Close Encounters: One Film, Many Journeys

By Debra Mitchell

“We think this means something. We think this is important.”
— Francois Truffaut as Claude Lacombe in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

My brother and I huddled together, shivering in a freak snowstorm as we stood in a long line that curled around Louisville’s Showcase Cinemas. It was 1977, the Friday after Thanksgiving, and we were waiting to buy tickets to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I didn’t think we’d make it. A teenage usher, relishing the authority of his megaphone, warned us every few minutes that we were in the danger zone. Past the danger zone.

Our chances dwindled as the snow fell harder and the landscape of the vast suburban parking lot looked like a staticky television screen. I was a year away from getting my driver’s license. My parents had to drop us off and pick us up at the movies. They hated driving in winter storms, and I was already worried about them coming to get us. My hands and feet were numb, and my little brother’s face had turned cherry-red in the freezing wind. I promised him that we’d get inside and hoped saying the words out loud would act like a magic spell.

Then the line started to move.

I tried to count the people in front of us. The theater held 750 people. I knew this because Cinema Four at the Showcase was my second home growing up. I loved going to movies, and it was the biggest theater in the city with cushy chairs that rocked and an extra-wide screen. I kept losing count of the crowd, but we were inching forward. Slowly.

Finally, impossibly, we squeezed into the lobby, elated to feel warm air and smell hot, buttery popcorn. Dusk had fallen and snowflakes sparkled pink in the lights outside the windows. We were just a few feet away from the ticket counter. My brother and I stopped talking. We didn’t want to jinx ourselves. 

“How many?” the cashier asked.

“Two kids. No adults.” I was so relieved and excited my voice shook.

I gripped the tickets in a tight fist. The movie had taken on a different luster. This wasn’t an ordinary night anymore. Everything felt heightened, tingly. We pressed into the mob at the concession stand to buy our standard treats: Junior Mints and Snow Caps. When we entered the theater, the only seats left were in the middle of the second row. We sank into our chairs and the lights dimmed. The screen stayed dark during the eerie opening notes of John Williams’ score: a tense string section played low, almost like a faint ringing in my ears. Then came a crescendo, taut and sinister… The screen burst into light and the soundtrack exploded in a note of proclamation:

BAH-BAM!

People screamed and popcorn flew across the screen in silhouette in front of us. The audience laughed at itself for being scared. My brother whispered, “Wow!”

Onscreen a sandstorm raged, abstract images appeared: a desert road, a few battered trucks, and a shack. Men wrapped in jackets and scarves struggled against the blowing sand to speak with an old man whose face was cracked and sunburned. The first words I heard clearly in the film were not English, and I remember thinking that was cool.

“El Sol salio anoche, y me canto,” said the old man. He rocked back and forth and repeated the line.

A bearded man in wire-frame glasses translated: “He says the sun came out last night. He says it sang to him.”

I felt like I had stepped onto a dream roller coaster. The safety harness clicked into place. And there was nothing but the cinematic ride for the next two hours and thirteen minutes. I never once thought about school, home, or the snowstorm raging outside the theater. I was on a journey that would affect the rest of my life, and I was not the same person when it was over.

For the first time, I was watching a film that didn’t explain or telegraph exactly what was happening in the story. My imagination was weaving the plot for myself out of quick-cut scenes bouncing from India to Indiana and teased by visions of a mountainous shape and a melody of five musical notes.

The terror of the alien abduction scene was generated not by gore or gross creatures, but by ordinary appliances out of control, a kitchen door opening, a relentless searching light, and the haunting sound of Johnny Mathis crooning, “Chances Are.”

At the film’s climax, when every thread of the story finally pulled together and transformed into a spectacle of sound, music, light, and wonder that remains unparalleled in film history, I remember feeling awe and joy. And when Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) boarded the mothership, I remember crying and being aware that I was experiencing something other than Disney-film sadness, something stranger and more complicated that resonated with the yearning, confusion, fear, and hope that I felt as a teenage girl.

I was already a film music fan, and I bought the Close Encounters soundtrack as soon as it was released. I listened to the score over and over in my parents’ basement. This was the era of vinyl and cassette tapes, and I wore out every copy I made. The music never lost its enchantment.

One summer before I went away to college, my family went on vacation to Myrtle Beach. I played the soundtrack at dawn, driving through the Smoky Mountains. We listened quietly and watched the mist rise and swirl through the pine trees. The music cue was “I Can’t Believe It’s Real.” In the film, Roy and Jillian (Melinda Dillon) are trying to get to Devils Tower, Wyoming – hoping to find answers to the traumatic things that have happened to them. The government has shut down the area, but Roy drives his beat-up station wagon through barrier after barrier until he reaches the foot of Devils Tower, and the elusive image in his mind becomes a breathtaking, mysterious reality. 

There was a mystical transcendence in driving to that music in the mountains. It made me think I was moving toward something important that I couldn’t quite see or comprehend yet. Not long afterward, I took that soundtrack with me to college – my freshman year at Webster Conservatory of Theater Arts in St. Louis.

Webster was a troubled place. The school’s theater program cut half the class after sophomore year. The creepy old dorm, a convent that had been turned into student housing, was supposed to be haunted by the ghosts of  “cut” students who had committed suicide. I never slept well there, and I wandered the halls after dark.

Late one night I heard the Close Encounters soundtrack coming from behind someone’s door. The door belonged to a sophomore journalism student named Kevin Renick. We had met earlier at a theater party called the Wham Fest. (I came dressed as Princess Leia from Star Wars.) Kevin invited me into his room. The wall above his bed was painted with a mural of the album cover for Close Encounters: the image of the empty country road at night, trailing into infinity under the stars. 

I stayed in Kevin’s room for hours talking about film soundtracks and Close Encounters. I tried to put into words what I felt about the film. We drank warm beer and ate stale potato chips. We didn’t get drunk, only slightly buzzed, just enough to heighten our own sense of how profound we were being.

In my memory of the conversation, Kevin thought the movie was about imagination, maintaining a sense of childlike wonder. I thought Close Encounters was about becoming an artist. About seeing things that other people didn’t see and then feeling compelled to express that vision and follow it to difficult places, taking risks and breaking rules. In the film, many people who are affected by the vision of Devils Tower never make the psychic connection with the real place. They never get to Wyoming. I told Kevin that was my biggest fear. I’d be one of those people who had a vision, but not enough drive, guts, or practical ability to make it real.

Before the sun rose, Kevin and I had formed a rare connection, one that has stood the test of time. Ever since that night in 1980 our friendship has generated thousands of stories, adventures, letters, and songs, although we’ve never resided in the same city again.

Twenty years later, I was living in Riverside, a suburb near Chicago, during a summer of heavy storms. In mid-July, a violent wind knocked out the power for a week. I decided to escape the unrelenting heat and humidity and take a road trip. 

I found an old travel book about places “off the beaten track”. One of them was in Devils Tower, Wyoming – a bed and breakfast that used to be a ranger station. The travel guide suggested making reservations months in advance, but I called anyway. There had been one cancellation. I paid for the room on the spot, packed my suitcase, and dug out my Close Encounters soundtrack. In less than an hour, I was on my way.

The road west was like a vintage postcard: blue skies and long, empty highways -- glistening with watery mirages and bordered by endless cornfields. When I reached South Dakota, I felt like a kite that had been flying high in the sky. My string had been cut and I was free, sailing wildly and happily without a guide rope. 

The day I came to Devils Tower, there was a tornado. The sky turned dark green and scraped against the tall grasslands. Hail pounded my windshield. I couldn’t see shit, so I stopped the car by the side of the road. There was no ditch where I could take cover, and I waited out the storm in the front seat while the wind roared around me.

But the storm ended quickly. The sky cleared as if nothing had happened. I drove across the Wyoming border and remembered a snowy November night, standing in line with my brother, closing in on the ticket counter… I was almost there. 

A few miles outside the park, I could see Devils Tower. I played the Close Encounters soundtrack and listened to my favorite cue: “I Can’t Believe It’s Real.” 

I followed a map to the old ranger station. The road was blocked by a fence and a sign that read: NO ADMITTANCE. But I got to drive past the barricade (just like Roy Neary) and take the skinny gravel road to a small house. I parked next to a ramshackle garden and a clothesline draped with sheets. It felt great to get out of the car, stretch my legs, and free my luggage from the trunk. I knocked on a screen door and entered a kitchen that smelled of dried herbs and incense. A young woman wearing cut-off jeans and a flowery blouse showed me the house. The dining room had one table with a cluster of chairs that didn’t match. This place was so remote, there were no restaurants nearby. Eating at the house was the only option. The picture window offered a panoramic view of Devils Tower.

I dumped my suitcase in a tiny bedroom and went straight to the park. I took the path that wrapped around the perimeter of the mountain. It was the day before the summer solstice. A park ranger told me that Devils Tower was a spiritual landmark for Native American tribes in the area. Every year at the solstice, the tribes used to gather and celebrate the summer harvest and peaceful relations. He said that once a year, the rangers led a solstice hike through the valley that once hosted the celebration. The hike ended with a view of the moon rising over Devils Tower. I signed up to go on the spot.

At sunset I went back to the B & B for dinner. Every seat at the table was occupied. We introduced ourselves to one another. One young couple had come to celebrate getting out of debt. Another older couple had come as part of a western vacation.

I talked about how Close Encounters had inspired me to make the trip. Frank, the owner of the B&B, talked about living in a cabin near the park when a gangly kid in a baseball hat pulled into his driveway in a clunker car. The kid asked if Frank knew anyone who could act as his guide. Frank offered to do it. The kid turned out to be Steven Spielberg, scouting locations for the film. He talked about scenes he wanted to shoot and Frank showed him the best places in the park.

The conversation led to space travel, and the man from the older couple said he had worked at NASA during the Apollo missions. I asked him about the navigation computer crashing when Neil Armstrong tried to make the first moon landing. Armstrong was barely able to land manually seconds before the fuel ran out.

“That was my fault,” the man said. “My department. We programmed the computer. Actually, it was Buzz Aldrin’s fault.”

He told us the story of how all simulations for the mission had failed. Every damned one. Well, some parts worked, but they never had complete success at every stage. Aldrin was freaking out. He made NASA program the computer to bring the crew home on autopilot if anything major went wrong. But it took up too much space on the computer. They knew it shouldn’t be programmed past ninety percent full, and now it was at a hundred percent. Sure enough, the computer crashed.

A brilliant starfield appeared over Devils Tower while we listened. The room felt still and solemn, like we were sharing a secret. The meal ended and Frank played the piano — Scott Joplin’s “Solace” – before we went to bed.

The next night I went on the solstice hike. There were only a dozen of us. I was surprised that it wasn’t more crowded. After all, it only happened once a year. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The moon rose on cue, as if choreographed, over Devils Tower.

Our small band of hikers stood together in the darkness. The ranger announced that our journey had ended, but none of us wanted to move. A man standing next to me piped up, “If anyone’s interested, the international space station is going to pass overhead in just a few minutes.”

I couldn’t believe it. Everyone waited. No one spoke. Except the crickets.

All of a sudden, there it was: a cluster of bright lights, clear and silent, moving through the stars. Blinking messages. Or just winking. Goosebumps erupted down my arms. I was watching a real space ship floating over the real Devils Tower, thirty years after I had come to this place for the first time one snowy night in Louisville, Kentucky.

The twelve of us tourists waited, staring up at the sky, watching.

We had made it. We were there. Until the ship disappeared into the stars.