignantJean-Louis Trintignant is a French actor who has enjoyed an international acclaim. He won the Best Actor Award at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival.-Career:...
, and Lino VenturaLino VenturaLino Ventura , was an Italian actor who starred in French movies.-Biography:Born as Angiolino Giuseppe Pasquale Ventura in Parma, Italy to Giovanni Ventura and Luisa Borrini, "Lino" dropped out of school at the age of eight and later took on a variety of jobs...
were considered for the role. During filming, Truffaut used his free time to write the script for The Man Who Loved WomenThe Man Who Loved Women (1977 film)The Man Who Loved Women is a 1977 French comedy/drama film directed by François Truffaut and starring Charles Denner, Brigitte Fossey and Nelly Borgeaud. In 1983, it was remade in Hollywood under the same title. The film had a total of 955,262 admissions in France. -Plot:Montpellier: December 1976...
. He also worked on a novel titled The Actor, a project he abandoned. - Melinda DillonMelinda DillonMelinda Rose Dillon is an American actress, perhaps best known for her roles in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the holiday classic A Christmas Story.-Early life and career:...
as Jillian Guiler, Barry's single motherSingle parentSingle parent is a term that is mostly used to suggest that one parent has most of the day to day responsibilities in the raising of the child or children, which would categorize them as the dominant caregiver...
. She forms a similar obsession to Roy's, and the two become friends. Teri Garr wanted to portray Jillian, but was cast as Ronnie. Hal AshbyHal AshbyHal Ashby was an American film director and film editor.-Birth and early years:Born William Hal Ashby in Ogden, Utah, Ashby grew up in a Mormon household and had a tumultuous childhood as part of a dysfunctional family which included the divorce of his parents, his father's suicide and his...
, who worked with Dillon on Bound for Glory, suggested her for the part to Spielberg. Dillon was cast three days before filming began. - Cary GuffeyCary GuffeyCary Guffey is a former American child actor. He is best remembered for his debut in the role of Barry Guiler in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind .-Biography:...
as Barry Guiler, Jillian's young child abducted in the middle of the film. Spielberg conducted a series of method actingMethod actingMethod acting is a phrase that loosely refers to a family of techniques used by actors to create in themselves the thoughts and emotions of their characters, so as to develop lifelike performances...
techniques to help Guffey, who was cast when he was just three years old. - Teri GarrTeri Garr-Early life:Garr was born in Lakewood, Ohio in 1947. Her father, Eddie Garr , was a vaudeville performer, comedian and actor whose career peaked when he briefly took over the lead role in the Broadway drama Tobacco Road...
as Veronica "Ronnie" Neary, Roy's wife. Amy IrvingAmy IrvingAmy Davis Irving is an American actress, known for her roles in the films Crossing Delancey, The Fury, Carrie, and Yentl as well as acclaimed roles on Broadway and Off-Broadway. She has been nominated for an Academy Award, two Golden Globes, and has won an Obie award...
(who later became Spielberg's wife) auditioned for the role. - Bob BalabanBob BalabanRobert Elmer "Bob" Balaban is an American actor, author and director.-Personal life:Balaban was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Eleanor and Elmer Balaban, who owned several movie theatres and later was a pioneer in cable television...
as David Laughlin, Lacombe's assistant and English-French interpreter. They meet for the first time in the Sonoran DesertSonoran DesertThe Sonoran Desert is a North American desert which straddles part of the United States-Mexico border and covers large parts of the U.S. states of Arizona and California and the northwest Mexican states of Sonora, Baja California, and Baja California Sur. It is one of the largest and hottest...
at the beginning of the film. - Josef SommerJosef SommerJosef Sommer is an American film actor.He was born Maximilian Josef Sommer in Greifswald, Germany and was raised in North Carolina, the son of Elisabeth and Clemons Sommer, a professor of art history at the University of North Carolina. He studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology...
as Larry Butler, a curious man who meets Roy and Jillian in Wyoming and attempts to scale Devil's Tower with them. - Lance HenriksenLance HenriksenLance James Henriksen is an American actor and artist best known to film and television audiences for his roles in science fiction, action, and horror films such as the Alien film franchise, and on television shows such as Millennium....
as Robert. Henriksen would go on to star in such sci-fi classics as The Terminator and Aliens. - Roberts BlossomRoberts BlossomRoberts Scott Blossom was an American theater, film and television actor and poet. He is best known for his roles as Old Man Marley in Home Alone and as Ezra Cobb in the horror film Deranged...
as Farmer, a radical who claims to have seen Sasquatch.
J. Allen Hynek
J. Allen Hynek
Dr. Josef Allen Hynek was a United States astronomer, professor, and ufologist. He is perhaps best remembered for his UFO research. Hynek acted as scientific adviser to UFO studies undertaken by the U.S. Air Force under three consecutive names: Project Sign , Project Grudge , and Project Blue Book...
and Stanton T. Friedman
Stanton T. Friedman
Stanton Terry Friedman is a professional Ufologist, currently residing in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. He is the original civilian investigator of the Roswell incident. He studied physics at the University of Chicago and worked as a nuclear physicist on research and development projects for...
make cameo appearance
Cameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...
s at the closing scene. Spielberg's friends Hal Barwood
Hal Barwood
Hal Barwood is an American game designer and game producer best known for his work on games based on the Indiana Jones license.Born in Hanover, New Hampshire, he studied art at Brown University and later attended the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television, where he met and...
and Matthew Robbins
Matthew Robbins (screenwriter)
Matthew Robbins is an American screenwriter, film producer and director. He is good friends with Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Guillermo Del Toro and Walter Murch and has had cameo appearances in THX 1138 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind...
cameo as two World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
pilots returning from the mother ship. Real life ARP
ARP Instruments, Inc.
ARP Instruments, Inc. was an American manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, founded by Alan Robert Pearlman in 1969. Best known for its line of synthesizers that emerged in the early 1970s, ARP closed its doors in 1981 due to financial difficulties...
technician Phil Dodds
Phil Dodds
Philip V.W. Dodds , credited as Phil Dodds, was an audio engineer who appeared in the 1977 motion picture Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Working for ARP Instruments, Inc., Dodds was on the set to install and manage the ARP 2500 synthesizer used in the movie to play the five alien tones, and to...
cameos as the operator of the ARP 2500 synthesizer
ARP 2500
The ARP 2500, built from 1970 through the mid-70's, was ARP's first product. A monophonic analog modular synthesizer equipped with a set of sliding matrix switches above each module. These were the primary method of interconnecting modules. There were also rows of 1/8" miniphone jacks at the end...
communicating with the alien ship.
Development
The film's genesis started when Steven SpielbergSteven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
and his father saw a meteor shower
Meteor shower
A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at extremely high speeds on parallel trajectories. Most meteors are smaller...
in New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
when the director was young. As a teenager, Spielberg completed the full-length science fiction film Firelight
Firelight (1964 film)
Firelight is a 1964 science fiction adventure film written and directed by Steven Spielberg at the age of 16. Made on a budget of $500, the film was, in a manner of speaking, Spielberg's first commercial success, as it was shown at a local cinema and generated a profit of $1. "I counted the...
. Many scenes from Firelight would be incorporated in Close Encounters on a shot-for-shot
Shot-for-shot
Shot-for-shot is a term used to describe a visual work that is transferred almost completely identical from the original work without much interpretation....
basis. In 1970 he wrote a short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
called Experiences about a lovers' lane in a Midwestern United States farming community and the "light show" a group of teenagers see in the night sky. In late 1973, during post-production
Post-production
Post-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
on The Sugarland Express
The Sugarland Express
The Sugarland Express is a 1974 American drama film starring Goldie Hawn, Ben Johnson, William Atherton, and Michael Sacks. It was directed by Steven Spielberg, his first film to be intended as a theatrical release .It is about a husband and wife trying to outrun the law and was based on a...
, Spielberg developed a deal with Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
for a science fiction film. 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
previously turned down the offer. Julia
Julia Phillips
Julia Phillips was a film producer and author. She is remembered for being the first woman to win an Academy Award as a film's producer, and for a best selling tell-all memoir.-Early life:...
and Michael Phillips
Michael Phillips (producer)
Michael Phillips is a film producer.-Film career:Michael Phillips, his then-wife Julia Phillips, and Tony Bill received the Academy Award for Best Picture for producing The Sting in 1973. The Phillipses were the first husband-and-wife team to win the Best Picture award...
instantly signed on as producers.
He first considered doing a documentary or a low-budget feature film
Low budget film
A low-budget film is a motion picture shot with little or no funding from a major film studio or private investor. Many Independent films are made on low budgets but films made on the mainstream circuit with unexperienced or unknown filmmakers can also have low budgets. Many young or first time...
about people who believed in UFOs
Unidentified flying object
A term originally coined by the military, an unidentified flying object is an unusual apparent anomaly in the sky that is not readily identifiable to the observer as any known object...
. Spielberg decided "a film that depended on state of the art
State of the art
The state of the art is the highest level of development, as of a device, technique, or scientific field, achieved at a particular time. It also refers to the level of development reached at any particular time as a result of the latest methodologies employed.- Origin :The earliest use of the term...
technology couldn't be made for $2.5 million." Borrowing a phrase from the ending of The Thing from Another World
The Thing from Another World
The Thing from Another World , is a 1951 science fiction film based on the 1938 novella "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell . It tells the story of an Air Force crew and scientists at a remote Arctic research outpost who fight a malevolent plant-based alien being...
, he retitled the film Watch the Skies, rewriting the premise concerning Project Blue Book
Project Blue Book
Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects conducted by the United States Air Force. Started in 1952, it was the second revival of such a study...
and pitching the concept to Willard Huyck
Willard Huyck
Willard Huyck is an American screenwriter, director and producer, best known for his association with George Lucas. They met as students at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and along with others, they became members of a renowned group of amateur filmmakers called The Dirty Dozen...
and Gloria Katz
Gloria Katz
Gloria Katz is an American screenwriter and film producer, best known for her association with George Lucas. Along with her husband Willard Huyck, Katz has created the screenplays of films including American Graffiti, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and the notorious Howard the Duck.-...
. Katz remembered "It had flying saucers from outer space landing on Robertson Boulevard
Robertson Boulevard
Robertson Boulevard is a street in Los Angeles that also passes through the incorporated cities of West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Culver City....
[in West Hollywood, California
West Hollywood, California
West Hollywood, a city of Los Angeles County, California, was incorporated on November 29, 1984, with a population of 34,399 at the 2010 census. 41% of the city's population is made up of gay men according to a 2002 demographic analysis by Sara Kocher Consulting for the City of West Hollywood...
]. I go, 'Steve, that's the worst idea I ever heard." Spielberg brought Paul Schrader
Paul Schrader
Paul Joseph Schrader is an American screenwriter, film director, and former film critic. Apart from his credentials as a director, Schrader is most notably known for his screenplays for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Raging Bull....
to write the script in December 1973 with principal photography
Principal photography
thumb|300px|Film production on location in [[Newark, New Jersey]].Principal photography is the phase of film production in which the movie is filmed, with actors on set and cameras rolling, as distinct from pre-production and post-production....
to begin in late-1974. However, Spielberg started work on Jaws
Jaws (film)
Jaws is a 1975 American horror-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. In the story, the police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a giant man-eating great white shark by closing the beach,...
in 1974, pushing Watch the Skies back.
With the financial and critical success of Jaws, Spielberg earned a vast amount of creative control from Columbia, including the right to make the film any way he wanted. Schrader turned in his script, which Spielberg called, "one of the most embarrassing screenplays ever professionally turned in to a major film studio or director. It was a terribly guilt-ridden story not about UFOs at all." Titled Kingdom Come, the script's protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
was a 45-year-old Air Force Officer named Paul Van Owen who worked with Project Blue Book. "[His] job for the government is to ridicule and debunk flying saucers." Schrader continued. "One day he has an encounter. He goes to the government, threatening to blow the lid off to the public. Instead, he and the government spend 15 years trying to make contact." Spielberg and Schrader experienced creative differences, hiring John Hill
John Hill (screenwriter)
John Hill is an award-winning American screenwriter and television producer.He got his start in Hollywood when he penned the 1976 TV movie Griffin and Phoenix, starring Peter Falk and Jill Clayburgh. In 1980 his film Heartbeeps was released, starring Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters.He wrote the...
to rewrite. At one point the main character was a police officer. Spielberg "[found] it hard to identify with men in uniform. I wanted to have Mr. Everyday Regular Fella." Spielberg rejected the Schrader/Hill script during post-production
Post-production
Post-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
on Jaws. He reflected, "they wanted to make it like a James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
adventure."
David Giler
David Giler
David Giler is an American filmmaker who has been active in the motion picture industry since the early 1960s.He started his career as a writer, providing scripts for television programs such as Kraft Suspense Theatre and The Man from U.N.C.L.E....
performed a rewrite; Hal Barwood
Hal Barwood
Hal Barwood is an American game designer and game producer best known for his work on games based on the Indiana Jones license.Born in Hanover, New Hampshire, he studied art at Brown University and later attended the University of Southern California's School of Cinema-Television, where he met and...
and Matthew Robbins
Matthew Robbins (screenwriter)
Matthew Robbins is an American screenwriter, film producer and director. He is good friends with Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Guillermo Del Toro and Walter Murch and has had cameo appearances in THX 1138 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind...
, friends of Spielberg, suggested the plot device
Plot device
A plot device is an object or character in a story whose sole purpose is to advance the plot of the story, or alternatively to overcome some difficulty in the plot....
of a kidnapped child. Spielberg then began to write the script. The song "When You Wish upon a Star
When You Wish upon a Star
"When You Wish upon a Star" is a song written by Leigh Harline and Ned Washington for Walt Disney's 1940 adaptation of Pinocchio. The original version of the song was sung by Cliff Edwards in the character of Jiminy Cricket, and is heard over the opening credits and again in the final scene of the...
" from Pinocchio
Pinocchio (1940 film)
Pinocchio is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the story The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. It is the second film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics, and it was made after the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and was released to theaters by...
influenced Spielberg's writing style. "I hung my story on the mood the song created, the way it affected me personally." Jerry Belson
Jerry Belson
Jerry Belson was a writer, director, and producer of Hollywood films for over forty years.Belson's writing credits include the Steven Spielberg films Always and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, several episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show and Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. and I Spy...
and Spielberg wrote the shooting script
Shooting script
A shooting script is the version of a screenplay used during the production of a motion picture. Shooting scripts are distinct from spec scripts in that they make use of scene numbers , and they follow a well defined set of procedures specifying how script revisions should be implemented and...
together. In the end, Spielberg was given solo writing credit. During pre-production
Pre-production
Pre-production or In Production is the process of preparing all the elements involved in a film, play, or other performance.- In film :...
, the title was changed from Kingdom Come to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. J. Allen Hynek
J. Allen Hynek
Dr. Josef Allen Hynek was a United States astronomer, professor, and ufologist. He is perhaps best remembered for his UFO research. Hynek acted as scientific adviser to UFO studies undertaken by the U.S. Air Force under three consecutive names: Project Sign , Project Grudge , and Project Blue Book...
, who worked with the United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
on Project Blue Book, was hired as a scientific consultant. Hynek felt "even though the film is fiction, it's based for the most part on the known facts of the UFO mystery, and it certainly catches the flavor of the phenomenon. Spielberg was under enormous pressure to make another blockbuster
Blockbuster (entertainment)
Blockbuster, as applied to film or theatre, denotes a very popular or successful production. The entertainment industry use was originally theatrical slang referring to a particularly successful play but is now used primarily by the film industry...
after Jaws, but he decided to make a UFO movie. He put his career on the line." USAF and NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
declined to cooperate on the film.
Filming
Principal photography
thumb|300px|Film production on location in [[Newark, New Jersey]].Principal photography is the phase of film production in which the movie is filmed, with actors on set and cameras rolling, as distinct from pre-production and post-production....
began on May 16, 1976. Spielberg did not want to do any location shooting
Location shooting
Location shooting is the practice of filming in an actual setting rather than on a sound stage or back lot. In filmmaking a location is any place where a film crew will be filming actors and recording their dialog. A location where dialog is not recorded may be considered as a second unit...
because of his negative experience on Jaws and wanted to shoot Close Encounters entirely on sound stage
Sound stage
In common usage, a sound stage is a soundproof, hangar-like structure, building, or room, used for the production of theatrical filmmaking and television production, usually located on a secure movie studio property.-Overview:...
s, but eventually dropped the idea. Filming took place in Burbank, California
Burbank, California
Burbank is a city in Los Angeles County in Southern California, United States, north of downtown Los Angeles. The estimated population in 2010 was 103,340....
, Devils Tower National Monument
Devils Tower National Monument
Devils Tower is an igneous intrusion or laccolith located in the Black Hills near Hulett and Sundance in Crook County, northeastern Wyoming, above the Belle Fourche River...
in Wyoming
Wyoming
Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High...
, two abandoned World War II airship
Airship
An airship or dirigible is a type of aerostat or "lighter-than-air aircraft" that can be steered and propelled through the air using rudders and propellers or other thrust mechanisms...
hangars at the former Brookley Air Force Base
Brookley Air Force Base
Brookley Air Force Base is a former United States Air Force base located in Mobile, Alabama. After it closed in 1969, it became Mobile Downtown Airport.- History :...
in Mobile, Alabama
Mobile, Alabama
Mobile is the third most populous city in the Southern US state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the Mobile River and the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 195,111 during the 2010 census. It is the largest...
and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad
Louisville and Nashville Railroad
The Louisville and Nashville Railroad was a Class I railroad that operated freight and passenger services in the southeast United States.Chartered by the state of Kentucky in 1850, the L&N, as it was generally known, grew into one of the great success stories of American business...
depot in Bay Minette
Bay Minette, Alabama
Bay Minette is a city in Baldwin County, Alabama, United States. As of the 2000 census, the population of the city was 7,820. According to the 2007 U.S. Census estimates, the city had an population of about 7,726 people. The city is the county seat of Baldwin County...
. The home where Barry was abducted is located outside the town of Fairhope, Alabama
Fairhope, Alabama
Fairhope is a city in Baldwin County, Alabama, on a sloping plateau, along the cliffs and shoreline of Mobile Bay. The 2010 census lists the population of the city as 16,176....
. Roy Neary's home is at Carlisle Drive East, Mobile, Alabama. The UFOs fly through the toll booth at the Vincent Thomas Bridge
Vincent Thomas Bridge
The Vincent Thomas Bridge is a long suspension bridge, opened in 1963, crossing the Los Angeles Harbor in the U.S. state of California, linking San Pedro, Los Angeles, with Terminal Island. The bridge is signed as part of State Route 47. It is named for California Assemblyman Vincent Thomas of San...
, San Pedro
San Pedro, Los Angeles, California
San Pedro is a port district of the city of Los Angeles, California, United States. It was annexed in 1909 and is a major seaport of the area...
, California. The Gobi Desert sequence was photographed at the Dumont Dunes
Dumont Dunes
Dumont Dunes is an area of the Mojave Desert containing large sand dunes, located approximately 31 miles north of Baker, California on California State Route 127. Bordered by steep volcanic hills and the slow running Amargosa River, the region is easily recognized from a distance by its distinctive...
, California, and the Dharmsala-India exteriors were actually filmed at the small village of Hal near Khalapur
Khalapur
Khalapur is a census town in Panvel subdivision of Raigad district in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is a suburb of Karjat. It is an industrial area with many chemical, plastic and steel units....
35 miles (56 km) outside Mumbai, India. The hangars in Alabama were six times larger than the biggest sound stage in the world. Various technical and budgetary problems occurred during filming. Spielberg called Close Encounters "twice as bad and twice as expensive [as Jaws]". Matters worsened when Columbia Pictures experienced financial difficulties. Spielberg estimated the film would cost $2.7 million to make in his original 1973 pitch to Columbia, but the final budget came to $19.4 million.
Columbia studio executive John Veich remembered, "If we knew it was going to cost that much, we wouldn't have greenlight
Greenlight
To green-light a project is to give permission or a go ahead to move forward with a project. In the context of the movie and TV businesses, to green-light something is to formally approve its production finance, thereby allowing the project to move forward from the development phase to...
ed it because we didn't have the money." Spielberg hired Joe Alves
Joe Alves
Joe Alves is an American film production designer, perhaps best known for his work on three of the Jaws films. He directed Jaws 3-D....
, his collaborator on Jaws, as production designer
Production designer
In film and television, a production designer is the person responsible for the overall look of a filmed event such as films, TV programs, music videos or adverts. Production designers have one of the key creative roles in the creation of motion pictures and television. Working directly with the...
. In addition the 1976 Atlantic hurricane season brought tropical storms to Alabama. A large portion of the sound stage in Alabama was damaged because of a lightning strike. During filming, cinematographer
Cinematographer
A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...
Vilmos Zsigmond
Vilmos Zsigmond
Vilmos Zsigmond, A.S.C. is a Hungarian-American cinematographer.In 2003, a survey conducted by the International Cinematographers Guild placed Zsigmond among the ten most influential cinematographers in history.-Biography:...
remembered, "Every night Steve watched movies and got more ideas. He added more shots to the shooting schedule, pushing it back. One crew member said, 'Steven, if you would stop watching those fucking movies every night we would be on schedule.'" Zsigmond previously turned down the chance to work on Jaws. In her book You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again
You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again
You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again is an autobiography by Julia Phillips, detailing her career as a film producer and disclosing the power games and debauchery of New Hollywood in the 1970s and 1980s...
, producer Julia Phillips wrote highly profane remarks about Spielberg, Zsigmond, and Truffaut. She was fired during post-production because of a cocaine addiction. Phillips blamed it on Spielberg being a perfectionist.
Visual effects
Douglas TrumbullDouglas Trumbull
Douglas Huntley Trumbull is an American film director, special effects supervisor, and inventor. He contributed to, or was responsible for, the special photographic effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner and The Tree of...
was the visual effects supervisor
Visual effects supervisor
In the context of film and television production, a visual effects supervisor is responsible for achieving the creative aims of the director and/or producers through the use of visual effects...
, while Carlo Rambaldi
Carlo Rambaldi
Carlo Rambaldi is an Italian special effects artist who is most famous for designing the title character of the 1982 film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and the mechanical head-effects for the creature in Alien...
designed the aliens. Trumbull joked that the visual effects budget, at $3.3 million, could have been made to produce another film [in addition to this one]. His work helped lead to advances in motion control photography
Motion control photography
Motion control photography is a technique used in still and motion photography that enables precise control of, and optionally also allows repetition of, camera movements. It can be used to facilitate special effects photography. The process can involve filming several elements using the same...
. The mother ship was designed by Ralph McQuarrie
Ralph McQuarrie
Ralph McQuarrie is a conceptual designer and illustrator who designed Star Wars , the original Battlestar Galactica , E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Cocoon, for which he won an Academy Award....
and built by Greg Jein
Greg Jein
Greg Jein is a model designer who creates miniatures for use in the special effects portions of many films and TV shows. He has been doing so since the 1970s.-References:...
. The look of the ship was inspired by an oil refinery Spielberg saw at night in India. Instead of the metallic hardware look used in Star Wars, the emphasis was on a more luminescent look of the UFOs. Many of the model makers attempted comical objects in the UFOs. One was an oxygen mask with lights, while Dennis Muren
Dennis Muren
Dennis Muren, A.S.C. is an American film special effects artist, most notable for his work on the films of Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and George Lucas. He has won eight Oscars for Best Visual Effects.-Early life:...
put an in-joke from his work on Star Wars
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, originally released as Star Wars, is a 1977 American epic space opera film, written and directed by George Lucas. It is the first of six films released in the Star Wars saga: two subsequent films complete the original trilogy, while a prequel trilogy completes the...
, using an R2-D2
R2-D2
R2-D2 , is a character in the Star Wars universe. An astromech droid, R2-D2 is a major character throughout all six Star Wars films. Along with his droid companion C-3PO, he joins or supports Anakin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Obi-Wan Kenobi in various points in the saga...
toy. (The model that was the mother ship is now on display in the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Annex at Washington Dulles Airport in Chantilly, Virginia.) Since Close Encounters was filmed anamorphically
Anamorphic format
Anamorphic format is a term that can be used either for: the cinematography technique of capturing a widescreen picture on standard 35 mm film, or other visual recording media, with a non-widescreen native aspect ratio; or a photographic projection format in which the original image requires an...
, the visual effects sequences were shot in 70 mm film
70 mm film
70mm film is a wide high-resolution film gauge, with higher resolution than standard 35mm motion picture film format. As used in camera, the film is wide. For projection, the original 65mm film is printed on film. The additional 5mm are for magnetic strips holding four of the six tracks of sound...
to better conform with the 35 mm film
35 mm film
35 mm film is the film gauge most commonly used for chemical still photography and motion pictures. The name of the gauge refers to the width of the photographic film, which consists of strips 35 millimeters in width...
. A test reel using computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
was used for the UFOs, but Spielberg found it would be too expensive since CGI was new technology in the mid-1970s. The small aliens in the final scenes were played by local girls in Mobile, Alabama
Mobile, Alabama
Mobile is the third most populous city in the Southern US state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the Mobile River and the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 195,111 during the 2010 census. It is the largest...
. That decision was requested by Spielberg because he felt "girls move more gracefully than boys." Puppetry was attempted for the aliens, but the idea failed. However, Rambaldi successfully used puppetry to depict the larger alien that communicates with Lacombe near the end of the film.
Post-production
Close Encounters is the first collaboration between film editor Michael KahnMichael Kahn (film editor)
Michael Kahn is an American film editor. His credits range from TV's Hogan's Heroes to feature films directed by George C. Scott and Steven Spielberg, with whom he has had an extended, notable collaboration over more than thirty years.Kahn is a member of the American Cinema Editors...
and Spielberg. Their relationship continued for the rest of Spielberg's films. When Kahn and Spielberg delivered the first cut of the film, Spielberg was dissatisfied, feeling "there wasn't enough wow-ness". Pick-ups were commissioned but cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond could not participate. John A. Alonzo
John A. Alonzo
John Alonzo, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer who pioneered hand held work, lighting techniques and HD development during his career...
, László Kovács
László Kovács (cinematographer)
László Kovács, A.S.C. was a Hungarian cinematographer who was influential in the development of American New Wave films. Most famous for his award-winning work on Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces, Kovács was the recipient of numerous awards, including three Lifetime Achievement Awards...
, William A. Fraker
William A. Fraker
William Ashman Fraker, A.S.C., B.S.C. was a cinematographer, film director, and producer. He has been nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography. In 2000, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Cinematographers honoring his career...
and Douglas Slocombe
Douglas Slocombe
Douglas Slocombe OBE, BSC, A.S.C. is a British cinematographer who has enjoyed a long career in the British film industry...
worked on the pick-ups. Lacombe was originally to find Flight 19
Flight 19
Flight 19 was the designation of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared on December 5, 1945 during a United States Navy-authorized overwater navigation training flight from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Florida. All 14 airmen on the flight were lost, as were all 13 crew members of a...
hidden in the Amazon Rainforest
Amazon Rainforest
The Amazon Rainforest , also known in English as Amazonia or the Amazon Jungle, is a moist broadleaf forest that covers most of the Amazon Basin of South America...
, but the idea was changed to the Sonoran Desert
Sonoran Desert
The Sonoran Desert is a North American desert which straddles part of the United States-Mexico border and covers large parts of the U.S. states of Arizona and California and the northwest Mexican states of Sonora, Baja California, and Baja California Sur. It is one of the largest and hottest...
. This was an important scene added in the re-shoots. Composer John Williams
John Williams
John Towner Williams is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T...
wrote over 300 examples of the iconic five-tone motif
Motif (music)
In music, a motif or motive is a short musical idea, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition....
before Spielberg chose the right one. Spielberg called Williams' work as "When You Wish upon a Star
When You Wish upon a Star
"When You Wish upon a Star" is a song written by Leigh Harline and Ned Washington for Walt Disney's 1940 adaptation of Pinocchio. The original version of the song was sung by Cliff Edwards in the character of Jiminy Cricket, and is heard over the opening credits and again in the final scene of the...
meets science fiction". Spielberg wanted to have "When You Wish upon a Star" in the closing credits
Closing credits
Closing credits or end credits are added at the end of a motion picture, television program, or video game to list the cast and crew involved in the production. They usually appear as a list of names in small type, which either flip very quickly from page to page, or move smoothly across the...
, but was denied permission (though the song's signature melody can be heard briefly just before Roy Neary turns to board the mothership). He also took 7.5 minutes out from the preview. Post-production was completed by June 1977, too late for the film to be released as a 'summer blockbuster'.
Music
The scoreFilm score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
was composed, conducted and produced by John Williams, who had previously won an Academy Award for his work on Spielberg's Jaws. Much like his two-note Jaws theme, the "five-tone" motif for Close Encounters has since become ingrained in popular culture (the five tones are used by scientists to communicate with the visiting spaceship as a mathematical language as well as being incorporated into the film's signature theme). The score was recorded at Warner Bros. Scoring studios in Burbank, California
Burbank, California
Burbank is a city in Los Angeles County in Southern California, United States, north of downtown Los Angeles. The estimated population in 2010 was 103,340....
. Williams was nominated for two Academy Awards in 1978, one for his score to Star Wars and one for his score to Close Encounters. He won for Star Wars, though he later won two Grammy Awards in 1979 for his Close Encounters score (one for Best Original Film Score and one for Best Instrumental Composition for "Theme from Close Encounters").
The soundtrack album was released on vinyl album
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
(with a gatefold sleeve), 8-track tape, and audio cassette
Compact Cassette
The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. It was designed originally for dictation, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel...
by Arista Records
Arista Records
Arista was an American record label. It was a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment and operated under the RCA Music Group. The label was founded in 1974 by Clive Davis, who formerly worked for CBS Records...
in 1977, with a total running time of 41 minutes (it was later released on compact disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
in 1990). The soundtrack album was a commercial success, peaking at #17 on the US Billboard album chart
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
in February 1978 and was certified Gold by the RIAA for 1 million copies shipped. It also peaked at #40 in the UK album charts. Although not included on the original soundtrack album, a 7" single, "Theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind", was also released and was a chart hit, peaking at #13 on the US Billboard Hot 100
Billboard Hot 100
The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...
in March 1978. The single was later included with the vinyl soundtrack album as a free bonus item, and added as a bonus track to the cassette. Track listing:
Side A:
- Main Title and Mountain Visions
- Nocturnal Pursuit
- The Abduction of Barry
- I can't Believe It's Real
- Climbing Devil's Tower
- The Arrival of Sky Harbor
Side B:
- Night Siege
- The Conversation
- The Appearance of the Visitors
- Resolution and End Titles
- Theme from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"†
† 1978 reissue - bonus track (cassette), free bonus 7" single (vinyl album).
Following the release of the "Collector's Edition" of the film in 1998, a new expanded soundtrack was released on compact disc
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
by Arista. The "Collectors's Edition Soundtrack" was made using 20-bit digital remastering
Audio mastering
Mastering, a form of audio post-production, is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device ; the source from which all copies will be produced...
from the original tapes, and contained 26 tracks totalling 77 minutes of music. The CD also came with extensive liner notes including an interview with Williams. Cues were given new titles, and it also contained previously unreleased material, as well as material that was recorded but never used in the film. Track listing:
- Opening: Let There Be Light
- Navy Planes
- Lost Squadron
- Roy's First Encounter
- Encounter at Crescendo Summit
- Chasing UFOs
- False Alarm
- Barry's Kidnapping
- The Cover-Up
- Stars and Trucks
- Forming The Mountain
- TV Reveals
- Roy and Gillian on the Road
- The Mountain
- "Who Are You People?"
- The Escape
- The Escape (alternate cue)
- Trucking
- Climbing The Mountain
- Outstretch Hands
- Lightshow
- Barnstorming
- The Mothership
- Wild Signals
- The Returnees
- The Visitors / "Bye" / End Titles: The Special Edition
Themes
Film critic Charlene Engel observed Close Encounters "suggests that humankind has reached the point where it is ready to enter the community of the cosmos. While it is a computer interface which makes the final musical conversation with the alien guests possible, the characteristics bringing Neary to make his way to Devil's Tower have little to do with technical expertise or computer literacy. These are virtues taught in schools that will be evolved in the 21st century." The film also evokes typical science fictionScience fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
archetype
Archetype
An archetype is a universally understood symbol or term or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated...
s and motifs. The film portrays new technologies as a natural and expected outcome of human development and indication of health and growth.
Other critics found a variety of Judeo-Christian analogies. Devil's Tower parallels Mount Sinai
Mount Sinai
Mount Sinai , also known as Mount Horeb, Mount Musa, Gabal Musa , Jabal Musa meaning "Moses' Mountain", is a mountain near Saint Catherine in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. A mountain called Mount Sinai is mentioned many times in the Book of Exodus in the Torah and the Bible as well as the Quran...
, the aliens as God and Roy Neary as Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
. Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil Blount DeMille was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. He was renowned for the flamboyance and showmanship of his movies...
's The Ten Commandments
The Ten Commandments (1956 film)
The Ten Commandments is a 1956 American epic film that dramatized the biblical story of the Exodus, in which the Hebrew-born Moses, an adopted Egyptian prince, becomes the deliverer of the Hebrew slaves. The film, released by Paramount Pictures in VistaVision on October 5, 1956, was directed by...
is seen on television at the Neary household. Some found close relations between Elijah and Roy; Elijah was taken into a "chariot of fire", akin to Roy going in the UFO. Climbing Devil's Tower behind Jillian and faltering, Neary exhorts Jillian to keep moving and not to look back, similar to Lot
Lot (Bible)
Lot is a man from the Book of Genesis chapters 11-14 and 19, in the Hebrew Bible. Notable episodes in his life include his travels with his uncle Abram ; his flight from the destruction of Sodom, in the course of which Lot's wife looked back and became a pillar of salt; and the seduction by his...
's wife who looked back at Sodom
Sodom and Gomorrah
Sodom and Gomorrah were cities mentioned in the Book of Genesis and later expounded upon throughout the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and Deuterocanonical sources....
and turned into a pillar of salt. Spielberg explained, "I wanted to make Close Encounters a very accessible story about the everyday individual who has a sighting that overturns his life, and throws it in to complete upheaval as he starts to become more and more obsessed with this experience."
Roy's wife Ronnie attempts to hide the sunburn caused by Roy's exposure to the UFOs and wants him to forget his encounter with them. She is embarrassed and bewildered by what has happened to him and desperately wants her ordinary life back. The expression of his lost life is seen when he is sculpting a huge model of Devil's Tower in his living room, with his family deserting him. Roy's obsession with an idea implanted by an alien intelligence, his construction of the model, and his gradual loss of contact with his wife, mimic the events in the short story "Dulcie and Decorum
Dulcie and Decorum
"Dulcie and Decorum" is a science fiction short story written by Damon Knight. It first appeared in the March 1955 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction...
" (1955) by Damon Knight
Damon Knight
Damon Francis Knight was an American science fiction author, editor, critic and fan. His forte was short stories and he is widely acknowledged as having been a master of the genre.-Biography:...
.
Close Encounters also studies the form of "youth spiritual yearning". Barry Guiler, the unfearing child who refers to the UFOs and their paraphernalia as "Toys", serves as a motif for childlike innocence and openness in the face of the unknown. Spielberg also compared the theme of communication as highlighting that of tolerance. "If we can talk to aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind," he said, "why not with the Reds
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
in the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
?" Sleeping is the final obstacle to overcome in the ascent of Devil's Tower. Roy, Jillian Guiler and a third invitee climb the mountain pursued by government helicopters spraying sleeping gas. The third person stops to rest, is gassed, and falls into a deep sleep.
In his interview with Spielberg on Inside the Actors Studio
Inside the Actors Studio
Inside the Actors Studio is a series on the Bravo cable television channel, hosted by James Lipton. It is produced and directed by Jeff Wurtz; the executive producer is James Lipton. The program, which premiered in 1994, is distributed internationally by CABLEready and is broadcast in 125 countries...
, James Lipton
James Lipton
James Lipton is an American writer, poet, composer, actor and dean emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University in New York City. He is the executive producer, writer and host of the Bravo cable television series Inside the Actors Studio, which debuted in 1994...
suggested Close Encounters had another, more personal theme for Spielberg: "Your father was a computer engineer; your mother was a concert pianist, and when the spaceship lands, they make music together on the computer", suggesting that Roy Neary's boarding the spaceship is Spielberg's wish to be reunited with his parents. In a 2005 interview, Spielberg stated that he made Close Encounters when he did not have children, and if he were making it today, he would never have had Neary leave his family and go on the mother ship.
Release
The film was originally to be released in summer 1977, but was pushed back to November because of the various problems during production, Upon its release, Close Encounters became a box officeBox office
A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....
success, grossing $116.39 million in North America and $171.7 million in foreign countries, totaling $288 million. It became Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
' most successful film at that time. Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum is an American film critic. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for the Chicago Reader from 1987 until 2008, when he retired at the age of 65...
refers to the film as "the best expression of Spielberg's benign, dreamy-eyed vision." A.D. Murphy of Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
gave a positive review but felt "Close Encounters lacks the warmth and humanity of George Lucas
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
's Star Wars". Murphy found most of the film slow-paced, but was highly impressed with the climax. Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
called it "a kid's film in the best sense." Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
compared Spielberg's storytelling to Jules Verne
Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...
and Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès , full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects...
. Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
declared it the greatest science fiction film ever made. Based on 39 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, 95% ("Certified Fresh") of the reviewers have enjoyed the film and the site's consensus states "Close Encounters' most iconic bits (the theme, the mashed-potato sculpture, etc.) have been so thoroughly absorbed into the culture that it's easy to forget that its treatment of aliens as peaceful beings rather than warmongering monsters was somewhat groundbreaking in 1977."
Spielberg's 1998 Collector's Edition was given a limited release as part of a roadshow
RoadShow
RoadShow , formerly known as "資訊娛樂共同睇" [paraphrased as Integrated View of Information and Entertainment]) is the first "Multi-Media On Board" service on transit vehicles in the world. It was launched by Kowloon Motor Bus Company on 26 November 2000...
featuring select films to celebrate Columbia Pictures' 75th anniversary in 1999. It was the first and only time this version of the film has been shown theatrically.
Reissue and home video
On the final cut privilegeFinal cut privilege
Final cut privilege is a film industry term, usually used when a director has contractual authority over how a film is ultimately released for public viewing.- Condition :...
, Spielberg was dissatisfied with the film. "Columbia Pictures was experiencing financial problems, and they were depending on this film to save their company. "I wanted to have another six months to finish off this film, and release it in summer 1978. They told me they needed this film out immediately," Spielberg explained. "Anyway, Close Encounters was a huge financial success and I told them I wanted to make my own director's cut
Director's cut
A director's cut is a specially edited version of a film, and less often TV series, music video, commercials, comic book or video games, that is supposed to represent the director's own approved edit...
. They agreed on the condition that I show the inside of the mother ship
Mother ship
A mother ship is a vessel or aircraft that carries a smaller vessel or aircraft that operates independently from it. Examples include bombers converted to carry experimental aircraft to altitudes where they can conduct their research , or ships that carry small submarines to an area of ocean to be...
so they could have something to hang a [reissue marketing] campaign on. I never should have shown the inside of the mother ship." In 1979, Columbia gave Spielberg $1.5 million to produce what would become the "Special Edition" of the film. Spielberg added seven minutes of new footage, but also deleted or shortened various scenes
Deleted scene
In Entertainment, especially the film and television industry, Deleted scenes are parts of a film removed or censored from or replaced by another scene in the final "cut", or version, of a film...
so that the Special Edition ended up three minutes shorter than the original 1977 release.
The Special Edition featured several new character development scenes, the discovery of the SS Cotopaxi
SS Cotopaxi
The SS Cotopaxi was a tramp steamer named after the Cotopaxi stratovolcano. She vanished in December 1925, while en route from Charleston, South Carolina, USA, to Havana, Cuba, with all hands.-Description:Cotopaxi was a cargo ship of 2,351 GRT...
in the Gobi Desert
Gobi Desert
The Gobi is a large desert region in Asia. It covers parts of northern and northwestern China, and of southern Mongolia. The desert basins of the Gobi are bounded by the Altai Mountains and the grasslands and steppes of Mongolia on the north, by the Hexi Corridor and Tibetan Plateau to the...
, and a view of the inside of the mothership. Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Special Edition was released in August 1980, making a further $15.7 million, accumulating a final $303.7 million box office gross. Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
"thought the original film was an astonishing achievement, capturing the feeling of awe and wonder we have when considering the likelihood of life beyond the Earth. This new version is quite simply a better film. Why didn't Spielberg make it this good the first time?"
In 1998, Spielberg recut Close Encounters again for what would become the "Collector's Edition," to be released on home video and laserdisc. This version of the film is something of a re-edit of the original 1977 release with some elements of the 1980 Special Edition, but omits the mothership interior scenes which Spielberg felt should have remained a mystery. The laserdisc edition also includes a new 101-minute documentary, The Making of Close Encounters, which was produced in 1997 and features interviews with Spielberg, the main cast, and notable crew members. There have also been many other alternate versions of the film for network and syndicated television, as well as a previous LaserDisc version. Some of these even combined all released material from the 1977 and 1980 versions, but none of these versions were edited by Spielberg, who regards the "Collector's Edition" as his definitive version of Close Encounters.
The film was released on DVD in June 2001 as a two-disc set that contained the "Collector's Edition". The second disc contained a wealth of extra features including the 101-minute "Making Of" documentary from 1997, a featurette from 1977, trailers, and deleted scenes that included, among other things, the mothership interiors from the 1980 Special Edition. James Berardinelli
James Berardinelli
James Berardinelli is an American online film critic.-Personal life:Berardinelli was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey and spent his early childhood in Morristown, New Jersey. At the age of nine years, he relocated to the township of Cherry Hill, New Jersey...
felt "Close Encounters is still unquestionably a great movie. Its universal appeal gave movie-goers something to be excited about during 1977–78 as the first in a wave of post-Star Wars science fiction films broke. Today, the movie stands up remarkably well. The story is fresh and compelling, the special effects are as remarkable as anything that CGI can do, and the music represents some of John Williams
John Williams
John Towner Williams is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T...
' best work." Emanuel Levy
Emanuel Levy
Emanuel Levy is an American film critic and professor.-Life:Emanuel Levy began his studies at Tel Aviv University, where he received B.A. in sociology, anthropology and political science. He did graduate work in sociology, film, and culture studies at Columbia University, where he earned a Ph.D...
also gave a highly-positive review. "Spielberg's greatest achievement is to make a warm, likable sci-fi feature, deviating in spirit, tone and ideology from the dark, noirish
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
sci-fi films that dominated the 1950s
B movies (Transition in the 1950s)
The 1950s mark a significant change in the definition of the B movie. The transformation of the film industry due to court rulings that brought an end to many long-standing distribution practices as well as the challenge of television led to major changes in U.S. cinema at the exhibition level...
and Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
mentality. He ultimately succeeded."
Close Encounters was given a second DVD release and a Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
release in November 2007. Released for the film's 30th anniversary, the set contained all three official versions of the film from 1977, 1980, and 1998 and a new interview with Spielberg, who talks about the film's impact 30 years after its release. The set also includes the 1977 featurette, various trailers, and the 1997 "Making Of" documentary – though this is now split over three discs rather than as a single feature as with the 2001 DVD release. In addition to these features, the 2-disc Blu-ray set also included storyboard-to-scene comparisons, an extensive photo gallery, and a "View from Above: Editor's Fact track" highlighting the different scenes in each version of the movie.
Legacy
Shortly after the film's release in late 1977, Spielberg desired to do either a sequelSequel
A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...
or prequel
Prequel
A prequel is a work that supplements a previously completed one, and has an earlier time setting.The widely recognized term was a 20th-century neologism, and a portmanteau from pre- and sequel...
, before deciding against it. He explained, "The army's knowledge and ensuing cover-up
Cover-up
A cover-up is an attempt, whether successful or not, to conceal evidence of wrong-doing, error, incompetence or other embarrassing information...
is so subterranean that it would take a creative screen story, perhaps someone else making the picture and giving it the equal time it deserves."
The film was nominated for nine Oscars at the 50th Academy Awards
50th Academy Awards
The 50th Academy Awards were held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, California on April 3, 1978. The ceremonies were presided over by Bob Hope, who hosted the awards for the eighteenth and last time....
, including Direction, Supporting Actress
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...
(Melinda Dillon), Visual Effects
Academy Award for Visual Effects
The Academy Award for Visual Effects is an Academy Award given for the best achievement in visual effects.-History of the award:The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences first recognized the technical contributions of special effects to movies at its inaugural dinner in 1928, presenting a...
, Art Direction
Academy Award for Best Art Direction
The Academy Awards are the oldest awards ceremony for achievements in motion pictures. The Academy Award for Best Art Direction recognizes achievement in art direction on a film. The films below are listed with their production year, so the Oscar 2000 for best art direction went to a film from 1999...
(Joe Alves
Joe Alves
Joe Alves is an American film production designer, perhaps best known for his work on three of the Jaws films. He directed Jaws 3-D....
, Daniel A. Lomino
Daniel A. Lomino
Daniel A. Lomino is an American production designer and art director. He was nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best Art Direction for the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.-External links:...
, Phil Abramson
Phil Abramson
Phil Abramson is an American set decorator. He was nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best Art Direction for the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.-External links:...
), Original Music Score
Academy Award for Original Music Score
The Academy Award for Original Score is presented to the best substantial body of music in the form of dramatic underscoring written specifically for the film by the submitting composer.-Superlatives:...
, Film Editing
Academy Award for Film Editing
The Academy Award for Film Editing is one of the annual awards of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Nominations for this award are closely correlated with the Academy Award for Best Picture. Since 1981, every film selected as Best Picture has also been nominated for the Film Editing...
, and Sound (Robert Knudson
Robert Knudson
Robert Knudson was an American sound engineer. He won three Academy Awards for Best Sound and was nominated for seven more in the same category...
, Robert Glass
Robert Glass (sound engineer)
Robert Glass is an American sound engineer. He won an Academy Award for Best Sound and was nominated for five more in the same category. He has worked on over 100 films and since 1948.-Selected filmography:...
, Don MacDougall
Don MacDougall
Don MacDougall is an American sound engineer. He won an Academy Award for Best Sound and was nominated for four more in the same category. He worked on over 130 films between 1974 and 1999.-Selected filmography:...
and Gene Cantamessa
Gene Cantamessa
Gene Cantamessa was an American sound engineer. He won an Academy Award for Best Sound for his work on the 1982 Stephen Spielberg film, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial...
). The film's only win was for Vilmos Zsigmond
Vilmos Zsigmond
Vilmos Zsigmond, A.S.C. is a Hungarian-American cinematographer.In 2003, a survey conducted by the International Cinematographers Guild placed Zsigmond among the ten most influential cinematographers in history.-Biography:...
's cinematography, although the Academy honored the film's sound effects editing with a Special Achievement Award
Academy Special Achievement Award
The Special Achievement Award is an Academy Award given for an achievement that makes an exceptional contribution to the motion picture for which it was created, but for which there is no annual award category...
. At the 32nd British Academy Film Awards
32nd British Academy Film Awards
The 32nd British Film Awards, given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1979, honoured the best films of 1978.-Best Film: Julia *Midnight Express*Star Wars*Close Encounters of the Third Kind-Best Actor:...
, Close Encounters won Best Production Design
BAFTA Award for Best Production Design
List of winners of the BAFTA Awards from 1964 to the present in the category "Best Production Design".-1960s:Best British Production Design - Black and White1964: Dr...
, and was nominated for Best Film
BAFTA Award for Best Film
This page lists the winners and nominees for the BAFTA Award for Best Film, BAFTA Award for Best Film not in the English Language and Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film for each year, in addition to the retired earlier versions of those awards...
, Direction
BAFTA Award for Best Direction
Winners of the BAFTA Award for Best Direction presented by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.-2010s:* 2010 - David Fincher – The Social Network** Tom Hooper – The King's Speech** Danny Boyle – 127 Hours...
, Screenplay
BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay
* 1982 - Missing - Costa-Gavras and Donald E. Stewart** E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial - Melissa Mathison** Gandhi - John Briley** On Golden Pond - Ernest Thompson* 1981 - Gregory's Girl - Bill Forsyth...
, Actor in a Supporting Role
BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role
Best Actor in a Supporting Role is a British Academy Film award presented annually by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding supporting performance in a film...
(François Truffaut), Music
BAFTA Award for Best Film Music
The Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music is an annual award given by British Academy of Film and Television Arts.-1960s:*1968 - The Lion in Winter - John Barry...
, Cinematography
BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography
-Best Cinematography - Colour:* 1963 - From Russia with Love - Ted Moore** Nine Hours to Rama – Arthur Ibbetson** The Running Man – Robert Krasker** Sammy Going South – Erwin Hillier** The Scarlet Blade – Jack Asher...
, Editing
BAFTA Award for Best Editing
The BAFTA Award for Best Editing is one of several annual awards presented by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts . The film-voting members of the Academy select the five nominated films in each category; only the principal editor for each film are named, which excludes additional...
, and Sound
BAFTA Award for Best Sound
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award for Best Sound has been presented to its winners since 1968 and sound designers of all nationalities are eligible to receive the award.-Winners 1968-present:...
.
Close Encounters lost the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation
Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation
The Hugo Awards are given every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was once officially...
to Star Wars, but was successful at the Saturn Award
Saturn Award
The Saturn Award is an award presented annually by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films to honor the top works in science fiction, fantasy, and horror in film, television, and home video. The Saturn Awards were devised by Dr. Donald A. Reed in 1972, who felt that films within...
s. There, the film tied with Star Wars for Direction
Saturn Award for Best Direction
The following is a list of Saturn Award winners for Best Direction:-Multiple Winners:*James Cameron - 5 awards*Steven Spielberg - 4 awards*Peter Jackson - 3 awards*Bryan Singer - 2 awards...
and Music
Saturn Award for Best Music
The following is a list of Saturn Award winners for Best Music.-Multiple Winners:*John Williams - 7 awards*Danny Elfman - 5 awards*James Horner - 3 awards*Alan Silvestri - 3 awards*Alan Menken - 2 awards*John Ottman - 2 awards*Miklós Rózsa - 2 awards...
, but won Best Writing
Saturn Award for Best Writing
The following is a list of people who have won the Saturn Award for Best Writing.-Multiple Winners:*James Cameron - 3 awards*Christopher Nolan - 3 awards*William Peter Blatty - 3 awards-External links:* http://www.saturnawards.org/past.html#writing...
. Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon and the visual effects department received nominations. Close Encounters was nominated for Best Science Fiction Film
Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film
The Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film is a Saturn Award given to the best film in the science fiction genre by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films.-Winners:-External links:*...
. The film received four more nominations at the 35th Golden Globe Awards
35th Golden Globe Awards
The 35th Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and television for 1977, were held on January 28, 1978.-Best Actor - Drama: Richard Burton – Equus*Marcello Mastroianni – A Special Day ...
.
When asked in 1990 to select a single "master image" that summed up his film career, Spielberg chose the shot of Barry opening his living room door to see the blazing orange light from the UFO. "That was beautiful but awful light, just like fire coming through the doorway. [Barry's] very small, and it's a very large door, and there's a lot of promise or danger outside that door." In 2007, Close Encounters was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress, and was added to the National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
for preservation. In American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
polls, Close Encounters has been voted the 64th greatest film of all time
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies
The first of the AFI 100 Years… series of cinematic milestones, AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies is a list of the 100 best American movies, as determined by the American Film Institute from a poll of more than 1,500 artists and leaders in the film industry who chose from a list of 400 nominated movies...
, 31st most heart-pounding
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills
Part of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years…100 Thrills is a list of the top 100 heart-pounding movies in American cinema. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute on June 12, 2001, during a CBS special hosted by Harrison Ford....
, and 58th most inspiring
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers
100 Years…100 Cheers: America's Most Inspiring Movies is a list of the most inspiring films as determined by the American Film Institute. It is part of the AFI 100 Years… series, which has been compiling lists of the greatest films of all time in various categories since 1998...
. Additionally, the film was nominated for the top 10 science fiction films in AFI's 10 Top 10
AFI's 10 Top 10
AFI's 10 Top 10 honors the ten greatest American films in ten classic film genres. Presented by the American Film Institute , the lists were unveiled on a television special broadcast by CBS on June 17, 2008....
and the tenth anniversary edition of the 100 Movies list. The score by John Williams was nominated for AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores
AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores
Part of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores is a list of the top 25 film scores in American cinema. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute in 2005.-The List:-External links:**...
.
Alongside Star Wars and Superman, Close Encounters led to the reemergence of science fiction films. In 1985 Spielberg donated $100,000 to the Planetary Society
Planetary Society
The Planetary Society is a large, publicly supported, non-government and non-profit organization that has many research projects related to astronomy...
for Megachannel ExtraTerrestrial Assay. In the 1979 James Bond film Moonraker
Moonraker (film)
Moonraker is the eleventh spy film in the James Bond series, and the fourth to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The third and final film in the series to be directed by Lewis Gilbert, it co-stars Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale, Corinne Clery, and Richard Kiel...
the five-note sequence is heard when a scientist punches the combination into an electronic door lock. In the South Park
South Park
South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...
episode "Imaginationland
Imaginationland
"Imaginationland" is a three-part episode of the American animated television series South Park.*Episode I*Episode II*Episode III...
", a government scientist uses the five-note sequence to try to open a portal. In "Over Logging
Over Logging
"Over Logging" is the sixth episode of the twelfth season of the animated series South Park, and the 173rd episode of the series overall. It originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on April 16, 2008...
", a government scientist uses the five-note sequence to try to get the central Internet router working. The "mashed potato" sculpture was parodied in the film UHF
UHF (film)
UHF is a 1989 American comedy film starring "Weird Al" Yankovic, David Bowe, Fran Drescher, Victoria Jackson, Kevin McCarthy, Michael Richards, Gedde Watanabe, Billy Barty, Anthony Geary, Emo Philips and Trinidad Silva, in whose memory the film is dedicated.The title refers to Ultra High Frequency...
, the film Canadian Bacon
Canadian Bacon (film)
Canadian Bacon is a 1995 comedy film which satirizes Canada – United States relations along the Canada – United States border written, directed and produced by Michael Moore, his only non-documentary feature...
, an episode of Spaced
Spaced
Spaced is a British television sitcom written by and starring Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson, and directed by Edgar Wright. It is noted for its rapid-fire editing, frequent pop culture references and jokes, eclectic music, and occasional displays of surrealism and non-sequitur humour...
, an episode of The X-Files
The X-Files
The X-Files is an American science fiction television series and a part of The X-Files franchise, created by screenwriter Chris Carter. The program originally aired from to . The show was a hit for the Fox network, and its characters and slogans became popular culture touchstones in the 1990s...
, an episode of That 70's Show, and an episode of The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
. The "headlights passing the parked truck by going straight up" sequence was parodied in an episode of Flo
Flo
Flo is an American sitcom which aired on CBS from 1980 to 1981. The series is a spin-off for Polly Holliday who portrayed the sassy and street-smart waitress Florence Jean "Flo" Castleberry on the sitcom Alice...
.
American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
Lists
- AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies - #64
- AFI's 100 Years…100 Thrills - #31
- AFI's 100 Years of Film ScoresAFI's 100 Years of Film ScoresPart of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores is a list of the top 25 film scores in American cinema. The list was unveiled by the American Film Institute in 2005.-The List:-External links:**...
- Nominated - AFI's 100 Years…100 Cheers - #58
- AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) - Nominated
- AFI's 10 Top 10AFI's 10 Top 10AFI's 10 Top 10 honors the ten greatest American films in ten classic film genres. Presented by the American Film Institute , the lists were unveiled on a television special broadcast by CBS on June 17, 2008....
- Nominated Science Fiction Film
In 2011, ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
aired a primetime special, Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time
Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time
Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time was a two-hour television special that aired on March 22, 2011 on the ABC in the United States. Hosted by Tom Bergeron and Cynthia McFadden, it was a collaboration between ABC News and People magazine that gave American film fans the chance to choose...
that counted down the best movies chosen by fans based on results of a poll conducted by ABC and People. Close Encounters of the Third Kind was selected as the #5 Best Sci-Fi Film.
External links
- CE3KONLINE
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind at Filmsite.orgFilmsite.orgFilmSite.org is a website operated by Tim Dirks since 1996, and owned by AMC since 2008. It contains over 300 reviews of what Dirks judges to be the "greatest films" of all time. In some cases, the review is scene-by-scene. It also contains many other pages offering an introduction to cinema...