'Close Encounters' with Muncie, 40 years later

MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) - Forty years after "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" first played on the big screen, director Steven Spielberg's drama about aliens making contact with Midwesterners is returning to theaters. And it's bringing Muncie with it.

For those who don't remember, the first half of the 1977 film takes place, for the most part, in Muncie, where local residents Roy Neary (played by Richard Dreyfuss) and Jillian Guiler (Melinda Dillon) and her young son Barry (Cary Guffey) encounter aliens.

In the movie's fictional world. Neary is a electric line repairman, who, along with Jillian, becomes obsessed with the image of a mountain following the encounter with glowing, zipping and fascinating flying objects. Neary's obsession costs him his wife (played by Teri Garr) and children. Jillian, on the other hand, is driven to find Barry, who is abducted in the dark of night from their farm outside Muncie.

As the story unfolds, and before the two follow their visions to a mountainous tower in Wyoming, "Muncie" touches fill the screen, from Dreyfuss wearing a "Ball U" T-shirt and looking for Cornbread Road to moments that are fun but inauthentic, including Muncie police cars chasing Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) across the Ohio state line and some "colorfully rustic" Muncie folks urging UFOs to stop and be friendly.

To this day, some people think that portions of "Close Encounters" were filmed in and around Muncie. It's easy to see why: Even with unrealistic touches like a long traffic tunnel and a toll booth at the imaginary border between Muncie and Ohio, so much of the movie "feels" like Muncie, from its sunny suburban neighborhoods to its dark rural roads to a familiar style of McDonald's.

Forty years ago, Muncie had a close encounter with Hollywood as the setting for the movie and, as the city's police chief at the time recalled in a recent interview with The Star Press, the possibility that Spielberg, his stars and his spaceships might come here for filming was pretty exciting.

'Hollywood is on the phone'

It's hard to overstate how big "Jaws," the 1975 shark thriller directed by Spielberg and co-starring Dreyfuss, was with moviegoers. Until "Star Wars" came out in May 1977, "Jaws" was the top moneymaker of all time. (It's still the seventh-highest money-making movie of all time, with a total of $470 million when its take is adjusted for inflation.)

So the March 26, 1976 story in The Muncie Evening Press, with the headline, "Science fiction movie may be filmed here," seemed pretty cautious considering the background of the moviemakers.

That caution reflected the attitude of Richard "Dick" Heath, who was Muncie police chief under Mayor Robert Cunningham. Heath recalled the events in a recent interview.

"I was sitting at my desk at city hall and the secretary came in and said, 'Chief, Hollywood is on the phone.' I said, 'Sure,' But it was Donna Brainard from the legal department of the Hollywood production company.

"She said, 'We would like to send you a script of a movie we want to make there in Indiana, utilizing Prairie Creek Reservoir and your dispatch center and maybe photograph some of your (police) cars.' A week later, I got a package with the script."

New police cars for the movie?

Spielberg wrote and directed "Close Encounters," which showcased the director's trademark mix of drama, emotion and eye-popping special effects that was familiar to everybody who saw "Jaws." Once the movie's story leaves Muncie, Neary and Jillian resolve their personal quests in very different ways: Jillian gets Barry back, when aliens return the child along with people they've abducted over the decades. Neary, on the other hand, eagerly - spoiler alert for a 40-year-old movie - boards the aliens' mothership and goes off into space, leaving his family behind.

By the time the movie opened in November 1977, however, the decision had long since been made to film "Close Encounters" in California, Devil's Tower National Monument in Wyoming and, for many of the Muncie scenes, Mobile, Alabama.

As Heath recalls it, the production needed sets and scenery that just weren't available in Muncie.

"We did furnish them with one of our badges and uniforms, so they could put some authenticity to the Muncie Police Department officers," Heath said. A member of the production company listened to police dispatch transmissions and "might have taken a couple of shots of Prairie Creek."

An urban legend that isn't true, Heath said, is that the Muncie Police Department purchased black-and-white patrol cars on the chance they would be used in the movie.

"That was already in the works," Heath said. "The police cars were all white at the time and we were taking new cars on. The manufacturer had police packages and the cars were black and white. But it wasn't for the movie."

Little touches are scattered through the Muncie scenes that add some local authenticity. Dreyfuss wears a "Ball U" t-shirt, popular at the time, in one scene, and a Ball State pennant is visible on his family room wall. A copy of The Muncie Star is seen, although it's an inaccurate replica. More accurate is a map of Muncie and Delaware County, glimpsed in Dreyfuss' utility company truck.

'Muncie is on the map'

"Close Encounters" went on to captivate audiences, making more than $300 million and winning an Academy Award for best cinematography.

Heath said he wished that Spielberg had decided to film "Close Encounters" here.

"Definitely," the former chief, now a polygraph operator in Wisconsin, said. "I think it would have been a plus for Muncie and Delaware County."

Thanks to hundreds of times Muncie has been mentioned in pop culture, from 1960s "Tom Slick" cartoons to movies like "The Hudsucker Proxy" to David Letterman's programs to current TV shows like "The Simpsons" and "Agents of SHIELD," Muncie has notoriety.

Part of that stems from seeing the "Muncie, Indiana" title in the opening minutes of "Close Encounters."

"Everywhere I go, when I say, Muncie, people say, 'I know Muncie,'" Heath said. "Muncie is on the map."

("Close Encounters of the Third Kind" returns to movie theaters for one week beginning Sept. 1. On Sept. 19, a new 4K restoration of the movie will be released on Blu-Ray and includes three different versions of the movie, plus extras including an interview with Spielberg.)

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Source: The (Muncie) Star Press

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Information from: The Star Press, http://www.thestarpress.com