Dear Cinephiles,

I have always been fascinated with language and communication. I came to the US at a very early age with Spanish as my first language. After high school I lived a year in France and once again I immersed myself in a different culture. The moment you are able to communicate with another person is truly special. The moment you’re willing to let go of your doubt and fears of making mistakes or be laughed at – and tap again to that natural instinct – that yearning – you had as a child when you first communicated with your parents – is to me joyful and life affirming.

When I saw Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind” in 1977 – it was one of the first films I saw in the US – and the themes I just mentioned reverberated deep within me. The spectacle and the cinematic wizardry were like nothing I’d seen before. I know I was watching an exploration of cosmic mysticism and the wonder of imagining life outside of our planet, but it was the eloquent articulation of language that moved me. Especially, when music becomes the common conduit for humans and “aliens” to find common ground. I relished that the movie recognizes the importance of music – of art. And there I was in a movie theatre – understanding as well – that movies have an essential role in communications by becoming a language we can all share!

Spielberg explained, “I wanted to make Close Encounters a very accessible story about the everyday individual who has a sighting that overturns his life.” Well, we can all relate right now with the experience the main character Roy Neary undergoes. And if there’s a lesson to take from his journey it is to not be afraid of the unknown – to confront it directly. Is it a coincidence that “The Ten Commandments” is seen on a television – and that Devils Tower recalls Mount Sinai? There’s so much to enjoy in this film – and so much to think about as well.

“Close Encounters” remains my favorite Steven Spielberg film – and one of the greatest movie experiences of all time. Its impact hasn’t been diminished with time. The last section of the film is overwhelmingly beautiful and emotional.

Love,
Roger

Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Available to stream on Crackle, and to rent on Amazon Prime, iTunes, YouTube, Vudu and Google Play.

Directed by Steven Spielberg
Written by Steven Spielberg, Jerry Belson
Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, Cary Guffey, François Truffaut
137 minutes

Richard Dreyfuss stars as cable worker Roy Neary, who along with several other stunned bystanders experience a close encounter of the first kind – witnessing UFOs soaring across the sky. After this life-changing event, the inexplicable vision of a strange, mountain-like formation haunts him. He becomes obsessed with discovering what it represents, much to the dismay of his wife and family. Meanwhile, bizarre occurrences are happening around the world. Government agents have close encounters of the second kind – discovering physical evidence of extraterrestrial visitors in the form of a lost fighter aircraft from World War II and a stranded military ship that disappeared decades earlier only to suddenly reappear in unusual places. Roy continues to chase his vision to a remote area where he and the agents follow the clues that have drawn them to reach a site where they will have a close encounter of the third kind – contact.

About Writer and Director Steven Spielberg
The most commercially successful filmmaker in Hollywood history, Steven Allan Spielberg was born December 18, 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Leah Frances (Posner), a concert pianist and restaurateur, and Arnold Spielberg, an electrical engineer who worked in computer development. Steven spent his younger years in Haddon Township, New Jersey, Phoenix, Arizona, and later Saratoga, California. A lifelong cinema buff, he began directing his first short movies while still a child, later studying film at California State University Long Beach, but dropped out to pursue his entertainment career. He first made his mark in television, directing Joan Crawford in the pilot for Rod Serling’s Night Gallery and working on episodes of Columbo and Marcus Welby, M.D. Spielberg’s first feature-length effort, 1971’s Duel, a taut thriller starring Dennis Weaver, was widely acclaimed as one of the best movies ever made for television. Spielberg permanently graduated to feature films with 1974’s The Sugarland Express, but it was his next effort, Jaws, which truly cemented his reputation as a rising star. In his 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 archetypes of modern Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking. In later years, his films began addressing issues such as the Holocaust, the Transatlantic slave trade, war, and terrorism. He is also one of the co-founders of DreamWorks movie studio. Spielberg won the Academy Award for Best Director for Schindler’s List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). Three of Spielberg’s films—Jaws (1975), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Jurassic Park (1993)—achieved box office records, each becoming the highest-grossing film made at the time. (Fandango) A few of Spielberg’s other notable films include Indiana Jones franchise, The Color Purple, Hook, Amistad, Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can and Lincoln.

The Beginning
Spielberg had been fascinated with outer space since he was a little boy, and his father drove him out to the desert near their home in Phoenix to watch a meteor shower. As a teenager in the early 60s, Spielberg made a low-budget movie about aliens called “Firelight.” That film planted the seeds for “Close Encounters.” Spielberg began working on the treatment for what was then called “Watch the Skies” in the early ’70s. Paul Schrader of “Taxi Driver” took a crack at a script that involved a government employee, whose job was to debunk UFO sightings, seeing a spacecraft himself. Spielberg, unhappy with the various script versions, ultimately decided to write it himself with input from others. (New York Post)

The Mother of all Ships
In a 1978 LAT article, Spielberg said he got his visual inspiration for the mothership, “often described as a clean, well-lighted oil refinery,” from two sources. He got the idea for the top half while passing an actual refinery on location in India. The other part came when he was out driving along Mulholland Drive. He stopped, got out, stood on his head and looked out over the San Fernando Valley. So what we have is an Indian oil refinery on top and the San Fernando Valley, upside down, on the bottom. The Model of the mothership was built by Greg Jein who used model train parts and architectural kits. When filmed with special photographic and lighting effects, the model appears to be a huge, hovering craft. Rotating, colored lights underneath the ship added to its effects. As a joke, the effects team planted on the exterior of the mothership, a miniature R2D2, a toy shark, a model of Darth Vader’s escape vehicle, a World War II fighter, and a tiny Volkswagen bus.The model of the mothership is now on display in the Smithsonian Institution’s Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Annex at Washington Dulles Airport in Chantilly, Virginia. (afi.com)

Contact with the Aliens
Steven Spielberg describes the music as being like an additional character in the movie. The famous five note theme (D-E-C-C-G) used, functions as a form of communication in the film. The score was composed, conducted and produced by John Williams, who had previously worked on Spielberg’s Jaws. Williams wrote over 300 examples of the iconic five-tone motif for Close Encounters—the five tones are used by scientists to communicate with the visiting spaceship as a mathematical language—before Spielberg chose the one incorporated into the film’s signature theme. Spielberg called Williams’ work “When You Wish upon a Star meets science fiction”. (The Making of Close Encounters)

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. Much like his two-note Jaws theme, the “five-tone” motif for Close Encounters has since become ingrained in popular culture.