‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind” cleane𝐆d up at the box office back in 1977. It also cleaned up in the real estate market.
The film, which involves Midwestern dad Roy Neary (played by Richard Dreyfuss), who sees a UFO and becomes obsessed, was supposed to be film🌌ed in a residential part of Los Angeles. That is until the filmmakers realized LA looked nothing like Middle America.
So production designer Joe Alves went scouting in Mobile, Ala., until he found a house in a new development that looked more like a typical American subur🍸b to serve as the Neary residence.
The house needed renovation to fit wiജth director Steven Spielberg’s vision,⭕ so Alves suggested the studio buy it. They declined.
“So [as🐓sociate producer] Clark Paylow and I said, ‘Why don’t we buy it and rent it to the studio?’ ” Alves tells The Post.
Suddenಞly the studio had a change of heart and purchased the house, located at 1613 Carlisle Dr. E. The $35,000 price turned out to be a good investment.
“They later sold it for a lot of money,” Alves saysꦜ of the quick $15,000 pr🗹ofit.
Audiences can catch another glimpse of that hous🐭e Friday when a remastered version of the film returns to theaters in honor of its 40th a💛nniversary.
Despite its enduring popularity, “Close🍬 Encounters” was hardly a sure bet. Spielberg was a relatively unknown filmmaker back then, and his original proposal called for a budget of $4.5 million — a massive sum for the day that required studio Columbia to grant t💯he project a special waiver.
The film’s cost woul🌳d later balloon to nearly $20 million, but in the interim, Spielberg’s blockbuster “Jaws” was released, earning the young director some latitude.
Spielberg had been fascinat♏ed with outer space since he was a little boy, and his father drove him out to the desert near their home in Pho♕enix to watch a meteor shower.
As a teenager in the early 1960s, Spielber📖g made a low-budget movie about aliens called “Firelight.” That filꩲm planted the seeds for “Close Encounters.”
Spielberg began working on the treatment for what was then called “Watch the Skies” in the early ’70s.
Paul Schrader of “Taxi Driver” took a crack at a script that involved a government employee, whose job was to debunk UFO sightings, seeing a spacecraft himself.🎉 Spielberg, unhappy with the various script versions, ultimately decided to write it himse🎃lf with input from others.
Dreyfuss lobbied for the part of Roy Neary, but Spielberg feared he was too young at 28. He later relented whe🌸n he realized that he needed an actor who had a childlike quality. Teri Garr was cast😼 to play Neary’s skeptical wife after Spielberg spotted her in a coffee commercial.
For the crucial role of Barry Guiler, the you﷽ng boy who has a strange connection to the aliens, the casting director tapped Car🅺y Guffey after spotting the boy in her niece’s classroom.
Guffey, who turned 4 on set, didn’t quite und🥃erstand acting, so Spielberg was left to manipulate the boy in creative ways in order to get authentic react꧂ions. In his first scene, when he’s awakened by aliens, for example, Guffey was filmed waking up from a real nap.
“The scene where I come around the corner and all the stuff is out of the fridge, Spielberg had one of the guys from the set wearing a gorilla outfit,” says Guffey, now working as an Alabama-based financial planner. “I had this quizzical look. He took off his gorilla mask, and I see it’s my friend from the set, so t🌠hen I smiled.”
Midway through the movie, Guffey’s character is kidnaped by the aliens. The twist was add⛦ed by writers Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins, who helped po🐽lish the script. The abduction did not sit well with the Columbia brass.
“The head of the studio was absolutely apoplec♌tic,” Robbins tells The Post. “He was like, ‘What is this?’ ”
The st🌱udio, worried that abduction was too alarming, insisted that Spielberg shoot the scene with a happier (and ultimately unused) ending in which young Barry is saved by his mother (Melinda Dillon).
The film’s most iconic location almost got cut, as well. Originally, Spielb𓃲erg planned to have the alien mothership land in a populated area between fast-food restaurants. That was later chanꦉged to an unnamed mountain.
Alves was tasked with findin🤪g a location, and he took a map and headed to South Dakota to survey various sites, including the back of Mount Rushmore. He drove some 3💜,500 miles, taking photos of rock formations. The winner proved to be Devils Tower, a flattop monolith in Wyoming that has become identified with the movie.
“Devils Tower was a knockout,” A🐈lves says. “You saw this little peak🧸, but as you got closer, it got bigger and bigger.”
Scenes were filmed at Tower’s base, and the 🐬production angered some residents and ranchers. But on a recent trip, Alves was surprised to find the local gift shop selling all manner of “Close Encountersಞ” memorabilia.
The military camp at the tower’s foot, where the aliens land, was actually filmed hundreds of miles away in Alabama. The set was originally going to be built on a Hollywood soundstage, but none exไisted big enough for what the filmmakers wanted.
The crewಞ flew around the country looking at alternative spaces, before finally settling on an abandoned zeppelin hangar in Mobil♈e, Ala.
“It was the biggest set ever ꦡbuilt,” Alves says of the approximately 450-by-300-foot giant display that reportedly cost $700,000.
John Williams’ score was nominated for an Oscar, but it’s the five-note phrase used to signal🀅 the aliens that audiences remember most. Williams wanted seven notes because he felt it would be easier to construct a melody, but Spielberg insisted on five. Tဣhe two tested some 300 combos before settling on the famous D-E-C-C-G.
“Close Encounters” premiered at New York’s Ziegfeld Theater on Nov. 15, 1977, and was a smash, becomi👍ng Columbia’s highღest-grossing film at the time.
The film zagged from other sci-fi movies, which presented aliens as hostile invaders, and instead of💛fered an ⛎optimistic view of extraterrestrials. At the movie’s conclusion, an awestruck Neary walks into the mothership and is whisked away.
“The theme of that movie was th𒆙e idea of, where could a mid-20th-century post-World-War-II soul like Rick Dreyfuss find some transcendence?” Robbins says. “Where was the opportunity for the soul to leap up and out and go to the beyond if you’re not going to go to church anymore?”