Lateral thinking is a manner of solving problems using an indirect and creative approach via reasoning that is not immediately obvious. It involves ideas that may not be obtainable using only traditional step-by-step logic. Considered pseudo-science by some, the term was first used in 1967 by Maltese psychologist Edward de Bono in his book The Use of Lateral Thinking. De Bono cites the Judgment of Solomon
as an example of lateral thinking, where King Solomon resolves a
dispute over the parentage of a child by calling for the child to be cut
in half, and making his judgment according to the reactions that this
order receives.
Edward de Bono also links lateral thinking with humour, arguing it
entails a switch-over from a familiar pattern to a new, unexpected one.
It is this moment of surprise, generating laughter and new insight,
which facilitates the ability to see a different thought pattern which
initially was not obvious. According to de Bono, lateral thinking deliberately distances itself from the standard perception of creativity as "vertical" logic, the classic method for problem solving.
Methods
Lateral thinking has to be distinguished from critical thinking. Critical thinking
is primarily concerned with judging the true value of statements and
seeking errors whereas lateral thinking focuses more on the "movement
value" of statements and ideas. A person uses lateral thinking to move
from one known idea to new ideas. Edward de Bono defines four types of
thinking tools:
idea-generating tools intended to break current thinking patterns—routine patterns, the status quo
focus tools intended to broaden where to search for new ideas
harvest tools intended to ensure more value is received from idea generating output
treatment tools that promote consideration of real-world constraints, resources, and support
Random entry idea generation
The
thinker chooses an object at random, or a noun from a dictionary and
associates it with the area they are thinking about. De Bono exemplifies
this through the randomly-chosen word, "nose", being applied to an
office photocopier, leading to the idea that the copier could produce a
lavender smell when it was low on paper.
A provocation is a statement that we know is wrong or impossible but
used to create new ideas. De Bono gives an example of considering river
pollution and setting up the provocation, "the factory is downstream of
itself", causing a factory to be forced to take its water input from a
point downstream of its output, an idea which later became law in some
countries. Provocations can be set up by the use of any of the provocation techniques—wishful thinking, exaggeration,
reversal, escape, distortion, or arising. The thinker creates a list of
provocations and then uses the most outlandish ones to move their
thinking forward to new ideas.
Movement techniques
The
purpose of movement techniques is to produce as many alternatives as
possible in order to encourage new ways of thinking about both problems
and solutions. The production of alternatives tends to produce many
possible solutions to problems that seemed to only have one possible
solution.
One can move from a provocation to a new idea through the following
methods: extract a principle, focus on the difference, moment to moment,
positive aspects or special circumstances.
Challenge
A
tool which is designed to ask the question, "Why?", in a non-threatening
way: why something exists or why it is done the way it is. The result
is a very clear understanding of "Why?", which naturally leads to new
ideas. The goal is to be able to challenge anything at all, not those
that are problematic. For example, one could challenge the handles on coffee cups: The reason for the handle seems to be that the cup is often too hot to hold directly; perhaps coffee cups could be made with insulated finger grips, or there could be separate coffee-cup holders similar to beer holders, or coffee shouldn't be so hot in the first place.
Concept formation
Ideas
carry out concepts. This tool systematically expands the range and
number of concepts in order to end up with a very broad range of ideas
to consider.
Disproving
Based on the idea that the majority is always wrong (as suggested by Henrik Ibsen and by John Kenneth Galbraith),
take anything that is obvious and generally accepted as "goes without
saying", question it, take an opposite view, and try to convincingly
disprove it. This technique is similar to de Bono's "Black Hat" of Six Thinking Hats, which looks at identifying reasons to be cautious and conservative.
Fractionation
The
purpose of fractionation is to create alternative perceptions of
problems and solutions by taking the commonplace view of the situation
and break it into multiple alternative situations in order to break away
from the fixed view and see the situation from different angles, thus
being able to generate multiple possible solutions that can be
synthesized into more comprehensive answers.
Problem solving
Problem solving
When something creates a problem, the performance or the status quo of the situation drops. Problem-solving
deals with finding out what caused the problem and then figuring out
ways to fix the problem. The objective is to get the situation to where
it should be. For example, a production line has an established run rate
of 1000 items per hour. Suddenly, the run rate drops to 800 items per
hour. Ideas as to why this happened and solutions to repair the
production line must be thought of, such as giving the worker a pay
raise. A study on engineering students' abilities to answer very
open-ended questions suggests that students showing more lateral
thinking were able to solve the problems much quicker and more
accurately.
Lateral problem "solving"
Lateral thinking will often produce solutions whereby the problem
appears as "obvious" in hindsight. That lateral thinking will often lead
to problems that you never knew you had, or it will solve simple
problems that have a huge potential. For example, if a production line
produced 1000 books per hour, lateral thinking may suggest that a drop
in output to 800 would lead to higher quality, and more motivated
workers. Students have shown lateral thinking in their application of a
variety of individual, unique concepts in order to solve complex
problems.
Made on a production budget of $19.4 million, Close Encounters was released in a limited number of cities on November 16, 1977, and November 23, 1977,
before expanding into wide release the following month. It was a
critical and financial success, eventually grossing over $300 million
worldwide. The film received numerous awards and nominations at the 50th Academy Awards, 32nd British Academy Film Awards, the 35th Golden Globe Awards and the 5th Saturn Awards, and has been widely acclaimed by the American Film Institute.
In December 2007, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. A Special Edition
of the film, featuring both shortened and newly added scenes, was
released theatrically in 1980. Spielberg agreed to do the special
edition to add more scenes that they were unable to include in the
original release, with the studio demanding a controversial scene
depicting the interior of the extraterrestrial mothership. Spielberg's dissatisfaction with the altered ending scene led to a third version of the film, referred to as the Director's Cut, that was issued on VHS and LaserDisc in 1998 (and later DVD and Blu-ray).
The director's cut is the longest version of the film, combining
Spielberg's favorite elements from both previous editions but removing
the scenes inside the extraterrestrial mothership. The film was later remastered in 4K and re-released in theatres on September 1, 2017 for its 40th anniversary.
Plot
In the Sonoran Desert, French scientist Claude Lacombe, his American interpreter, cartographer David Laughlin, and other researchers discover a flight of Grumman TBM Avengers that went missing shortly after World War II.
The planes are in perfect condition, but without any occupants. An
elderly witness nearby claims "the sun came out at night, and sang to
him." The researchers are similarly baffled to find the SS Cotopaxi in the middle of the Gobi Desert, intact and completely empty. Near Indianapolis, air traffic controllers watch two airline flights narrowly avoid a mid-air collision with an unidentified flying object (UFO).
At a rural home, three-year-old Barry Guiler wakes to find his
toys operating on their own. He starts to follow something outside,
forcing his mother, Jillian, to chase after him. Large-scale power
outages begin rolling through the area, forcing electrician Roy Neary to
investigate. While he gets his bearings Roy experiences a close
encounter with a UFO, and when it flies over his truck it lightly burns
the side of his face with its lights. The UFO takes off with three
others in the sky, as Roy and three police cars give chase. The
spacecraft fly off into the night sky but the metaphysical experience
leaves Roy mesmerized. He becomes fascinated by UFOs to the dismay of
his wife, Ronnie, and begins obsessing over subliminal images of a
mountain-like shape, often making models of it. Jillian meanwhile also
becomes obsessed, sketching the unique mountain image. Soon after, she
is terrorized in her home by a UFO which descends from the clouds. She
fights off violent attempts by the UFO and unseen beings to enter the
home, but in the chaos Barry is abducted.
Lacombe and Laughlin—along with a group of United Nations experts—continue to investigate increasing UFO activity and strange, related occurrences. Witnesses in Dharamsala, Northern India
report that the UFOs make distinctive sounds: a five-tone musical
phrase in a major scale. Scientists broadcast the phrase to outer space,
but are mystified by the response: a seemingly meaningless series of
numbers (104 44 30 40 36 10) repeated over and over until Laughlin, with
his background in cartography, recognizes it as a set of geographical coordinates, which point to Devils Tower near Moorcroft, Wyoming.
Lacombe and the U.S. military converge on Wyoming. The United States
Army evacuates the area, planting false reports in the media that a
train wreck has spilled a toxic nerve gas, all the while preparing a
secret landing zone for the UFOs and their occupants.
Meanwhile, Roy becomes increasingly erratic and causes Ronnie to
abandon him, taking their three children with her. When a news program
about the train wreck near Devils Tower airs on television, Roy and
Jillian see the same broadcast, recognizing the same mountain they have
been seeing. They, along with other travelers experiencing the same
visions, set out for Devils Tower in spite of the public warnings about
nerve gas.
While most of the travelers are apprehended by the Army, Roy and
Jillian persist and make it to the site just as UFOs appear in the night
sky. The government specialists at the site begin to communicate with
the UFOs, that gradually appear by the dozens, by use of light and sound
on a large electrical billboard. Following this, an enormous mothership
lands at the site, releasing the missing World War II pilots and Cotopaxi
sailors, as well as over a dozen other abductees from long-missing
adults to children (and even a few animals), all from different eras and
all of whom have strangely not aged since their abductions. Barry also
returns and reunites with a relieved Jillian. The government officials
decide to include Roy in a group of people whom they had selected to be
potential visitors to the mothership, hastily preparing him.
As the extraterrestrials finally emerge from the mothership, they
select Roy to join them on their travels. As Roy enters the mothership,
one of the extraterrestrials pauses for a few moments with the humans.
Lacombe uses Curwen hand signs
that correspond to the five-note extraterrestrial tonal phrase. The
extraterrestrial replies with the same gestures, smiles, and returns to
its ship, which ascends into space.
Cast
Richard Dreyfuss as Roy Neary, an electrical lineman in Indiana who encounters and forms an obsession with unidentified flying objects. Steve McQueen
was Spielberg's first choice. Although McQueen was impressed with the
script, he felt he was not right for the role as he was unable to cry on
cue. James Caan, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, and Gene Hackman turned down the part as well. Jack Nicholson turned it down because of scheduling conflicts. Spielberg explained when filming Jaws, "Dreyfuss talked me into casting him. He listened to about 155 days' worth of Close Encounters. He even contributed ideas."
Dreyfuss reflected, "I launched myself into a campaign to get the part.
I would walk by Steve's office and say stuff like 'Al Pacino has no
sense of humor' or 'Jack Nicholson is too crazy'. I eventually convinced
him to cast me."
François Truffaut as Claude Lacombe, a French government scientist in charge of UFO-related activities in the United States. The UFO expert Jacques Vallée served as the real-life model for Lacombe. Gérard Depardieu, Philippe Noiret, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Lino Ventura
were considered for the role. Internationally renowned as a film
director, this was Truffaut's only acting role in a film he did not
direct as well as his only role in an English-language film. During
filming, Truffaut used his free time to write the script for The Man Who Loved Women. He also worked on a novel entitled The Actor, a project he abandoned.
Melinda Dillon as Jillian Guiler. Teri Garr wanted to portray Jillian, but was cast as Ronnie. Hal Ashby, who worked with Dillon on Bound for Glory (1976), suggested her for the part to Spielberg. Dillon was cast three days before filming began.
Bob Balaban as David Laughlin, Lacombe's assistant and English-French interpreter
Cary Guffey as Barry Guiler, Jillian's son. Spielberg conducted a series of method acting techniques to help Guffey, who was cast when he was just three years old.
The film's origins can be traced to director Steven Spielberg's childhood, when he and his father watched a meteor shower in New Jersey. At age 18, Spielberg completed the full-length science fiction film Firelight. Many scenes from Firelight were incorporated in Close Encounters on a shot-for-shot basis. In 1970 he wrote a short story entitled "Experiences" about a lovers' lane in a Midwestern farming community and the "light show" a group of teenagers see in the night sky. In late 1973, after completing work on The Sugarland Express, Spielberg developed a deal with Columbia Pictures for a science-fiction film. 20th Century Fox had previously turned down the offer. Julia and Michael Phillips signed on as producers.
Spielberg first considered doing a documentary or low-budget feature film about people who believed in UFOs. He decided "a film that depended on state-of-the-art technology couldn't be made for $2.5 million." Borrowing a phrase from the ending of The Thing from Another World, he retitled the film Watch the Skies, rewriting the premise concerning Project Blue Book and pitching the concept to Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz. Katz remembered, "It had flying saucers from outer space landing on Robertson Boulevard [in West Hollywood, California]. I go, Steve, that's the worst idea I ever heard." Spielberg brought Paul Schrader to write the script in December 1973 with principal photography to begin in late 1974. To discuss the script, Spielberg visited the home where Schrader lived with his brother Leonard. However, Spielberg started work on Jaws in 1974, pushing Watch the Skies back.
With the financial and critical success of Jaws, Spielberg
was able to negotiate a vast amount of creative control from Columbia,
including the right to make the film any way he wanted.
Schrader turned in his script, which Spielberg called "one of the most
embarrassing screenplays ever professionally turned in to a major film
studio or director" and "a terribly guilt-ridden story not about UFOs at
all." Titled Kingdom Come, the script's protagonist was a 45-year-old Air Force
officer named Paul Van Owen who worked with Project Blue Book. "[His]
job for the government is to ridicule and debunk flying saucers."
Schrader continued: "One day he has an encounter. He goes to the
government, threatening to blow the lid off to the public. Instead, he
and the government spend 15 years trying to make contact."
Spielberg and Schrader experienced creative differences, hiring John Hill to rewrite. At one point the main character was a police officer. Spielberg "[found] it hard to identify with men in uniform. I wanted to have Mr. Everyday Regular Fella." Spielberg rejected the Schrader/Hill script during post-production on Jaws, reflecting that "they wanted to make it like a James Bond adventure".
David Giler performed a rewrite; Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins, friends of Spielberg, suggested the plot device of a kidnapped child. Spielberg then began to write the script. The song "When You Wish upon a Star" from Pinocchio influenced Spielberg's writing style. "I hung my story on the mood the song created, the way it affected me personally." During pre-production, the title was changed from Kingdom Come to Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
J. Allen Hynek, who worked with the United States Air Force on Project Blue Book,
was hired as a scientific consultant. Hynek felt that "even though the
film is fiction, it's based for the most part on the known facts of the
UFO mystery, and it certainly catches the flavor of the phenomenon.
Spielberg was under enormous pressure to make another blockbuster after Jaws, but he decided to make a UFO film. He put his career on the line." USAF and NASA declined to cooperate on the film. In fact, NASA reportedly sent a twenty-page letter to Spielberg, telling him that releasing the film was dangerous.
In an interview, he said: "I really found my faith when I heard that
the Government was opposed to the film. If NASA took the time to write
me a 20-page letter, then I knew there must be something happening."
Early in pre-production, Spielberg hired film title designerDan Perri to design a logotype for Close Encounters. Perri, who had previously worked on The Exorcist (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976), produced a logotype in Handel Gothic
typeface, with only a script to work from. Delighted with the result,
Spielberg applied the logo to all production stationery and crew shirts.
Unusual in filmmaking, Spielberg carried enough influence to maintain
creative control over the film's entire branding and asked Perri to
design the advertising campaign and title sequence for Close Encounters based on his logo.
Perri later went on to design titles for many other major Hollywood pictures, including Star Wars (1977), Raging Bull (1980), and Airplane! (1980).
Principal photography began on May 16, 1976, though an Associated Press report in August 1975 had suggested filming would start in late 1975. Spielberg did not want to do any location shooting because of his negative experience on Jaws and wanted to shoot Close Encounters entirely on sound stages, but eventually dropped the idea.
Matters worsened when Columbia Pictures experienced financial
difficulties. Spielberg claimed the film would cost $2.7 million to make
in his original 1973 pitch to Columbia, although he revealed to
producer Julia Philips that he knew the budget would have to be much
higher; the final budget came to $19.4 million. Columbia studio executive John Veich remembered, "If we knew it was going to cost that much, we wouldn't have greenlighted it because we didn't have the money." Spielberg hired Joe Alves, his collaborator on Jaws, as production designer. In addition the 1976 Atlantic hurricane season brought tropical storms to Alabama. A large portion of the sound stage in Alabama was damaged because of a lightning strike. Columbia raised $7 million from three sources: Time Inc., EMI, and German tax shelters.
CinematographerVilmos Zsigmond
said that, during the shooting for the film, Spielberg got more ideas
by watching films every night which in turn extended the production
schedule because he was continually adding new scenes to be filmed. Zsigmond previously turned down the chance to work on Jaws. In her 1991 book You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, producer Julia Phillips wrote highly profane remarks about Spielberg, Zsigmond, and Truffaut, because she was fired during post-production due to a cocaine addiction. Phillips blamed it on Spielberg being a perfectionist.
Douglas Trumbull was the visual effects supervisor, while Carlo Rambaldi
designed the extraterrestrials. Trumbull joked that the visual effects
budget, at $3.3 million, could have been used to produce an additional
film. His work helped lead to advances in motion control photography. The mothership was designed by Ralph McQuarrie and built by Greg Jein. The look of the ship was inspired by an oil refinery Spielberg saw at night in India. Instead of the metallic hardware look used in Star Wars,
the emphasis was on a more luminescent look for the UFOs. One of the
UFO models was an oxygen mask with lights attached to it, used because
of its irregular shape. As a subtle in-joke, Dennis Muren (who had just finished working on Star Wars) put a small R2-D2 model onto the underside of the mothership. 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.
Close Encounters was filmed anamorphically and the visual effects sequences were shot on 70 mm film, which has greater resolution than the 35 mm film used for the rest of the production, so that when the miniature effects were combined with full-sized elements through an optical printer,
the effects footage would still appear clear and sharp despite having
lost a generation's worth of visual data. A test reel using computer-generated imagery
was created for the UFOs, but Spielberg found it would be too expensive
and ineffective since CGI was in its infancy in the mid-1970s.
The small extraterrestrials in the final scenes were played by fifty local six-year-old girls in Mobile, Alabama. That decision was requested by Spielberg because he felt "girls move more gracefully than boys". Puppetry
was attempted for the extraterrestrials, but the idea failed. However,
Rambaldi successfully used puppetry to depict two of the
extraterrestrials, the first being a marionette
(for the tall extraterrestrial that is the first to be seen emerging
from the mothership in what was originally a test shot but eventually
used in the final film) and an articulated puppet for the
extraterrestrial that communicates via hand signals near the end of the
film.
Post-production
Close Encounters is the first collaboration between film editor Michael Kahn
and Spielberg. Their working relationship has continued for the rest of
Spielberg's films. Spielberg said that no film he has ever made since
has been as hard to edit as the last 25 minutes of Close Encounters
and that he and Kahn went through thousands of feet of footage to find
the right shots for the end sequence. When Kahn and Spielberg completed
the first cut of the film, Spielberg was dissatisfied, feeling "there
wasn't enough wow-ness". Pick-ups were commissioned but cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond could not participate due to other commitments. John A. Alonzo, László Kovács, and Douglas Slocombe worked on the pick-ups. Lacombe was originally to find Flight 19 hidden in the Amazon Rainforest, but the idea was changed to the Sonoran Desert. Spielberg also took 7.5 minutes out from the preview.
The score for the film 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".
Incidentally, Williams briefly included the song's signature melody in
the score at Spielberg's behest, just before Roy Neary turns to board
the mothership.
The synthesizer used to play the five notes is an ARP 2500. ARP Instruments' Vice President of Engineering, Phillip Dodds,
was sent to install the unit on the film set and was subsequently cast
as Jean Claude, the musician who plays the sequence on the huge
synthesizer in an attempt to communicate with the extraterrestrial
mothership. Spielberg initially included Cliff Edwards' original "When You Wish upon a Star" from Pinocchio in the closing credits, but after a Dallas
preview where several members of the audience audibly snickered at the
inclusion, the song was dropped and replaced with Williams' orchestral
version. It was included in the special edition of the end titles on the 1998 Collector's Edition of the soundtrack.
The score was recorded at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California. 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 (one for Best Original Film Score and one for Best Instrumental Composition for "Theme from Close Encounters").
Themes
Film critic Charlene Engel observed Close Encounters
"suggests that humankind has reached the point where it is ready to
enter the community of the cosmos. While it is a computer which makes
the final musical conversation with the extraterrestrial guests
possible, the characteristics bringing Neary to make his way to Devils
Tower have little to do with technical expertise or computer literacy.
These are virtues taught in schools that will be evolved in the 21st
century." The film also evokes typical science fictionarchetypes
and motifs. The film portrays new technologies as a natural and
expected outcome of human development and indication of health and
growth.
Other critics found a variety of Judeo-Christian analogies. Devils Tower parallels Mount Sinai, the extraterrestrials as God and Roy Neary as Moses. Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments is seen on television at the Neary household. Some found close relations between Elijah
and Roy; Elijah was taken into a "chariot of fire", akin to Roy going
in the UFO. Climbing Devils Tower behind the faltering Jillian, Neary
exhorts Jillian to keep moving and not to look back, similar to Lot's wife who looked back at Sodom and turned into a pillar of salt. Spielberg explained, "I wanted to make Close Encounters
a very accessible story about the everyday individual who has a
sighting that overturns his life, and throws it into complete upheaval
as he starts to become more and more obsessed with this experience."
Roy's wife Ronnie attempts to hide the sunburn caused by Roy's
exposure to the UFOs and wants him to forget his encounter with them.
She is embarrassed and bewildered by what has happened to him and
desperately wants her ordinary life back. The expression of his lost
life is seen when he is sculpting a huge model of Devils Tower in his
living room, with his family deserting him.
Roy's obsession with an idea implanted by an extraterrestrial
intelligence, his construction of the model, and his gradual loss of
contact with his wife, mimic the events in the short story "Dulcie and Decorum" (1955) by Damon Knight.
Close Encounters also studies the form of "youth spiritual
yearning". Barry Guiler, the unfearing child who refers to the UFOs and
their paraphernalia as "toys" (although that was unscripted, with the
child being drawn to smile by being shown toys offstage), serves as a
motif for childlike innocence and openness in the face of the unknown. Spielberg also compared the theme of communication as highlighting that of tolerance. "If we can talk to extraterrestrials in Close Encounters of the Third Kind", he said, "why not with the Reds in the Cold War?"
Sleeping is the final obstacle to overcome in the ascent of Devils
Tower. Roy, Jillian and a third invitee, Larry Butler, climb the
mountain pursued by government helicopters spraying sleeping gas. Larry
stops to rest, is gassed, and falls into a deep sleep.
In his interview with Spielberg on Inside the Actors Studio, James Lipton suggested Close Encounters
has another, more personal theme for Spielberg: "Your father was a
computer engineer; your mother was a concert pianist, and when the
spaceship lands, they make music together on the computer", suggesting
that Roy Neary's boarding the spaceship is Spielberg's wish to be
reunited with his parents. In a 2005 interview, Spielberg stated that he
made Close Encounters when he did not have children, and if he
were making it today, he would never have had Neary leave his family and
board the mothership.
Communication and language issues constitute additional themes as noted by Andrew Johnston in Time Out New York:
"Throughout the film, there are many scenes that anticipate themes
Spielberg would explore in subsequent projects, but his execution of
these ideas here is usually more interesting and subtle. In Amistad,
for example, he devotes much time to illustrating the language barrier
separating Africans from both their captors and their potential saviors.
It's an essential plot point, but it's so belabored that the story gets
bogged down. In CE3K, the language problem is illustrated
concisely by a quick scene in which an interpreter translates Spanish
into English for Laughlin so he can turn around and translate it into
French for Lacombe. Since Spielberg doesn't ram the language problem
down our throats, the extraterrestrials' solution—using music to
communicate with humanity—seems more elegant and natural."
Release
Reception and box office
The film was to be released in summer 1977, but was pushed back to November because of the various problems during production.
Close Encounters premiered at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City on November 16, 1977, and played there and at the Cinerama Dome
in Los Angeles, grossing $1,077,000 prior to its national release on
December 14 when it opened in 270 theatres grossing $10,115,000 in a
week with a per-screen average of $37,460. It added 301 more theatres on December 21. By the end of the second week of national release it had grossed $24,695,317.
It made a record $3,026,558 on December 26, 1977, and set a one-week record of $17,393,654 from December 26 to January 1. The film opened overseas on February 24, 1978, and grossed $27 million internationally by the end of March from 19 countries. Close Encounters received mostly positive reviews and became a certified box office
success, grossing $116.39 million in the United States and Canada, and
$171.7 million in foreign countries, for $288 million worldwide.
It was Columbia Pictures' most successful film at that time. Jonathan Rosenbaum refers to the film as "the best expression of Spielberg's benign, dreamy-eyed vision". A.D. Murphy of Variety magazine gave a positive review but wrote that Close Encounters "lacks the warmth and humanity" of George Lucas'sStar Wars. Murphy found most of the film slow-paced, but praised the climax. On Sneak Previews, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert
highly recommended the film. Siskel praised the film's message about
not being "afraid of the unknown," said Dreyfuss was "perfectly cast"
and described the ending as "a wonderful scene, combining fantasy,
adventure and mystery." He mentioned, however, that the picture got
"bogged down" by a subplot in the middle. Ebert said "the last 30
minutes are among the most marvelous things I've ever seen on the
screen" and that the film was "like a kid's picture...in its innocence." Pauline Kael similarly called it "a kid's film in the best sense". Jean Renoir compared Spielberg's storytelling to Jules Verne and Georges Méliès. Ray Bradbury declared it the greatest science fiction film ever made.
Reissues and home media
On the final cut privilege,
Spielberg was dissatisfied with the film. Columbia Pictures was
experiencing financial problems, and they were depending on this film to
save their company. "I wanted to have another six months to finish off
this film, and release it in summer 1978. They told me they needed this
film out immediately", Spielberg explained. "Anyway, Close Encounters was a huge financial success and I told them I wanted to make my own director's cut. They agreed on the condition that I show the inside of the mothership
so they could have something to hang a [reissue marketing] campaign on.
I never should have shown the inside of the mothership."
In 1979, Columbia gave Spielberg $1.5 million to produce what
became the "Special Edition" of the film. Spielberg added seven minutes
of new footage, but also deleted or shortened various existing scenes by ten minutes, so that the Special Edition was three minutes shorter than the original 1977 release, running 132 minutes. The Special Edition featured several new character development scenes, the discovery of the SS Cotopaxi in the Gobi Desert, and a view of the inside of the mothership. Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Special Edition was released in August 1980, making a further $15.7 million, accumulating a final $303.7 million box office gross. Roger Ebert
"thought the original film was an astonishing achievement, capturing
the feeling of awe and wonder we have when considering the likelihood of
life beyond the Earth. ... This new version ... is, quite simply, a
better film ... Why didn't Spielberg make it this good the first time?"
The 1980 Special Edition was the only version officially available for many years on VHS. Then, in 1990, The Criterion Collection
offered two versions for LaserDisc, one a variant of the original 1977
edition (with subtle edits made by Spielberg—this became the syndicated
television version), the other the Special Edition (programmed by the
viewer using their LaserDisc player's remote features that predated the
seamless branching of DVDs).
This triple-disc LaserDisc set also included an interactive "Making
Close Encounters" documentary featuring interviews with Spielberg and
other cast and crew involved with the film, as well as stills and script
excerpts. In 1993, the Special Edition was released on VHS and
LaserDisc and did not see a further release for 14 years.
Vincent Misiano reviewed Close Encounters: The Special Edition in Ares Magazine
#5 and commented that "Artists in other media have always had the
luxury of returning to a piece, reworking and refining it. For various
reasons, money first among them, this opportunity has rarely been
afforded to filmmakers. Steven Spielberg has been given the chance and
used it well."
On May 12, 1998, Spielberg recut Close Encounters again
for the "Director's Cut", released as simply the "Collector's Edition"
on VHS. This version of the film is a re-edit of the original 1977
release with some elements of the 1980 Special Edition, but omits the
mothership interior scenes as Spielberg felt they should have remained a
mystery. The director's cut is the longest release of the film, running
at 137 minutes, two minutes longer than the theatrical version and five
minutes longer than the special edition. A LaserDisc release of the Collector's Edition, released on July 14, 1998, includes a new 101-minute documentary, The Making of Close Encounters,
which was produced in 1997 and features interviews with Spielberg, the
main cast and notable crew members. There have also been many other
alternative versions of the film for network and syndicated television,
as well as the aforementioned Criterion LaserDisc version. Some of these
combined all released material from the 1977 and 1980 versions.
However, most of these versions were not edited by Spielberg, who
regards the "Collector's Edition" as his definitive version of Close Encounters. The Collector's Edition was given a limited release as part of a roadshow
featuring select films to celebrate Columbia Pictures' 75th anniversary
in 1999. It was the first time this version of the film had been shown
theatrically. The director's cut was once again released in theaters on
September 1, 2017 in tribute to the film's 40th anniversary.
It made $1.8 million in the weekend ($2.3 million over the four-day
Labor Day holiday), pushing its career global gross to over $306 million
worldwide.
Close Encounters was released on DVD on May 29, 2001, in a two-disc "Collector's Edition" set that contained only the director's cut.
This set contained several extra features, including the 1997 "making
of" documentary, a featurette from 1977, trailers and deleted scenes
that included the mothership interior from the 1980 Special Edition. A
single-disc DVD edition of the film was released on August 27, 2002. In tribute to the film's 30th anniversary, Sony Pictures released the film on DVD and Blu-ray in 2007. For the first time, all three versions were packaged together. Then in 2017, in honor of its 40th anniversary, the film was given a 4K
restoration of the original camera negative. Following its theatrical
re-release of the director's cut, the film was released in 4K and
Blu-ray with all three versions given the same 4K treatment.
The film received four more nominations at the 35th Golden Globe Awards: Best Director (Spielberg); Best Film – Drama; Best Original Score (Williams); and Best Screenplay (Spielberg).
Shortly after the film's release in late 1977, Spielberg desired to do either a sequel or prequel, before deciding against it. He explained, "The army's knowledge and ensuing cover-up
is so subterranean that it would take a creative screen story, perhaps
someone else making the picture and giving it the equal time it
deserves."
When asked in 1980 to select a single "master image" that summed
up his film career, Spielberg chose the shot of Barry opening his living
room door to see the blazing orange light from the UFO. "That was
beautiful but awful light, just like fire coming through the doorway.
[Barry's] very small, and it's a very large door, and there's a lot of
promise or danger outside that door." In 2007, Close Encounters was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress, and was added to the National Film Registry for preservation. In American Film Institute polls, Close Encounters has been voted the 64th-greatest American film, the 31st-most thrilling, and the 58th-most inspiring. It was also nominated for the top 10 science fiction films in AFI's 10 Top 10 and the tenth-anniversary edition of the 100 Movies list. The score by John Williams was nominated for AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores.
Alongside Star Wars and Superman, Close Encounters led to the reemergence of science fiction films. In 1985 Spielberg donated $100,000 to the Planetary Society for Megachannel ExtraTerrestrial Assay. In the 1979 James Bond film Moonraker the five-note sequence is heard when a scientist punches the combination into an electronic door lock. In the 2009 comedy film Monsters vs. Aliens, the president of the United States plays the five-note sequence on a synthesizer while attempting "first contact" with an extraterrestrial robot. In the South Park episode "Imaginationland", a government scientist uses the five-note sequence to try to open a portal. In "Over Logging", a government scientist uses the five-note sequence to try to get the central Internet router working. The "mashed potato" sculpture was parodied in the films UHF, and Canadian Bacon, and episodes of Spaced, The X-Files, That '70s Show, The IT Crowd, and The Simpsons. It was satirized in the 200th issue of Mad, July 1978, by Stan Hart and Mort Drucker as Clod Encounters of the Absurd Kind.
In 2011, ABC aired a primetime special, Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time, that counted down the best films chosen by fans based on results of a poll conducted by ABC and People magazine. Close Encounters of the Third Kind was selected as the #5 Best Sci-Fi Film. The Guardian also selected the film as the 11th best Sci-Fi and fantasy film of all-time.
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