Close Encounters of the Third Kind - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Close Encounters of the Third Kind or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Close Encounters of the Third Kind

[wallace]

Beyond having to manage the myriad of complex technical and artistic details involved, Steven Spielberg would find he also had to spend a lot of time and energy battling the studio for more and more money, a task he wasn't prepared for and didn't like. At one point later in production, the studio refused to shell out several thousand dollars for the effect of the Devils Tower control room glass shattering and Spielberg used his own money for it.

[michele]

Two of the main characters are a man from Indiana (Neary) and a Frenchman who leads a government project. In Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the main character's name (or nickname) is Indiana, and the German archaeological team is led by a Frenchman.

[kristina]

The actors had to spend a lot of time acting to objects and things that weren't there and being told by Steven Spielberg what they were looking at and how to react. "For weeks we were just sitting on a rock, shifting positions, pretending to look at the landing site and the sky," Melinda Dillon said. "It was a great acting exercise." François Truffaut, however, found it very difficult, finally giving himself over to be nothing more than another object in the "grand cartoon strip" of 2,000 storyboard sketches Spielberg had shown him. When Richard Dreyfuss saw the final picture, he was upset with several moments of his performance, believing he would have reacted quite differently if he had seen the actual effects.

[jim]

The iconic five-note melody was a chance arrangement that both composer John Williams and director Steven Spielberg happened to like out of hundreds of different permutations. The tone was later used in Moonraker (1979) and again in the cue line in Star Tours (1987).

[kristina]

In a new technique, the special effects were produced in 70mm. A live action shot which would later have a special effect added would also be shot in 70mm. The rest of the film was shot in 35mm. When the 70mm special effects shot was overlaid on the 70mm live action, the overall graininess was the same as normal, non-effect 35mm film, thus matching the rest of the film, even after the completed film was blown up to 70mm prints. This was to avoid the effect Steven Spielberg had noticed in previous effects-laden films, where the viewer instinctively knew when a special effect was coming up, because of the change in the grain of the shot.

[charlie]

The 2007 30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition is the first release of the original theatrical cut since the Criterion laserdisc released in 1991.

[ray]

Michael Kahn's first special effects movie.

[bernice]

In 1978, Topps Chewing Gum Co. produced a set of 66 trading cards and 11 stickers based on the film. Ironically, because neither Richard Dreyfuss or François Truffaut had granted permission for the use of their likenesses, none of the cards featured photos of Roy Neary or Claude Lacombe, the film's two main characters. Instead, Topps' version of the story focused on Ronnie Neary and her children, and Jillian and Barry Guiler.

[sophie]

The organization that Claude Lacombe (François Truffaut) leads is called the Mayflower Project, a secret collaboration between USA and France to establish a contact with UFOs. Its flag is a white one with a black triangle on it, and it can be seen between USA and France flags during the secret reunion scene where Lacombe explains Zoltan Kodaly's manual signals used to interpret the musical notes.

[kristen]

The car crash that occurs while police pursue UFOs was performed by stuntman Craig R. Baxley. Baxley would later direct fellow CE3K alumnus, Carl Weathers, in Action Jackson (1988).

[eli]

Mothership's appearance was eventually re-used several times. In one episode of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) an alien race called Bendari arrives Eternia in a space ship whose shape remembers Mothership. And in Uncle Fester's Quest: The Addams Family (1989), another alien race who abducts all the population of a city travels aboard a spaceship very similar to Mothership.

[jeffrey]

The film holds the record for most cinematographers on a production (11, counting the Special Edition).

[norma]

Because the future of Columbia Pictures was riding on the success of the film, and because Steven Spielberg wanted to prevent any made-for-TV ripoffs, the film was made under extreme secrecy. To prevent anyone not directly involved with the production from sneaking onto the set, everyone working on the film was required to wear an ID badge, and on one occasion Spielberg himself was barred from entry when he showed up without his.

[willard]

No one was more surprised than Steven Spielberg when his first choice to play the Frenchman - François Truffaut - said yes to appearing in his first American film.

[kim]

The first collaboration between Steven Spielberg and his editor Michael Kahn.

[camila]

The working title was "Watch the Skies," the closing words from The Thing from Another World (1951). These words also can be heard in the cartoon that wakes Neary.

[bernice]

François Truffaut's English was not strong. To get through some of his scenes, he stuck pieces of paper with his lines on them on various objects where he could read them and the camera would not pick them up. In one case, as he argues face to face with an Army officer (who has his back to the camera), he is reading his lines off a card pinned to the man's chest. He had shown the same trick to an actress who was having trouble with her lines in Day for Night (1973), in which he played the director of the movie-within-the-movie.

[jesus]

The shot of a large saucer-shaped shadow passing over Roy's DWP truck as it crosses the countryside was added in the 1980 Special Edition.

[ronnie]

Opened the same week that Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) overtook Jaws (1975) to become the biggest blockbuster of all time.