criterionforum.org

From Hollywood Reporter (via Yahoo News):

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Steven Spielberg's landmark "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" is coming to DVD ($40) and Blu-ray Disc ($50) on November 13, four days shy of the 30th anniversary of its 1977 theatrical opening.

The release marks the first time a Spielberg movie has been issued on high-definition disc, and it also is the first home video release of all three versions of the film: the 1977 original theatrical cut, the re-edited 1980 theatrical special edition and Spielberg's director's cut, released in 1998.

"Close Encounters of the Third Kind: 30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition" also includes a new interview with Spielberg, a retrospective documentary and, exclusive to the 50GB Blu-ray, new "storyboard-to-scene" comparisons and the original 1977 "Watch the Skies" featurette.

Through a process known as "seamless branching," the Blu-ray version contains all three films on a single disc. The process identifies the differences between each version of the film, segments the footage and then arranges it into three unique playlists so that footage used in all three films is only included on the disc once -- minimizing space requirements.

"Close Encounters" was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including best director, and won one, for cinematography. The Academy also gave a special achievement award to Frank Warner for sound effects editing.

The original theatrical cut of the film opened in 1977 and has never been released on video. Three years later, Spielberg released a re-edited version of the film -- first to theaters and then to videocassette -- in which he deleted several smaller scenes and added others, including a sequence showing Richard Dreyfuss inside the alien mother ship at film's end. In 1998, Spielberg made more changes to the film but restored the original ending, and "Close Encounters" went back out to theaters as well as DVD.

I don't think I own a disc with seamless branching, but doesn't this go all screwy on a lot of players (brief, barely perceptible pauses when branching occurs)? Or am I just way behind the times here?

I'll buy it if it retains the documentary that was put on the earlier SE.

I love this film, definitely Spielberg's greatest, with one of the lovliest and most interesting scores ever written, magnificent Vilmos Zsigmond cinematography, and possibly the greatest use of visual effects in a film. I also don't own it, so this is an eventual must for me.

dadaistnun wrote:I don't think I own a disc with seamless branching, but doesn't this go all screwy on a lot of players (brief, barely perceptible pauses when branching occurs)? Or am I just way behind the times here?

I've got Apocalypse Now and have never had any problems with it.

dadaistnun wrote:I don't think I own a disc with seamless branching, but doesn't this go all screwy on a lot of players (brief, barely perceptible pauses when branching occurs)? Or am I just way behind the times here?

all screwy = brief, barely perceptible pauses ???

Few players today have this problem. It was an issue maybe in 1998...

As I said, behind the times. I thought part of the reason seamless branching wasn't used more often was because it didn't provide the smoothest of transitions. Color me technologically embarrassed (not the first time & it cetainly won't be the last).

I wish they'd rerelease this into theaters, it's really terrific on the big screen. I have the basic DVD release, I should pick this one up. Can always use more Close Encounters.

Side note: The spaceship sequence soundtrack on a good stereo is amazing.

dadaistnun wrote:I don't think I own a disc with seamless branching, but doesn't this go all screwy on a lot of players (brief, barely perceptible pauses when branching occurs)? Or am I just way behind the times here?

Through a process known as "seamless branching," the Blu-ray version contains all three films on a single disc

This may only apply to the Blu-ray version. For $40, I'm betting the standard DVD will be two or three discs.

Anyone know if any of the supplements from Criterion's LD appears on the new Blu-ray disc?

Didn't the Criterion LD also include 3 versions - 1977 theatrical, 1980 spec ed, and the ABC broadcast version (which combined scenes from '77 and '80 versions) ?? Is the ABC version worth getting?

For those interested, Wal-Mart has the Ultimate Edition with a bonus disc, which turns out to be the film's soundtrack. All of this for $30.

I finally saw this film for the first time last night. I'm not sure why I never got around to it. It was released a year before I was born, and even though my older brother was a big fan (he even had a hardcover book of stills/production info), and I am interested in UFOs/extraterristrial life I somehow just never watched this film.

But I loved this film, and it's easily one of Spielberg's best. I chose to watch the director's cut (I got it from Zip (aka Canada's Netflix) and figured given the option of the cuts to watch, I might as well watch the one as the director intended) and it's amazing to see Spielberg in such mastery of his skills at such an early stage in his career. The second half of the film, is so perfectly timed and paced that it makes the rush and wonder of the landing of the ship breathless. I envy audiences thirty years ago that were able to experience it on the big screen, but even in my living room I was mesmerized. The film still remains such an impressive, unique take on close encounters and wraps them in a pretty solid theology.

Reading up on the film later, I was glad to discover that the director's cut does not include footage from the inside of the ship as I think leaving it up to the viewer's imagination is so much better. There are still the typical Spielberg problems with this film, most notably, his complete inability to write for female characters and oddly for this film, the first half of the film is largely useless. As we never see the family again after Roy's (overly long) meltdown sequence, I'm not sure why Spielberg even bothers trying to establish those relationships, most particularly, Roy's diminishment in the eyes of his eldest son. It just plays as completely counterintuitive (and not in a good way) for the lead/hero role.

Just curious, has Paul Schrader's original script for this ever been published/made available? Has anyone read it? I'd be curious to see what his version was like, compared to Spielberg's (Spielberg apparently changed so much of it that Schrader removed his credit).

Antoine Doinel wrote:Just curious, has Paul Schrader's original script for this ever been published/made available? Has anyone read it? I'd be curious to see what his version was like, compared to Spielberg's (Spielberg apparently changed so much of it that Schrader removed his credit).

From what I can gather, the original idea was for the film to use the 'religious pilgrimage' trope. The protagonist may even have been a priest in Schrader's script - which may have given the film a similar feel to Philip K. Dick's absorbing and uncharacteristic 1982 novel The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (which could make a GREAT movie under a great director). Schrader seems to have seen the story as a serious fable, but when he suggested that Spielberg's idea seemed to be that the Jaws director wanted the first man to visit another civilised planet to, "start a McDonalds", Spielberg pointed at Schrader and said, "that's it! That's what I want," and Schrader there and then realised that they would have to part way. Spielberg re-wrote the story and script, but I reckon that some of Schrader's ideas remain, ie. the 'historic archetypal place' - Devil's Tower. Schrader never speaks about his time on CE3K.

Very, very interesting stuff. Thanks for the info Person.

Antoine Doinel wrote:Very, very interesting stuff. Thanks for the info Person.

You should check out Peter Biskind's book, Easy Riders Raging Bulls which talks about Schrader's involvement of the film and how much of the script Spielberg actually wrote.

Fletch F. Fletch wrote:

Antoine Doinel wrote:Very, very interesting stuff. Thanks for the info Person.

You should check out Peter Biskind's book, Easy Riders Raging Bulls which talks about Schrader's involvement of the film and how much of the script Spielberg actually wrote.

And, unless I've lost too many memory cells, the excellent Schrader on Schrader has quite a bit about it too.

I'm pretty sure Schrader's lead character was a priest - and he later regretted giving up a credit on the film (he sold it for a fixed amount - IIRC he could have had points if he had retained screenplay credit).

Am I wrong in remembering that Schrader's story was supposed to have been more or less based on the Biblical story of Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus?

MyNameCriterionForum wrote:Am I wrong in remembering that Schrader's story was supposed to have been more or less based on the Biblical story of Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus?

That's was about the size and shape of it, yes - a 'road to Damascus' journey towards cosmological enlightenment. PKD's, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer is a must-read if this idea intrigues you. But the idea of a priest investigating extraterrestrials holds greater intrigue.

From what I have read, the Vatican probably knows about the E.T. cover-up on Earth and has a grip on the history of E.T. activity on this planet. I have a book which documents flying saucer-like objects in Christian artwork. When one applies hermeneutics to many passages of the Bible, it does begin to make sense, ie. that the Old Testament plural gods were aliens and that the 'supernatural' events of the Torah/Bible were, in fact, extraterrestrial technologies. I don't believe that this was the case, but as a hypothesis, I think that it holds water, though proving it is beyond mine or anyone else's ability.

Dug up the info from Schrader on Schrader and found that the main character was no intended to be a priest. Here's what he has to say:

My script centered on the idea of a modern-day St. Paul, a guy named Paul VanOwen, whose job for the government is to ridicule and debunk flying saucers. But then one day, like St. Paul, he has his road to Damascus--he has an encounter. Then he goes to the government; he's going to blow the lid off the whole thing, but instead the government offer him unlimited funds to pursue contact clandestinely, so he spends the next fifteen years trying to do that. But eventually he discovers that the key to making contact isn't out there in the universe, but implanted inside him.

About the only thing that was left of all that when Steven finally made the film was the idea of the archetypal site, the mountain that's planted in his mind, and some of the ending. What I had done was to write this character with resonances of Lear and St. Paul, a kind of Shakespearean tragic hero, and Steve just could not get behind that, and it became clear that our collaboration had to end.

It came down to this. I said, 'I refuse to send off to another world, as the first example of earth's intelligence, a man who wants to go and set up a MacDonald's franchise,' and Steven said, 'That's exactly the guy I want to send.' Steven's Capra-like infatuation with the common man was diametrically opposed to my religious infatuation with the redeeming hero--I wanted a biblical character to carry the message to the outer spheres, I wanted to form missions again. Fortunately, Steven was smart enough to realize that I was an intractable character and he was right to make the film that he was comfortable with.

. . . at Steven's request I withdrew from credit arbitration, which is something I've come to regret in later years, because I had points tied to credit. So I gave up a couple of million dollars that way, but that's the way it happens.

I think the religious angle still plays in the final film - I've always considered it (and to a lesser extent, E.T.) to use aliens as a metaphor or example of religious devotion, conversion, and "experience."

Here's passage from Easy Riders, Raging Bulls:

Paul [Schrader] signed on in December 1973, and wrote a script about a UFO that crashes at the North Pole, pillaging Howard Hawks' The Thing. The story focused on the army's attempts to keep it secret. It was called Kingdom Come. Steven didn't like it. He said, "I want these people to be people from the suburbs, just like people I grew up with, who want get on the spaceship at the end."... Spielberg later referred to Schrader's script as "one of the most embarrassing screenplays ever professionally turned in to a major studio or director."

Spielberg took steps to make sure [writing] credit would not be an issue on Close Encounters. Julia Phillips said he "made me pressure every writer who made a contribution to the script." She told Schrader that none of his work was left in the shooting script, and that Spielberg wanted sole writing credit. Paul agreed not to contest it. "Steve felt he hadn't been given enough credit for the Jaws script, he was going to make sure that didn't happen again," recalls Schrader...He added, Spielberg "seemed to resent the fact that anyone has ever helped him, whether they be Verna Fields, Zanuck and Brown, Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb, Mike and Julia Phillips. That's Steve's problem." For his part, Spielberg commented, "It surprises me that Schrader would slink after someone else's success by vividly inflating his imagined contributions."

After watching the Spielberg On Spielberg documentary on TCM, I wonder if George Lucas is still seeing profits from this the way Steven is from Star Wars.

Thanks for the excerpt Fletch (I really have to check out that book). Schrader's script sounds interesting but obvoiusly, quite different from the final film. Are there any specific elements of Schrader's script left in the final film that leave him with a legitimate beef? Or is just pissed at missing out on the financial windfall?

I came across this amusing excerpt from an interview with Lance Henriksen in Films in Review:

B.L.: By the time you moved on to CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND had you relocated to California?

L.H.: No, I was still in New York and Steven Spielberg wanted to meet me after DOG DAY AFTERNOON. He just wanted to meet me to see if I was any different from the character I portrayed in that film (laughing). When we did CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, I would say things and Spielberg would look at me like I was quoting lines to a completely different movie. I wanted to throw my jacket over one of the little creatures and capture him (laughing).

B.L.: It always seemed your role in that film was much bigger, but was cut severely.

L.H.: I worked on that movie for six months. I actually learned how to fly airplanes during that shoot. I’d get up at four in the morning and go down to take flying lessons. We were shooting on a big ex-military airport, a giant hangar. I would land at close to eight o’clock right on that runway, get out of the plane and go straight into work. I did all of that because I thought the character would have known how to fly and I was preparing to jump out of an airplane. Spielberg sent one of the assistant directors out to me and he said, “Lance, that’s enough. We’re not going to let you jump.” They had all found out I was going to jump that day.

Lance Henriksen always gives excellent interviews. His segments on the Near Dark DVD are awesome!