If you have a trained eye you can see Darth Vader's ship and R2D2 from Star Wars, and several other bits of Spielberg-Lucas memorabilia.
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The aliens broadcast a series of pulses which are decoded by the scientists to be a longitude and latitude. In degrees:minutes:seconds, the longitude is 104:44:30 and the latitude is 40:36:10. These numbers are what the computer display shows and are what the scientists say (except for one slip-up in the hallway early in the scene where 104:40:30 is said). The scientists grab a globe and declare these coordinates are in Wyoming. Everybody and his brother (and the aliens) then proceed to show up at Devils Tower, Wyoming. However, Devils Tower is at around longitude 104 deg 44 min and latitude *45* deg 36min, not the *40* deg 36 min pulsed out by the aliens. If everyone had gone to 40 deg 36 min, they would have ended up in Colorado, more than a couple hundred miles south of Devils Tower, Wyoming. See more...
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Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) - 10 trivia entries
Directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Lance Henriksen, Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr (add more)
If you have a trained eye you can see Darth Vader's ship and R2D2 from Star Wars, and several other bits of Spielberg-Lucas memorabilia.
Spielberg wanted to use the music When You Wish Upon A Star from Disney. It can be barely heard in the original film score in 1977. John Williams later put a very clear version in the closing credits in the Special Edition version and in the current DVD and CD.
When the aliens release the humans from the mothership, we see a man walking towards it wearing a goatee and pipe. He is Dr. J Allen Hynek. He coined the term Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Hynek also worked for the Air Force debunking UFO reports.
After this movie, young Cary Guffey got to play the part of an alien himself - in the Italian movies "Uno Sceriffo extraterrestre - poco extra e molto terrestre" (English title: "The Sheriff and the Satellite Kid", 1979) and its sequel "Chissą perché. capitano tutte a me" ("Everything Happens To Me", 1980); both with the Italian actor Bud Spencer.
Bright lights were used during the scene where little aliens were standing outside the mothership. This was because Spielberg wasn't too happy about the alien heads the children were wearing, because they did look fake and they sort of looked like Casper the friendly ghost.
The aliens that come out of the ship at the end of the movie were played by 7 year old girls and the scene had to keep being re-shot because their fake alien heads weighed 5 pounds each.
The only close-up of all the aliens in CE3K was a mechanical one called "Puck." Puck can be seen smiling at one point. Steven Spielberg was handling the hydraulics to create the smile.
When Barry is being kidnapped by the aliens, somebody pulls him out of the house by the dog's entrance in the door. The person who pulls him is his real mother.
Richard Dreyfuss was paid a million dollars to reprise his character in the 1980 "Special Edition" where you can see him standing inside the spaceship. In the current DVD edition, that scene was cut.
The base station next to Devil's Tower was shot in Mobile Alabama.
You may also like: Avatar | The Fourth Kind | Caddyshack | The Cannonball Run | Carrie
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