The Legacy of Close Encounters

The year is nineteen seventy seven. If everything's ready here on the dark side of the moon , play the Pak Tones . The movie Close Encounters of the Third Pine Hello everyone and welcome to spool . Yes, welcome to Unspooled. This is a podcast about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must es, and in case you missed 'em, we have covered the AFI top one. That's my line. I'm back. Oh, you're right. My gosh. So sorry again . I'm just back. I'll step off my line. Hello, it's Amy. Hi. We have covered the AFI top one hundred now we are trying out movies from three major lists. The letterbox top two hundred and fifty films with the most fans, the IMDB top two hundred and fifty, and the New York Times one thousand essential films. You know, Amy, if you listen to any of the episodes I did without you . I didn't even say that line when you were not here. Really? Yeah. I thought you were just waiting for me to go away so you could take over the whole intro. Amy, welcome back. You've been gone for a very long time because you were doing your job as the film critic for the LA Times in Cannes. I was, I was in France watching very long, very boring movies, and I was pretty mad that most of them made it to this year's Cannes. Last year's can. Great, this year's can it wow . All right . Hey everybody, one of my favorite podcasts talking pictures is back for another season . You know this? It's from TCM and HBO Max. It's a podcast all about movies and memories hosted by Ben Manquitz, and he gets to sit down with some of Hollywood's most influential actors and filmmakers to discuss the movies that inspired them. I've been on the show. It was the most fun and this season he is talking to people like Egg Wright about pacing and montages in film and Rosie Perez about her acting career and how it kind of just began on accident . He's also talking to Patten Oswald, Susan Sarandon, Hiramoray, who is a director who did a lot of Atlanta and the great news show Widows Bay, Sally Field, Tony Goldwin, and so much more. This season, Ben and his guests are on camera, so you can also watch talking pictures on HBO Max and Spotify or listen wherever you get your podcast. Study come together on a Windows eleven PC and for a limited time, college students get of both worlds. Get the unreal college deal, everything you need to study and play with select Windows eleven PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft three hundred and sixty five premium and a year of Xbox GamePass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn at Windows dot com slash student offer. Law supplies last and jun thiretieth terms at Akka dot mslash college pc ooled. I am Paul Sheer. I'm an actor, writer, director. I did not go to can, but I did appreciate John Travolta 's bere and you know, I was a part of that discourse . And I wanted to know what do you think about John Travolta cosplaying as a director while he was there as an actor ual direct for his short film, which is now currently on Apple called Wait . I know the name of this. I know the name of this because I was there. I was there when he wore the bearet and he got his little palm de Or it was very exciting . Yeah, the movie is called Propeller One Way Night Coach . It is the story based on a little kid's book that he wrote I think like almost twenty years ago and then did the audio book for about thinly fictionalized version of his first gigantic plane trip across the country from the east coast to Los Angeles with his mother who was an aspiring actress on a propeller night coach, which is not a jet that will take you all in one swoop, but more like a cute bus where you hop from thing to thing to thing. It's really like a nostalgia piece about how back in the day airplanes felt so magical. They weren't such a grind and the kid gets jaded and he hates chicken cordon bl ue and that becomes like a total runner. It's the strangest film I've ever seen. It's about an hour long . It was full of just childlike wonder and whimsy. In a way, it's his version of close encounters. It's just he loves planes and Steven Spielberg loves aliens , but I have to tell you, being at Cannes, sitting in that theater, waiting for whatever this movie was, because we had no idea really what to expect. They were playing John Travolta music the whole time. They were playing songs from Hairspray, they were playing songs from Greece. We were all getting pretty amped up. And then he came on stage in his little bearer. And I don't know if people could really see this from the photographs, but not only was he wearing the little beret and the little pocket scarf, he was wearing shiny loafers without socks. He was tray European . And he was just delighted. I think that's the thing I've always loved about Travolta is say whatever you want about anything about that man. He is so sincere . So wearing his heart on his sleeve. He's an I love about him, but I will say this , odd choice to be the narrator of a film where you are essentially the child, that's like the adult version of the child, but then also be in the movie as a character . Oh yeah, he plays, I think the pilot at the end. It's an incredibly Ferd movinieand. I think his daughter plays the airline stewardess that the little kid falls in love with. It's very much about his mother's love life because she's insisting on dressing up and trying to flirt with wretched men because maybe she can get him a new daddy. And she gets some action on the airplane not the mile high wow but you know they park and the plane stops, they get off, they get motels. Hey , whoa. Oh, wow. All right . Well, I gotta watch this one hour long movie based on the forty two page short story propeller, one way night coach just rolls off the tongue . And when he got his honorary poem, he was so surprised and he even was spitting out some little French. He said, I think Treen Croyabble , it was beautiful. Wait a second. He was surprised. Yeah, he didn't know. He didn't know. Terry, Terry , the head of Can, I think he really shocked him. Okay. Or he got limited actor . We know he's a tremendous actor, but yeah, I mean, he got an honorary pomdore. He did. I mean, it wasn't based on his work for this film . It was based on his body of work . I think it was based on getting his body to can having him in the room. It was a little bit of a celebrity thin year this year. Yeah, 'cause I was gonna say another film in Cannes that got a little like hand love the fast and the Furious. Number one , number one and I believe the head of Cannes said it represents the spirit of Cannes? Yes. Fast and furious? You know that I was there too, because there was no way I was going to miss Vin Diesel walking the red carpet to the Gran Palette The big theater. I mean, Travolta played the small theater, this is the big theater . And Vin Diesel, incredibly stoked, wearing a rhinestone jacket that was promoting the last the upcoming Fast and Furious movie on the back. What is it? Fast forever, whatever it's called. And yeah, and we should say, you know, the first Best and Furious did not play can, which was definitely, I would assume not invited to play Can. Then play can? No, but because Can is necessarily too high fullutin. I mean, the year that Fast Infurius came out, it did play Shrek in the main competition, I even believe. But Terry said that Fast Infurius represents , I think I think he called it like the cinema universal , which honestly , yeah, and of everything I saw at Can Watching Fast and Furious was one of the better times I had because it was a lot of two and a half hour movies where nothing happened this year. Over the bummer. But there is a movie everybody's gonna freaking flip out about can I tell you? One, yeah, sure. It's the newest book by Jane Schumbrum. Jane Schumbrum did we're all going to the World Fair. They did. I saw the TV glow. I was kind of me curious on those? I admired the effort, the intent. I didn't love the film. I flipped for teenage sex and death, and I am so stoked for people to watch it. I love this. All right, well great. Well, we will have a lot more to unpack , but you know what, Amy, we can't get obsessed about can because today we have to get obsessed about aliens because the year is nineteen seventy seven and Steven Spielberg is chasing a sp aceship with a bumper sticker that says blockbuster or bust . I mean, or honestly, I guess the question is, how does a thirty one year old director follow up jaws the biggest summer blockbuster in history. I mean, that's the question that's in front of him as he sets out to make his second film. Yeah, I mean, especially when his buddy, George Lucas, just broke Jaws' record with Star Wars, especially when this story that he wants to tell about an alien encounter on Earth is Spielberg's Passion Project. This is the movie that he has been trying to make since he was a little kid with his first camera. He actually even sold the script first but then Jaws happened to run into production . Like this was the movie. So the pressure is on and it is not helping that Spielberg is very aware that he told a big lie to Colombia when they asked him how much close encounter was going to cost and Columbia at this time is pretty broke, not green lighting anything over three million dollars. So Spielberg says oh just two point seven million dollars . Yes, and that number is just a little off . That's right, close encounters will cost nineteen million dollars it will require the biggest sound stage Spielberg can find and major special effects by Douglas Trumble who worked on two thousand one a space Odyssey . Yeah Spielberg will eventually admit that the production of close encounters was quote twice as bad and twice as expensive as Jaws. And you remember when we did our episode on Jaws, the meltdowns they had over the fact that the shark didn't work. I mean, and you remember that the crew wanted to like dump him in the water at the end. Like he shot that final scene in Jaws when he was on an airplane because he didn't want the crew to basically kill him. I mean, not kill him, but to humiliate him. He knew he needed to get out of dodge. So for him to say this is worse as a production experience, wow, and I haven't heard any of these stories. The thing that's interesting about this and I feel like it's a blind spot for me for sure is that this is not really what you would expect a follow up to be. I mean it,'s not a traditional alien movie. It's not even a traditional alien attack movie. It's something stranger . Yeah, it's it's not this here's a shark coming to get the town. I mean, this is a story about a working class father of three. His normal existence just gets knocked sideways by this visit from a flying saucer. And instead of being an action packed adventure, it turns into this contemplative story about a man who gives up pretty much everything, his wife, his kids, his reputation, his existence on earth to chase this vision that almost nobody around him seems to understand. Now Spielberg has been through many drafts of the script, and some the guy was a cop or in others, he's a government agent . And then you know he's like, this guy just makes him, I don't know, too standard heroic. He wants the spectacular to happen to someone ordinary. And his first thought was to cast Steve McQueen to play kind of against his type, to make that star of bullet, which we've done on the show as well, an average guy. And here's the thing , Steve McQueen tells Spielberg , I love this script. It made me cry and that's exactly why I can't do it. He can't cry on command . James Kann, Dustin Hoffmann, Al Pacino, even Gene Hackman Jack Nicholson all say no as well. Now we'll say for Spielberg's benefit. He does finally get to pull this off when he makes war of the world because then he casts Tom Cruise to play against type to be the man who's running from the aliens and not trying to save the day. He finally accomplishes it. It takes him a minute. But here, when it comes to close encounters, he has Richard Dreyfus from Jos just on his jock begging for the part. Richard Dreyfus is going by his office. He's even trash talking the other actors as a joke, being like, he can't do that. Al Pacino, you don't want him. He's not funny. Richard Dreyfus keeps insisting, hey, this part should not have a big star in it playing against type. It should just have a common man, like me . And Drive finally convinces Spielberg to give him this role of Roy Neery by saying four magic words You need a child . That's him. He's the big child. Interesting. Wow, I would never think of him like that , but I love that he framed himself that way. Now Terry Garr is cast as his dubious wife, Ronnie, Melinda Dylan, as Jillian, a nearby stranger, who knows that the aliens are real because they've befriended and abducted her son Barry. That's four year old Carrie Guffy, who , wow, that performance is quite extraordinary. It really is. And you've also got French filmmaker Francois Tufau as Claude Lacombe, the scientist chasing after the alien's strange activity with his interpreter who was played by Bob Balaban. Love it. Now, the movie is sold using mystery. I mean, one trailer is just these phenomenal images with no plot or words and another doesn't show anything from the movie, not even the actors. It's just an empty road over this Close Encounters of the first kind sighting of an unident ified flying object Close encounters of the second kind physical evidence of a UFO . Close encounters of the third kind Actual cont act . Columbia Pictures in association with EMI presents close encounters of the third kind . Now that mystery works because the movie is a major, major, major, major hit. It makes three hundred million dollars. That is enough for it to come in third at the year in box office after Star Wars and I'll give you two seconds to guess what number two was I know this one only because I am very much versed in this lore smoky and the bandit . You are correct. And it gets nomodated for nine oscars, including Director for Spielberg, supporting actress for Dylan. It loses those. It wins two, though. One for cinematography, and a special achievement for sound effects editing, and plus, it has zoomed onto the New York Times list of the one thousand essential movies of all time . Now, Amy, I kind of alluded to this at the start of the episode, but this is not one of the Spielberg movies that I often re visit. As a kid , I remember seeing these images of the film , but I don't really recall watching it. And then I distinctly remember watching it and being incredibly bored. And then maybe within the last ten, fifteen years, I revisited it and I was like, Wow , this is good . And then rewatched it last night and I was like, I think this is kind of great like it is such a mature movie. It feels very different than the Spielberg that we know. It feels very adult. It kind of reminded me of the Testament of Anne Lee in a way It's interesting. And believe me and yeah, I found the movie to be incredibly magnetic. And I was thinking about this because because in nineteen seventy nine, Star Trek the Motion Picture comes out. And that's a movie that takes a lot of time to give you these beauty shots of the enterprise. Like, hey everybody, finally enjoy it. You get to see it on the big screen and it's boring. And all you want to do is like fast forward shots of beautiful models. And here I found myself in rapped attention when you're seeing these miniatures and these ships, there's something about it with the music and the way that he shoots not only the models but the people's reaction to the models that I found myself feeling like Richard Dreyfus. I was completely sucked into this film . Yeah, it feels like a movie that doesn't get bogged down in actually the plot that they would expect. You know, right? Yes, Melinda Dylan, she gets her son kidnapped, but the My Lost Son story never takes over. It's never about, we have to get to the ship to get my last my lost son, right? What the movie really just drills into is this idea of like mystery , wonder, curiosity. Like it is a straight emotion machine. I mean, it really is obsession too. And I think that's the thing that really is fascinating because is trying so hard to figure out happened and this event has affected him so much that he changes, right? Like his life completely falls apart . And , you know, I was thinking about like Spielberg's life and , you know, you could tie a lot of these , you know, thoughts into , you know, whether it's being an addict or obsessed with making your first project, this idea that like the whole world goes by the wayside as you are just trying to excavate this idea and that's what feels so personal to me. Like, you know, beyond the sense that I'm sure that as we know now more a little bit about Spielberg, we see that he was fascinated by religion and the part that religion played on his family. Like there's a lot of themes here, but obsession is the one that he captures so well. And as an audience, you're kind of caught up in that obsession. Yeah, no, I think that's so true because there's like the biographical narrative of why this story matters so much to me, which kind of goes like this. I'm Spielberg. I'm born in, you know, nineteen forty six, nineteen forty seven, which happens to be like the year that the United States goes into this big saucer craze. You know, they say that they see these ghost rockets that don't make any sense because World War two just ended, there shouldn't be these ghost rockets flying away. I grew up obsessed with the sky. You know, when I'm ten, my dad drives me out to watch a Perciid shower. And that's when I say, I am in love with astronomy, I'm in love with science fiction. One summer my boy scout troop goes on a scouting trip without me. I can't make it. And they all tell me when they get back that they saw a UFO and this drives me nuts and I missed it. I have to make this movie about UFOs. That's like the top line narrative of it. But then there's the one that I think you are picking up on that I'm picking up on too, which I think we even get a glimpse of here when you have Franco Truffau a filmmaker, you know, a very famous filmmaker interrogating our hero, I'll say hero with air quotes about what has brought him to this place. Yes, Toxic and coming here, you've exposed yourself to toxic gas . Well, I'm alive. We're to . We're talking to Papillon. This is true, Miss Denny. Prevailing winds were blowing from the south instead of the north. This conversation would not be taking place. There's nothing wrong with the air field . What makes you say that ? I just know. There's nothing wrong with it? What are you saying? Go outside and make me a look, I want to talk to the man in charge. Mr. Lakarm is the highest authority . He isn't even an American. Mr Nire you an artist or a painter ? No . That question, are you an artist? Like he's gonna ask about your head ringing, he's ask about going to this physical symptoms. He's gonna ask if you've been like burned from whatever it is that you saw with the sunburn effect. But are you an artist , right? Like yeah he's been doing the sculpture of this mountain that's possessing him. We've been watching Wellinda Dylan drawing this painting, sketching this mountain over and over again. The other guy too , there's something in the aliens that I think activated an artist . It drew them there. And I think that's exactly what you're talking about. You're Spielberg, you're thirty one, you haven't had kids yet. Maybe you're not even sure you'll have them because you are obsessed with this idea of the thing you have to create, the thing that you have to like see for yourself, that you have to make exist. I mean, like he even said when he was making this film, I can't move my life forward until close encounters is behind me. Where are you off to this summer ? Day trip, weekend trip, week long trip? 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Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing sign up for your one dollar per month trial today at Shopify. com slash realm. Go to shopify dot com slash realm. That's shopify dot com slash realm It's so interesting because I look at all of these, you know, quote unquote great directors as directors who are wrestling with their own kind of desire to be the best and to make something and to put their mark on cinema. And that is really where I feel like he is capturing this voice and to know that this is a production that is so plagued with problems and he's fighting through it every single way. I mean even till the end in this movie is released under duress because essentially Columbia is collapsing, right? And they force him to kind of finish the film before it's done , which is why we have multiple , you know, edits of this film, but there is this true connection of trust me, I know, I know what people need to see. And that's kind of what Richard Dreyfus is doing like, trust me, I'm not crazy. This is I'm doing something that's important. And what is he doing? He is the one human that the aliens have decided like, yeah, he is worthy to go up. Like he is the pure of heart. He is the director that will lead the future, if you will . If you will, but it comes at a massive cost. It's not like the movie ends with congratulations. You were right. We're applauding to you. Your wife's like, Oh, sweetie, I'm so s orry. Go forth. Like he has to give up everything to go there. He has to have this madness that nobody understands. And never second guesses like, oh my gosh, I'm leaving my family and my children. Like there is something about that character where you feel for him. And never do you ever think, wait, wait, he's gonna get on this ship. What about his wife and three kids? Like wait wait, what's going on here? Like and I'll tell you as a father, I could not wrap my head around that at all . And then I go back one more step and go , yes, that's what's going on with the character. And I look at Spielberg and going, Spielberg's like, I want to make this movie and let me cast maybe one of the biggest directors of all time and let me direct him . So it's like it's a power move over there as well. It's like I'm gonna take one of the biggest people and make them work for me in a field that they're not even fully versed in doing and like make them watch you work . Right, I mean, right ? Which I think was really frustrating for Trufo because he made movies on a low budget that wound up being masterpieces. We've done four hundred blows on this on this show before . And here he's like, wait, you're doing this one helicopter shot. It's taking you two takes. And for this one helicopter shot with two takes, I could have made a movie. And I think he's sitting there losing his mind. Well, there's a great story also that like Spielberg was trying to show Trufau how to act out the scenes because you know, there's a language barrier and Trufau just started like im itating Spielberg on the first day and then watched the dailies and was like, Oh , you're making me into a terrible actor. I cannot follow your physical direction anymore. He's like, and Spielberg do credit his. It's like , Yeah, I know, I'm pretty bad . But that's true. Spielberg does not have the thing of I must be in my own movies . You know, I just find that like, yes, you can sit here and go, oh, you know, I was wrestling with trying to make a blockbuster after Jaws, but he doesn't wrestle with it. He doesn't play it safe. He puts up these obstacles in every single way, right? You know, Columbia is the studio who wants a hit. He this is not, I mean, it is a hit. It becomes a giant hit, but this is not a straightforward hit. Like you don't go from the maker of jaws close encounters, right? Like it doesn't feel totally like the same movie and in many ways it feels like two thousand one. Well, yeah, and also think about it coming right after the summer of Star Wars, which has the audience hungry for more trips to space, but this is like you're not going to hang out with aliens, really. You're not going to go on this like, here's my hero doing the good thing saving the galaxy adventure. This guy's gonna give up his kids, which Spielberg has said, you know , once he had kids, he would have never done that plot point. Right. Which, you know, fine, but I kind of love they did because I do too. Yeah. Because I have that, I guess I love that like coldness. No he's giving up in that the movie doesn't even do that sentimental montage of watching his kids grow up without him or anything, they're just gone. They're just gone from the film. Well, to me, one of the most powerful shots in this movie, I really was obsessed with it watching it last night. And I found myself , I'll be honest, sometimes I'm not just sitting down and watching a film. I'm doing other things. And you know, I've seen this a handful of times. And I was cleaning up my kitchen and I had it on my kitchen and I found myself standing still in front of the TV in my kitchen for twenty , thirty minutes just glued to the TV. I was like, I should just take this in the other room at this point. But it kept on pulling me in and the shot that I was thinking about is after Richard Dreyfus has his first encounter , he's at home and he's playing with his potatoes. It's a very famous scene, right? Like where he's start ing to carve this image that he's seen and his son knows something is wrong . And he's watching his dad who's not even really talking. He's just kind of in his potatoes and he just starts crying and weeping and the camera just it's talk about crying. I mean on this boy trying to hold it together but also being like , This is not my dad. This is not right. And I found that to be such a beautiful thing because he's oblivious to his son. His son is completely melting down . it And's for a guy who doesn't have a family at this point , he is capturing I think actually something from his own youth like this you know child not being seen this family life that feels so lived in. I mean, I feel that way in ET, we talked about that as well, but it's like wow, he captures family perfectly. Well, I guess you've noticed a little strange with Dad . It's okay though I'm still dead I can't describe it. Yeah, you're right. He's almost at this liminal age where he can see himself as the son even more than he would see himself as the grown up And what I love about how he does that scene is not only is it silent in that literal sense that you're describing or just the few words out here like what we played right now, but that Terri Gar , the wife is watching this happen and she doesn't even have to say what she's thinking. By the way, we have talked about Terry Gar's career before that she had already done, you know, young Frankenstein. That's not what gets her cast in this. What gets her cast in this is that Steven Spielberg sees her in a coffee ad and he loves how naturalistic she is in this coffee ad a housewife that he's like, that's her, that's the woman. This is the ad. This is what it sounds like. Look, when it comes to coffee, I don't take any chances. I use MJB . Now, heaven knows, some of my friends don't really know the difference. I mean, to them, coffee is just something to drink, but I like coffee . I mean, I really get disappointed if it doesn't taste good . So I have to use MJP because well, because somehow it always tastes good when it should , and I'm not the greatest cook in the world . There is so much dialogue in this movie that goes unsaid , right? You just see in her face everything that's happening. Like he is so wise in this film with withholding information and not having to put everything on the nose that you are just living in this and kind of chasing up after these characters and understanding what they're feeling without them having to turn to the camera and say, help my husband is losing it. Right. You know? It's sort of like the shining in that way, but the shining hasn't existed yet. You know, there's nobody has seen the shining. The shining comes out three years after this, but you're just watching a family fall apart and you're seeing it through just the face of this woman trying to hold it together, the face of the child crying. And I love that it's just a couple scenes after this where they're having that big fight about like we have to go to family therapy. What it is is family therapy. We mean we all go . We all talk. We no one is singled out and maybe it's not your fault anyway it works if it still works you go please Come on guys I don't understand what it is. Get out . Go to your room and close the door . And this kid who's been crying starts calling him a cry baby. And you see that it's like affecting this kid. He made he made the kid cry and it's making the kid so angry that he has to turn it back on him. How dare you make me cry? And I think what the movie does really beautifully is you're watching the family lose their father , but you're watching this man find a higher purpose that as an audience we are support ing. Like never do I think like, oh he should stop, he should stop. Like you can tell that he is absolutely possessed. And I know I talked about this earlier about the special effects, but what makes a special effects in this movie still hold up to this day is he's not shooting ships. He's shooting reactions to ships . A majority of this film is Richard Dreyfus' face just telling us everything . And especially at the end when we get to, you know, this government facility , everybody is staring, but Richard Dreyfus's awe and wonder and joy. It does feel like he is having this like come to Jesus moment and that is what I think makes the ending so powerful because it's not like, oh cool aliens are here. It's like oh no this is beyond that. It is like he's he's giving us an emotional reaction to it, which it's so funny because we see movies about aliens and spaceships and war and all these big things, but we really forget to have that awe of the moment. Wow, I was like, this is such a powerful filmmaking tool that I don't feel people use that much . Yeah, you almost just have to get over it right away. And I mean, this is absolutely no this on independent state, which we had a lot of fun covering. It's like, hey, there's an alien. I'm a punched in the face, right? Right. Yeah, yeah, right. Right. There's just no there's even the awe of seeing the ship like everyone's pausing, but it doesn't feel like there's a joy, right? And I think you know, this movie does a really interesting thing because as you're watching it, you're like, are they friendly or are they evil? And you know, I've grown up in a time where yeah, aliens are coming. You better fucking run, right? And this movie, I think, keeps that tension alive . But the end of the film is so it's still embraces that awe and wonder. I mean , I know it's edited out , but in the mid eighties , Spielberg got a chance to kind of tweak his vision . And one of the things that he added was a continuation of Richard Dreyfus going into the mothership . And that whole ending is really interesting. And he eventually realized that's a total mistake. I should never have shown that I've shown too much . But that ending is about him just standing in the middle of the ship and just looking at it. Just looking at it and just like being home, it's a cathedral, it's a temple. It feels like something even though you're looking at nothing but lights and and not, you know , just light and sound , you know, it 's the effects where I almost feel like the ships aren't even there. Right? It just kind of like the glow and to represent them with the glow. I mean, the version you're talking about is the one that I watch, which I always kind of regret when I do because that's also the one that has like the really clunky use of wish upon a star, which drives me. Right. Yes, yes. This one is the one that I watched, it's there. Yeah That just, I can't handle that. Like when they were even doing the first test screenings of close encounters, audiences came back very polarized from the beginning in the seventies. Don't use Wishapot a star berg like,' Is'm gonna use Wishoponna Star . I don't know why maybe he's like acting like I guess he's acting like dryfless and he's like, we're gonna see Pinocchio. God damn it. I love Pinocchio. This is my movie. This one caused Tetness . What is this? Hey, most play in the town . Pinocchio. I don't know if I 've never seen Pinocchio. You guys have never seen Pinocchio. You're gonna look leave it! Who wants to go cartoon rated G for kids ? How old are you? Eight? You want to be nine? Yeah. You're gonna see Pinocchio tomorrow night . Roy, that is a wonderful way to win over your children. I'm not serious. I'm just saying I grew up with Pinocchio and the kids are still kids. They're gonna eat it up . Okay , okay, I'm wrong. I'm wrong. I'm wrong, Roy, all right? Tell me, you are close to death. Come out here . But I think his like obsession is a mistake because that's the one thing in this movie that just does not belong to him, you know? Right. You hear Pinocchio, you don't think of Spielberg. You think of Disney. It's just wrong. You just can't do that. Like you can't take away from his own vision with that. I think it's bad enough honestly that he makes the alien starships play a little bit of jaws, that music right here. Yes Yes, it's like such a bop and then it becomes jazz . I know. I was so and look, there's also something you can say for like this is John Williams and him collaborating . And I feel like the iconic sound that do equally as impressive as the jaws theme, right? We are familiar with it . And that's that I got my cat to come when I whistle that, right? Oh, really? Oh yeah, because you know, my cat loan Williams. So when I whistle John Williams, he runs in from the backyard. That's our new one. I got him to do close encounters. It's pretty great. I love that. But John Williams, I think is playing with simple melodies and there was a part of me that was like, Is this cheeky or is this like again , it's a little like it's showy right cute . It's like oh yeah, I can do this now. I can do whatever I want. You love me right yeah yeah he does it it's a little bit rim like you maybe you trust your own vision, which is great, but maybe you don't trust your own reputation 'cause you have to remind me of it. Right. And I also think what's so beautiful about it is the aliens are teaching way to communicate through sound, right? And they're trying to connect with them . And I love how I love first of all how the original sound is coming out of this chant, a very religious chant. You talk about speaking in tongues and being like possessed and the sound is coming out of that group of people like in, is it India where they're all just in Northern India? Yeah, where they're chanting together. It's like and it's like wow and they're trying to capture that and like every you know group of people have been touched with a different part that kind of connects one to the other and I love that. Like that's that communion of all voices as one . And I think the minute you start to add something that's familiar , it actually dilutes the new sound or the new like the you know, the fact that that went from a chant to like cassio style music you're, you know, that kind of synth music is kind of the really beautiful evolution of it. So you don't want to hear anything that sounds familiar. I get it. I get it. And although it did make me smart when I was like, wait a second, is that Disney? I literally had the thought, is that Disney, and then I had the thought? Is that Jos Didn't yeah, it didn't seem cool though to me I love that you're talking about that village scene because to me , you really get the sense of , oh, Spielberg has all the tools because the amount of extras in that scene, oh my goodness, the amount of like running, taking in all of those real people , chanting, singing at the costumes. This film feels huge because of those little shots like that. You know, like, I love that he's keeping this in a small world where we're watching his dad and that we're seeing his emotional struggle. But every so often he pops out and you're like, whoa. Also a weird funny story about the scene, apparently the guy that they h ired to handle the extras in India taught them the five note chant, but taught them the wrong five note chant. For some reason he screwed it up. And so they had to keep stopping because everybody was chanting the wrong one . Oh my god . Yeah. But I kind of love that because this is a film about, I would say, the difficulty of communication . So much of this film feels almost like a seventies movie with overlapping communication , struggles in human communication, people talking over each other all of the time. I mean, it opens with this whole sequence of like, Hey, we're in Mexico, some people are speaking Spanish, some people are speaking English. Hey, we've got to translate to this French guy. There's this collision of languages before you even get to the musical language . He says the sun came out last night . He says it sang to him . Irin K Musol it is the new EC ESA taper of the week . And then it cuts from there to a scene of these air traffic controllers trying to talk to these pilots who are experiencing some sort of unidentified flying phenomenon and they're doing it like an altman mo vie. I love that about it. It's like one controller talking on top of another controller talking on top of another real controllers too. Like he cast actual air traffic controllers, I believe, for that sequence. Yeah, I think so because they had to shoot the sequence before anything else because they had to somehow film something before this end of the year for like a tax break. I don't even understand. And he didn't have the cast red yet, so he was like, well, we got to do a scene that has nobody in it. But to hear, it almost feels like you're watching the seventies turn into blockbuster filmmaking again. And I love that in here. Okay, senator, Early Windsor . He's getting away from my wing heel. We're turning away immediately and I'll safe by here now. Are we thirty one to send and maintain flat level three zero. Great, allegeny triple four turn right thirty degrees. You get on the order of the forty fifth three part of the way. See, what the hell are they getting test? Are we jettisoning to basically do any test operations restricted area of two five zero eight. Are you thirty one Roger? I guess what I'm building to is like, yeah, this movie is so much at its core about communication too. We're trying to communicate with these aliens. We're learning their song . Butw meanhile, we're back in this house where everybody there is like yelling on top of each other, everybody there is fighting, and he and this wife cannot communicate about what he saw and why it's important, or at least not in a way where she's willing to listen, not in a way where he's able to understand how much he's scaring her . Yeah , I mean, I don't think you can see anything else because he's so solely focused Fourth of July savings are happening now at the Home Depot with select appliances starting at three hundred and ninety eight dollars. Plus, get free delivery on appliance purchases of three hundred and ninety eight dollars or more, no membership required. Upgrade your kitchen with a modern and sleek G profileE refrigerator featuring hands free autofill for the perfect pour every time. And make laundry day easier with two in one washer dryer combo innovation that completes laundry in about ninety minutes. Shop top brand appliances now at the Home Depot offer about june seventeenth to July at USLC Store online for details . When you finally find your thing, you want the whole world to know about that thing . So you use a thing called Canva to make it an even bigger and better thing . Whether you want to create flyers for that thing, make presentations for that thing, or design merch for that thing, you can do anything so people can see your thing, feel your thing, love your thing . The next thing you know, it's a thing . Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing. I also think that the time in which this movie is being made is informing some of these decisions as well because we're coming off of Watergate and the government has lied to us and they've lied to us in a major way. And I think I mean my God, I can't believe it . And I think that was an awakening for so many people . If that's true, what else are they doing? Like what else is going on here? And this idea that everybody else is just following the path. Oh, it was this. Oh, it's a it's a toxic waste leak. People aren't questioning anything. And this movie is about like can you question the government? And it's interesting because this government is viewed in I think two different ways. Like you would think that the government is out here to hurt the aliens. What we find out is the government is trying to learn from them. They have a bigger plan. We don't know what that plan is. They're not even necessarily know if it's just our government. Like why is there this French guy there? What's happening? Yeah. Well, I and think that also the French element of it kind of represents this other side of government, right? There's to your point, like, are you an artist? There's two things. One is we are a government, we are going to take care of this. We are looking at this and the other is like about the humanity of the experience . And it's interesting that that's the way that the movies split . Like Trufau's character , you know, when he looks over at D reyfus is like, I envy you. I envy that you are able to be in this position . And then the US government kind of uses him . You know, like, okay, great, we got our guy in here. We'll put him in a red suit. We'll get him on the thing. And it's it's this battle of who do we believe, why do we believe ? And yes, the government's using him, but he's also using the government and you know, can't we just be in this moment without actually doing anything? There's a lot going on here because yes , does the government cover up things? Absolutely . But I would argue that in the last even six to eight months, we've seen so much stuff about UFOs and whether or not you want to believe the extent of the footage that we've seen , at least we know, well, this footage is finally being released . Can I admit that I haven't had the brain wave to look at it, which is so strange ? I think I was going to wait my entire life to see alien footage and for some reason. I'm like, I can't click on it. There's something in me that's just like, no, I'm brain my won't take it right now. I mean, I think in many respects, it's very much unident ified flying objects is what we're seeing . And everyone can create their own story for that. But I do think that this is a movie about taking back your independence. Like I'm going to follow what I want and I'm going to get what I need and I'm not going to take everything lying down. Like I think that that's an energy that definitely is coming out of this post watergate era . Well, it's funny because one of the script notes that Steven Spielberg got back when he was pitching this because he wanted to pitch this movie as this is UFO's in Watergate. And a news reporter that he was telling the story to was like, Don't you think that if aliens were real, Nixon would be telling people so that people would stop talking about Watergate ? And it kind of rattled him like, oh, wait, that's really good, that's a really good point. And what I find interesting about the way he writes the movie instead is that these people seem to know everything that's going on or at least they have an idea, right? But they never tell us. Like even within their own movie, we're watching them run around, but they're like, What's over there? How much fuel does that have? And nobody's stopping to explain what's happening. Right. It's actually not even important, right? It's like they're working on their own thing. Like we don't need to know what their science is or what they pulled together. And I love that they know that these aliens are coming with all of these people or at least they suspect that they're coming with all of these lost pilots, which are actually based on real things. Like the pilots, the ships, everything that they're talking about are all real cases that disappeared back when people were talking a lot about the Bermuda triangle. You know, flight nineteen, that was like, I think six planes, twenty seven people vanished in nineteen forty five, the Kotapaxi that boat that you see in the desert, that's nineteen twenty five and like thirty five people vanished. And so they have this board of everybody they expect to be on that they've already made . They've already made it, you know ? But yeah, you just get these little glimpses that they know so much more than whether they're even telling us in the audience . Well , I think that conspiracy is something that obviously has been with us for a very long time, but definitely now you can so many more voices to echo and support your own theory theories and what he's kind of doing and what Rodger Dreyfus does here is he leaves behind the society that he knows and he starts this path and in many respects I, think it incredibly powerful about how a belief can make you act in ways you would never act. And I'll go to like january sixth. You know, I think a lot of people who participated in january sixth were under this same kind of delusion. Like when Richard Drive is like, we're going to drive through this , you know, fence to break into this site . Like he's not a that's that's out of character for him, right? But I know there's something there. I'm going to take off my mask because I know it's okay to breathe the air here, right? Like he's made all those same choices . It turns out that he's right , but you can also go down that path and be wrong . And I think that's the interesting side of conspiracy too. Like when do you stop believing? Because a movie like this will say, well , it's still happening. You just didn't catch it. Like right, he could have been he could have been extracted, but he made a choice and he stayed , right? At every given point, they put those dead animals out there and he was like, No, we're going to keep on going, right? They're actually unconscious sleeping animals. Okay, yes, which really they did in real life. They knocked out animals in real life and hid them and like they look so convincing in a message do not drive this way . But I think that's what's so that's what's so interesting to me is that idea that when you believe something wholeheartedly , you will move heaven and earth to see it through . And I think there's something really beautiful about that. It's dangerous too, right? I mean, the reason why we like this movie is because well, he was right , but you know, what if you're wrong ? Yeah , but even on the path that leaves right or wrong, he gets to build this new community. You know, he gets to befriend Julian and he gets to even befriend that guy who he temporarily gets to hang out with because they're like running up the mountain together until the guy gets exhausted and like falls asleep with the sleeping gas and skids down. And I love that little detail that when the buddy that they're running with skids down, like Larry, that's his name. When Larry is trying to climb up that boulder and gets too tired, he skids down and you just see his awkward socks like there's something so realistic in how sloppy everybody looks, how messy everybody looks? And even the movie that the sloppiness of the emotions that he's gonna go down there and talk to those aliens. And yeah, Jillian 's not going to come with him, but they're gonna share that goodbye kiss. And the movie's not even more realistic about it. It's not like , are you cheating on your wife? It's like, hey, you're having you have this connection with a person who actually believes you, you know, trusts you. And you're saying goodbye to humanity and they have almost I really love the connection that they have and this conversation right here that's like the build up to their kiss. I want to see better. I can see fine. We can't stay here . I can . Why? Because Barry's not here . I'm just not ready I can't I can't stay. I've got to get down. I know I love that in his last moments on Earth , this character found understanding. And of course, I'm picturing like, how does his wife even explain what happens? What does she know? The government is like lying in saying there's some sort of contaminant in the air. They're not going to tell her that her husband went to outer space . But you know, what I found so fascinating about her story is how when her son comes back it feels like part of that obsession fades away too , right? Like she I think Richard Dre yfus's kids came off that ship, they weren't abducted. But if they did, like he would still be going towards it. And so they are like in the same boat, but they're going in different directions or you know, they have different destinations, I should say, because she I think is appreciating the aliens and was called to them to get her son back , but she wasn't as obsessed. We don't even know what Richard Drephus is feeling because it is an internal movie. Like what is he feeling? What is he ? What does he know? What do they see of him? Why is he more special than the others? And he clearly is , but we don't know why . Yeah, or is he maybe even not that much more special? He's just the one who made it there. Like I bet they would have wanted to take her too if she'd wanted to go. You know, I mean, even at the end , I think he's still getting interrogated by Trufo. What do you want? Right? Like here? Right . Why do you want ? I just want to know that it's really happening . The idea that he just wants to know, that he just wants to know that it happened, that it was true , that sounds so powerful , right? Yeah. Well, I mean to know that you're not crazy ? I think he wants to what else is out there, right? Like my life changed, that one moment where he is in the truck and the light comes on and he has that moment . He is forever changed because it's like his mind has been opened to something that he had never conceived or could conceive. And I love how he stages it, right? Where you have, oh, it's a set of headlights behind you. Go forth, go forth. A car drives by. Oh, it's a set of headlights before you or behind you, go forth, go forth. And then they just raise and float up above him. Like, oh my goodness, what? It's so prof ectly creepy. I was thinking about it because you know, with backrooms coming out and all sorts of things, I've been thinking a lot about how scary it is when the mundane does something unexpected. You know, entering those worlds where I know how a stop sign is supposed to behave. Why is that stop sign rocking back and forth? That I find that eerier than if a gigantic, you know, fang on fang on fang alien came out and it was like , at L meook. I want to bite your face off. Like I don't care. You know, I love how Spielberg takes the normal tactile and makes that unnerving . All the toys turning on, the being inside the house when all of the appliances suddenly come alive and you're hearing I love how you're hearing like kind of the split reaction of Melinda Dylan screaming because Spielberg has not told her that any of this is going to be happening. So she's like actually finding out in real time that her stove is going to be coming alive and yelling at her. And the little kid who has gotten his secret private walkthrough of no, this is all going to come alive and it's amazing, just being delighted in that contrast between like her screams, his giggles, like, can we listen to that for a second? You know what it kind of reminded me of? It reminded me of who framed Roger Rabbit, that opening cartoon where Baby Herman is crawling through the kitchen and like causing disaster and Roger Rabbit is the adult who's panicking . Yes, yes . I love that. Well, I want to just talk about that kid, the four year old because you know, I think at the core of this movie , this is a film about communication . Lack of communication, how you communicate, what you communicate. And the first moment that we really get to explore in this is this boy's reaction to waking up in the middle of the night. He comes downstairs . He sees the fridges open, everything's on the floor like ET . I mean, there are almost beat for beat visuals in this movie that look like ET and Polter. Malians like to raid refrigerators, kids with single mothers are very prone to befriending aliens A lot of stuff single mothers are kind of losing it a little bit. They're blonde they're crazy, they go to sleep in their jean shorts. Like by the way, that kid does look like one of the aliens too. At the end of the movie, oh, did they get him because he looks like them? But in a cute way, like I think he's cute, but the aliens are too. Yeah. I mean, the aliens are little kids in costumes. I think it's like fifty six year old girls from Alabama. They just put them in these little costumes where they couldn't they couldn't take them off easily if they had to pee. So like having to take fifty six year old girls into the bathroom very difficult, very difficult. And also the first time they saw the masks , some of them cried and they had to make them less scary . But there, but this moment when he first looks at the alien , I don't know what they were doing off camera. And I think that the one thing you can say about Spielberg is his talent for directing child actors is unmatched. The kids in this movie look like kids. It's before this era of like actors that like look like they're, I don't know, like thirty year old , you know, or they're held together a little bit more. These kids look ragtag , but that performance of the boy reacting to, we don't see what he's reacting to, you know, but we see it all in his face. Same way that Richard Dreyfus looks at the ship. He's so happy and he's there's this communication here and that clip that you just played is like this what may be scary to some is pleasant to others . That's like, you know, that's true faux point of view too. It's like this idea of how do you communicate in a world where your no might be somebody else's yes is somebody else's happiness ? Yeah, totally. And I mean, I know how they got their performances out of at least those actors . I mean, one thing that Spielberg told the actors on set, the adult ones is he said, just imagine the person that you love most in the world when you look up at the sky. You know, so Melinda Dylan said that she was imagining her grandmother . But for the kid, what they did is they waited, they honestly waited for that little kid to fall asleep, like for real. They put him in the prop bed, everybody waited until he fell asleep, and then they woke him up naturally with the toys , so they're getting his actual reaction to what's happening. Wow. And this kid is not an actor. Like this kid was, I think he was like in preschool or something, and one of his classmates was the niece of the casting director. And so she just saw him in the classroom and she was like, That's the kid. They just complete random look that they just thought he had the right face . And so they wake him up from this nap and he's seeing all of these toys. And he's like, Oh my goodness. And he walks downstairs and what they are doing is they're hiding some people behind a giant piece of cardboard, right? So he would look at the cardboard and then they'd lower the cardboard and it would be Steven Spielberg dressed up as a clown. And then they'd raise it back up, and then they'd lower it again and it would be somebody dressed like a gorilla and he'd be like, Oh no. And then they'd drained it up again and it would be a friend of his and like, oh okay I trust that guy and then he'd look more natural and he would smile Wow. I love that sequence it's again it sets the tone for the movie, right? Like you don't feel like this kid's in danger and I think that that even helps you with the with the boy being taken, you're like, all right, he'll be cared for. Something good is happening here Unless it's an evil trick, but it doesn't feel like it, but you get that tension. You know, the sky looks so red and so scary that you're not sure what to expect. I mean, Spielberg has said like if he could sum up his career in a shot, it would be that little kid from behind staring at this red sky and you don't know what to expect. I love that the mom is like, I'm locked in the door and the kids like, but I'm opening it. These are my friends. By the way, tiny fun fact about this kid, Carrie Guffy He after this was offered playing the kid in the shining. Oh wow. Did he turn it downed? Because his parents were like, School is really important. When he turned eighteen, they gave him all of the money that he had earned from acting, which turned out to be about one hundred thousand dollars. He burned through pretty much all of it. You bought like a car, he was an eighteen year old who had just gotten a gigantic amount of money. By that point he was done with acting, so he became a financial planner. Oh, interesting. Yeah, he's still a financial planner. You could hire him to help him. Money there, it'd be great. Yeah. He's like, I made mistakes with my money from acting. Let me teach you how not to do that. You know , I also want to just go back to communication for one second and think about how that also ties into Spielberg as a person who is directing these big ideas and you know, whether that's jaws or close encounters , he has these things in his head and he's trying to communicate them. And sometimes people don't get it . I mean, famously on this, Julia Phillips , a very big producer who wrote a book about her, you know, her substance abuse problems. Like she was so cracked out on this set that he had to like fire her. She was the producer of the film and she was like banned from the Columbia a lot. Like so he was dealing with just different people. He's in India. The person gets the wrong notes, right? Exactly All this stuff where I think what the movie might be saying is like go slower , tolerate people. Like there's there is something there if you actually stop and listen or if you try to get away from yourself and your own preconceived notions, you can maybe find a deeper meaning . And I could see a guy who has first two sets are nightmares where no one is really fully getting him . Like, wow, like what that means, you know, for him to be like, no, no, no, you may not get me, but like just listen to what we're trying to do and we could work together and you know so much about filmmaking in this . Yeah, I mean luckily the movie he makes after this, everything goes really well and it's thought of as a gigantic hit . Sorry. Yes. Me making a terrible joke about nineteen forty one. Oh my gosh, I thought UT was the next one. Oh my gosh. Wow, wow. nineteen forty one and then Raiders, which I feel like you can really see them working out a lot of Raiders when they're traveling abroad and then it's so fascinating and like look, I have a feeling that, you know, sometimes I was talking about this with a friend , you get into a position where you're like, you know what ? Yes, that production was flawed and we but we got it and the quality was great. You run out of those every now and then, right? Like you can sometimes pull it out of your ass , you know, a couple times, but it does it's not the only way to do it ninet.een And forty one does feel like one of those movies, I got it, I got it. And you don't. You don't got it. You don't got it. I mean, he could do humor. He can do humor, but I like it when he mixes the humor into the craziness that's happening. Like nineteen forty one, the jokes do not land. Here you got a guy trying to sell gas masks to people that lands. And now you're gonna be real disappointed and sorry if you don't have one of these early warning systems such as a bird, a gas mask. Why even my dog has a gas mask? And any of you folks are worth more than a dog ? By the way, just speaking of the random bits of humor in this film, I love how people's reactions to the spaceship when they see them or when they're really just hearing the stories is to try to figure out how to relate it to something they know. Like that conversation he has with Terry Gar where he's trying to describe what it looks like is she's just clinging to normal things like a taco right, ? I mean, trying to translate the unknowable is so difficult. I love how the kid is just saying stuff like ice cream. You have these things that sound like non sequiturs, but those non sequitters make it feel real. Well, and I think that like, you know, most communication is like that house is full of chaotic communication. Like everyone's yelling at each other, but they're not they're not angry at each other, but like just wires are constantly getting crossed . And you know, it says something about humans. Like they're limited. And I think that that's the whole idea of like the music. Like music is a little bit more finite and true faux, you know, does that hand gesture because it's like at least we can we can't is interpret this because he's somebody also who is having a hard time being understood and a hard time understanding, right? When he's talking to the old man who saw the planes appear in the desert, right? Like he also doesn't understand what's going on , right? There's a constant level of lost in translation that you know and humans are innately going to be flawed with it because they are they can't explain bigger, right? They can't like he can't like you said, he can't explain exactly what he's seeing. So it comes to like literally bringing the trees in from the outside or drawing these images like it is a how do you articulate this feeling, this belief? And you know, I think that that's, you know, what probably some of the best religious figures and and and not influencers, but like people like Tony Robbins, you know, are great at, which is like articulating a feeling that is hard for people to put words to. Wait, exactly right . Like that's what brings these two parts of this film together because it's like about obsession among a family man, among an artist and it's about communication , you're exactly it. That's exactly it. Spielberg made this movie to communicate what it's like . Because if you couldn't use words, which they can't, and you have to do it through sculpture, you have to do it through film, making the movie is just the next way . It's making it dimensional. I like that little bit where they're saying, Oh, Devil's Mountain. Oh, I thought it looked like this from the other side, but I guess I only drew this one angle because this one angle's all I have. But because Dryfas is a sculptor, he's like, No, I saw it from all the directions. Making a film about that then is every direction. You can do the whole thing. You can tell the whole story. And I think there's something really interesting about this film because it feels very mature. It feels like a very adult film . And it actually is a lot more in line with the Spielberg of Schindler's List and of Munich and you know this not to say that he's incapable of making adult films, but for such a long time , he was making movies that were these giant family friendly blockbusters that were beautifully shot and wonderfully acted. But I'm really curious about what pulled him in that direction because it seems like nineteen forty one's a failure. So he kind of leans into how can we create a hit and does that? And I wonder if he like there's a fear of failure again , right? And so you go in this path and then he works up enough to, you know, on Jurassic Park two to be like, All right, now I'm actually going to start making these movies that I wanted to make. Not to say that he didn't want to make these other ones, but it does feel like he's going in one direction. Maybe I'm totally misreading it, but that's no but I can hear that. I can hear that. I think you're queuing into the anxiety of I have to remind you guys that I made jaws. Right. I mean, in a way, what you're, as you're describing that kind of psychology, what I'm picturing is here's a man who just made a film about how even this adult man with connections to the earth and a wife and three kids has the belief, has the ability, has the freedom, should have the freedom to dream , right? Right? To have an imagination to explore his own desires . He's making this argument that imagination and wonder doesn't only belong to the young, that it belongs to the young and the middle aged and the old alike. You get all of the generations in this movie . But then maybe he doesn't seem to believe that for himself. He's almost making a movie about like I deserve to do this, I deserve to tell stories and to disappear into my imagination. Part of why he said he was nervous to even cast Dreyfus in the first place is that Dryphus reminded him too much of himself . You know, that was like casting him self in this role and it made him uneasy , but it is a biography of him in a sort, as we're explaining. You know, it's a biography of a young kid his age in love with aliens, and then the adult man risking his mature life story to chase his dreams. And yeah, it is interesting that then he doubles back and he's like, I'm getting off the spaceship. Here's nineteen forty one. Oh dear, what have I done? Let me get back on the spaceship. Let me make rats, which I've proven that I can do. I know that I can marshal to like foreign lands and command a set of giant extras . But it's fascinating. Like, I guess you'd aren't born with the confidence always, or you have the confidence only in flickers and flashes. Well, I mean, also nineteen forty one was such a disaster that you do feel like I don't want to be in that position again. I mean , even though Jaws is a gigantic success, I think we've all seen that clip and we talked about it in the episode where he thought he was going to like sweep the Oscars and barely got nominated, right? Or I don't think he did get nominated, right? So he's like recording it because he's certain that he is. Right. And so there must be on some level like he failed there. Yeah , right. I don't mind that because I feel like you have to fail in order to learn from a failure. Like maybe he had to make nineteen forty one . Right. In order to come back to Earth . Ooh . I just really love this film and I think that it's a more accessible two thousand one and I love two thousand one But I think it you can see his influences there . And I think you can also see what he brings to things that Kubrick does and we talked a lot about the shining in this. I think there's humanity to it. There, you know, there isn't this humanity in the shining with Jack Nicholson as much as there is with Richard Drevas. And I would love to see like if Spielberg tackled the shining, I bet you would feel more for Jack Nicholson's character. You probably would. You probably would . Although yeah, I guess Kubrick doesn't care if people identify with how much he gives up his entire life to make art. Who knows? I know. Maybe that's a quick, I don't know if I believe it, but I'm going to say it right now . But I guess what was so interesting to me was that this movie actually did work . And I think it was partly because of the time and audiences probably had a lot more patience to sit and watch something like this. I think it preyed upon their fear of what else is the government hiding. And this want to break free of this malaise. Like, you know, I think this is also a story about middle age. Where are we? What are we doing with our lives? Like, am I meant for something higher ? And I think that it was at a time , you know, we talk about like, oh the great seventies directors, this movie fits in that mold really well. Very much, very much, very much. And with this context, it makes me really curious to see Disclosure Day and to see how in older states man Spielberg relates to aliens and wonder. Like, I haven't seen it yet, you haven't seen it yet. I am curious if it has any connection to the fact that when he made this film, he said, You know what ? People have asked me to do a se quel to close encounters or a prequel . I don't think I can because he feels like doing a story about this cover up that he's alluding to is so big that it would take somebody else making the picture to give it the equal time that it deserves. I don't know yet if Disclosure Day is a sequel or a prequel. I'm imagining that it is just because I think that would be sort of fun. Well, I think the idea that it exists in the same world is really fun. Yeah., right And I keep on hearing this idea that it is about shedding more light this world, but it's not necessarily like, you're not going to see like Richard Dreyfus get off a ship . You may just see him slip off a chair on a Bill Mar. Richard Dreyfus has been on this ship longer than these nineteen forty five pilots though. Wow. It would be great if he hasn't like completely lost his mind that he would be on there. But I also don't know if you need it because I think that what Spielberg is really obsessed with is talking about , you know , are we are we preventing an opening of our own minds culturally by not letting us see the aliens and making all the people who have had these experiences feel like they're absolutely crazy , right? Are we preventing a true contact? And I love that at the time that this is released, you mentioned this before, like, why wouldn't Nixon release alien information because it would distract from Watergate. We're in a time where our president is releasing alien information to distract from Epstein . And Spielberg basically gets to do a press tour around real new alien information about a movie about the government hiding alien information . I think what I could have never predicted as a kid is that we would get alien information and we would not care . That's the startling thing to me. Like that there could be a disclosure we're like, okay, cool, anyways, back to reality, why is gas dollars? But yeah But you know , I'm excited I'm very excited to see this film and if anything, if the aliens simply just look like the aliens from close encounters , I'll be happy . You know, and I mean, it might be as stealth of a callback as like a tiny archer D two on the ship that happens here. I'll take it and again, just, you know, watching this and seeing that he's like answering his own movie, but I didn't realize how much of a stamp this movie put on the future of alien films . Like he personified certain things in mainstream culture