Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with today’s Behind the Scenes Pic!
Happy Sunday, folks. Today’s pic takes a look behind the scenes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which is an amazing film as is, but even more interesting when you think about where Spielberg was when making it.
Here he is fresh off the success of Jaws, which not only set the box office on fire, but set the standard for the studio tentpole film. He was praised as a wunderkind and this was his “sophomore” effort in the eyes of most people, although he had feature experience with both The Sugarland Express and, to some degree, Duel, before Jaws.
I mention Duel and not his other TV movies, like Something Evil, because Duel was actually theatrically released it was so good. Something Evil is kind of rightly forgotten, a teeth-cutting for the young director, what most young filmmakers get out of their system in film school now.
So, Spielberg has the world at his feet and decides to write a sci-fi film that would take the seeds of his trademark suburban family unit that was glimpsed with Brody’s family in Jaws and make it his own. He also established relationships on this movie that would stick with him for a long time, especially with cutter Michael Kahn.
So, the Spielberg that we all know (and the Spielberg most of us grew up with) was solidified with this movie. And I have to say, I’m quite a fan of Spielberg as a writer, something he didn’t do much, but Close Encounters and Poltergeist are two fantastically written films. AI I have a soft spot for, but wouldn’t count it as the best written material in the world, but we all know that Spielberg wasn’t writing that to be a Spielberg movie, but a Kubrick movie.
So, I have much love for this movie. From Richard Dreyfuss’ fantastic performance as Roy Neary to Melinda Dillon’s incredibly sympathetic Jillian to Teri Garr’s incredibly unsympathetic and frustrating Ronnie Neary to Vilmos Zsigmond’s amazing photography and the brilliant and iconic John Williams’ score, which is one of the few film scores to actually have real plot significance.
And that brings us to today’s pic, which has a young Spielberg actually at the famous keyboard that is used to communicate with our alien visitors. Hope you enjoy and click for the bigger version!
Tomorrow’s pic finally appeases the demands of one particular constant reader who is a big fab four fan!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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