60 Fun Facts About Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Which studio turned the project down before Spielberg struck his deal with Columbia in late 1973?

Fox passed on it a few years before it released Star Wars; Columbia's finished film became the studio's most successful release up to that time.

Which actor plays Roy Neary, the Indiana everyman whose life is upended by a UFO?

Dreyfuss lobbied for the part while shooting his previous film for Spielberg, telling Spielberg things like 'Al Pacino has no sense of humor' to talk him out of other choices.

What is Roy Neary's job when the film begins?

He is sent out to investigate widespread power outages, which is how he ends up parked at a railroad crossing when the UFO passes over his truck.

Near which Indiana city does three-year-old Barry Guiler live when he is abducted?

The abduction house itself was actually a location outside Fairhope, Alabama, near where the film's giant hangar sets were built.

The film's climax takes place at Devils Tower, a real monument in which state?

The film's popularity produced a lasting jump in visitors and climbers at the monument.

Who composed the film's score, including its famous five-tone motif?

Williams wrote more than 300 candidate five-note phrases before Spielberg picked the one used in the film.

How many notes make up the musical phrase the scientists use to greet the mothership?

Williams reasoned that four notes was a fragment and seven notes was a song, so five sat mathematically in between.

Which celebrated French film director plays the scientist Claude Lacombe?

It is his only acting role in a film he did not direct; between takes he wrote the script for The Man Who Loved Women.

Lacombe was modelled on which real-life UFO researcher?

Gérard Depardieu, Philippe Noiret, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Lino Ventura were all considered for the role before it went to a director.

The film's title comes from a UFO classification scale devised by which astronomer?

He served as a scientific consultant on the film and can be spotted at the end, bearded and with a pipe in his mouth, stepping forward to watch the mothership.

On that scale, what does a close encounter of the 'third kind' actually mean?

Abduction is the 'fourth kind', a category added later that was not part of the original scale.

Which Italian effects artist designed the film's extraterrestrials?

He built a marionette for the tall alien that first steps out of the mothership and an articulated puppet for the one that trades hand signs at the end.

Who supervised the film's visual effects?

He joked that the $3.3 million effects budget could have funded an entire extra film, and the work advanced motion-control photography.

Which Star Wars character was hidden on the underside of the mothership model as an in-joke?

Model makers also tucked a pea-sized TIE fighter, a mailbox, a great white shark, a Volkswagen bus and a small graveyard onto the miniature.

Where did the original mothership model go on permanent public display?

It was placed steps away from the space shuttle Discovery at the Smithsonian annex beside Washington Dulles Airport.

Who designed the mothership?

The model itself was built by Greg Jein; the emphasis was on luminescence rather than the metallic hardware look of Star Wars.

The look of the mothership was inspired by something Spielberg saw at night in India. What?

One of the smaller UFO models was an oxygen mask with lights attached, chosen for its irregular shape.

What physical mark does Roy's first UFO encounter leave on him?

His wife Ronnie tries to hide the sunburn and wants him to forget the whole thing.

What is the name of Barry's mother, who is drawn to the same mountain shape as Roy?

She fights off the unseen visitors trying to get into her house, but Barry is taken anyway.

Which actress earned an Oscar nomination for playing Barry's mother?

She was cast only three days before filming began, on the recommendation of director Hal Ashby.

Who plays Ronnie Neary, Roy's increasingly exasperated wife?

Both Streep and Irving auditioned for Ronnie; Garr had actually wanted to play the other female lead.

What wakes Barry and draws him out of the house at the start of the film?

The kitchen fridge has also been ransacked; the boy's unscripted delight was coaxed by showing him real toys off camera.

In the opening scene, the missing planes of Flight 19 turn up intact where?

Spielberg originally planned to have Lacombe find the planes hidden in the Amazon rainforest.

Which vanished ship is discovered sitting in the middle of the Gobi Desert?

The ship's discovery scene was one of the additions made for the 1980 Special Edition.

What does the repeating string of numbers received after the five tones turn out to be?

Laughlin, the cartographer, is the one who works it out.

What cover story does the Army plant in the media to clear civilians away from the landing site?

Roy and Barry's mother see the mountain on the very news reports meant to keep people away.

Witnesses in which Indian town report the UFOs' distinctive five-tone sound?

The Indian exteriors were shot at a small village called Hal near Khalapur, about 35 km outside Mumbai.

What gestural system does Lacombe use to 'sing' the five notes to the alien?

The signs pair one hand shape with each note of the scale; the alien answers in kind and smiles.

Which Disney song shaped Spielberg's writing of E.T. and was briefly in the credits until a preview audience laughed?

Spielberg called the finished score 'When You Wish Upon a Star meets science fiction'.

Which screenwriter's first draft, titled Kingdom Come, did Spielberg later call 'not about UFOs at all'?

That draft's hero was a 45-year-old Air Force officer whose job was to debunk flying saucers.

Which working title did Spielberg borrow from the last line of The Thing from Another World?

Firelight was actually the feature-length sci-fi film Spielberg made at 18, and Experiences was his 1970 short story about teenagers seeing lights in the sky.

Spielberg's first choice for Roy turned the part down, saying he could not cry on cue. Who was he?

Caan, Hoffman, Pacino and Hackman also passed, and Nicholson had scheduling conflicts.

Close Encounters' landing-site interiors were built in two abandoned WWII airship hangars in which city?

The hangars were six times larger than the biggest sound stage in the world, and a lightning strike damaged part of the set during the 1976 hurricane season.

What was the film's final production budget?

Spielberg had pitched Columbia a $2.7 million picture; one executive later admitted they would never have greenlit it at the real cost.

How many theaters did the film open in when it went into national release on December 14, 1977?

That first wide week grossed just over $10 million, a per-screen average of $37,460, and 301 more theaters were added a week later.

Close Encounters was the third highest-grossing film of 1977. Which film sat between it and Star Wars?

It eventually passed $300 million worldwide once the 1980 Special Edition and later reissues were counted.

Which competitive Academy Award did the film win?

Vilmos Zsigmond took the statuette; the film also received a Special Achievement Award for Frank Warner's sound effects editing.

Which synthesizer is used to play the five notes to the mothership?

ARP's vice president of engineering, Phil Dodds, was sent to install the unit and ended up cast as the musician who plays it on screen.

Who played the small extraterrestrials that swarm out of the mothership in the finale?

Spielberg asked for girls rather than boys because, he said, 'girls move more gracefully than boys'.

To fund the 1980 Special Edition, Columbia insisted Spielberg add what?

Spielberg later said he never should have shown the interior, and his 1998 Director's Cut removed those scenes again.

How long is the 1998 Director's Cut, the longest of the film's three versions?

That makes it two minutes longer than the 1977 theatrical cut and five minutes longer than the 1980 Special Edition.

Close Encounters was Spielberg's first collaboration with which editor, who has cut nearly every Spielberg film since?

Spielberg says no film he has made since was as hard to edit as the last 25 minutes of this one.

In which year was the film added to the US National Film Registry?

That was the film's 30th anniversary, the same year Sony first packaged all three cuts together on DVD and Blu-ray.

Where did Close Encounters rank on the American Film Institute's original 100 Years...100 Movies list?

AFI voters also ranked it the 31st most thrilling and the 58th most inspiring American film.

Which agency reportedly sent Spielberg a 20-page letter warning that releasing the film was dangerous?

Spielberg said the letter convinced him he was on to something: 'If NASA took the time to write me a 20-page letter, then I knew there must be something happening.'

At which New York cinema did the film premiere on November 16, 1977?

It ran there and at Los Angeles's Cinerama Dome for a month before going wide in 270 theaters on December 14.

The tie-in novel was credited to Spielberg but largely ghostwritten by whom?

Spielberg estimated there was 'about 20 percent of me in the book' and admitted he had never bought a copy.

The composer slipped the two-note motif from which earlier Spielberg film into the mothership's music?

Williams was nominated for two scoring Oscars in 1978, for this film and Star Wars, and won for Star Wars.

Devils Tower was the first US national monument. Which president proclaimed it?

Congress had already set the area aside as a forest reserve in 1892, fourteen years before the monument was created.

The Lakota name for Devils Tower, Matȟó Thípila, translates to what?

In the Kiowa and Lakota story, girls fleeing giant bears prayed on the rock, which rose skyward; the bears' claw marks became the tower's columns.

As Roy and Barry's mother climb the tower, government helicopters spray them with what?

Their fellow invitee Larry Butler stops to rest, is gassed and falls asleep, so only two of the three reach the top.

Who plays David Laughlin, the cartographer who interprets for Lacombe?

He later published a diary of the shoot titled Spielberg, Truffaut & Me.

Future Apollo Creed actor Carl Weathers has a small role in the film. As what?

Lance Henriksen, later of Aliens and Millennium, is also in the cast, as a character named Robert.

Asked in 1980 for a single 'master image' summing up his career, Spielberg chose which shot?

He described it as 'beautiful but awful light, just like fire coming through the doorway', with promise or danger outside.

In 1985 Spielberg donated $100,000 to which organisation's search for extraterrestrial signals?

The money funded the Megachannel ExtraTerrestrial Assay, a radio survey run from Harvard.

Producer Julia Phillips, fired during post-production, later savaged Spielberg in which memoir?

Phillips blamed her firing on Spielberg's perfectionism; the article notes it followed her cocaine addiction.

Title designer Dan Perri set the film's logotype in which typeface?

Spielberg liked it so much he put it on crew shirts and stationery and had Perri design the whole ad campaign around it.

Roy's obsession echoes a 1955 short story called 'Dulcie and Decorum'. Who wrote it?

Bradbury, for his part, declared Close Encounters the greatest science fiction film ever made.

The film's huge interior sets were built in two abandoned airship hangars in which Alabama city?

The former Brookley Air Force Base hangars were six times larger than the world's biggest sound stage; a lightning strike damaged part of the set.

How much did Spielberg claim the film would cost in his original 1973 pitch to Columbia?

He admitted to producer Julia Phillips he knew it would run far higher; Columbia later raised $7 million from Time, EMI and German tax shelters to finish it.