‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey

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We're doing Close Encounters this week, a movie that

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Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The experience of an ordinary man shared by people from all over the world, drawn to a single spot by a compulsion they don't understand, to witness the most dramatic event in the history of the human race.

And when the communication begins, it is fantastic.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

All right, I'm Bill Simmons.

That's Sean Fantasy, the big picture, Chris Ryan, The Watch.

Yeah.

What else are you up to?

What is top three draft picks?

Watching a lot of tape, watching a lot of highlight mixtapes on YouTube right now.

Close encounters, the third kind.

I saw it in the theater.

Whoa.

Did you?

Yeah.

Tell us about it.

Was this a...

Not only did i see in the theater i think i saw the re-release in a drive-in vague memory the 1980s vague memory the 1980 re-release 1980 re-release i think i saw in a drive-in but i'm not i'm don't confirm don't confirm that to the washington post or anything but it's just the vague

the library of congress vague vague drive nobody there it's okay yeah i saw this movie 1977 i gotta be honest i was six years old it kind of or seven years old kind of freaked me out yeah understandable uh didn't really love the ending and then uh and had no no, you know, the dad's going on on the UFO at the end.

I'm like, what the fuck?

Yeah.

Dad, are you going to go?

Like, it was like one of those.

I think that was the intention, right?

Yeah.

I think Steven Spielberg agrees with you right now as well.

This movie is just incredible.

What was the rewatch like for UCR?

Dude, this might be like one of the best directed movies I've ever seen.

Is there a bad shot in this movie?

Like, you could freeze frame any single thing from this film, and it's a painting, but it's, you know, it's Spielberg kind of at

like his tools have matured by this point after Jaws.

But he's still 29.

I'm just going to see.

Is he even 30?

He has so much energy and all of the things he's trying and all the things he's doing and even the stories about the way he made it, which almost sounds like more like the way sometimes Corsesi makes movies where it's like, we're going to try this.

We're going to try that.

We're going to try this.

I wrote something the night before or Coppola.

That kind of, it has that energy.

It has that like pure autourist energy, which I know he obviously is one, but often relies on, you know, you know, screenwriters to contribute to the story and stuff like that.

This really feels something different in his catalog.

Yeah, it's breathtaking.

It's one of only three movies that he has a screenplay credit on, and you can tell that it comes from a deep, deep part of his soul.

And it's hard not to watch the movie and not feel like he's making connections that maybe he doesn't even ultimately realize are there in his life, in his heart, in his mind.

And his kind of quest for something bigger than himself is just a big part of all of his movies.

His childlike wonder.

Yeah, yeah.

And, but, like,

we, we kind of like make fun of that, right?

Like, the Spielberg face and his always seeing the world through a kid's eyes.

But this is also just a very dark and sad movie about kind of losing your grip on reality and obsession and becoming consumed by something and not even fully understanding why.

So it's just bizarrely mature for a 29-year-old, fairly like sheltered kid from Arizona.

You know, it's just an odd thing.

I wrote my notes.

They don't make them like this anymore.

That's why you're you.

Just we say this sometimes with the rewatchables.

They don't make them like this anymore.

They don't.

The pace is just not like it would be made now.

The actors, the patience that he has with like the wide shots where now they would have just CGI's shit.

But like I watched with my wife and daughter last night, the second time in a week.

And my daughter was like, did they, they put those stars in?

And I'm like, no, they couldn't really do that back then.

I think they were just caught lightning in a bottle with Muncie, Indiana in this house.

And just everything about it, just everything in the way it moves and watching Dreyfus just lose his mind over the course of 90 minutes.

And you stay in his side somehow.

And then the last 20 minutes is unbelievable.

Yeah.

It's like the ultimate payoff where they go over the mountain and then they look and Melinda Dylan's face kind of does the jaw drop.

And then it's like, wait, what's going on here?

It ties into a bunch of 70s shit that we'll talk to, but it's just such a cool constructive movie so this came out like six months after star wars and you were saying when you saw that in theaters that there was a divide that there was like the jocks and there was the star wars kids

did did this movie like bridge that gap because this was a really big hit as well yeah or do you feel like kids were like what the happened here

This wasn't like Star Wars.

This was kind of its own thing.

And the cachet of it was that the guy from Jaws made it.

That's the only thing I remember.

But it tapped into all this UFO stuff that my experience with UFOs, and I think everybody's was up until this time, was aliens were potentially evil.

They're coming to get us.

They're going to invade us.

That was like all the programming from the radio stuff in the 30s and 40s and

the movie shows and the 50s and 60s.

And it was all like, watch out, they're coming.

And this movie just flipped it.

And they're like, what if they're not coming?

What if they're just really interested in finding out more about us?

Which now seems like the easiest flip to make, but back then was like a crazy movie.

The movie is way more optimistic and romantic about the otherworldly, the extraterrestrial than it is about the human.

Like, I think it's actually a pretty cynical movie about humanity in a lot of ways, but about the wonders that could be above us and out there.

It's incredibly like wide-eyed and affirmative.

Did you get that?

But think about 20 years later, we're in Armageddon Independence Day mode, where it's like the aliens are coming, they're going to fucking get us again.

Yeah.

And that's kind of the generational response to whatever was going on here, where it was way more hope in outer space, I think.

Yeah, I think Don't Fear the Unknown seems to be the thing that Spielberg was driving towards.

That Dreyfus talks about what attracted him to it, that there would never really been a science fiction large-scale movie that was about the potential hope and optimism of connecting with.

another people.

But I don't know, like, I don't think the movie is necessarily down on humanity.

That might be like a little bit cute to say it that way.

But I think that like ultimately, like, it's more just that, like, you associate with Spielberg an almost saccharin view of like the family unit or something like that.

And that everything is sort of rooted in the relationship between children and parents.

And I think that it's a little bit outside of that.

Like, even though there are obvious elements that he would continue to refer to over the course of his career, it just feels like a different group of people than I find in most Spielberg movies to me.

Yeah.

Well, there's also no villain.

Yeah.

Even E.T.

has villains.

I don't know if there's a villain in this movie.

I don't think there is.

He said that he wished he could have made this before Jaws in part because he was inspired by Watergate, that the idea of like a mass government cover-up was compelling to him and kind of blending that with his interest in genre movies.

But you could tell, like, in the time that passes between Watergate and his opportunity to make this movie, like, he kind of loses interest.

Like, this is one of the softest government conspiracies of all time.

Yeah.

Like, people find their way onto this platform at the end of the movie, movie, like civilians, and they're like, you should join in.

It's such an open, not conspiratorial way of seeing what would happen if this happened in ontology.

It was just like, and the whole thing that the government's doing to the people around Devil's Tower is like putting them to sleep.

Like it's like they're very, it's like the kind.

Yeah.

Well, you talk about the paranoid 70s.

Which we've discussed in the past here, but this is a whole genre that I love, by the way.

This should be a 2B category.

Conversation, All the President's Men, Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor, Capcorru One, China Syndrome, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, all of its a response to Watergate and Vietnam and not trusting

government.

By the way, there's 20 more movies, but those are the headliners.

So it feels like this is part of that era.

But I agree with you.

It feels like Spielberg also lost interest in something along the course of it because they start making this in 73.

And

that's right around the time you would have started thinking, like, what's the government hiding?

yeah what else are they doing jfk assassinations previous decade um

but it also like starts this whole sci-fi era that's like the modern sci-fi era with star wars because we get those two we get superman and star trek in 1881 we get alien empire superman 2 and flash gordon we get e.t blade runner star trek 2 and the thing just in 1982 so something flips and it's like modern sci-fi all of a sudden but i think it starts with star wars in this movie Yeah, I mean, this movie to me also is like, I remember we were doing Days of Thunder.

We were talking a little bit about it kind of ushering in the 90s and getting out of the 80s, but still having like 80s residue as it dove into the 90s.

I feel that way about Close Encounters too.

There's obviously a lot of 70s in this and there's a lot of the neuroses and stuff that was in the air in this movie, but there also is an element to where it's so predictive that it feels like it's 1983 in this movie, even though it's six years later.

Yeah, there's like a six-year window where this movie could have come out.

Because to me, E.T.

and this movie are pretty close, but there's a five-year difference when those came out.

Yeah.

It's the same kind of childlike wonder.

What if the aliens are here to be our buddies?

The government's a bad guy, but not really.

It's just not pessimistic.

And all of those other movies that you talked about ultimately end on these moments of like, ugh.

I guess we're just kind of screwed as a society.

And this movie doesn't feel that way at all.

Like body snatchers.

that's in a world where everyone has been consumed, you know, like that's the bleakest ending of all time.

Yeah, and this one, even though I think it's so sad, the ending of this movie, it's not

Niri doesn't seem, he seems excited.

Yeah, he's he guessed what he wants.

He's like, Do they have same-game parlays out there?

You guys are HBO.

Yeah, so he blends the paranoid 70s with the modern sci-fi era, but as a Steve Spielberg movie, yeah, I call him Steve, love Steve.

Um,

and it's an unbelievable follow-up to Jaws, which is the other piece of this.

He makes Jaws, which basically we talked about in Star Wars.

Star Wars gets all the credit for kind of ruining movies and where we went, but Jaws kind of started it.

Yeah,

everyone wants to be Jaws and wants to own all the movie theaters.

And he starts that.

And he's 27 at that point.

And he's in what's next mode.

And he's probably the most scrutinized director of that era, other than Coppola, at that point in 75.

Scorsese, Schrader, all those dudes, De Palma, they're all kind of like indie bands underground.

But he follows it up with this, which it feels like a ballsy move.

Yeah.

To follow up Jaws with a way bigger, more ambitious movie.

He's got this great knack, though, don't you think, of knowing when to capitalize on his previous success?

You know, like if you look at going from

Jaws to this, this is a real like blank check kind of a movie.

Like, you know, you, you've written your ticket or like launching Dreamworks when he does, or doing Jurassic Park and Schindler's List in the same year, or,

you know, like knowing when to flip back to Blockbusters after making an awards film.

And that kind of like, he just has this fascinating sense of career navigation that I think it eludes a lot of his peers because they're so driven by their artistic inspiration.

And he is art and commerce.

He is like, he's, he makes movies for people.

He doesn't make movies for himself, even though the movies are often about himself.

Yeah, there's a Dreyfus quote that's on the, like, a, on one of the posters for Close Encounters.

I think it might have even been like a press release announcing its production or something like that.

And Dreyfus talks about.

Did you guys

have a hard straight surface?

There was a quote about how Steven Spielberg is basically able to balance the big picture and be able to be like, I can tell this huge story for as many people as possible to enjoy, but also is like super concerned with the detail of every shot.

And you can feel that in this movie.

You can feel that in all of his films, but especially his best ones, where

it's the like thing that's all the way in the back of the frame that on the fifth time you watch it, you're like, he did not fucking do that, did he?

That's in there.

But when you're just watching it just to watch it at a drive-in, it still works.

You know, know, you don't have to have like a key to understand this movie.

It can just play as this guy has an experience, chases it all the way across the country, gets in a fucking spaceship.

It's pretty cool.

Or you can watch it and be like, did Vilma Zygmunt do that?

Like, that's crazy.

Yeah.

Well, Jaws, this movie, E.T.,

three movies that have now been all out for at least 40 years.

Jaws will be 50 years this year.

And you can still watch it.

Like

producer Craig will probably have a kid at some point, I'm guessing, in the next 10 years.

And 10 years from now, we'll be able to watch all three of those movies with that kid and they'll probably hold up, even though a lot of it's dated and the clothes are weird and there's no phones.

But it's something like eternal.

You don't think producer Craig's child will have an AI visor surgically implanted on the side of its head

as it drinks soylent?

It's very possible.

Making bets.

Yeah, not ruling it out.

Just betting on the outcome of each scene.

Spielberg.

So inspiration came from him and his dad watched a meteor shower once in New Jersey.

Somehow that led to this movie.

Can I ask, were you a big space kid, UFO kid?

Really wasn't.

No, okay.

There was a couple TV shows.

Lost in Space was okay.

Yeah.

Never liked Star Trek.

What about the Twilight Zone?

Twilight Zone kind of always freaked me out.

I was an only child, so that...

I don't know.

Okay.

Just never got there.

Okay.

I never really

had to do it with Twilight Zone.

I don't know.

that show you need to talk about.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Your parents are like, shut up.

We're not talking about the Twilight Zone.

Put sports back on.

I don't know.

It just never got there.

How about you?

I think when I was a kid, I probably was a little bit more dinosaurs and knights in armor.

But these movies...

No, yeah.

You know how you're done?

Dinosaurs and Knights.

It's the worst porn search I've ever heard.

Dinosaurs and Knights in Armor.

They don't knock it until you try it.

You love when a knight just kind of gets in.

2025.

You've got to really push it to get there.

You know what I mean?

See the backside of that T-Rex.

Let me see.

Raptor.

Were you a space guy?

I was interested in UFOs.

Yeah.

Sure.

Yeah, that I never really made the UFO crossover, even when X-Files was happening.

Even on, like, what was the...

I was always more interested in the autopsy shows on HBO than the UFO side.

Okay.

I think it's interesting.

It's the DNA stuff.

It's entirely possible to me, though, that this movie coming out before I was born, while you seeing it at its release, almost like dictates the way that we saw, like our relationship to space and UFOs.

Like this being a warmer, softer idea around that makes it not something that like your parents feared or that you feared.

And also, you know, we talked about this when we did ET.

Like ET came out the year I was born.

And I think also ET just made every kid want to have a friend who was an alien.

Like that, that just felt like it also depends on when you see it.

Like I saw E.T.

and we talked about when we did the E.T.

pod, but like when they're on the bikes in the air, you're just like, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life.

This one I saw, I was probably a little too young, but could still see it.

It's also mostly, it's about a middle-aged man.

I mean, there's not a piece of it, though.

Okay.

Like, how he lives right near his

street.

Yeah.

Well, because it's 1977, he looks like he's a kid.

Yeah, he's got five kids and owns a house and has been doing his job for 12 years, but he's not as old as you think he is.

He's caring older.

No sakes, though, for him.

Yeah, unfortunately.

At that point, I'm kind of surprised Ronnie didn't pop a couple of menthols, but we'll get somebody.

Somebody could have done it.

So Spielberg does his own science fiction film called Firelight, which he made on his own when he was 18, then used some shots for this movie.

He wrote a short story in 1970 about...

a Midwestern farming community and a light show, a group of teenagers saw in the sky.

So he had all these little weird Spielberg pieces, then did the columbia deal in 73

initially it was about ufos watergate and a government cover-up that's how they sold it as sean said it flipped and then a bunch of writers came in including our guy paul schrader yeah i've got some intel on that yeah roy was into some some escort service

that's how that's how he met melinda dylan's character yeah he was always mixing peto bars mall and whiskey together yeah

No, it was a military movie.

Yeah, there's a really, I found an interview with Schrader.

This is going to go in internet research, but I guess technically it's a newspaper.

So

Schrader said Stephen wanted to make a film about a common man.

That was my argument with him.

Who the fuck wants to see that?

This is supposed to be the greatest event in the history of the earth.

At least make the character equal to the event.

But Steve felt audiences wanted to see movies about ordinary people.

Shakespeare's

audiences wanted to see Macbeth.

They didn't pay to see a play about a porter, but Steve wanted to make a movie about the porter, a guy who would go off to Mars and start a chain of McDonald's.

Always like the backhand of compliments from the other directors for him.

It's pretty funny.

There's a lot of people.

But he went back hard at Schrader.

He said it was the worst script he'd ever read.

He said it was the worst script that's ever been turned into a soldier.

He's a video.

It's available online.

I thought what Spielberg said many years later was interesting about this, which is that

his idea at first was that it should be a cop or a soldier.

And that that sense of authority and trust that comes from those figures could be powerful in telling the story like that.

And that's why he presented it that way to Schrader.

And then he thought about it some more after reading Schrader's script.

And he was like, people in uniform are not relatable to regular people.

They're figures that exist outside.

They manage society.

They're not in society.

And this is Rick Caruso's problem when he wore a suit every day.

Couldn't relate.

There's something to it.

And if he had just put on an Oxford and untucked it, put on a half zip.

But just making it a guy who works for the power company completely changed the perspective when you're watching the movie.

I don't know that I really like intellectualize what's the job of the guy who I'm following in the story that much but maybe it is unconscious I watched 77 then I watched the directors they cut out a scene when he's about to get promoted from the theatrical yeah and it's not in there we don't really know anything about his job in this movie he's just like off gonna do so I guess the the point Spielberg I guess wanted to make in his final cut was this it just doesn't matter what it is about yeah and I think everything you need to know about him is that he seems incredibly frustrated as he is like sitting in a cramped living room with three children and his wife.

Well, the lesson really is don't have three kids.

Peter

Peter, Peter Biskin, it's a big month for him on the rewatchable.

He wrote in Easy Riders Raging Bulls.

He had a whole thing about this movie and said, Spielberg's movies in particular are colored by longing for the absent dad, a nostalgia for authority.

His families are often fatherless.

The plots are set in motion by the moral and emotional vacuum at the center of the home and resolved by father surrogates.

A little harsh, but not untrue.

Well, this is the Old Testament of that then.

But I don't, do you want to get into it now?

I mean, I think we understand his story very differently now and his relationship to his parents is completely different.

And so you've got 40 years of Spielberg movies that are more or less in that.

thematic vein that Biskin is writing about.

But he learned a lot of things nearer to the,

in the last 10 years about his parents that indicated that it was actually like his mother who was the cause of his parents' breakup and that his father did not abandon them, but in fact, there was an affair and like it's all in the Fablemans.

And if you watch the Fablemans, you understand his life completely differently.

And now to watch all of his movies where he's got all this frustration and regret and anger about the way that his dad like a quote unquote abandoned them, but that isn't actually what happened.

It puts such a strange lens on all these movies.

Because like when you're a kid, you think you know what's going on with your parents and you have no idea.

You have no clue what's really between them.

And so for him to be like processing this for 30 years of the most popular movies of all time is so interesting.

You agree with that?

Yeah, I think that

the crucial thing that he said is that he would not have made the same movie if he had had children,

which I'm sure we're going to talk about a lot about Roy's decision-making throughout this movie.

I have a couple spots.

that that is like one of the most important things that he brings up.

So it's like, yeah, I think you're right.

He's making a lot of these films relating to his parents, but he's also making a lot of these films with his own kind of self-perception as a parent.

Or he's making three versions of the same film because that's what happened.

He released the theatrical in 77.

It did amazingly well.

It saved Columbia.

Columbia was going broke.

Their whole bacon depended on this movie doing well, and it did, but they rushed it.

And they rushed it, I think, six, seven months ahead of when he wanted to do it.

So then when they said they were re-releasing it, he's like, I'm cool.

I'll get behind it.

Isn't this fucking crazy that the two biggest half movies

of this year and two of the biggest movies of the last 40, 50 years are Star Wars and Close Encounters and both directors are like, this was just the version that I was ready, that that was ready at the time when I had to turn this thing in.

I think it's a good lesson in creativity, though.

Sometimes maybe you're overthinking it too much.

Maybe turn it in.

Because even like the stuff they add in the special edition, the studio is like, We'll pay for this.

We'll market it.

That's why you do the redraftables.

But they say to them, you have to show the inside of the spaceship, which they do.

So if you get the 4K Blu-ray of it, they have the three versions.

So we see the inside of the spaceship in that version.

And I don't want to see the inside of the spaceship.

I don't either.

But the whole point of this movie is you kind of don't know what's out there or what's in there or anything.

Yeah, Roy could get fucking vaporized the second he steps on that ship.

So Spielberg agreed to it because he wanted to make all these other changes and cut all this fat from the movie that always drove him crazy.

And then that he agreed to the spaceship.

That drove him crazy.

So now we get the director's cut in 98, which is the kind of official version.

And I think that's the best version.

I think that's the one that features some new stuff from the 80 version, like the Codopaxi, the finding the ship.

Some good edits.

And it's cleaner.

You understand Lacombe and Neary a little bit more than you do in the theatrical cut, but you don't have the spaceship interior, which I don't.

I don't really get the appeal of that sequence at all.

Ebert loves that sequence.

Yeah, I don't get it at all.

Yeah, he really did.

Well, he's Spielberg said they gave gave him 1.5 million to work on the special edition, which is a lot of money back in 1980.

Anyway, huge hit for Steve.

Follows it up with 1941, which was not a huge hit, but leads to everything that happens in the 80s.

Do you, I know you did the Book of Basketball 2.0, but is there any part of you that wants to go back to the book of basketball and like take a chapter out, add two more chapters in the middle, redo it?

Say, oh, like I, now that.

I would change so many things about it.

Now that I've had 10 more years of LeBron, I want to say this, you know, like

so many fingers don't work.

Why Why don't you do it?

Because my fingers don't work.

Is that the only reason?

Yeah, that's the only reason.

That's so interesting because I totally agree with you.

The compulsion of Lucas and Spielberg to just keep going back to these movies that at release were five-star all-time masterpiece classics.

Yeah.

Were movies that are like, these movies will live for 100 years.

And they're like, eh, I got a couple of notes for myself.

Yeah, I got to get Jabba anyway.

The only thing.

Could you imagine Jabba was in closed encounters?

Isn't R2 underneath the spaceship?

The only thing I can identify with, because obviously the dumb NBA book I wrote was remotely like these two movies, but

you get, you go down the line with something where you have a deadline, and at some point there's no going back, and you kind of have to finish it, even though deep down you're like, like in that case, I just should have split that into two books.

And it was so obvious.

It's so obvious now.

I'm like, why didn't I just do the first book?

And then the pyramid could have been the second book.

But when you're like 75% down the road, you can't stop.

And I assume sometimes that happens with a movie too, where it's like, it's got to come out in November 77.

And you're just like, all right.

And you just put your head down and you try to get to the deadline.

Is that how you felt having to recap the Alexander Doderio episode of True Detective?

Yeah.

Should I make this two episodes?

I would just digitally edit out Andy.

Amy's being just uncomfortable.

I'm here with my co-host Job of the Hutt.

That's where you you really needed Mir Joe House to come in as a special guest house.

I think 1130 p.m.

bad Mike Joe House would have done a great job.

Anyway, Dick.

Oh, wait, I was just going to say that just as far as the tinkering, you know, obviously we'll get to the part where, you know, eight different writers worked on this movie and tried to help him with it.

And clearly, like, he was relying on collaborators.

But I do get the feeling like as he, you know, he would wake up and be like, hey, I wrote something last night.

And so while we're here, let's shoot this and let's go try this.

I wonder if the nature of the way he made the movie led to him wanting to kind of endlessly tinker on it.

And because it was never, this is Tony Kushner's script and we are going to nail it.

Right.

This is David Kepp's script and we are just going to honor it.

There's a lot of fun stuff about how much he actually wrote and whether he's even a good screenwriter.

And it seems like there was like eight, nine people involved.

There were two people helping him rewrite it.

And

one of the ways people ding him when the people weigh in is like, ah, he can't write a script.

He doesn't know what the fuck he's doing with that so julia phillips put that in a very colorful way

yeah i forgot about that book i actually i want to read that this summer because there's an uncut version too of the julia phillips think about the expanded edition she just she's just become director's got the oozio yeah it's called you'll never eat lunch in this town again well and she never worked again so she was one of the producers her and her husband michael right it's a scabrous memoir of her time in hollywood snorting so much cocaine she snorted so much cocaine during the filming of this movie that they bounced her from post-production right?

Early on the cocaine thing, too, 1977.

Like, that's pretty early to ruin your career with cocaine.

It's like the tail.

I'm sure there's some start of it.

Yeah.

Guys out there.

77, 80s disagree.

Yeah.

No, it's like the first year, though, where people were really doing that.

Anyway, Dick Dreyfus,

Jaws 75.

Close Encounters and Goodbye Girl in 77.

Win's best actor for Goodbye Girl.

A good example of that category we always wanted for the Oscars.

Best year.

Best year.

Best year where you have to have

big things in at least two movies.

The all-time easiest, but it could be anybody.

It could be director.

It could be a screenwriter,

anyone.

I don't know why they don't do that.

We've never found out a good reason.

You know, just add it to the list of the 300 categories I've given for free to the Academy Awards.

Best year.

Yeah.

Brainer.

Passes on Jaws 2, a movie that we will do on the rewatch list at some point because I love that movie.

And then from 78 to 81, The Big Fix, The Competition, and Whose Life Is It Anyway?

a movie that he says afterwards he has no memory of making because by that point he was doing so much cocaine that it actually like burned a hole in his brain and he can't remember he kind of gets it back with let it ride and steak out he gets a couple of good ones big what about bob what about bob yeah big dick dreyfus comeback 86 range yeah which you never would have predicted because he's such an unlikely star in the first place yeah so him like having a comeback him like being a more nevish dustin hoffman is an incredible well it starts with american graffiti which i should have mentioned he also passed on the china syndrome

and he left all that jazz during rehearsals.

Is he going to be in the Michael Douglas part?

What part was he?

Michael Douglas part.

What was he going to play in all the jazz?

Scheider's part?

He left the Schrider part.

Get the fuck out.

Really?

Left the Scheider part, and they replaced him with Shider.

Couldn't get the hang of it.

That's cool.

Couldn't get a feel.

Dreyfus would have been terrible.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, that's a rough one.

Who's Dreyfus

in the last 25 years?

This version of the music.

Speaking of they don't make him like this anymore.

Mid-70s Dreyfus.

Who is it?

God.

Because now I just feel like they would have put like Jonah Hill in this movie.

No shots fired at Jonah Hill, but they would have started as a comic actor.

This guy was like a dramatic actor.

But don't you think they would have just put like comic actors in here now?

They don't let ugly people lead blockbusters anymore.

I mean, that's true.

He's just, he's just way too normal looking.

He just looks like a guy at the grocery store.

A lot of the guys who I would be like, oh, maybe it would have been this person have just, they just get made into superheroes and eat like three times times their body weight and protein to look better but like toby maguire has a little bit of dreyfus ish vibe right but it's all people that also could have played a superhero yes that's like paul ruddy yeah right woody harrelson right right yeah but these are all guys who like after six months and a lot of creatine slash hgh like literally can put on fan decks you know like richard dreyfus can't do that but the i mean spielberg has said it multiple times and i think this is this one's the best example of it that he is like his ultimate emotional stand-in that when he's making a movie that that he feels personally connected to, obviously draws this film always.

There's a handful of movies that he makes where he's like, I need to get something across about how I feel.

This movie is about how Steven Spielberg feels.

And Dreyfus is the best at that, even though this is like one of the greatest casting what-ifs of all time.

The list of people that he went to for this part is amazing.

I also watched a goodbye girl recently, which is like six months.

No idea how he won best actor.

It's just inexplicable.

Solid movie, but basically a really well-written rom-com.

And Dreyfus is just.

But shouldn't it be Marsha?

Did Marsha Mason win?

Like, it shouldn't have.

She should have been the one who was like the focus of the awards campaign.

Dreyfus just comes in, he's coming in hot.

He's like a dick, out-of-work actor.

Yeah, and

she's got a kid.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But he's like full-fledged Russell Westbrook 2017 in it.

He's like, I'm also going to grab all the rebounds.

He's just doing everything.

2017, that's when Against Westbrook was published.

Do you remember that?

Yeah.

So he's got that performance, but then he's got this one, which is so much more interesting of a performance.

And of course, he wins for the other movie, but I think he's just fantastic in this movie.

This movie was pretty criminally overlooked, I thought.

Yeah.

But like, I think this is his best performance.

I really do.

Like, and I think I've seen all of the Dreyfus movies.

I think this is his best one.

He's like, unravels over the course of 90 minutes in a way that I don't know.

I think there's some real art to it.

He was nominated for Mr.

Holland, right?

He's great.

Yeah, Mr.

Holland, he's pretty good.

He's got nominated for it.

He was.

How many Oscar nominations does he have?

Did you guys do that?

Yeah, we didn't invite you because you don't like that movie that much.

That's a great pod, though.

That was Mew and Van.

That was when Van.

I think that's when Van, that was his initiation to get it.

Was that the first one?

Mr.

Holland.

It was one of the first ones.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was a very fun episode.

Yeah.

I think.

I love how it's an initiative.

You got to go kill a guy.

Via Mr.

Holland's Opus with us.

Explain the Barwin apart.

Is This is one of the most egregious best picture snubs of all time, isn't it?

It's amazing to me that it's not nominated, especially given the crop of what it's up against.

I want to talk about that right after this break because this episode is brought to you by State Farm.

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Okay.

Annie Hall wins for best picture.

We cover this in Star Wars.

Star Wars is nominated.

The Goodbye Girls nominated Julia and the Turning Point.

I haven't seen that.

I don't think.

I have because we did a 1977 draft on the big picture and I watched it and it's a perfectly adequate drama about ballet.

Oh, yeah.

And it is just the way it worked back then.

Close Encounters was like too popcorn-y and too...

But this movie got nine

Oscar nominations.

I understand it.

And actually Gilbert got nominated for director, which is the weirdest part of it.

But it's not like it's Armageddon where it got like all the effects and sound stuff.

It's like it got a supporting actress nomination, you know?

It won for cinematography.

There was a special achievement Oscar for the sound effects editing for this movie.

So it got,

it was acknowledged as an important film.

So for it to not hit Best Picture, it's also strange.

It's not a kid popcorn movie.

It's like asking really deep questions and it's going place.

It's the third biggest movie of the year.

So Goodbye Girl got for best picture, not for director.

That's and Spielberg got for director, not the movie.

Turning point got both, which I think as the years pass.

And then Dreyfus doesn't get nominated at all for this movie.

And I guess, is there a role you can't be in the same category twice?

I don't know.

Or it's just, has that happened?

Has anyone ever been best actor for two movies out of the five spots?

I believe it has has happened, but the reason that the director of

The Goodbye Girl wasn't nominated is because it's the same director of the turning point.

It's Herbert Ross.

They're both Herbert Ross.

So that's why Dreyfus couldn't get the double best actor either.

No, you can get nominated twice in the same category for the same performances, but it's usually very hard because there's a lot of vote splitting historically.

Yeah, he has to be best actor.

You couldn't have squeezed him.

And the only actor that got nominated was our girl, Melinda Dylan.

Can't wait to talk about her.

anyway, Dreyfus, um, he ends up winning, so it works out great.

Truffaut's in this movie, he is, man.

Hell yeah, Frank,

your boy.

Obviously, wasn't understanding the significance in 1977 as I was holding on to my dad, terrified, wondering where

the dad of three kids was going on a spaceship.

But, um, do you want to do the belt for truffaux films?

You know, like, does it go like Wild Child and then Ben Board, Stolen Kisses, The Last Metro?

Like,

what do you think?

Where does it end?

The Truffau Month?

Should we do Truffaux?

Yeah.

That'd be great.

Jules and Jim.

Well, 400 Blows?

Yeah.

Well, this was his only role in an English language film and his only acting role in a film that he did not direct.

And Spielberg, one of the great heat checks of all time, who's barely done anything, is like, I'm going to get this guy in my movie.

And he's just going to act in it.

It worked.

Yeah.

And Juffo's like, I don't really act.

Like, I just do my thing.

Yeah.

And he was like, perfect.

He's also like, I don't speak English.

I can't really understand what you guys are talking about and also half of the acting he has to do in this movie is basically like just look at that wall over there because we're going to put these special effects in later yeah and uh i don't know i like him he's tremendously effective in this movie he's really good helps that ballaband is just like

like that's a great interpreter to have for him yeah

what is is there any other equivalents of this of Trufo being in a Spielberg movie, like the fourth Spielberg movie ever made?

Well, David Lynch was just in a Spielberg movie.

That's true.

David Lynch was in the Fablemans playing a director.

Yeah.

You know, like John Houston was in Chinatown.

Like, there were like directors did do Chinatown.

There were examples of this because, you know, a lot of...

Sidney Pollock and Aswat Shut

Vesta.

Sidney Pollack and Michael Clayton, too.

Yeah.

And, you know, like Scorsese played Vincent Van Gogh in Curosawa's Ron, you know, or no, Curosawa's Dreams.

Like it, it's something that like directors would do for each other as a sign of admiration.

But not for a director who's 29 and he said one hit.

Yeah.

It's just

a weird choice, but I like like it it's cool he's like what if roy is a threesome with wounded dylan and a ufo

ufo alien just kind of rat it

that would be very very true faux it would john williams did the score for this movie what a year for this guy talking about best year he sure did talk about best year start close encounters and star wars in the same year did the score And then Spielberg edited the film to match the score.

Insane.

Because you said John Williams was blacked out during Star Wars.

He might have still been blacked out.

Yeah.

He's like fucking grinding it out.

He said they did 300 five-note combinations to get to the place where they wanted to go with this score.

And that this is the one that they landed on.

And he wrote the movie around the combination.

I don't even know.

Spielberg is just that he's an alien, you know, where it's just like he just sees and understands things that everybody, even the people who work really closely with him, are just like, how did you know that this was going to work?

Yeah, like there's certain things where I'm like, did you build this entire film around the people in the Indian, like the Indians pointing at the sky?

Like, does the, the film itself like explodes when that happens?

Yeah.

But I'm like, did you have that in your head when you were writing it?

Did you know you were going to get that?

Yeah.

John Williams, 75 to 78.

Jaws, Close Encounters, Star Wars, Jaws 2, and Superman.

Pretty good.

Just five of the highlights.

Pretty good.

Then he's like, I'm going to come back in 81 and 82 with Raiders and ET back to back.

This is low-key and John Williams month, too, I guess.

Yeah, and then he's like, I'm going to rip off another 40-plus years.

Did he do the score for Deathwish as well?

I don't think he did it.

I don't think they asked him.

Yeah, Herbie Hancock did it.

That'd be great if his pseudonym was Herbie Hancock.

When I like to do a little jazz over some vigilante killings, would you be surprised if John Williams had an Alter Ego, though, like Garth Brooks did?

No, I was just like, yeah, I love making, I love low-budget horror movies.

Yeah.

Will Johnyums.

Yeah.

$19.4 million budget made $306 million, third biggest movie of 1977.

Sheesh.

Raj gave it four stars when it came out, then another four stars in 1980 and wrote, I thought the original film was an astonishing achievement, capturing the feeling of awe and wonder we have when considering the likelihood of life behind the earth.

This new version gets another four stars.

It is quite simply a better film.

So much better that it might inspire the uncharitable question, why didn't Spielberg make it this good the first time?

Settle down, Raj.

Um, what do we do then?

You know, like when Meltzer has a five-star match, but then he

revisits the tape and sees that he missed a couple of holds, and he's like, Can we do a five-and-a-half-star match?

Yeah, like I didn't go from higher than four.

I didn't realize that went through the Spanish announcer's table in this new match.

Do you think

this is Spielberg's greatest achievement?

I still think it's Jaws.

Um,

degree of difficulty of Jaws is a 99.9 out of 100.

I still don't understand how they made that movie.

There's a lot of he's in the ocean for like how many months when we did that?

Like, he's in the ocean for

I think that there are better movies that he has made.

I think visually, this is like as virtuistic as it gets.

Like, there are things in this movie, and I know a lot of that could be Zygmunt and it could be like the different people working in special effects.

The totality of the visual achievement for me is like the best he gets

because of my age, there's something about jurassic park and schindler's list and then soon saving private ryan where it felt like he was kind of coming back for his middle age to be like just so you know i am the greatest of all time that those three movies in three completely different ways yeah are they stand alongside yeah sure this and jaws to me um

well it's a different question right degree of difficulty it's got to be jaws still just how fucking crazy that movie was this is

feels like the most majestic movie he made yeah

e.t is probably the most relatable

like it's just et was a phenomenon raiders is maybe the most fun raiders is the most fun and then shindler's list is the most meaningful

jurassic is like he learns all the lessons from his earlier movies and just throws into that and then saving private ryan's like probably the best pure filmmaking like that the battle scene the first 20 minutes it's probably the peak of his career right dobbins and i were just saying this this on the pod, though.

I genuinely think 50 years from now, people will also look at Westside Story and Fablemans as part of this like topic.

Here he is.

It's like Twilight.

Yes, him kind of in his final stage, understanding how to make a movie better than anybody and still pouring himself into it.

So I don't know.

You know who also liked this movie?

Our girl Pauline Kale.

How about that?

Yeah.

She said very few movies have ever hit upon this combination of fantasy and amusement.

The Wizard of Odds, perhaps, in a plainer down-home way.

She's a big

Steve.

Are there any haters out there on this movie?

I'm going to get to that.

Okay.

Well, can I point something out about Ebert and Siskel?

Because I went back and re-watched their segment about it.

And they both did something that we do all the time that I think is really interesting.

And I think it's important to clock commentary about movies, even movies that are considered all-time great in real time.

They both are like, this movie kind of drags a little bit.

The second act is a little soft in the middle, and it's not that great, which is something you would say about just kind of any movie that you see on a game.

Like the Roy making the mashed potato mountain kind of

lead up to going to Devil's Tower.

And I don't know that that's like a, I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but now when we talk about a movie like this as so sacred and so important, and you're asking, is it literally his greatest achievement?

Arguably the greatest American filmmaker, I don't know, since John Ford, whatever.

Now we like genuflect at it.

But even in the time when it came out, critics have this desire to be like, nothing's perfect.

Like, just so you know, even though you stole our breath,

you could have like tightened this up a little bit, which I find very funny for a movie that is so meaningful to so many people that endures 50 years later that that's not even really found in Ebert's review.

In his written piece, he doesn't say like, oh, it kind of sags a little bit in the middle.

But on TV, he found himself like reverting to this.

comment that you can make about any kind of movie.

We just did it on Star Wars where we're like, there's a lot of droids in the first 30 minutes of this movie.

I'll say this.

I kind of agree with him about close encounters where it's like, oh, okay, that, that 15 to 20 minutes of Roy losing it is slow,

but there are even in those sequences, moments visually where you're like with Roy on the phone with Ronnie and the fucking tower is on the TV and the tower is on his table and you're like, turn.

turn, turn.

And you realize like the way he has blocked it, the way he's framed it is literally taking over your brain because you're like, Jesus has to look at the TV.

Just look at the TV before it's too late.

Look at the TV.

And you're like, oh my God, that's just like a really small domestic scene.

And he's still at the top of his game doing it.

I can only judge it with my version of PR and basketball: the Zoe Simmons looking down versus looking up scale.

And there was a lot of looking down at her phone the first 20 minutes.

But then when he gets to the

railroad tracks and the first car behind, then the second car, the lights go up.

And it got definitely this was her first time?

Yeah.

4K?

Yeah.

Yeah.

This movie is arguably the case for physical media.

I can't.

This is really important to say.

When do you want to do this?

I mean, whenever you want, but just like this movie in 4K.

Do your three movies.

What did I say?

I forget what I said.

What did I say?

The three movies that have three different versions of them?

Oh, it's this, it's Blade Runner, and it's Apocalypse Now.

Yeah.

That the great thing, obviously, one of the great things about physical media is you get to see these various editions of the movies that are made over time.

But those are also three movies that

kind of didn't look great on TV and don't look great on streaming.

But when you put those three discs, those three 4K discs into your machine and you can watch any of the versions you want to, you ascend to heaven.

You know, you're like, this is how it was supposed to be seen.

I think it's a really, we make this point all the time.

This is one of the all-time best examples of it.

This movie got killed by Square TVs and crappy quality.

It did not, it was not a movie that was on TNT and TBS for 100 years, the same way some of these other ones were.

And then when you watch it with the wide TV and the light and it is fucking

the longest great shotcordo I've ever like compiled and I don't know if I've ever seen it look this good.

Like I might have actually been watching Close Encounters like 10 times.

The show the house with the stars is like breathtaking.

Yeah.

But there's like 40 of those.

Roy and Jillian meeting as all the people are swarming by them.

The India sequence and just the detail of the hordes moving in the background while there's action happening in the foreground.

I mean, the entire final 20 minutes and the first five minutes, yeah, yeah.

The shot of the clouds behind the devil's tower.

I couldn't figure out where, like, did they add those clouds when they climb over the mound

and the camera goes up with them and then shoots up to just barry opening the door and the wave of orange light through the it's there's just so many moments in this movie where you that are jaw-dropping

most re-watchable scene i really like the air traffic controller scene oh my god it's awesome it's good tw517 you wish to report a ufo over

the guy's like

nah i didn't see anything i wouldn't know what to report

good right by us right now that was really close are eight thirty one it's out of three four zero on the traffic path ask them if they want to report officially

do you want to report a UFO, Ova?

EWA-517, do you want to report a UFO, Ova?

Negative.

We don't want to report.

Aries 31, do you wish to report a UFO, Ova?

We want to report one of those either.

Aries 31, do you wish to file a report of any kind, Over?

I wouldn't know what kind of reports to file, Connor.

uh areas 31 uh me neither i'll try to track traffic to destination over but everything about that scene which shouldn't really be a good scene at all yep all the actors are really good the way he does the camera he's building suspense and it's just like a guy on a radio he does something where he uh the main air traffic controller is talking and talking to the pilots and as he pulls out

Another guy and then another guy keeps putting their face in the frame and saying something different about what could be happening.

He's like, oh, is this military running like rocket launches like over there?

And like, do we have some private plane doing it?

And then you, it's just, it's just such masterful filmmaking.

And you subconsciously retain all this information about a situation that ultimately doesn't really matter.

Yeah.

But it's just great.

Builds the tension beautifully.

That's what Kevin Nagandi should have done during the draft lottery.

You know, he just let it blurt.

He was like, the Sixers lost their pick.

It's like, just, hey, settle down.

Like, don't overreact.

Well, they made it the Spielberg move.

Like, he does it in this scene a couple of times.

He's really good at either zooming in on somebody's shocked face or zooming back from somebody's shocked face so we needed like just a shot at jay billis like the slow version of jay billis like in complete awe of what was happening or daryl mori in the moment when we saw it revealed

the little kid barry waking up with his room going bonkers

it's amazing yeah the monkey with the symphony this is another one where i just have to say in 1977 we did not have like a ton of awesome special effects for scenes like this now this is a layup you just see gas shit and the monkey, but like, yeah, just from a how, how are they doing this standpoint?

That scene was huge.

I see this scene in particular as like a tremendous precursor for Poltergeist.

Like, his room is just reminds me of that kid's room at the clown in Poltergeist.

Really great Boston University shirt on that kid.

Sure.

Yeah.

I really like it.

Excited Boston represented.

Why was he wearing a Boston University?

Dad, who bounced on him, went.

Oh, wow.

What are you saying about Bostonians?

Do you see what you just indicated?

This is this movie about child abandonment.

It's true.

Dreyfus's UFO encounter all the way through the highway chase.

The fake out with the second car that I mentioned, where it turns out to be the UFO, is clearly the

okay, motherfucker

a word for the exact moment.

The movie goes up a notch.

It's also the Fortune 3 clap for the most giveable moment of him being like taken up by the light.

Yeah.

The flashlight mistake still hits.

That hit that.

I used that in my mind when Sixers got the third pick.

I'm watching Rutgers.

Him almost hitting the kid in his truck.

Yeah.

It's a great, oh no, you just think the kid's going to get pancake and then the UFOs going by and then them chasing him.

The one guy goes off the cliff.

Like that's, holy shit, that's a great seven minutes.

All through the toll plaza.

Do we still have toll plazas?

We do.

I assume, I don't remember anything about seeing this in the theater other than being scared at at the end, but I assume when the lights go up behind him, that was probably a noise made by the audience.

Yeah.

Right.

Like, oh, like, Sinners had that a little bit when

she walks away,

Josh Allen's wife, when she walks away from the group.

She's formerly being addressed.

Oh, I know her.

Her name's Haley Steinfeld.

Yeah.

When Josh Allen's wife would never allow his wife to be in the film, no way.

And all of a sudden, that vampire has a lot of people.

And they'll have one year of the nine times.

Drake Bay's not marrying an actress, he's got a seventh-grade girlfriend.

God bless him for that.

Yeah, he's a little guy.

Love Drake May.

He's all I have now.

Jason Tatum's out for a year.

I just have Drake May.

I was waiting.

Okay, so we're in minute 51.

I asked Sean if he was going to bring Jason Tatum up, and he was like, No, I don't think so.

And I was like, I definitely am.

It's fine.

I knew it was coming.

Not that

the Northern India scene?

Thoughts.

Wait, where's the GT?

My God.

For the record, I have not said anything.

Before we go to India, the one thing that's really cool about the first 20, 30 minutes is you're like, that's a spaceship.

Like, there's no confusion.

There's no like, oh, what is this conspiracy?

It's like, that's a fucking spaceship from outer space.

Yeah.

And you know that you're in a movie where their aliens are, if not, if they're not going to show up, that he, what he's experiencing is real, even if it feels like a dream.

Yeah.

Unlike when Jason Tatum went down.

It wasn't a dream.

Well, it was real.

Well, perspective matters.

The Northern India scene.

I texted you guys when I was rewatching it because I was like, this is my bones are chilled by this.

To me, I was like, this is movies to me to make something like this.

Yeah.

It's now they just CGI all they do.

It's the directing version of the Rick Dalton a word.

It's like, holy shit, dude.

Every shot, every camera movement, yeah the fingers yeah like the crowd but just hearing that five note thing sung by those the indian men and even though you don't know where the movie's going the first time you see the movie you're like there's something special about this melody i don't know what it is but he's communicating to you that this sound matters yeah which is just great movie making They come from Melinda Dylan's house and take Barry.

Incredible.

Right through the dog door.

Don't have a dog door is one of the lessons of this movie.

Yeah.

Just open the door, let your dog out you never had one

first of all it's it's like just an invitation for burglars they're always like just big enough it's a pretty small burglar yeah well but if you have a burglar crew i think piggy richard could fit through a dog door no i think richard dreyfus could also oh it's like if you have ocean's 11 you got

a short guy yeah

um dog door in indiana too it's like it's funny cold there

True.

Yeah.

Like, what are you doing?

Dog doors don't exist anymore.

Like, if I went to somebody's house and and they had a dog door, I would, I wouldn't know what you wouldn't trust them.

No, I would just be like, what are you guys doing?

My family has a dog door, so how dare you?

Which family?

My parents.

They still have a dog door?

Yeah, but it goes through the backyard where it's fenced in.

Oh, well, that's acceptable.

Do you lock the dog door at night?

No, right.

They live in a warm other city.

They live in the Bay Area.

And they're a lot of tall thieves.

Well, they used to.

So they can't get into the house.

But if people get over the fence, they're getting in your house anyway.

Well,

I guess.

I mean, if all the doors are going to be

FaceTime them right now and to where your parents are,

just so we can get a look.

Let's stage a robbery to see what they were doing.

I thought it was a good idea.

We could do that.

I have some nitpicks about that Melinda Dylan house scene in a second.

Picturing Tom Noonan through the map into Craig's parents' house.

This is out there.

It's all South.

Yeah, I grab it.

I enjoy the Big Air Air Force Town Hall just because I like Town Hall stands.

This is a UFO, yeah, and it's also good because it's one of the few times in the film that I think Roy is like that.

I didn't want, I don't want to be like this, yeah, but it's how, like, I don't want to see this is the line he has.

That's it's cool.

Well, one of the best scenes in the movie is the mashed potato scene.

I can't describe it

when I'm feeling,

When I'm thinking.

This means something.

This is important.

I wrote down Spielberg as the goat of these scenes.

I don't know why he's so good at them.

It's like the pouring the wine, the wine scene

in Jaws.

Like when they're sitting around the table.

Or the kid or the kid imitating.

Yeah.

But he's just really good at like the most normal family thing is happening, but there's something also major happening.

Please pay attention.

The little kid in this scene is so good.

The oldest son, just watching him and his mouth starts crippling.

He's like, my fucking dad's losing his mind right now.

Yeah.

Barry gets a lot of the praise for this movie as like the great kid actor.

The kid who plays Neri's eldest son is really, really good.

Yeah, he's excellent.

Yeah.

I have

three left.

Roy loses his shit and starts throwing things into his house.

Yeah.

When they eavesdrop on the UFO communication before they go down, and then the whole ending.

I don't know.

How do you separate?

We get Barry back.

Roy gets a red jumpsuit.

Yeah.

Roy gets a red USA jumpsuit.

Roy's going in the spaceship.

We're done.

I love when,

are we going to talk about Hynek?

When the Heinek emerges with the pipe?

Yeah.

Like just as the aliens are coming out.

That's a great moment.

What's the most re-watchable?

I'm probably going to go go Roy's Close Encounter, the truck.

Railroad Crossing.

Yeah, that is me too.

I really like the mashed potato scene though.

This is turning into my favorite category.

What's the most blank thing about this movie?

In this case, the most 1977 thing.

I had kind of a funny one for this that I hadn't occurred to me before, but the most 1977 thing about this movie is that World War II is only 30 years prior.

Right.

So they're all like, these guys disappeared in 1945.

And it's like, yeah, well, that's actually just, that's younger than this movie is to us.

Right.

You know, or that's more recent than this movie is to us.

So what'd you have?

I love that Roy's just got the TV on all the time.

And he, you can only get information by keeping the TV on, you know, like the news reports flashing and then he's watching the Daffy Duck cartoon and then it cuts out and something else cuts in.

And this idea that like it's not just the no cell phones.

The no cell phones, like even today, Spielberg talks about how he's like, nobody ever says to me, it's weird that there are no phones in Close Encounters because it's not when you're watching the movie.

you're just flowing with the characters.

But people don't use TV that way anymore, they don't just like turn on channel two and let it stay on for six hours.

Yeah, they're so determinative with what they want to do.

McAfee live, yeah, yeah, yes.

Uh, I have McAfee has DeShambeau on

that

McAfee has the Marionette Alien, Shams.

What happened with that lottery?

McAfee's got Lacombe and Balaban.

I have for this category.

on magafy would crush that would be a great segment speaking french that would actually probably be aaron rogers' favorite episode of magafi is these two guys just be like aliens around he would want to debate lacombe

debate lacomb a mcdonald's sign with only 24 billion served that oh that's a good one rotary phones

the tvs

neighbors hanging out in the street We don't get that anymore.

And if we get it, you assume that

something bad is about to happen.

Come over to my my neighborhood.

I live in a very friendly enclave.

Yeah.

They got kids.

Everybody's got a dog door because everybody trusts each other.

That's right.

That's right.

In the real America where we don't lock our doors.

Here are my two favorites, though.

A three-year-old kid named Barry.

Yeah.

This just never happened.

That's so confusing.

That kid better become Barry Morgan.

It's like maybe the last year you named your kid Barry.

Yeah.

And then

this is the number one.

They're eating dinner.

There's just a thing of whole milk in the middle of the table.

But whole milk is back.

Oh, it's back?

Yeah.

Right, Craig?

Whole milk is back.

That's right.

Okay.

When's the last time you took down a glass of whole milk?

Uh, I learned within the last few years that I'm lactose intolerant, so it's been some time.

Okay, but for the first 37 years of my life, I would have a glass of milk and be like, I feel terrible and not understand why this happened.

Here we are.

There it is.

So, wait, you do you do like oat milk and cereal now?

Nope, I eat cereal dry, unfortunately.

I'm sorry, I forgot about that.

You raw dog cereal?

Oh my god.

Oh, no, part of that.

Part of it was sad to And my daughter sees me doing, so now she does it because she's like, that's how you eat cereal.

Oh, my God.

I think almond milk is pretty good with cereal.

It isn't bad, but I just have an association with all milks now.

I have no milk in anything.

Wow.

Didn't we do like 10 minutes on cereal for one milk?

He and I did.

Did you see they're trying to ban Applejacks?

When they're trying to say it's not healthy.

The woke mob came for Applejacks.

No, man.

The Maha crew was just like, oh, we can't call this like part of your healthy breakfast anymore.

And it's hard.

Who's calling Applejacks part of your healthy breakfast?

Applejacks.

when they do like Saturday morning cartoon ads.

They think it's like apple slices.

If you eat a bunch of broccoli, frosted flakes is technically part of your filthy breakfast.

That's like the most un-American thing.

We need Trump.

Maybe Trump can use his powers for good.

Just save Apple Jackson.

Trump's coming out for Count Chocolate.

I've heard a thing today.

That could be Trump.

What saves the best?

People being amazed that UFOs exist.

That's cool.

Yeah, people still do that.

Well, now UFOs exist.

We're seeing them all over the place constantly.

Should we like, let's go.

Let's do it.

Like, so they exist.

There is life on other planets.

That life has come to this planet.

Like, you believe that?

I think we've had a lot of evidence the last few years.

You don't believe it?

I kind of stand with the guy from the news network in the meeting, in the Air Force meeting, where where it's like, if it's happening so much, like, why don't we have like really

video now, though?

Do we?

Do we?

CR is like, I still believe in the long two

and no UFOs.

Yeah.

The full hat.

The long Applejacks and fucking UFOs do not.

Starters should throw 130 pitches and no sex before marriage.

15-round heavyweight fights.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And whole milk.

Okay, so you're just like, it's out there.

They're out there.

Area 51, they were constantly flying around.

Yeah.

Okay.

I think so.

Okay.

I don't think that's controversial anymore.

I definitely think there is life

in other galaxies.

I'm not unconvinced that they've been to our galaxy.

I believe they probably have.

That's just something I believe and can't prove.

This planet, I don't believe it.

We haven't confirmed anything for our planet.

Something has come to the mind.

The story is ready to confirm.

The line between Yannis and Tedacu.

Well, there's a line in this movie where it's like Einstein was probably an alien.

Oh, yeah.

What else do you have for what stage is the best?

There's a lot of really cool recurring images when you re-watch the film of like Roy looking at maps, Roy stuck at a crossroads.

It's very reflective of the character's like inner life, but without...

explicitly saying this guy's at a crossroads.

He doesn't know where he's going.

Like the end of Castaway.

Yeah.

And then there's like a lot of really awesome imagery of roy is always like going against a crowd like a crowd is running towards him and he's like i have to go through this to get to the other side so just really always being conscientious of like reflecting character with that and uh

god man jillian and roy really got something you know that like desperation that that we went through something it's not romantic i know it's like when they see each other like on the lookout like the the next day they're just like fuck only only the two of us understand this i think they could have gone at it get it go he gets he gets a little tension overinda dylan has something special yeah she just does i had her in what stage the best she's just good gear for her something special uh my last what stage the best is when a guy in mission control figures everything out before everyone else he's just like excuse me wait it's longitude I feel like that happens in any mission control situation.

Like one dude just sort of sees the whole chessboard.

What do you have, Sean?

I think this movie in 2001 are the most responsible for the current wave of great event filmmakers that we have.

So Nolan, Villeneuve, Bong Junho, Guillermo del Toro, they're all hugely inspired by this movie.

A lot of their movies are kind of grasping for what this movie gets.

That's this like complicated mix of cynicism and wonder, this idea of like something bigger than you.

but grounding all of those movies in family stories.

Unfortunately, it leads to Zemekis making contact.

I mean, him too.

And he was like his apprentice at this time.

I like contact, but okay.

Motion control cameras used again as on Star Wars.

And Douglas Trumbull, who worked on 2001, bringing them to this movie so that they can have effects that, like, Craig shouted out, the clouds.

That's just something that he created and mapped onto just a regular 35 millimeter shot of the sky, which is just incredible.

So Craig's pro that and Dog Doors so far.

It's quite a list.

Spielberg writing credits.

Yeah.

Written and directed by Steve Spielberg.

Yeah.

Close Encounters, AI, and the Fablemans.

That's it.

That's his whole career.

The AI one is a little weird, right?

Well, he like completed something.

Sure.

Yeah, he sure did.

Also aged the best is Bob Baker designing the Marionette.

Yeah.

I go to Bob Baker's Marionette Theater on the regular with my kid.

Future thriller.

Incredibly creepy to welcoming.

Yeah.

Gene Siskel called this movie a fairy tale for adults, which I've always thought was the best way to describe it.

Huge Huge Gene Siskel year.

Yeah.

Fever came out this year.

I would say that the last thing I had for What's Age the Best is the pop culture durability of small-town suburban America.

And so, like, basically, from this movie, through E.T., through Goonies, all the way through Stranger Things,

people have returned to this as the setting for

something amazing is happening here.

You know, something adventurous is happening.

There's a really good,

you're going to make fun of me, but it's fine.

There's a really good review of this movie written by Christopher Macquarie, the Mission Impossible director on Letterbox.

And he writes long reviews.

So I would say a great writer.

And he wrote something that is never communicated in the movie literally, but is true, which is that all who come in contact with the alien spacecraft are imprinted with a fragmentary vision which compels them instinctively toward a common objective.

That if you have been, if you have encountered the alien, you're you're drawn to Devil's Tower, that like something is pulling you.

But he, like, Niri can't even figure out the words to explain how he feels.

He just feels it, which is how people tend to make choices in their life.

You know, they just like something happens, and then they just like instinctually, I have to do this thing.

But there's no scene where they're like, here's the lore of the alien.

And the alien has a, they dropped a seedling from the sky and a plant grew and it made people smell something.

Like, it doesn't have that science fiction thing of overexplaining everything that I just think makes the movie feel so timeless.

There's been movies since where the person only he can see

the thing.

They, I feel like it's been ripped off every time we've ever seen a movie.

Man on fire, yeah, Field of Dreams.

Field of Dreams is a really good example.

Uh, more what's age the best for me.

Royce Sunburn, I always thought, was really smart, really funny.

The half-faced Sunburn.

The little kid is just incredible, Barry.

Um, there's a good cast in what if with him, but he just makes some great faces.

Very likable.

I never feel like he's in total danger.

Did you read the story of how he got that performance out of him?

Or hear Spielberg tell it?

He would only do like one or two takes, right?

But he would do something every time he had a scene where he had to look up at the sky.

Yeah.

He said he would bring a present to set

and he would open the present at an elevated spot on the set while he was filming Carrie Guffey, the actor.

And he would very slowly open the ribbon and slowly lift the box and slowly remove the toys so that the kid just stood there like this, waiting to see what was inside the present, his mouth open.

And that scene in the movie when he says, toys, it's because he's literally showing him a toy coming out of a box, but it looks like he's watching an alien spaceship.

It's like ingenious shit.

Steve.

I like the giant globe.

I was going to say, do we have giant globes anymore?

I think mostly for ornamental purposes.

What did they say it costs?

It's $2,500.

That was actually in my book about metals.

I love that moment.

They're like, it's a $2,500 globe.

What are you guys doing?

I love it.

And when they have to roll the globe down the hallway.

Any movie with a plot involving Devil's Tower, I feel like you're just in good hands.

It's like, oh, shit, Devil's Tower is involved now.

1970s big family moms calmly navigating their crazy husband perfect

that wife is out the door now in five minutes i wouldn't say terry Garr is terribly calm in the movie.

No, she melts down once or twice.

Yeah, but she's like, she's trying to like keep order on the chaos there.

Gotta watch out for that.

They called Carrie Guffy one take Carrie, by the way.

No original one take Sheen.

One take CR.

So little kids wearing

numbered football baseball shirts that don't have a team.

This was a total thing in the 70s.

I have pictures of myself in those shirts, and then it just went away.

Why was it a thing?

I don't know.

Do you think it's because we realized we could sell socks?

I don't think we

it working tough really yet?

Do you remember when the first time you had a Red Sox thing was?

For Halloween, dressing up as Fred Lynn.

But that had to be like an entire uniform.

Do you remember like the first t-shirt you got?

I think it was later.

I just don't think people thought the same way with that.

I think you might be right.

I'm sure people will be like, oh, you're a fucking idiot.

But like, I think people were the first time.

Was when they had like the

NBA hats with like the cursive font.

Like, that's when I started buying random other shit.

I have a bunch of Celtics t-shirts that for some reason my mom saved that are all different like Celtic ones from different sizes.

So they definitely made them, but I just don't feel like people wore the sports stuff the same way.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I just, those t-shirts specifically made me, made me nostalgic.

Close Encounters, first collaboration between film editor Michael Kahn.

and Spielberg.

You know, they still aren't working together.

They've never not worked together since this movie, which I thought was really cool.

Michael Kahn's 94 years old.

Yeah.

And Spielberg said this is like, this is the hardest one to edit, right?

Yeah.

Because it was just like the last 25 minutes really hard.

And then the last one, Melinda Dylan, who was in this in Slapshot same year.

Henry Han's wife, which we covered last year when we did Slapshot.

She was also in

Christmas Story.

She was in Absence of Malice.

She was in a few other things.

Which Melinda Dylan in, is it Melissa or Melinda?

Melinda.

Melinda in Christmas Story and this.

She's probably in the two most iconic mashed potato scenes in movies.

Right.

No question.

Yeah.

She sort of is the mayor of Apex Mountain for mashed potatoes.

Yeah, Mashed Potato Mountain.

Just a great job by her.

She lives in City Hall at the top of Apex Mountain.

That's right.

Okay.

Speaking of mashed potatoes, that Big Kahuna Burger Award for best use of food and drink, you could almost change it.

No-brainer.

Closing California series.

That's good.

Bicahuna Burger is still pretty great.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Never taste that tasty burger.

That is a tasty burger.

We're going to take a break and then do the rest of the categories.

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All right, CR.

Go nuts.

Great chat, Gordo.

You got to limit yourself to three.

Okay, we've talked silver, bronze, and gold.

Let's see.

I think the wide shot of the house with the stars.

There are no bad shots.

Barry's abduction, I think, and the red light coming through the doorway is incredible.

Looks at the pits of hell.

I mentioned Roy and Jillian in the crowd.

I think that might be my favorite.

I think Roy and Jillian meeting.

and coming together and embracing as all those people, the waves of people are getting on and off the train.

India is really good.

Yeah.

Like to throw that in there as well.

India is amazing.

I think the first time you see the board when they play Williams' five-note score and you see the colors across the board, that's like a chills moment for me.

The wind in the first five minutes with the sand and people wearing the things over their face.

Like Spielberg's always really good at that for some reason.

Yeah.

And then, like you pointed out before, Devil's Tower on TV with the sculpture and the

side by side.

Side by side.

Kid Cutty Pursuit of Happiness were Best Needle Drop.

There's actually no real music in this, just John Williams.

I thought it might be interesting to mention just here that Spielberg said he wanted the movie to feel like when you wish upon a star.

Yeah, but then

it kept getting cut out.

Yeah, the original cut ended with that, the original version from Pinocchio.

And then they, it tested badly.

Is that what they said?

The research was they did it in Dallas and people laughed.

Spielberg got hurt, took it out.

But I think that that's worth mentioning is like a, it's not necessarily a needle drop, but it is obviously a huge influence on the, and you know, they talk about Pinocchio in the movie.

The Chess Rockwell and Brock Landers Award for Best Character Name.

Roy Neary is really good

as a lead.

Is it better than Claude Lacombe?

Claude Lacombe is also really good.

Roy Neary is that that could have been a bunch of 70s lead actors.

I like the

major wild Bill Walsh, the guy who's just like, I got to gas these people if you don't get them off the mountain.

What do you got for your flex category?

It's tough because it's basically,

I just got to talk about the smoking because there's just, Ronnie would be,

would be the Chris Ryan award winner if the main character, I mean, like, it's not the main character, but if Ronnie is just slamming Winston's the entire time, I think she just becomes that much more relatable, the Terry Garr character.

And also, it's upsetting that she either of them could have smoked.

Some Virginia Slims, whatever they may be.

Does Spielberg have many smokers in his movie outside of Saving Private Ryan?

No.

That's why there's none in here.

I think in 77 in Indiana, I feel like everybody's smoking.

Oh, my God.

It's like you're almost looked at weirdly if you're not lighting one up at 8 o'clock at night.

There's cigars in 1941.

Ashing through the dog door.

Yeah.

Butch's Girlfriend Award.

Ashing through the dog door.

Butch's Girlfriend Award, wink leak of the movie.

Sean, you go.

Do you have one?

Yeah, Joseph Summer as Larry Butler.

Yeah.

I feel like we could have done a little better.

I had that too.

You know, he's like,

I'm from L.A.

Yeah.

And he gets put to sleep.

I wanted like a little for a movie that's so realized and so well cast.

Yeah.

You'd be about that later.

I have Roy Neary, worst family man in any great movie.

Just a reprehensible father-husband.

He's so, it's unbelievable.

He's got three kids and a wife.

He's like, ah, I gotta follow this thing.

I'll see you guys later.

I can't understand the decision that he makes at the end of the movie, but

this is three people that are like obsessed with what they're obsessed with.

Like the things that we care about, we care about to a degree that is unhealthy and has led us to this moment in our lives.

And in some ways, has been good.

Yeah.

So like

you can't totally castigate a save my comments for hottest tape.

Okay.

Okay.

Roy, one of Roy's kids could have come in with like an ice skate blade stuck out of his head and be like, hold on, hold on.

But like he had,

I can't defend him because I would never leave my kid ever for anything ever.

But if you encountered an alien and he cosmically, it cosmically changed you.

Yeah.

I think that's what the movie is trying to convey.

There's no going back from this moment.

Spielberg himself, who did not have kids when he wrote this movie,

was like, like, eh, probably could have, probably would have done a couple different things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You have no sense of any sort of connection.

But that's us.

This is also the 70s when you just, your kids left for four hours.

And he's, and I think it's worth you pointing out, like, that he's 33.

Like, he's like, life just got away from me here.

You know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's, that's why he should have been smoking long darts.

I mean, three kids before 31 or whatever.

Yeah.

He's living in Muncie, Indiana.

Nichotic behavior.

Yeah.

Well, back then it was the

common.

For I remember one of my friends when I was a kid who had like

four or five kids.

And every time he came home, we would be bummed out because it was just, he just hated everybody.

And you could just feel it.

I remember feeling that when I was like six.

Some people in their 70s, they were just like,

what happened?

Maybe, maybe it's still like this now, but you could really be like, what?

I have four kids.

I met my wife when I was 18.

Now I'm 32.

I'm just going to get bummed.

Yeah.

The only thing Drake's ever really just like, god damn, I didn't play the feel at all.

I thought he was a left tackle.

He was a guard.

I'm sorry.

I'm just going to get a riot count, not tell anybody.

What do you have for weak link?

Meanwhile, Josh Allen, childless.

I had Larry

the jogging LA guy.

What's age is the worst other than no iPhones or camera phones?

The aliens at the end are not good.

Like, it just doesn't look good.

The Marionette Alien looks good and the final alien.

The

one.

That one's really cool.

Grimbaldi looks good that does the hand signs, but the little girls in the alien suits, it looks terrible.

Like, we can be honest about it.

I think probably...

I kind of like it.

I wonder if it's...

This is literally what has ATC.

You guys have kind of done so much cool shit with aliens throughout cinematic history.

Like, would you put this in the top 10 aliens you've seen on screen?

1577, though.

What are they going to do?

Literally, Scott makes the xenomorph like a year later.

Like, just you're getting fifth grade girls.

You're getting 50 of them from some town and putting an alien costume on them and you're calling it a dad 15 years later we get natasha henstridge you know what i mean like

you've made great advances in alien interest yeah it was actually 17 years later seven months later

not in three days countdown to species has begun yeah was this the first time in a major popular movie that they showed aliens

no no no no you mentioned the day the earth stood still early i was saying a modern 50s movie though um

no they're, I mean, they're all through 50s and 60s sci-fi.

I'm saying, like, from mid-70s forward, it's like this is a demarcation movie for where the aliens would go.

Like, what are the biggest alien movies of the 70s?

Do you know they made an alien sequel called Aliens 1986, Chris?

Yeah,

Sigourney Weaver.

I did.

Yeah, I just found out about that.

Supposedly, it's good.

Is that the one where Josh Berlin and Benicio Del Toro are raiding the southern border?

No, I don't think that's it.

If only there was a podcast where you could go back and talk about older movies and check that out and just think about what they meant to us.

Instead of letting the 2B algorithm dictate it.

Two bearing enough cigarette smoking is age the worst.

Nobody realizing Roy has PTSD.

Yeah.

Because we don't know what PTSD is in 1977, but he's clearly just completely traumatized.

Yeah, this is like Ronnie could take a beat and just be like half of his body got singed.

Like something clearly happened out there.

Yeah, maybe the maybe the glaring sunburn on his face, like something horrible has happened here.

She's trying to get him to fix his face with makeup.

Right.

It's not very sympathetic.

Stealth UFO watch parties that nobody knows about.

Probably you're not pulling that off in 2025.

Probably no.

No cell phones.

So the TV show Soap,

which was a show I really liked in the late 70s, and they had a whole plot where Burt got abducted that was basically based on this movie.

And now that show, nobody even knows that exists.

I'm putting that in what stage is the worst.

But yeah, they got a half a season of soap out of

basically a Roy Neri plot with Bert.

And then he came back from outer space and like wanted to have sex with his wife all the time.

She's like, something's going on with this guy.

Yeah, soap.

Late 70s.

Richard Mulligan.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

From Empty Nest?

So

grandmother from Who's the Boss was the star.

Billy Crystal played

a gay character.

Moody was like the first gay character ever.

There was a guy with a ventriloquist guy.

It was a weird show.

I liked it.

And then

I went over what they were.

Mothership Interior in the 80 cut, and then the movie brats being unable to stop fiddling with their creations.

I feel like that didn't age well that they did that.

Did you have a Ruffalo Hannah Rubinik Partridge over acting work?

Not really.

I didn't either.

I have Balaban when he's just like, explain what's going on, like in the desert.

Sean, what do you have for a fucks category?

The Zwatanao Award.

What happened the next day?

Yeah.

Roy is anally raped repeatedly for 30 years on the spaceship.

It's a complete analog.

Is Ronnie with a greater Muncie Realtor in a week or less?

Yeah.

This is Jack.

He has a Cadillac.

He treats me really well.

You're just going to have to call him dad.

I think that oldest son is definitely robbing a liquor store by age 15.

The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford.

Hottest take award.

What do you have?

Roy gets a lot of heat for abandoning his family.

Yeah.

Who I think you could make a case abandon him in some ways earlier in the film.

I like it.

If I had the chance to be one of the first human beings to have meaningful contact with an extraterrestrial life form race, I'm hitting the fucking transfer portal.

Goodbye, family.

Anyone can have a family.

Yeah.

I get to go to Mars or wherever.

Like, that's incredible.

So, do you not fear the unknown?

Because that's the big question at the center of this.

Well, I think what it is is that, like, there's no other choice for him by this point.

Like, this has clearly become like an obsession that he's willing to throw his family away for.

But you're you're saying you're making the choice.

Yeah, I know.

And you're saying I will take,

I don't know, who's, what's it, what's that dude, Ace?

He's going to go to going to the six years Ace Bailey.

Yeah.

You're like, I'm going Ace Bailey.

I don't care what the pundits say.

Yeah.

I think that it's just like, it's not a choice at all.

Like families are great and everything, but like if you got to be like the first person to meet aliens,

you could start another family.

I see it.

I was thinking like if my kids were the same age, what Roy was, you know, I'd be like, I really want to go, but Zoe's got a game on Saturday.

The Pats are playing the Colts on Sunday.

How much sports am I going to miss?

Same.

It's a complete same.

Cruise has a Celebration Impossible movie coming out.

Shadem's ramping up.

I heard this new Cool Blue movie has a chance.

I'm just saying.

Okay.

Yeah, I think about it, though.

Entertaining.

What do you have for How to Stake?

Is this the best movie ever made with a long title?

I think it is.

Close Encounters of the Third kind.

So six words?

Yeah.

Six or more.

What are the avatars

called?

I wish you had prepped us for this.

Would you call it?

Would you call now?

You know how I feel.

Everything, Fellowship of the Ring, everything everywhere all at once.

I think this is a better movie than The Fellowship of the Ring, which is a movie I love, but I think it's better.

I think the biggest contender is probably Doctor Strangelove.

Oh, or How I Learned to Stop Worry.

Yeah.

But I mean, go through your Den of Thieves 2 Pantera.

Oh, your favorite, the assassination of Jesse James by the coward Richard Cord.

Robert Ford.

Who's Richard Cord?

I just.

Coward Robert Ford.

Richard Ford's an author.

He is an author.

He is an author.

He's a great sports writer.

Birdman had a long one.

Borat?

Cultural learnings of America from the future.

We haven't gotten to a film that is better than Closing Counters yet.

That's a good one.

Sure.

Borat?

I mean, Borat rocks.

Borat's funnier than Closing Gatters.

I agree.

I agree.

No debate there.

I had to say that.

So is it?

I think you're right.

That's right.

I think it's a good call.

Great one.

I don't even know if it's a hot take.

It's like a lukewarm.

You said you didn't have enough time to prep.

Look at this.

Perfect tape.

I also got that anally raped joke, too.

So that's.

I worked hard.

Mine is if the 2025 version of this movie would somehow manage to reflect all the things that suck about 2025.

Roy would be a fucking lunatic on Reddit every day.

Yeah.

Roy's kids would all immediately be diagnosed with collateral PTSD and turned into over-medicated zombies.

They'd just be fucking drinking Ridland shakes.

PETA would be protesting the animal's sleep gas.

And the UFOs never would have come because everyone had a camera phone.

And they would have been like, these guys with the phones, like, fuck that.

We're out.

So the movie never happens, and Roy's in jail.

What's he going to jail for?

Just for what happened to his father.

That kid trespassing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's in Reddit.

Yeah.

Going to jail.

He's losing Reddit.

It's going to be tough for a lot of out there.

Casting what ifs.

Oh, God.

Wow.

This is a crazy one.

Steve McQueen, first choice.

Impressed with the script.

Said, I can't cry on Q.

I'm not your guy.

Because I'm fucking Steve McQueen.

I'm not crying in a movie, motherfuckers.

Spielberg's story about the meeting with McQueen is incredible.

McQueen gets the script.

He likes the script.

He says, I want to meet Steven Spielberg.

He invites him to a bar.

Steven Spielberg literally said, I had never been to a bar before in my life.

Or had sex with a woman.

He's 26 years old.

Steve McQueen says, meet me at the Doom Room.

They go meet at the Doom Room.

Inside the bar, it's a raucous, rowdy bar.

He said, McQueen had 14 beers.

He had three.

The Wade Bogs.

He said a fight broke out in the middle of the meeting that they were having, and that McQueen got up as if he was going to enter and try to break up the fight and then.

pulled himself back because he didn't want to embarrass himself in front of Spielberg.

And finally, he said, I love this script.

I really want to do it.

I actually cried a little while reading it, but I know that I could never achieve that for you on camera.

So I can't do your movie.

Bob Evans is like, Yeah, Allie McGross can do

with Steve McQueen.

What could go wrong?

They're gonna be together for three months.

She's gonna meet him at the Doom Room.

No big deal.

I know he's cool, but how cool is he?

Hey, Ellie, I know I left a couple voicemails.

You know, no big deal.

Call me back.

He just sounds like you for me.

How the

by all accounts, the coolest actor of all time.

Yeah.

Like still now to this day.

Such a different movie if he's in it.

Yeah.

I don't think he can be in this.

He may speak a little Paul Schrader version of it where it's like a little bit more of an whatever this movie is, it can't be him.

So anyway, James Kahn, Dustin Hoffman, Pacino, Gene Hackman all turned down the part.

Nicholson's intrigued, but has scheduling conflicts.

And meanwhile, Dreyfus already has heard about the movie because he's on the set with Jaws and he's lobbying, lobbying, lobbying.

Yeah, there's some great stories about dreyfus like sticking his head into spielberg's office and being like i heard nicholson's crazy yeah you don't want him but then he wanted a lot of money and points they back off they go back to pacino still not interested nicholson says no thanks again

this is in the research hackman turned down the role because he was in a troubled marriage and could not spend 16 weeks outside of los angeles on location shooting And then James Conn's like, I'll do it for a million and 10% of the gross.

This is a pretty interesting James Conn movie.

I I think it could have worked with James Conn.

He's

maybe a little too strapping.

I think he would have been a little bit more intimidating as a disaffected father, though.

Like him getting mad at the family and throwing shit through the window to build the Devil's Tower mud.

Well, him coming out of Rollerball and doing this.

I don't know how you shut off Rollerball.

Yeah, it stays.

He just has that streak of rage underneath the surface that Dreyfus doesn't have.

Dreyfus is always like flummoxed and bent out of shape, but he's not angry.

And Khan, I'm like, is this guy going to throat punch me?

Like, he just always looks like he's off.

You're like, holy shit.

That's how I feel about Brian Curtis

when you're in person with him.

I know.

He has a physical intimidation factor.

Terry Garr wanted to portray Jillian, but was cast as Ronnie.

Meryl Streep and Amy Irving also auditioned for Ronnie.

Amy Irving then auditioned to be Steven Spielberg's girlfriend and then mother of his child and wife.

Meryl Streep went on to some good things I heard.

She did.

Not familiar with her.

She would have been a cool Ronnie.

She would have been a cool Jillian.

Hal Ashley worked with Melinda Dillon, suggested her to Spielberg cast three as for the filming.

And then this was a great cast and what if, not for this movie.

Stanley Kubrick, have you heard of him?

I have.

So impressed by Carrie Guffey's performance as Little Barry that he wanted to cast him as Danny Torrance.

And unfortunately, Guffy was filming The Sheriff and the Satellite Kid.

And its sequel, Everything Happens to Me.

I hope you did not get to be in the shiny.

I would have fired his fucking agent.

You know, know carry went on to uh work for merrill lynch and be like a finance guy yeah he's your guy right that's your financial financial advisor carry guffey one take carry tough beat one click carry now

best that guy award i think bob balaban counts even though now he's bob balaban but for for everyone friends true faux

oh at the time

at the time was anybody like the only people who were saying he was doing that guy were the cinephiles well

you're missing the farmer who saw Bigfoot is the snow shuffle guy from Home Alone.

Yeah, Robert's Blossom.

That's that's it.

That's your answer.

Henriksen is also in this

Dan Waiters.

I'm just giving it to Carl Weathers because he just died.

It's great to see him.

Great.

I think it was.

I think he should have been dressed like Apollo Creed, but that would have been good.

Yeah, like in the trunks.

Yeah, just dressed up like he came from the set.

We don't get to give this out.

The Brandy Booth Award.

Spielberg's Cocker Spaniel, Elmer, can be seen when the humans get released.

Also appears in Jaws as the Brody family dog.

He's in Jaws and Close Encounters.

Wow.

Elmer.

I was going to give that award to the Doggy Door.

Yeah, the Doggy Door could happen too.

Recasting Couch Director or City, what do you got?

None.

Okay.

What do you have?

I had none either.

Except that one guy you mentioned that they could have.

And Joseph Summer.

We could have done a little better.

Yeah, maybe John Kazille.

But recasting the director.

Kazille, James Berlin, even yeah,

popcorn one set for two days.

OJ, why not OJ?

OJ, yeah, that would have been great for the legacy of this film.

Recasting Couch Director City, I came up with every 10 years who I would have casted in the Dreyfus Park.

Jesus, let's do it.

Oh, yeah, cool.

Go.

You're going to share 1987

Tom Hanks.

1997, Will Smith.

No?

Too handsome.

Too heroic.

He needs to zag though, and he loves aliens.

Okay.

Who would you have instead in 1997?

But he could have uttered that, his catchphrase, welcome to Earth.

Nick Cage?

Nick Cage could work.

That would have been good.

Gear?

Too hot?

Too old.

97.

Yeah.

We're in like

97.

I mean, like Bruce Willis is a little too old.

But I mean, this is

this is a category that we're going to talk about, but to me, this is like this, this is a Phillip Siemer Hoffman part.

I have him for 07.

Okay.

2017 Chadwick Boseman.

Oh, yeah.

Doing great.

That's all I got.

Craig, flex category.

Can I go hottest take?

Yeah.

Yeah.

The

musical communication back and forth scene between the mothership and the humans.

It works for the five notes, and then it completely loses you and is just kind of awkward and weird.

Once the spaceship starts playing the tuba for like 10 minutes and they're just like riffing like jazz musicians,

Liz and I were laughing.

And I've seen this movie before,

but

yeah, that Spielberg got a little, he was doing tricks on it, as the kids said.

Yeah.

Wow.

Okay.

Steve got over his bag.

The tuba.

Steve and John Williams.

When the brass did start coming out, I'm like, all right, there's a couple notes from old Dog Door here.

Dial it back on the music, music, Steve.

Lose the Tuba.

It's another director's commentary.

It has to come now.

It's like, I heard this Craig Horbeck.

Yeah.

Really made me rethink the musical stuff.

The Horbeck cut is coming.

I'm removing the music from Close Encounter.

It's a VG now.

Half-asser research.

The exact quote on Schrader's script from Spielberg.

One of the most embarrassing screenplays ever professionally turned into a major film studio director.

Didn't like it.

Tough one.

Schrader's script was: a guy as an encounter goes to the government, threatening to blow the lid off to the public.

Instead, he and the government spent 15 years trying to make contact.

The USAF and NASA refused to comment to cooperate in the film.

Spielberg thought that was a good sign for the film.

Yeah.

What do they have to hide?

Right.

Yeah.

Hmm.

You'll never eat lunch in this town again from Julia Phillips.

threw daggers everywhere at this film and said Spielberg was a perfectionist.

And that's why she got fired.

Wasn't the mounds of cocaine she was doing.

How's your memoir, You'll Never Smoke Heaters in This Town Again, going?

You'll never blog in this town again.

Six-year-old girls, 50 of them, played the aliens.

They're all from Mobile, Alabama.

Must have been a weird casting call.

Tried puppetry, it didn't work.

Doug Trumbull was the visual effects supervisor.

Doug.

Doug.

Our guy, Doug.

And there was

a $3.3 million budget.

Their work helped lead to advances in motion, control, photography.

Mothership, Ralph McCorry, been here for Ralph.

77.

Starbucks from this.

I have them coming up later.

I'm just going to read this verbatim.

Spielberg was eager to show

Trufo the...

Hold on.

Truffau, the giant landing sight set, hoping to impress the other director.

Truffo didn't seem to be impressed at all.

Spielberg and his crew later realized Truffaut was used to directing movies in small, intimate settings, and he could not grasp the scale of the landing site.

When he went into the set of the hotel room where Jillian watches the Devil's Tower newscast, Truffaut stood up and said, now this is a set and was dead serious.

And they were like, okay.

This was the spaceship they built, like the soundstages in Alabama for this one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Truffaut wasn't a huge fan.

Didn't really guess.

It kind of makes sense if you have seen any truffaux films so it makes me wonder why stevens people were wanting him in the first place he never really made like a space epic it's a weird one do you think this movie is like better or worse if it's like uh

gerrard debardieu yeah martin balsam or something

like an american yeah like like there is because there was casting motifs for these guys but it was all french characters i i think just a nerd blackman would have been interesting Just to nerd out, though, like the idea of the barrier of communication is such a key theme of the movie and the idea of balaban being an interpreter and also that the aliens need interpreters and they take on the human form but they also have this musical signature and that this like how we are connected without language yeah such a powerful idea in the movie that i really like that it is not just a French person but a French person who's like the 400 blows communicated something so profound to this generation of filmmakers who are in the 70s trying to attribute it's him yeah paying homage to to what truffo gave them

john ford's the searcher spielberg watched over and over again as he made the movie.

The horizon line.

That movie always keeps popping into the rewatchables research as like this normal star for all these huge microphones.

Well, that shot of Ethan opening the door to searchers is that the shot of the door opening and Close Encounters.

I mean, it's like, oh, did you want to do a criteria orgasm?

I hadn't thought about it until now, but they're connected.

Well, there's, and then in Fablemans, he has David Lynch playing John Ford talking about the importance of where you set the horizon in a frame.

And if you watch Close Encounters with that in mind, you can totally see it.

Topps made 66 trading cards and 11 stickers in 1978 of this film.

Dreyfus and were they like, here's Ronnie.

Here's our numbers.

Literally.

Great kids.

This is what they did.

One meltdown.

Dreyfus and Truffaut did not want to be in the card set and are not in it.

So everybody but Richard Dreyfus and Francois Truffau has a Topps card from Close Encounters.

It's not even just Topps cards.

They're seeing stuff.

It's this weird thing they did for a while.

Is that on eBay?

Like, do you think it's?

Oh, yeah.

For not that much either.

Expecting.

Jaws has cards.

Rocky one and Rocky two have cards.

E.T.

has cards.

There's a lot of them.

When are we doing ringer cards?

There's been offers.

Big waz.

Brian Curtis is the killer.

Throat slitter.

So the version, their cards were like about Ronnie Neary and her children and some of the other characters.

I don't think it did that great.

Okay.

Apex Mountain.

Spielberg, no.

I mean, it has to be Dreyfus.

Yeah, definitely Dreyfus.

Dragons and Oscars.

It's about as apex-y as it gets.

Right?

UFOs in a movie.

I think so.

I think what's Independence Day?

I mean, it really could be.

It really could be.

Yeah, because this is specifically a UFO.

Plus, it starts.

It's not like spaceship, it's not aliens.

We're talking UFOs.

Yeah, I mean, I think in the 50s, when movies like The Day of the Earth Stood Still were coming out and films were so important to the culture, and the amount of people that saw that movie,

you could say

Kalatu, Barat, and Nick 2, and all that stuff that came out of those movies was huge.

And we don't necessarily have the perspective on it since what we cover on the show is basically the last 50 years.

But

for the post-the new Hollywood era, this is probably the most important UFO movie ever made.

Yeah,

I think I agree.

UFO Sunburns, definitely for sure.

Truffau, no, no, I'm gonna say no,

Melinda Dylan,

same year, right?

With slash live side, yeah,

pretty good, yeah, mashed potatoes,

mashed potatoes, certainly as a building material, yeah.

Did this maybe movie make you want to have mashed potatoes when you saw them?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I felt the same way.

Do you?

There's a lot of mashed potatoes, though, for five people.

But that's how they used to get down in Muncie in the 70s, right?

A lot of them.

It was like whole milk.

Just eat those votes.

She had to eat the box.

She should have been smoking those Virginia slants as she was eating the mashed potatoes.

Like, bite, smoke.

That's appetizing smoke.

Yeah, for sure.

Movie dads losing their minds.

Probably not.

I think it's still the shining.

Good.

Technically, Henry Hill is a dad in the second half of Goodfellas.

Karen.

Muncie, Indiana, I'm going to say yes.

Uh-huh.

Any big basketball players from there?

Probably.

Terry Garr?

I'm going to say the Tootsie era when she started to go on Letterman.

And was she nominated for Tootsie?

Yeah.

She was, right?

So I would say Tootsie.

NBA players from Muncie, Indiana.

include

Alan Levell, used to be on the Rockets, Jay Edwards, Craig Neal,

nobody that famous.

Bob Knight hadn't started the whole Bloomington talent factory.

You believed that he had the right way of coaching.

How about those Red American track suits?

Those are awesome.

Those are going to be in my memorability.

The dream team, maybe break those back up.

Oh, that's cool.

Bad Parenting.

Bad Parenting

in a major box office Smash movie.

I'd say this boy's life's probably up there.

But as a Smash.

Bad Parenting in a Smash movie?

Don't remember me.

Do you think John McClain is a better or worse dad than Roy Neary?

He seems like a pretty good dad.

He puts himself in a lot of danger.

But he's not his children.

I mean, he could have said, you know what?

Like, if we lose Bedelia, like, I have to be there for my children.

Roy Nieri drove his family away.

He just abandoned them.

So did John McClain eventually.

But then they're reunited.

Marry Elizabeth Winston.

You know, she comes back and live free or die hard.

Cruise or Hanks.

I think it's Hanks.

But I would have also really enjoyed Cruz.

Cruise basically does a version of this in War of the Worlds.

Don't you think that Cruz would be better at the obsession part?

Hanks is more the everyman, which is useful,

but Cruz being the guy who's like, I got to go to Devil's Tower,

it depends on what year of Cruz I'm getting.

So, like, if it's 87, maybe, because we don't have a ton of background with him yet, it's hard to imagine.

But if we're in the late 90s with him, I'm just assuming it's going to become an action movie.

Yeah.

And it's hard to imagine Cruz as like a guy working for the Muncie Power Department.

That's right.

Whereas Hanks, he's he ever had like a normal job because even in color of money, he's still like a fucking incredible pool player.

Bartender in Jamaica?

He's the best bartender of all time, or is the second best, depending on who he asks.

I have him, number one.

He was just a normal senator in Lions for Lambs.

That's true.

What do you have, Craig?

Hanks.

Okay.

Scorsesir Spielberg.

Spielberg.

By the way, Spielberg, ninth rewatchables movie.

I think he tied for the lead.

With who?

With Tony Scott.

Nice.

And Michael Mann.

Nice.

Wow.

And we still have a few Spielbergs on the board, though, too, right?

I don't like that man is now in a tie.

Yeah.

You got to get public enemies on the board.

We got to.

There's some work left.

It's time for keep.

It's time for man should be.

What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played, clearly, Roy Nieri?

Okay, picking nets.

Our Jericho Miles and Hot Logan's run.

My biggest picking Knit.

It's okay.

You're okay.

And you can clearly tell it's a movie written by somebody who didn't have kids yet.

No mom is letting their kid go out that dog door.

Even in the

world.

First of all, there's like moms get like crazy strength when their kids are in danger.

Even she's holding on to the kids with dog doors.

She's not letting go.

But this isn't like a carjacking.

Like this is like, this isn't a car.

Like, this is like, I have a red light.

Shit is coming through the how about the kids?

she's in the kitchen freaking out and the kid just climbs away and goes out the dog door like she'd be holding on to the kid the entire

holding on to the kid all you the minute something like this happens the your instinct is just to go to grab your kid the whole point of being a parent is you're putting the kid above your own safety your life everything that's just it's the fucking dna of it and you're just like this with your kid the whole time i wouldn't know i'd just be watching dylan harper tape

you know

well i don't think spielberg knew i think it does raise the question why the fuck is is there a dog door with a three-year-old in this house anyway?

I know this is a dog door episode now, but how can you do it?

She came that freaked out the first time he goes outside, though.

She's freaked out in the kitchen, though.

And Belinda Dylan even says that.

Oh, when she looks out there, she's like, Barry, where are you going?

She's kind of like Barry.

But that was the 70s, though.

We've covered this.

We just were gone all day.

We let our three-year-olds wander in the street.

Yeah.

I told you we used to go to the Chestnut Hill dump.

Yeah.

Just for the day.

Come back at like 7:30.

Yeah.

I used to to go to the bada bing every day after school.

I found out if they was there.

Here's another parent nitpick.

So Barry comes off the UFO.

She's like, Barry,

Melinda Dillon is the mom.

Oh my God.

I just feel like you're inspecting your kid first.

That kid comes off.

I'm picking him up.

Take a look at him.

I'm making sure all the digits are there.

Do you still have two feet?

Do you still have arms?

Do you have hands?

I'm just looking at you.

Is he an alien?

Yeah.

You're inspecting him before you interact with them.

I think that

is a real untapped sequel potential of like Barry, something that happened to Barry.

Yeah, I have that unanswerable.

Barry the Omen.

1989 Barrie in High School.

Yeah.

Barry Omen for stamina.

Barry Omen.

Barry Omen's good.

They don't kill any animals.

They just sleep gas them.

What's going on?

That was an odd bit.

Sleep gas?

Huh?

It's weird.

Do I have sleep gas now?

Can I buy some major was lying?

Sleep gas Craig?

Why?

I don't know.

I just want to test it out.

Yeah.

You blaspheme John Williams.

You get sleep gassed.

And then

my last one, the pilots come off the UFO.

My first question is,

what year is this?

Yeah.

Where am I?

These guys are super chill.

Like, they haven't thought about it.

I'm like, hi, I'm Bob Gordon, U.S.

I'd be like, where am I?

What year is this?

What do you think hits those guys first is like the craziest thing?

Baseball's integrated?

Like,

what the fuck?

There's a professional basketball league at 1945 to 70.

Hey, Garrett has how many home rates?

What?

Why is it only about baseball?

Everybody, they're just super racist about baseball.

Who is this, Reggie Jackson?

Reggie Jackson has a candy bar?

What's up with the guy who's greeting them when they're getting off the plane and he's just like, Lieutenant, welcome back.

What is that guy's problem?

Why is he like trying to assuage those guys?

There wasn't one guy.

It's like, what year is this?

It's 1977.

What?

1977?

Like this is like the I'll step on my sequel now.

The sequel is these guys going back to their families and their wife is 32 years older.

Yeah, not a year.

They're just like, ah.

I sure this is going to work.

I'm just a 24-year-old gunner.

I left World War II.

Now I have a 58-year-old wife.

I just think Ty Cobb's the best thing that ever happened in baseball.

Totally misunderstood.

Their kids are older than them, potentially.

Uh-huh.

It just had so many questions.

Yeah.

It's a really cool back-to-the-future thing.

Yeah.

It would have been distracting for a guy to be like melting down and being like, what do you mean, 1977?

But the whole time you're watching it, you're waiting for someone to have any reaction.

They have no reaction.

Yeah.

I would have had a lot of sports questions.

I just would have wanted to go through every year to see if the Red Sox won.

All right.

Just don't tell me if the one winner.

Let's go.

46.

Cardinals went, fuck.

47.

Yankees went, fuck.

48.

It just goes.

We get to 75.

It's like, well, Red's, Red Sucks, fine.

I'll say you're

not flowing as that one.

And then you would have only had to wait another 27 years.

Right.

What if they got off and they were like really scared of Barry?

Dude, no.

You guys didn't bring Barry back to you.

He's the devil.

Yeah, that could have been another sequel.

Barry just going nuts.

What other nitpicks do you have?

You know,

the conspiracy being for the greater good and like how nice everybody involved in the military and the science community are.

It's more of like an age of the worst, probably, but it's a very warm version of we're really trying to look out for everybody's best interests.

Or Spielberg sucking up to the Illuminati, trying to get in.

It could be

that too.

I think it's a little suspicious the centrality of power that someone like Lacombe has on American soil.

That's a little weird.

That probably isn't likely to happen.

Yeah, good point.

That is funny when Roy's like, he's not even American.

There's an incredible moment on Steven Spielberg's inside the actor studio.

Do you know what I'm referring to?

I saw that when it happened, but I don't remember.

So this is a real thing that happened.

James Lipton is interviewing him, and this is what Lipton says.

He says, your father was a computer engineer.

Your mother was a concert pianist.

And when the spaceship lands, they make music together on the computer.

suggesting that Roy Neary's boarding the spaceship represents Spielberg's wish to be reunited with his parents, for them to be reunited as a couple.

And in the moment on the show,

it like dawns on Spielberg, like what he has done and doesn't realize that.

And it's a very beautiful moment about how you kind of create things and don't necessarily understand how you're bringing ideas and feelings inside of yourself and putting them in the world.

But I'm like, how the fuck did he not like ever put that together?

The subconscious is a very powerful thing, man.

Like, he's talked about this movie nonsense

for 25 years at this point when he's being interviewed.

Like, there have been multiple documentaries made about this movie where he's reflecting on what it means.

And it took James Lipton at the actor's studio to coordinate these ideas.

Did he say that before or after Fabelman's?

Before, yeah.

It was like 20 years ago.

Inside the actor's studio, I got nostalgic.

Now it would be Spielberg on Theo Vaughn's podcast.

They would be like, How'd you make that UFO?

They look fucking cool, man.

You like yogurt?

Yeah, cool.

At the time, everybody was like, James Lipton, what a blowhard.

What this, this, this pompous.

He was so good.

He really was.

Any other pick and nets?

No, I think the prevailing one to me is what Chris said, which is like

the government sure is friendly in this movie.

Yeah.

It's really like even having a televised meeting with the people who feel like they've been

vanished or like had experiences and just feeling, you guys, your concerns are really valid.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I wish I could tell you something else.

Sequel, prequel, prestige TV, all blackcasts are untouchable.

I still like the idea of

prestige TV sequel of these guys coming back to their families off the ship.

Yeah.

And maybe it's like almost like an episode of Lost.

Each episode is Senator and One Guy trying to re-acclimate himself with his now age family.

End of the first season, Roy comes back.

Yeah, Roy comes back.

But it's 2007.

You think this is an untouchable?

He thought about making a real sequel many times, and

it was presented to him as it could have been a huge windfall, and he never pursued it.

And it's not that he's above sequels.

He's made sequels, but um, it's interesting.

So, you'd have to have Roy in the sequel if Spielberg was doing it.

I think that would be interesting.

The time to do it would have been in the early 2000s.

You know, it would have been when you had crossed that 30-something-year threshold, yeah, and Dreyfus was still acting.

Some ekis was like, I got this, yeah.

Spielberg's like, fuck this shit,

fucking contact.

Now, I'm not, now I'm never making a sequel.

I don't think this one ruined.

That was I love that Spielberg turned into you.

Now, I'm I'm fucking never doing it.

Fuck this.

How about that?

I believe Spielberg likes contact, just for the record.

Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Treyo, Doris Burke, Sam Jackson, No, Byron Mayo, Barney Cousins, Tony Roma, Harling Mays, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs, or Wilford Brimley in the firm.

Didn't you have somebody in addition you wanted to add or no?

You want to go first?

Sure, I can do Doris Burke talking about Roy's oldest son.

Yeah.

We see you, Brad.

You may not be able to solve fractions, but now you're you're going to have to solve being the man of the house.

Your crybaby father has chosen a life of the unknown out in outer space instead of taking you to Pinocchio.

So get ready to learn drywall, buddy.

At least until Terry Garr finds a silver fox somewhere on the Muncie singles scene.

I think we've turned this into Byron Mayo as Doris Burke.

Did you feel like DB and

you didn't throw in a young man there?

That's better than you.

We see you, young man.

That young man, that young man has found something in that cereal box.

What's the kid's name?

Brad.

Wouldn't it be Mr.

Brad?

Mr.

Brad.

Did you think that RJ and DB were doing a kind of in New York's pocket for that game?

What?

Kind of?

You didn't think so?

Oh, my God.

They were like, oh,

it's another really tough foul.

You mean when Josh Hart tripped Tatum?

And they were like, whatever.

And they were like, ah, that was worse.

It's been a very pleasant hour and 50-minute podcast.

Wow.

that was not a dirty thought.

I just rolled a grenade in there and walked silent.

That's absolutely ridiculous.

You're ridiculous.

I have a new character for this.

As a

non-partisan observer, I'm just saying.

Out there just rooting for the Knicks.

Jay Williams from First Take.

I have a new character.

Not from Duke University or Chicago Paul Jake.

I think it's a new first take.

Where it goes around and everybody agrees on something and it goes to Jay Williams.

I know Claude Lacombe pulled it off.

I know he brought all those air plane pilots back and I know he established actual contacts with the aliens without our planet being destroyed.

I get it.

But how hard was that really?

How hard was that really?

That's my question, guys.

So he figured out six sounds of a synthesizer.

Now he's a hero.

Where was the science?

That's my question.

Because

are you a scientist or a music producer?

If I need a music producer in 1977, guys i'm getting brian eno i'm getting alan parsons i'm not getting claude the comb and that's all i'm saying

jay leaves for our sake thank you new debut

way to go in your brian eno bag one day every member of the sports media will be a member of this cat

college off

uh just want to ask her who gets it wait did you have any

i do you have here's a really good case for Wilfred Brimley saying, and what does she find in that spaceship, Mitch?

Heartbreak.

Heartbreak.

She goes down to her local

Devil's Island?

Yeah, Devil's Tower.

What does she find, Mitch?

Yeah.

Did I say Devil's Island?

Devil's.

You did, but that's Devil's Tower.

Maybe that could be the sequel.

Close Encounters 4 Devil's Island.

Just want to ask her who gets it, Steve.

I wrote John Williams.

Honestly, also, maybe Vilmos, the cinematographer,

he did get it, but he

did get it.

They did have a little bit of assistance on this one, didn't he?

He did reshoots, and he was not available for the reshoots.

And some of the reshoots were done by John Alonzo, Doug Slocum, who shot the Indiana Jones movies, and

shit, another like incredibly accomplished cinematographer.

Not Mr.

Alamendros.

No, no, someone else.

I have Steve.

Okay.

Probably unanswerable questions.

Did Roy ever come back?

Yeah.

What happened to Roy?

Did he ever see his family again?

Why don't people age on the ship?

A rare case of like a sequel actually would have answered some questions, but on the other hand, it's kind of cool never knowing whether Roy came back or not.

What do Ronnie and the family think when they come home and see what Roy's done to the house?

And she gets back from her sisters.

She's like, I have this ranch house.

I think you're calling like this

sanitarium.

Yeah.

Right?

It's like if this guy ever comes back, we have to lock him up with a straitjacket because there is 500 pounds of dirt and trees in my living room right now.

And Ronnie will have no idea what happened to him, right?

No, no, but we do know culturally what happened to Barry Omen, you know, and that he is the Antichrist.

And so that will go.

My next question: what was Barry like around 1989, just in high school?

Have you seen Richard Man?

Yeah, red darts through people's faces.

Why does Roy,

like, what is the reason for Roy getting fired?

Unclear.

He just didn't show up to work, maybe?

Well, or is he speeding around in his truck and like too much, too much reckless driving?

Because I feel like a lot of people in Muncie

are like probably the bar was pretty low to keep your job that night.

So like, why would you get fired the next day?

I agree.

There was something missing from that, especially in the 77 cut.

He's getting promoted.

Yeah.

And then he goes right there.

So it's almost like a scene is missing.

I guess a lot of things happen.

What is it?

Like, they're basically like urgent, like you wonder whether or not like Roy is being put in position to follow this link to like get out to devil's tower

uh mwinda dylan's husband who we never see in this movie what if it was hand rhan

and he's like transferred from the indiana team he played cook played college at boston university that's why he managed got transferred over kind of checks out yeah so you can't say it wasn't that would be great if like she gets back from devil's tower paul newman's waiting for her in a leather overcoat

who's the closest nhl franchised indiana is it like the blue Blue Jackets?

Well, we did have the Indianapolis Racers.

Blues?

The Wlues?

WHA in 1977, the Racers where Gretzky played.

Any other unanswerables?

No.

What piece of memorability would you want from this movie or not want?

Jumpsuit, certainly.

Jumpsuit was magnificent.

Clay Mountain sculpture for me.

I have the cymbal banging monkey toy,

but I also like the beast.

Did you see the movie The Monkey?

The horror movie that came out this year?

I did not see that because the reviews were mixed, but I will say it at some point.

I have a weird memorabilia question because I have to say that just the one shot of the McDonald's, I like had the urge where I was like, Should I go get a fucking Big Mac right now?

Like, this is because you get you see the archers.

When that happened, was your wife out of town?

Yes, yeah,

but I didn't go.

And I do want to know, memorabilia-wise, is a 1977 McDonald's burger taste much different than a 2025 2025 McDonald's burger?

Good question.

That was awesome.

Probably the same.

My wife did not want to have this conversation.

You'd be surprised.

Do you think Roy Nary should have been a verb?

Like, I just Roy Narried it last week.

Just fucking left.

Does that mean like when you abandon your family to go to golfing or something?

Yeah.

I just did it real nice.

Do you think that's what Josh Hart did to Tatum?

He neared him.

Roy Narried him.

Coach Finst.gov for best life lesson.

It's okay to dump your family as long as you're trusting your gut.

That's why I'm hottest take.

Is it justifiable if the aliens are real?

It's a leap of faith.

Do you support the reading of the film that none of that is really happening?

Oh, that it's all in his hands.

And Niri's having a psychotic break.

Oh.

Triggered by.

Psycho and Top Gun Maverick.

He dies in the first 10 minutes.

Yeah.

It's one of those.

That's my favorite one ever.

That's still the best there.

The death dream.

Yeah.

it's heaven when he gets to the top of devil's tower

no i think it's just a mass delusion oh wow i don't know this is the

interesting line of thought

if it's a mass delusion he's probably having sex with melinda dylan at some point fair mountain yeah he's gonna throw one in there quickly you and ran his wife

love slapshot threesome

um

best double feature choice i have star man with jeff bridges that's a good one i really like that movie yeah i I have.

I've probably seen that movie more than just about anybody.

The Carpenter movie.

Yeah.

I love Star Man.

Tonally, those are really matched.

You know that movie?

Either of you?

Craig Jack?

Jeff Bridges.

It's like a really great Jeff Bridges movie.

It's similar to 1984.

Curiosity and wonder, and

it's

not cynical or mean in any way.

It's the rare unknown.

He has these carpenter movies.

What does he have like 10 special balls and he can use each one?

He like saves a deer with one of them.

And then he starts running out of balls, like literally.

I had Asteroid City, which is a Wes Anderson movie from a few years ago about alien visitation, but also very melancholy about family.

That's a good one.

There was a special feature on the 4K that I think was made

maybe seven or eight years ago.

And it's three

kinds of close encounters is the name of it.

And it's an int it's three interviews, one with Spielberg, one with Denis Vilneuve, and one with JJ Abrams.

And JJ and Denis talking about how the movie kind of changed their lives and how they see movies.

And then one with Spielberg kind of talking about the movie 40 years later.

And

in that documentary, Spielberg says, I think Arrival is the best movie about alien encounters since Close Encounters.

Like, I think that this is the absolute pinnacle of this kind of a film.

That would probably be tough for JJ, who made Super 8 and is basically like trying to make Close Encounters.

Super 8 is not uttered once during this documentary.

Didn't he make Cloverfield, whatever that one was too?

He didn't direct it, yeah.

Who won the movie?

Spielberg?

Yeah.

Yes.

He's also making another UFO film right now.

He is.

That we didn't talk about.

He's chasing ghosts.

Well, we've never done War of the Worlds too, and War of the Worlds is totally in conversation with this movie.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Craig.

Wait, what was that?

War of the Worlds compared to this movie?

But do you like War of the Worlds?

It's fine.

Okay.

I think it's good.

I think it's very good.

But I don't think it's as good as Close Encounters.

Craig?

My tuba thoughts aside, I do love this movie.

I've seen it.

I've seen a shame.

I do.

I love this movie.

Spielberg is my...

After watching this, it just reconfirmed why Spielberg is my favorite director.

I still think he just makes movies.

Like Spielberg movies are what movies are supposed to be.

He makes the platonic ideal of movies to me.

Like, they are how you are supposed to feel after watching something.

Like, there's no better feeling than the first shot of a Spielberg movie.

Like, you see the camera coming down, you just like feel it.

Um,

and I actually think this movie does not resonate super hard with my generation or has not endured the same way other Spielberg films have.

And I honestly think it's because he made ET too soon after this.

Like, if he just waited 15 years after Close Encounters to make E.T., I think Close Encounters is a way bigger movie for people in my life.

I think the rewatchability of it on the 80s, 90s TV apparatuses really hurt it yeah it was one of the rare ones it was just really hard to watch they could never get the camera right when they would pan and scan on it just never was the same kind of impact and I just think if you're a parent and you want to show your kid an alien movie you're picking ED like you're never going to pick this one first I wonder whether but this has had like a sort of cinematic studies revival like it's a big letterbox movie it's a big like people are like this is top three Spielberg yeah it's been re-released theatrically a couple times and I think it's widely seen as, even though I think it's actually a very mature portrait of parenting, one of Spielberg's most mature movies.

And so it's like E.T.

is a movie you watch when you're a kid.

Jurassic Park is a movie you watch when you're a kid.

Jaws is a movie you watch when you're a kid.

As you're starting to get into adult life and having real responsibility, it's a very powerful movie.

All right.

You did a great job.

Close encounters.

Did a great job, what?

Just on the spot.

You were like, I'm nervous.

I wanted more time in the outside.

I felt like we needed more time, much like Spielberg making the movie.

but we did find we may not have gotten Jay Williams.

I was just going to say you brought Jay Williams to the table, and we'll be forever changed because of that.

Thanks to Craig and Jack, as always, you can watch this on the Ringer movies and thank you to Ronic channel as well.

And thank you to Ronic.

Um,

and we have one more big ass 70s movie next week, which I don't know what it's going to be yet, but it's great to see you guys.

Thank you.

Let's go.

This episode is brought to you by Warner Brothers Pictures.

One battle after another is coming to theater September 26th.

Don't miss legendary writer, director, and producer.

My guy, Paul Thomas Anderson, teaming up with Leo DiCaprio for the first time ever.

Pretty exciting.

They almost teamed together in Boogie Nets, actually, alongside award-winning actors like Sean Penn, Tiana Taylor, and Benicio Del Toro in this hilarious action-packed adventure following Bob Ferguson, an ex-revolutionary, on a mission to find his missing daughter and overcome the consequences of his past.

One battle after another.

Only in theater September 26th.

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