Ray Morton

Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film by Ray Morton provides a detailed look at how this landmark movie came to be made. Appropriately the book starts as a mini-biography of writer and director Steven Spielberg covering his childhood introduction to making his own movies, his early fascination with the stars and what lies beyond in outer-space, his parents divorce, his breakthrough to becoming a professional director, and how the success of Jaws impacted the development and making of Close Encounters. One of the fascinating and surprising details that comes out is the initial development of the film under earlier titles like Watch the Skies as Spielberg, a true UFO believer at the time with a personal passion for making the film, had signed a development agreement to make it with Columbia Pictures as a low budget feature as his next film after his first theatrical feature The Sugarland Express. Because the writing and development of CE3K was taking so long Spielberg took the job as director of Jaws. The record shattering box-office success of Jaws made Spielberg the most in demand director in Hollywood and naturally Columbian Pictures was eager to be the ones to produce his next picture. The development delays followed by the success of Jaws lead Spielberg to expand his vision for what he wanted the film to be, no longer low budget documentary style instead it would be a globe spanning epic. One of the great gifts of this book is how Ray Morton takes us behind the scenes to show the breakthrough innovations required by the special effects team lead by Douglass Trumbull as they needed to invent new ways to create the fantastic and realistic images Spielberg envisioned and demanded. The book covers aspects like the discovery during location scouting of Devil's Tower an iconic image and location in the film that was not in the original scripts. Because there was no Hollywood studio stage large enough to build the set for meeting with the Mothership they converted two massive airplane hangers on a closed Air Force base in Mobile, Alabama. During production the film's budget swelled to the point where it would literally make or break Columbia Pictures and fortunately for everyone it was a massive success. Morton then details the unusual afterlife of the film as Spielberg was never satisficed with released version as he missed scenes he was forced to drop during production and had to rush the editing, so he agreed to make The Special Edition four years later when Columbia agreed to give him money to shoot the scenes he missed and re-do the editing while he would give them a look inside the mothership which could use to promote the release. Of course it turned out no one much liked the look inside the mothership, so when Blu-Ray DVDs came along Spielberg was able to create what is now his preferred version The Definitive Director's Version. Today watching any of the editions you will be struck by the humanity of the film especially the real pain underlying the chaos of the family scenes with Richard Dreyfuss, Teri Garr and their kids plus the joy and wonder of it all. Whether by design or happy accident the size and shape of this paperback resembles a technical manual on how to operate technical device similarly Ray Morton's earlier look at movie making history King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson which was an oversized paperback much like its subject. And both books overflow with the author's enthusiasm for these films and visionary breakthroughs required by their innovative creators to get each of them made.… (altro)