Rewatchables Reference

• Bill: The air traffic controller scene – TW517 reporting a UFO, nobody wants to file a report. 'Everything about that scene, which shouldn't really be a good scene at all. All the actors are really good.' Also: Barry waking up with his room going bonkers; Roy's UFO encounter through the highway chase with the fake-out second car; the Northern India scene ('I texted you guys – this is movies to me'); mashed potato scene; Roy throwing things into his house; the whole ending.
• CR: Roy's close encounter at the railroad crossing – the truck, the lights going up behind him.
• Sean: The Northern India scene – 'hearing that five-note thing sung by those Indian men, you're like there's something special about this melody. He's communicating to you that this sound matters.'

• CR: World War 2 being only 30 years prior – 'these guys disappeared in 1945, and that's actually more recent than this movie is to us now.'
• Sean: Roy just having the TV on all the time as the only way to get information. People don't use TV that way anymore.
• Bill: McDonald's sign with only '24 billion served'; rotary phones; neighbors hanging out in the street; a 3-year-old kid named Barry (last year you could name a kid Barry); whole milk in the middle of the dinner table; little kids wearing numbered football/baseball shirts with no team.

• CR: A 'six-pack of Dyan Cannon' – wait, that was 'Heaven Can Wait'. For this: the pop culture durability of small-town suburban America as setting for adventure movies (this through ET, Goonies, Stranger Things). Also: the recurring imagery of Roy at crossroads and going against crowds.
• Sean: This movie and 2001 are most responsible for the current wave of great event filmmakers – Nolan, Villeneuve, Bong Joon-Ho, del Toro. Also: Spielberg's three screenplay credits (this, AI, Fabelmans); Bob Baker designing the marionette alien.
• Bill: Roy's half-face sunburn; little Barry's amazing faces; Melinda Dillon (same year as 'Slap Shot' – Hanrahan's wife – plus A Christmas Story, making her 'the mayor of Apex Mountain for mashed potatoes'); the giant globe; any movie involving Devil's Tower; 70s big-family moms calmly navigating their crazy husband.
• CR: When a guy in Mission Control figures everything out before everyone else – 'excuse me, wait, it's longitude!'

• CR: Possibly the longest Great Shot Gordo he's ever compiled. Barry's abduction with red light through the doorway ('looks like the pits of hell'); Roy and Jillian meeting as waves of people swarm past; the India sequence with hordes in the background and action in the foreground.
• Bill: The wide shot of the house with the stars – 'breathtaking.' The wind in the first 5 minutes with sand and people covering their faces. Devil's Tower on the TV side-by-side with the sculpture in Roy's room.
• Sean: The first time you see the board when they play Williams' five-note score and the colors flash – 'a chills moment.' Very opening the door and the wave of orange light.

No traditional needle drops – just John Williams' score throughout. Spielberg wanted the movie to feel like 'When You Wish Upon a Star.' The original cut ended with the Pinocchio version of that song, but it tested badly in Dallas – people laughed. Spielberg got hurt and took it out.

• Sean: Joseph Summers as Larry Butler – 'we could have done a little better' for a movie so well-realized and well-cast.
• CR: The jogging LA guy.
• Bill: Roy Neary – worst family man in any great movie. 'Just a reprehensible father, husband. He's got three kids and a wife. He's like, I got to follow this thing. I'll see you guys later.'

• Sean: The aliens at the end – the little girls in alien suits don't look good. The marionette alien and the final Rambaldi alien look good, but the rest are rough.
• Bill: Not nearly enough cigarette smoking for 1977 Indiana. Nobody realizing Roy has PTSD. Stealth UFO watch parties that nobody knows about – 'you're not pulling that off in 2025.' Also: the mothership interior in the 1980 cut; the movie brats being unable to stop fiddling with their creations.
• Bill: No cell phones/camera phones – 'the UFOs never would have come because everyone had a camera phone.'

CR: Bob Balaban when he's explaining what's going on in the desert – the interpreter going a bit big.

• Sean: Is this the best movie ever made with a long title (6+ words)? Biggest contender is probably Doctor Strangelove. 'We haven't gotten to a film that's better than Close Encounters.'
• CR: Roy's family abandoned HIM in some ways earlier in the film. 'If I had the chance to be one of the first human beings to have meaningful contact with an extraterrestrial life form, I'm hitting the transfer portal. Goodbye family. Anyone can have a family. I get to go to Mars.'
• Bill: The 2025 version would be terrible – Roy would be a lunatic on Reddit, his kids diagnosed with collateral PTSD and over-medicated, PETA would protest the animal sleep gas, and UFOs never come because of camera phones.
• Craig: The musical communication scene goes on too long – 'it works for the five notes, then it completely loses you when the spaceship starts playing the tuba for 10 minutes.'

• Steve McQueen was first choice. Amazing meeting story: McQueen invited 26-year-old Spielberg (who'd never been to a bar) to the 'Doom Room,' drank 14 beers, almost broke up a bar fight, and said 'I love this script, I actually cried reading it, but I know I could never achieve that for you on camera.'
• James Caan, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Gene Hackman all turned it down. Jack Nicholson was intrigued but had scheduling conflicts. Hackman turned it down because he was in a troubled marriage and couldn't spend 16 weeks on location.
• Dreyfuss lobbied from the 'Jaws' set – stuck his head into Spielberg's office saying 'I heard Nicholson's crazy, you don't want him.' But he wanted a lot of money and points.
• Teri Garr wanted to play Jillian but was cast as Ronnie instead. Meryl Streep and Amy Irving (later Spielberg's wife) also auditioned for Ronnie.
• Stanley Kubrick was so impressed by Cary Guffey that he wanted to cast him as Danny Torrance in 'The Shining' – but Guffey was filming The Sheriff and the Satellite Kid.

• Bill: Bob Balaban as the interpreter (now he's Bob Balaban, but in 1977 he's a that guy).
• CR: Roberts Blossom (the farmer who saw Bigfoot) – the Snowshovel Guy from 'Home Alone'.
• Bill: Carl Weathers – 'just died, great to see him.'
• CR: Lance Henriksen is also in this.

François Truffaut – only English-language role, only acting role in a film he didn't direct. Spielberg heat-checked getting one of the most important directors in cinema history to act in his 4th movie at age 29. Sean: 'He's tremendously effective in this movie.'

• Bill's 'every 10 years' version: 1987 Tom Hanks, 1997 Will Smith (Sean: 'too handsome, too heroic'), 2007 Philip Seymour Hoffman, 2017 Chadwick Boseman.
• Craig's modern pick: Ryan Gosling.

• Spielberg on Schrader's script: 'One of the most embarrassing screenplays ever professionally turned into a major film studio.'
• Julia Phillips' cocaine use got her fired from post-production. Her memoir threw daggers at everyone.
• 50 six-year-old girls from Mobile, Alabama play the aliens. They tried puppetry first and it didn't work.
• Doug Trumbull supervised the visual effects on a $3.3 million budget. Ralph McQuarrie (who also designed 'Star Wars') designed the mothership.
• Spielberg was eager to impress Truffaut with the giant landing site set. Truffaut wasn't impressed at all. But when Truffaut saw the hotel room set, he said 'now THIS is a set.'
• Close Encounters was the first collaboration between Spielberg and editor Michael Kahn (now 94 years old). They've never worked with anyone else since.
• John Ford's The Searchers was Spielberg's reference movie – he watched it repeatedly during filming.
• Topps made 66 trading cards and 11 stickers of the film in 1978. Dreyfuss and Truffaut didn't want to be in the card set.
• Spielberg's cocker spaniel Elmer appears when the humans get released from the spaceship. Also appeared in 'Jaws' as the Brody family dog.

• Dreyfuss: Yes – 'wins the Oscar, 77 is about as apexy as it gets.'
• UFOs in a movie: Yes – 'the most important UFO movie of the new Hollywood era.'
• Mashed potatoes: Yes. Melinda Dillon 'is the mayor of Apex Mountain for mashed potatoes' (also in A Christmas Story's mashed potato scene).
• Muncie, Indiana: Yes.
• Spielberg: No – could be 'Jaws', Schindler's List, or the Jurassic/Private Ryan era.
• Melinda Dillon: Probably – same year as 'Slap Shot'.
• Bad parenting in a major box office smash: Discussed ('The Shining' may still hold the title).

Spielberg (obviously). Bill: Spielberg's 9th Rewatchables movie, tied for the lead with Tony Scott and Michael Mann.

Clearly Roy Neary. Sean: 'This is a Philip Seymour Hoffman part.'

• Bill: No mom is letting their kid go out that dog door. 'You can clearly tell it's a movie written by somebody who didn't have kids yet.' The whole point of being a parent is putting the kid above your own safety.
• Bill: Barry comes off the UFO and Melinda Dillon doesn't immediately inspect him? 'I'm making sure all the digits are there. Do you still have two feet?'
• Bill: The pilots who come off the UFO are super chill – nobody asks 'what year is this?' or has any reaction to being back after 30+ years.
• CR: The conspiracy being for the greater good and how nice everyone in the military is. 'A very warm version of we're really trying to look out for everybody's best interest.'
• Bill: They don't kill any animals for the evacuation, just sleep gas them. Also: how does Max get to the Coliseum that fast during the Super Bowl... wait, wrong movie.
• Craig's flex: Every character should have been fired. Roy riding his bike on the freeway as a power company employee. The government not questioning civilians who showed up at Devil's Tower. Melinda Dillon abandoning her teaching job for weeks.

Bill likes the prestige TV sequel idea: the WWII pilots coming back to their families, each episode centered on one guy reacclimating. 'End of the first season, Roy comes back, but it's 2007.' Spielberg considered a real sequel many times but never pursued it.

• CR as Doris Burke: 'We see you, Brad. You may not be able to solve fractions, but now you're going to have to solve being the man of the house. Your crybaby father has chosen a life of the unknown out in outer space instead of taking you to Pinocchio. So get ready to learn drywall, buddy.'
• Bill debuts Jay Williams from First Take: 'I know Claude Lacombe pulled it off. I know he established actual contact with the aliens. But how hard was that really? He figured out six sounds of a synthesizer. Now he's a hero. If I need a music producer in 1977, I'm getting Brian Eno, I'm getting Alan Parsons. I'm not getting Claude Lacombe.'

Bill: Spielberg for directing. Sean: John Williams. CR: Vilmos Zsigmond (who actually won it for cinematography).

• Did Roy ever come back? Bill: 'A rare case where a sequel actually would have answered some questions, but it's also kind of cool never knowing.'
• What was Barry like in high school around 1989? What did the aliens do with him?
• Why does Roy get fired? He just didn't show up to work? In the 77 cut, he was about to get promoted.
• Sean: Neary's being 'anally probed repeatedly for 30 years on the spaceship.' CR: 'Is Ronnie with a greater Muncie realtor in a week or less?'

• CR: The red American jumpsuit (NASA-style).
• Sean: The clay Devil's Tower mountain sculpture.
• Bill: The cymbal-banging monkey toy. Also the BU shirt on Barry.

• Bill: 'It's OK to dump your family as long as you're trusting your gut.'
• Sean: Is it justifiable if the aliens are real? 'It's a leap of faith.'

• Bill: Starman with Jeff Bridges (1984 Carpenter film) – 'probably seen that movie more than just about anybody.' Sean: 'Tonally they're really matched. Curiosity and wonder, not cynical or mean.'
• CR: Asteroid City (Wes Anderson) – 'alien visitation but also very melancholy about family.'

Spielberg. He also is making another UFO film right now.

Craig: 'My tuba thoughts aside, I do love this movie. Spielberg is my favorite director – Spielberg movies are what movies are supposed to be. The platonic ideal of movies. There's no better feeling than the first shot of a Spielberg movie.' Thinks Close Encounters hasn't endured with his generation because Spielberg made ET too soon after – 'if he waited 15 years, Close Encounters is a way bigger movie for people my age.' Also: 'if you're a parent wanting to show your kid an alien movie, you're picking ET. You're never going to pick this one first.'