Great Scene: “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”

A cinematic moment in Spielberg’s classic science fiction movie.

I believe Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) is the only movie for which Steven Spielberg has a sole “written by” credit. As such, it’s interesting to compare Spielberg’s screenplay to the movie. Here is an example: When the story’s Protagonist Roy, named Greenhouse in the script, has his initial encounter with the alien space ship.

That last paragraph has 19 lines — far different than contemporary screenplays which often cap scene description paragraphs at 3 lines. However, the action within the writing is strong. Here’s the movie:

It’s pretty close to the script, even down to the the “super high beams… rising vertically out of sight.”

It’s one of many great scenes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

[Note: There are four other writers who made an uncredited contribution to the Close Encounters script.]

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