CE3K: An Appreciation

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

The profoundest fear of my childhood was aliens. Somehow, somewhere, I got the notion, as a small child, that strange lights in the sky meant I was in danger. Close Encounters emancipated me from that irrational, childish fear, and set the tone (five tones, actually) for a life changed by cinema.
Spielberg set out to make a movie about UFO’s and Watergate, and he did so magnificently. Government conspiracies aside, CE3K resonates with an agenda that surely represents a high-point of movie studio money and individual vision. Like Welles before him, Spielberg spills his Jungian guts out, here: Devil’s Tower, a beacon metaphor for the collective unconscious – confused but ripe for evolution; a positively Zauberfloten score by John Williams; a cameo by Francois Truffaut, who was studying for a book he was writing on acting; Melinda Dillon, in her nightshirt and short-shorts, as vulnerable and imperiled as any screen heroine; Teri Garr, her tragicomic foil; Dreyfuss, Dreyfuss, Dreyfuss; the dazzling light show and concerto crescendo (No Dark Side of the Moon synchs, please...) All this and more from the Jaws wunderkind. CE3K is a movie about hysteria and vision, and how the two commonly intersect in the creative mind. It’s the anti-Apocalypse Now. It’s Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead without the creepy comb-over.
Roy Neary’s quest for meaning in his mashed potatoes unfolds like a puzzle. The protagonist loses his mind and his family in pursuit of the truth and “cosmic enlightenment.” All the childish toys and train sets and Pinocchio music boxes (hear Roy’s wife call him “Jiminy Cricket” to capture his distracted toddler attention span) are left behind as the boy becomes a man, bathed in the reverent, approving glow of the mothership. Those strange lights in the sky are no danger. They are, instead, a modern manifestation of hope (and vindication) for the seekers and travelers among us. We are not alone, after all.

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The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street

There's an episode of the old Twilight Zone named this, where the neighbors of an idyllic Mayberry-esque town find themselves plunged into darkness by a mysterious power outage. Soon there are rumors of malevolent monsters or aliens invading. Eventually they begin to turn suspicious of each other and viciously attack one among them for being different. It is the incivility of panic and fear that brings the true "monsters" to maple street in the guise of its own irrational residents.

I used this in court the other day to offer a parallel to my guilty client's neighborhood problem. He moved into a private bedroom community with his loud music and his barking dogs. He was neither friendly nor respectful to his neighbors. One day, he gets a note on his door threatening to "take care" of his dogs. Furious, he gets into an ugly argument with his neighbor, and gets pushy. Charged, he is ordered to stay away from his neighbors, and, accordingly, he can't stay in his own home. His entire neighborhood showed up in court for his sentencing to speak against him as "a bully" and "not a good neighbor" and a "danger" and a "threat to their community." None of them are willing to tell who wrote the nasty note that provoked the confrontation in the first place.

So I spoke on his behalf and reminded the court of that Twilight Episode I saw many years ago, a glazed-eyed fat kid, up too late watching TV.

As usual, no one knew what the hell I was taking about.

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A Childhood Anecdote

Like Machiavelli, I learned my political lessons young.

I was in elementary school when a levy on the ballot brought cameras to our class for a puff piece. It was in the media center where the cameraman lit up his lights, looking for ideal children in need of funding. Instead, he found a swarm of obnoxious children, anxious to be on tv, piling on one another at the bookshelf, ripping books off the shelves, glancing at their covers toward the camera, and tossing the books aside. They looked like the carp in the shallow pond at the amusement park, lurching over one another for a pellet. And what was that pellet, anyway? Media exposure? A childish urge for Warhol's 15 Minutes? McLuhan's bastards, every one.

I played it cool, found a quiet empty spot near a window for good lighting. I opened a book and read. The cameraman annoyed with the chaos and anarchy his lens was capturing, turned his eye toward me, alone in a corner. He set up his camera and filmed me. I never lifted an eye toward the lens. He captured a moment for public consumption, then went on his way, hurriedly packing his lights and batteries. I was the one who wound up on tv.

I think the levy passed.

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