CS Weekly Archive > The Big Picture > 12/07/07

This Means Something, This is Important:
Three Different Close Encounters

of the Third Kind

By jason davis

CS Weekly takes a look at Steven Spielberg's different cuts of Close Encounters of the Third King, and how the story has changed with each new alteration.

Spoilers are unavoidable, so please proceed with caution.

Though writers are often attuned to the storytelling possibilities of the screenwriter and director, the contributions of the editor are often overlooked. If the screenplay is the blueprint and principal photography is construction, then post-production is the painting, carpeting, and accoutering of the finished building. A different assembly of a scene can convey an entirely different tone, as when Frodo (Elijah Wood) meets Gandalf (Ian McKellen) in two disparate beginnings to The Fellowship of the Rings. A single shot can alter the nature of a character, as in Rick Dekkard's (Harrison Ford) unicorn dream in the director's cut of Blade Runner. Indeed, the whole intent of a film can change, as with the special edition of The Abyss, which offers an entirely different third act than the theatrical experience.

The editing of a motion picture is the last opportunity to refine the story before handing it off to the audience, and though DVD has greatly enhanced the market for revisionist filmmaking that first flourished with Laserdisc, most viewers are content to enjoy added scenes without really digesting the subtle alterations they add to the narrative. In the wake of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's 30th Anniversary DVD release of Close Encounters, CS Weekly took the opportunity to scrutinize the three edits of the film offered in the set and analyze the subtle course corrections introduced to the story by Spielberg at each re-release.

In 1977, Columbia Pictures was on the verge of bankruptcy and exerted pressure on Spielberg to deliver the film in November of that year rather than the Summer 1978 target the writer-director preferred. As a result, the original theatrical release was far from Spielberg's idealized version, though it saved the studio. A few years later, the filmmaker arranged with Columbia to revisit the movie in what would become the special edition released in 1980. Running three minutes shorter than the theatrical cut, this version added slightly less than it cut and significantly reshaped the characterization of the film's protagonist. A third version, dubbed the director's cut, appeared for the picture's 20th anniversary in 1997 and effectively combined the best of both previous versions into a definitive release.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind is the story of Indiana electrical lineman Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), who is driven to distraction after a close encounter with extraterrestrials and drives off his family before pursuing subconscious impulses that lead him to a rendezvous with the aliens. Though this basic throughline is present in each iteration of the movie, the viewer's perception of Roy is subtly shifted from one variant to the next. Additionally, two parallel plots—fellow UFO observer Gillian Guiler's (Melinda Dillon) search to recover her missing son, Barry (Cary Guffey), and French scientist Claude Lacomb's (François Trauffaut) quest to communicate with the visitors—expand and contract, altering the texture and scope of the overall story. We'll come to these at the end of the analysis. Roy's character arc is the greatest alteration inherent in the three versions, so we'll tackle that first.

In the 1977 version, we see Roy briefly interact with his wife, Ronnie (Teri Garr), and three young children before being called to the power plant, where he's effectively promoted to supervisor and sent on an important repair run. Encountering the alien ships, he tries to impart his enthusiasm to his family and fails before becoming obsessed with the experience after being fired. Compelled to recreate a landmark imbedded in his mind, he terrifies his family by repeatedly modeling Wyoming's Devils Tower in everything from mashed potatoes to the dirt from his garden. Eventually abandoned by his wife and children, Neary builds a massive mud replica in his living room before setting off for the actual site and his eventual meeting with the aliens, where he boards their ship bound for space. In this edit, Roy is a man driven by what seems like a programmed imperative. His behavior is erratic, but with humorous overtones, as when he dismantles a neighbor's pond to create his living room monolith. The family doesn't understand his enthusiasm coupled with alien-induced compulsion, and they leave him to his own devices.

In 1980, Spielberg's revisions cast a more cynical eye on Roy's antics, and the whole film took on a disconcerting tone. The first major addition of footage is an extended interlude at the Neary's suburban abode before any of the outlandish shenanigans occur. The scene is a chaotic nightmare, with Roy's family being revealed as a dysfunctional mess. Though an altercation between Roy and Ronnie is trimmed from this version, the sense that his home life is a domestic disaster is placed foremost in the viewer's mind. The new scene does the duty of both the post-termination argument as well as a later snip that truncates a quarrelsome family dinner and sets up the notion that Roy might be on the lookout for anything that might help him escape his tedious existence.

Another 1980 insertion finds Ronnie awaking in the middle of the night and discovering a fully clothed Roy trembling under a running shower. As she shouts at Roy, we see that she's had enough of his obsession and can no longer deal with his antic disposition. Combined with the deletion of Roy's comic acquisition of building materials for his Devils Tower model the next morning and its quirky dish-clattering coda as he climbs into his house through the kitchen window, the one-two punch of Roy's shower freak-out followed by Ronnie's hurried departure with the kids eliminates the scene's levity and casts Roy as a madman who's driven his family from their home. A sly edit shortly thereafter removes Roy's regretful glance at some neighborhood children playing outside while he builds his indoor mountain. The special edition's Roy isn't missing his family—good riddance to them, the edit seems to say.

The more critical tone of the special edition is further reflected by the deletion of another scene, a press briefing at a local air force base where we learn that Roy's UFO-hunting pal Gillian Guiler has reported the disappearance of her toddler to the police. Without the shot of the newspaper declaring the search for little Barry, the viewer is led to believe that Gillian did not alert the authorities and instead plans to recover her child by pursuing the aliens she believes took him. Her mania mirrors Roy's, and the special edition's deletions diminish all their rational behavior to create the sense that both are raving lunatics with a destructive obsession. Similarly altered is the scale of the alien incursions on Earth. Whereas the theatrical cut offers a flight of long-missing 1940s air craft parked in the Mexican desert and a village in Delhi whose inhabitants have taken to chanting the signature five-tone tune of the aliens, the special edition adds the reappearance of the S.S. Cotopaxi, a vessel that vanished over half a century before. At this point, it's worth noting that Spielberg made one concession to Columbia for the money to re-cut the film: a brief sequence showcasing the previously unseen interior of the alien mother ship as Roy climbs aboard. The studio wanted an image to hang its re-release ad campaign on and the director reluctantly gave it to them, a compromise that would be redressed in 1997.

In Laurent Bouzereau's engaging behind-the-scenes documentary, Spielberg allows that of all his films, Close Encounters is one that fixes the young filmmaker at a certain moment of his life. He claims that he could never make such a film today, and it's probably with this notion in mind that the 1997 director's cut relaxes much of its bias against Roy Neary. Though the torturous family scene and disturbing shower sequence remain, they are tempered by the return of the lighter moments of Roy's mania not glimpsed since the '77 version. Gillian is redeemed by the return of the scene that establishes her decency as a parent, and Spielberg excises the offending look behind the curtain that bought him his initial revision. Of course, the film is still about a man who abandons his family to go on a cosmic joyride with aliens of uncertain intent. There can be no complete apology for Roy's behavior, nor can the involuntary nature of his obsession be denied.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind represents a storytelling balancing act told over 20 years. An exuberant Spielberg, invigorated with the possibility of life on other planets, plotted the tale of a dreamer driven to obsession by an extraterrestrial encounter. After a few year's consideration, he turned a more suspicious gaze on his carefree crazy man before, after two decades with the film, he relaxed into a version that offered a more balanced appraisal of his protagonist, as well as a best-of-both-narrative-worlds of what came before. In revisiting his movie, Spielberg inadvertently launched the notion of the special edition or director's cut thus reinforcing the importance of post-production as a storyteller's last opportunity to reshape their tale.

Jason Davis has been the DVD Manager for CS Weekly, a contributing editor for Creative Screenwriting Magazine, and has written for Cinescape.com, MSN.com, and created the TV series Studio 13, which ran on Lorne Michaels' Burly TV network. He lives in the small space left over by his ever-expanding library of books, movies, and music.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind courtesy Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

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