Mashed Potato Mountain
The other night I decided to rewatch the movie that basically sparked this lifelong, borderline obsession of mine (and countless others, I’m sure) - Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind!
The first time I saw this film, I was very young, but I remember the experience VIVIDLY. It was the late '80s; my dad was half-asleep in his recliner, recovering from one of his late-night shifts at the bakery, while I sat on the floor in front of the giant 800 pound, somewhat ornate wooden box of knobs and static that we called a television back then. I was an all-over-the-place kid, chock-full of ADHD that wouldn't be formally diagnosed for another 30 years, but I remember the world literally stopping, and my emotions becoming an undulating wave of intrigue mixed with brackish waters of pure horror. I was terrified.
To this day, I still don’t fully understand why the movie affected me the way it did, and as silly as it sounds, I wholeheartedly believe it completely changed the course of my stupid little life. Those child-like greys were the worst thing I had ever seen. They were horrible! Repulsive! Never mind the other two aliens (who were arguably much scarier), but those 2-3 dozen little big-headed guys excitedly running around on the tarmac? Hello, recurring nightmares that will probably plague me for the rest of my life! Ugh!
It also didn’t help that my dad, after suddenly being jostled from his slumber and bombarded with a million questions about what I was seeing, inadvertently decided to add fuel to the fire by telling me that despite the fictitious events unfolding before my impressionable eyes, he was pretty sure all of this was based on truth. Heck, he’d even seen a couple of UFOs in his day.
THANKS, STEVEN. THANKS, DAD.
Flashing forward to first grade, after being granted library privileges and figuring out the basics of reading, I’d sneak over to the “big kids’” side of the library and crouch down to the last shelf of the first row. On the right-hand side were the “fringe” books, mostly consisting of Scholastic and Usborne’s World of the Unknown series. I’d clutch them to my chest greedily and bee-line it to the librarian, clumsily writing my name on the due-date stamp cards for the seventeenth time. Looking back, I’m surprised my teacher never intervened and tried to push me toward something more at my reading level - like Clifford or those elusive Berenstain Bears. She was pretty close to retirement, however, so I think she was just happy I was enthusiastically reading SOMETHING even if it was only being partially comprehended by my tiny little brain.
If you’re at all curious, my favorite UFO story was the Lonnie Zamora incident because I thought the little egg-shaped craft was cute.
Anywho, back to the movie. It’s hard to believe it’s almost 50 years old and still as powerful as it was back then. The fun thing about rewatching it, however, is discovering all the Easter eggs and things you either missed or were ignorant to during previous viewings. You begin to appreciate the little touches - like the one star always moving in the night sky, or the names of specific defense contractors on the sides of wooden crates. There are still parts that leave me wondering, like how Richard Dreyfuss’s character exactly received the information and compulsion to be drawn to Devil’s Tower. Was he physically abducted off-screen at some point, or was it simply beamed to him while he was at the train crossing, along with that gnarly “sunburn” to boot? The same goes for Melinda Dillon’s character. Were she and her son previously in contact, or was this something the aliens decided to do all willy-nilly? I’d love more backstory, but at the same time, I kinda enjoy not fully knowing the circumstances and leaving things up in the ambiguous air.
Do not let me know if there are any clear-cut explanations for the above that I somehow missed. Let me live in ignorance!
Another part of the movie that, for whatever reason, I find very funny now is the aliens’ decision to release the human captives and then send out their most horrible, spindly, 10-foot-tall skeletal one immediately after. Couldn’t they have opened the hatch a bit more so it didn’t have to duck to get out and scare everybody? Imagine if it tripped and stumbled down the ramp. They could have included that as a blooper.
I still maintain the staunch belief that the cool musical exchange part was them teaching us tonal versions of swearwords. All those hand gestures? Probably extremely rude in origin.
Before I conclude this post and wander off to do whatever I do all day, I found some of the actual alien costumes that were worn, and hmm... I'm a little embarrassed now that these guys captivated my emotions for as long as they did because good lord, just look:
