Aliens On Earth.com Resources for those who are stranded here Our Bookstore is OPEN Over 5000 new & used titles, competitively priced! Topics: UFOs - Paranormal - Area 51 - Ghosts - Forteana - Conspiracy - History - Biography - Psychology - Religion - Crime - Health - Geography - Maps - Science - Money - Language - Recreation - Technology - Fiction - Other - New Search... for keyword(s)   in Page Titles in Book Title/Author in Contents of Pages ---other searches--- Metacrawler Yahoo FAST Search Google Altavista Dogpile Inference Find Northern Light IWon.com MSN Search Las Vegas Sun Mothership -> UFO -> Updates -> 1998 -> May -> Here

From: Stig_Agermose@online.pol.dk (Stig Agermose)
Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 05:39:51 +0200
Fwd Date: Fri, 01 May 1998 07:44:53 -0400
Subject: Re: Final Re-Edit Of 'Close Encounters' Ready

>From the Los Angeles Times Syndicate via CNN. URL:

http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9804/30/home.video.lat/index.html

*******


Home video: New 'Close Encounters' cut ready for collectors


By Scott Hettrick


CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND: THE COLLECTOR'S EDITION (Columbia
TriStar, VHS priced for sell-through with a minimum advertised price of
$13.95, laserdisc $79.95, rated PG) 1977. Directed by Steven Spielberg;
starring Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr and Francois
Truffaut.


Not to be confused with "Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The
Special Edition," this third and supposedly final re-edit of the 1977
movie about man's first official and friendly encounter with aliens
from Steven Spielberg removes the final nearly three-minute segment
inside the alien Mothership that was added against Spielberg's wishes
in order for the studio to justify re-releasing the Special Edition
theatrically (in 1980).

Although the Special Edition generated only $13.6 million in grosses
compared to $114 million for the original, it is the Special Edition
that most people are familiar with, because it is the edition that has
been distributed on video and shown on TV.

Spielberg claimed that he was so rushed into releasing the 135-minute
original in time for Christmas, 1977, that he didn't have time to edit
the movie as he really wanted. He made at least 14 changes for the
132-minute Special Edition, many of which involved minor trimming of
scenes, such as the introduction of Roy, the Richard Dreyfuss
character, playing with his model trains; Roy at the power station just
before he heads out in his truck and has his first "encounter"; Roy
seeing the shape of Devil's Tower in his pillow after visualizing the
same shape in his shaving cream; Roy slowly coming to sit at the dinner
table, joining his family, before he forms Devil's Tower out of his
mashed potatoes; and an extended scene of animals and other chaos at
the train station near Devil's Tower, including an encounter between
Roy and a military guard played by a post-"Rocky" Carl Weathers.

The total running time of those cuts (which can be seen in the
Voyager's Criterion Collection laserdisc edition of the original cut of
the movie) and a handful of insignificant others equals less than five
minutes, and they remain the same in this new 137-minute collector's
edition available on both VHS and laserdisc in standard and wide screen
formats. Spielberg still refuses to allow any of his movies to be
released on the new DVD platform, but the laserdisc offers a far
superior picture and color tones than the new VHS, which is muted and
grainy.

Spielberg swapping around same scenes

One of the two most significant cuts Spielberg made for the Special
Edition was to remove a nearly four-minute press conference held by the
Air Force to dispel the reported sightings of UFOs by Roy and other
locals. The other was to trim more than four-and-a-half minutes of the
scene in which Roy is so energized to create a physical manifestation
of the image that has been planted in his mind that he runs around his
yard like a madman in his bathrobe, tearing out plants, ripping out
fencing and throwing it all through the kitchen window of his house.

The director also added the ending scene inside the spaceship and threw
in a courtesy five-second shot onto the end of the scene of the UFOs
flying around the mountain road to show them pausing momentarily and
shining their lights on a McDonald's billboard.

These two additions again have been removed for this new collector's
edition, while the two scenes involving the press conference and Roy
gathering yard materials have been restored.

One could easily wonder why Spielberg continues to tinker with this
movie two decades after its initial release, particularly when the
changes simply involve rearranging, inserting and withdrawing the same
old scenes as originally shot. It's not as if he has used the advances
in technology to incorporate new special effects, as George Lucas did
last year with "Star Wars."

Movie admittedly dated

In fact, Spielberg's Capra-esque (read hopeful) view of alien
encounters is probably the most dated and weakest of his pictures
because of its focus on the special-effects-laden final encounter.
Although that encounter generated enormous awe in 1977, much like the
knee-buckling shock of the first view of dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park,"
it lost much of its surprise appeal after the first viewing and has far
less impact now with the advancement of special effects in movies over
the last two decades.

In a 15-minute "making of" documentary included in the VHS version of
the collector's edition (the laserdisc is slated to have a 100-minute
documentary on the making of the movie), Spielberg says the movie even
dates him personally, as it shows his protagonist Roy choosing to leave
his wife and children without even saying goodbye, as he volunteers to
go off with the aliens in their spaceship. Spielberg says he could not
fathom that now that he has become a husband and father.

After all is accounted for, this new collector's edition does restore
some of focus back on the human characters rather than the aliens,
giving the film more depth. The scene in which Roy becomes so obsessed
at his home not only gives justification to his wife taking the kids
and leaving him, it also offers some of the movie's best glimpses of
humor, heart and humanity.

Two other scenes added to the Special Edition that remain in this
edition accomplish the same thing: The three-minute, 30-second scene in
which Roy tries to convince his kids that the family should go see
"Pinocchio" instead of going to the Goofy Golf course, and the scene in
which Roy is sitting fully clothed in the bathtub with the shower on,
which causes his wife to go into a rage, fearing that her husband has
lost control of himself.

Steven Spielberg knows exactly what he's doing.


(c) 1998, Scott Hettrick. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate


Related sites:

Note: Related sites will open in a new browser window. 

*Internet Movie Database -- "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"

*Related Site

*Sound off on our message boards & chat      

=A9 1998 Cable News Network, Inc.
A Time Warner Company

All Rights Reserved.