[innerSpaceman]

(continued)

But here’s what’s still different about Close Encounters of the Third Kind ...

1) Right after Roy Neary’s first close encounter, inside his truck at the stop sign, a new effects shot of a UFO shadow passing over Roy’s truck was inserted for the Special Edition. The new DVD uses "trim" footage of Roy’s truck driving through a tunnel as a restoration, but there is likely still a brief shot missing from this segment. Tiny difference.

2) The actor Roberts Blossom plays an unnamed old coot character who "saw Bigfoot once" and is mysteriously present and waiting with his hillbilly family when Roy and Gillian first see the UFOs whiz by on the highway, and are pursued by police cruisers. After the police zoom by, and before Neary says the line, "This is nuts!" ... Blossom’s character had a line, "They can fly rings around the Moon, but we’re years ahead of them on the highway." The restoration uses an alternate-take shot of this line, and inserts it in the wrong place. It uses a very long shot with a car headlight in the foreground and Blossoms way in the background. The original was a much closer, waist-up shot of Blossom. And of course, the line makes zero sense if it’s uttered before the police drive by in pursuit. Nice try, but this is still a minor difference from the original film.

3) The first scene of Roy and the mountain he’s built in the center of his miniature train setup is GONE. Missing Forever. Arrggh. It’s part of the really important progression of Roy’s descent into seeming lunacy and a vital element of Roy’s obsession with the "shape" that was a central theme of the original movie. In this scene, we are introduced to the train set mountain and the "shrine" Roy’s assembled in his hobby room of newspaper clippings and Star Trek model spaceships. In the scene, Roy promises Ronnie he’ll give up the crazy obsession if there’s no positive result at the Air Force News Conference (the following scene). I remember the Enterprise and Klingon ship models got a laugh from the audience, and a prominently displayed magazine cover of projected NASA ships of the post-Moon-landing future is also one I cut out of that magazine as a kid. (It’s still visible in the far background of the existing versions of the film when we now first see the clippings and Star Trek models much later). Big, substantive difference. Entire Missing Scene.

4) There is still some missing footage from the start of the following Air Force News Conference scene as Roy and Ronnie are waiting in the reception area - before Gillian arrives in the scene, hounded by reporters about her missing son, Barry. Obviously lost when the prior scene was cut. Sloppy, but a small difference.

5) The second scene of Roy and his miniature mountain is one of the most important scenes in the entire movie and it’s MISSING and assumed LOST FOREVER. In it, Roy is seen getting more intuitive about transforming the mountain into the "shape" he’s had implanted in his mind. Just after the scene where the audience learns about a butte-shaped feature called "Devil’s Tower," Roy for the first time starts carving grooves and ridges into his mountain sculpture. This was a particularly suspenseful scene for the audience because, even though most people were not familiar with Devil’s Tower before it was popularized by this very film in the late ‘70's, the audience had just figured out all Neary had to do was lop the top off his mountain. He was getting warmer and warmer as he carved ridges and was just about to have the all-important epiphany ... when he’s called away to dinner. On the menu: Mashed Potatoes.

Since 1980, all versions of the film would have you believe that Roy Neary has never sculpted the "shape" until he starts doing so with a fork in a pile of mushy spuds. The action of obsessed mashed potato carving is still funny as a silly thing to do. But there is no set up for this big joke. The audience never sees Roy carving his mountain. Worse and stupider ... we never see Roy losing his marbles. He’s just suddenly insane.

In all modern versions of the film, we last see Roy on the mountain road waiting for the UFOs to return. Military helicopters show up instead. Roy is just beginning to notice the "shape." Here, he sees it in a pile of dirt being molded the little kid, Barry. Earlier in the day he saw it in a blob of shaving cream and (in some versions) an upturned pillow. After an interlude about LaCombe in India and Barry being abducted by aliens, we next see Roy at the Air Force News Conference and then sitting down for Mashed Potato dinner. There’s no indication that his obsession with the "shape" has progressed into his own sculpture attempts, or that his UFO obsession has progressed into shrine-making. (The element of him building an observation platform on his roof was cut from all versions of the film, but you can still see it when Ronnie leaves home with the kids a little bit later in the movie.)

One minute, Roy’s a mildly curious man ... and the next he’s a completely bonkers mashed potato masher. His growing obsession with The Shape and losing his grip on day-to-day realities, while a central element of the original movie, is now eviscerated in all remaining versions of this iconic film. In fact - until the film breaks out into action mode and UFO encounterism in its final act, this is what the movie was ABOUT. And yet, all semblance of it is gone - - even in the so-called "Director’s Cut" - which leads me to sadly assume the footage has been irretrievably lost.

In the very next scene after the mashed potatoes incident, where we NOW see the model train mountain FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME, the effect is jarring. It’s palpably obvious to almost everyone who saw the original film that - wait a minute - that mountain’s "been there" since long before "now." (Less obvious, but still within the realm of recollection, is that the Star Trek models and newspaper clippings "first" seen in an even later segment have also "been there before.").

BAH on this. Very important Missing Scene. The two missing scenes represent a BIG DEPARTURE from the original movie, and frankly ... Roy Neary’s character arc just does not make sense without them.

Though they may be legitimately (if negligently) lost ... it is purely fraudulent to label any version that doesn’t include them as the 1977 Original Theatrical Release.


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