50 Fun Facts About Contact (1997 Movie)

In Contact, which historical figure appears in the video hidden in the alien signal, from an early TV broadcast?

Adolf Hitler opening the 1936 Berlin Olympics is the image sent back: in the story it was the first broadcast strong enough to pass beyond Earth's ionosphere.

Which real US president appears in Contact through digitally altered news footage, prompting a White House complaint?

Bill Clinton's real remarks on an unrelated scientific discovery were edited in so that he seemed to address alien contact, and the White House counsel wrote to protest.

Ellie Arroway's pod seems to drop straight through the Machine in Contact, yet how much static did the recorder log?

18 hours of static is the detail officials keep confidential: it backs Arroway's claim that she was gone far longer than the moment observers saw the pod fall.

In the film Contact, the alien signal comes from which star, the brightest in the constellation Lyra?

Vega is only about 25 light-years from Earth, so in the story a television broadcast from the 1930s has had time to reach it and be sent back.

On the alien beach in Contact, whose appearance does the extraterrestrial borrow to speak with Ellie Arroway?

Her father died when Ellie was young, and the alien wearing his face says humanity's radio emissions have earned it a first step into the wider universe.

Which actress stars in Contact as Ellie Arroway, the astronomer who detects a signal from another star?

Jodie Foster was cast by the film's first director after he had considered Uma Thurman, and Julia Roberts had also shown interest in the part.

In Contact, the first sign that the signal is artificial is that its pulses count out which sequence?

Prime numbers pulse through the signal first, and deeper layers then reveal a hidden video and tens of thousands of pages of encoded data.

Which actor plays Palmer Joss in Contact, having dropped out of the lead role in The Jackal?

Matthew McConaughey played the man of faith opposite a sceptical scientist years before returning to cosmic science fiction as the lead of Interstellar.

Reporters from which real news network appear throughout Contact, a decision its chairman later called a mistake?

CNN lent its anchors to make the story feel real, but its chairman said the cameos made the network look manipulated by its corporate parent and tightened the rules.

The giant Arecibo radio telescope where Ellie Arroway works in Contact also staged the climax of which James Bond film?

GoldenEye staged its final fight on the dish two years before Contact was filmed there, and the telescope itself collapsed in December 2020.

Which director took over Contact after the studio fired its original choice, having first turned the job down?

Robert Zemeckis came aboard with total artistic control and final cut, having disliked an earlier script's ending full of angelic aliens.

Which character is chosen ahead of Ellie Arroway to ride the first Machine in Contact and dies when it is destroyed?

David Drumlin, the president's science adviser, had earlier cut Arroway's funding and then presented her discovery to the press as his own.

How is the first Machine destroyed during testing at its launch site in the film Contact?

A suicide bombing by a religious fanatic wrecks the Machine and kills several people, leaving a secretly built second Machine as the only way forward.

The second Machine in Contact is secretly built on which Japanese island, where Ellie Arroway finally makes the trip?

Hokkaido hides the backup built in secret by the US government and Hadden Industries, which is revealed only after the first Machine is lost.

Terminally ill billionaire S. R. Hadden spends his last days aboard which real space station in Contact?

Mir was still flying when the film was released, and the real station was deorbited four years later after its funding was cut off.

Ellie Arroway begins her search for alien signals in Contact at the Arecibo Observatory, on which Caribbean island?

Puerto Rico's Arecibo dish was real and more sensitive than the photogenic array Arroway moves to next, as SETI researchers pointed out when they reviewed the film.

Nations pool their money to build the first Machine in Contact at which American launch site?

Cape Canaveral's neighbour, the Kennedy Space Center, let the filmmakers into areas closed to most visitors, where they studied a shuttle pad's gantry to design the Machine's supports.

Which trait of Ellie Arroway does Palmer Joss raise before the selection panel in Contact, costing Arroway the seat?

Her atheism sinks the bid once Joss presses the point, though he later admits he voted against Arroway because he feared she would not survive the trip.

Carl Sagan, whose novel became the film Contact, was best known on television for presenting which science series?

Cosmos has been seen by hundreds of millions of people, and Sagan died in December 1996 while Contact was still being shot, so the film closes with a dedication to him.

Contact opened in second place at the North American box office behind which other 1997 film about aliens?

Men in Black was already in its second weekend, yet Contact still gave its lead actress the biggest opening of her career for the next five years.

At which real radio observatory does Ellie Arroway's privately funded team detect the alien signal in Contact?

Very Large Array dishes were in daily scientific use, so the crew had to negotiate with the National Science Foundation to turn them for the most dramatic shots.

Which British actor plays S. R. Hadden, the reclusive billionaire who bankrolls Ellie Arroway in Contact?

John Hurt's Hadden also supplies the primer that lets the team read the message, a coincidence the film uses to keep the idea of a hoax alive.

Which actor plays Michael Kitz, the security chief who tries to take over Ellie Arroway's project in Contact?

James Woods's Kitz later chairs the hearing that brands the journey a hoax, even though he has seen confidential evidence that supports Arroway.

Which actor plays the presidential science adviser who takes credit for Ellie Arroway's discovery in Contact?

Tom Skerritt had already gone into deep space as the captain in Alien, and here plays a rival who wants the seat on the Machine for himself.

Which actress plays Rachel Constantine, the White House official who advises the president in Contact?

Angela Bassett took the part four years after her breakthrough playing Tina Turner, and her character is one of two people who discuss the film's final secret.

Which actress plays the young Ellie Arroway in Contact, years before appearing as Johanna Mason in The Hunger Games?

Jena Malone won a Saturn Award for best performance by a younger actor for the part, which shows the childhood loss that drives the adult scientist.

Which former Brat Pack actor plays Richard Rank, seen arguing on a television debate show in Contact?

Rob Lowe's character spars on screen with one of the film's own story writers, who makes a cameo appearance as herself.

Which actor plays Kent, the blind SETI astronomer on Ellie Arroway's team in Contact?

William Fichtner's character was based on Kent Cullers, a real SETI physicist described as the first astronomer to have been blind from birth.

Which composer wrote the score for Contact, having earlier written the music for Forrest Gump?

Alan Silvestri has scored almost every film Contact's director has made since the two first worked together in 1984.

Which Oscar-winning actor was approached to play the US president in Contact but chose to make The Jackal instead?

Sidney Poitier turned the part down, and shortly afterwards the filmmakers found real presidential news footage that they could adapt instead.

Which Australian director was hired for Contact but fired before filming began, later suing the studio in vain?

George Miller was blamed for delays and for wanting five more weeks of rewrites, and one of his ideas had been to make the pope a key supporting character.

Which director sued over Contact in 1996, claiming it grew from a TV special planned with Carl Sagan in 1975?

Francis Ford Coppola filed the suit a week after Sagan's death, and a judge dismissed it in 1998 because he had waited too long to bring it.

Which physicist advised Carl Sagan on wormholes for Contact and later served as scientific consultant on Interstellar?

Kip Thorne's advice gave the story a shortcut through space that physics could at least entertain, and he went on to share the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Which real SETI astronomer spent months talking with the star of Contact to help shape Ellie Arroway?

Jill Tarter also served as a story consultant, advising on how to show the career struggles that women scientists faced in earlier decades.

Ellie Arroway's surname in Contact was chosen partly to echo the birth name of which French Enlightenment writer?

Voltaire was born François-Marie Arouet, and the surname also suited a heroine who would fly like an arrow through space.

Contact's director first turned the job down in order to make a film about which famous showman?

Harry Houdini's life story was the project he preferred, but he came back to Contact after the studio fired the director hired in his place.

The long pull-back from Earth that opens Contact was inspired by which short documentary about cosmic scale?

Powers of Ten was made by the designers Charles and Ray Eames, and Contact's three-minute homage was then the longest continuous computer-generated shot in a live-action film.

Which New Zealand effects company, co-founded by Peter Jackson, designed the wormhole sequence in Contact?

Weta Digital was one of eight effects houses on the film and only a few years old, having been founded to create the effects for Heavenly Creatures.

The Machine in Contact reused a design drawn for an unused scene in which science fiction sequel?

Terminator 2 concept artist Steve Burg had drawn the design as a time-displacement device, then reworked it when Contact needed alien engineering that looked huge and real.

In Carl Sagan's novel Contact, and in early film designs for the pod, the travellers' craft takes which geometric shape?

A dodecahedron has twelve faces, and the finished film kept the idea by wrapping one around the spherical capsule that holds the traveller.

Contact won which major science fiction prize for Best Dramatic Presentation, shared by its director and writers?

Hugo Award voters named the film Best Dramatic Presentation, with Carl Sagan among the credited winners more than a year after his death.

Contact earned an Academy Award nomination in which category, losing on the night to Titanic?

Best Sound recognised the film's four-man mixing team, but the prize became one of the eleven Oscars that Titanic collected that night.

Which American film critic gave Contact three and a half stars and later added it to his Great Movies collection?

Roger Ebert called it the smartest story about alien intelligence since Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and he promoted it to his Great Movies list in 2011.

Which co-writer of Contact's story, later married to Carl Sagan, appears as herself in a television debate scene?

Ann Druyan and Sagan finished their first film treatment in 1980, a few years after she had led the creative work on the golden records carried by the Voyager probes.

The real presidential press remarks edited into Contact were originally about which scientific announcement of 1996?

A Martian meteorite found in Antarctica was reported to hold possible fossil traces of bacteria, and the president's wording was general enough to pass as a comment on aliens.

Contact's famous shot of young Ellie racing upstairs turns out to be a reflection in the mirror of what?

A medicine cabinet door swings open at the end of the shot, an illusion built from three separately filmed pieces joined by computer.

The alien beach in Contact is modelled on Ellie Arroway's childhood drawing of which Florida city?

Pensacola appears only as a child's picture, and the effects team ran the waves backwards and sped up the palm shadows so the beach would never look quite real.

What does NASA hand Ellie Arroway before launch in Contact, an item its own adviser said astronauts never carry?

A cyanide pill stayed in the script because Carl Sagan insisted NASA really issued them, while the film's adviser, a former Apollo flight director, said it never had.

Contact's crew watched which science fiction classic for inspiration, a film one critic later likened it to for awe?

2001: A Space Odyssey was screened for the production crew, and reviewer James Berardinelli later compared Contact's sense of spectacle to Stanley Kubrick's film.

The field of giant radio dishes seen throughout Contact, a real working observatory, stands in which US state?

New Mexico hosted the first days of shooting near the town of Socorro, where the real observatory lines up 27 dishes.