Steven Spielberg’s 1977 film
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
was a creative, critical, and commercial triumph,
saving Columbia Pictures from financial disaster.
Although Spielberg wasn’t interested,
the studio wanted a sequel.
However, after witnessing Universal Studio’s
less-than-artful franchising of Jaws,
Spielberg feared Columbia would make
a follow-up without him
and began conceptualizing what would
later be known as "Night Skies."
While not a direct sequel to Close Encounters,
Spielberg’s treatment was inspired by
the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter of 1955.
Brought to Spielberg’s attention by
UFO-ologist J. Allen Hyneck
while he worked as a consultant on Close Encounters,
the reported incident involved a Kentucky farmhouse that was supposedly attacked by 3-foot tall aliens.
The occurrence was later explained to have been a bad mix of meteor showers, horned owls, and intoxication.
From there Spielberg contacted special effects
master Rick Baker to design the alien creatures.
To translate his treatment into a script,
Spielberg, a fan of the Jaws spoof Piranha,
hired its screenwriter, John Sayles.
Sayle’s script gave personality to it’s five aliens, which Baker seems to have been articulating in his designs
- the menacing Scar killed the farm’s livestock
with his long, luminescent finger;
while the child-like Buddy befriended
the rural family’s 10-year old, autistic son,
and was abandoned on Earth by his bullying comrades.
Spielberg received a tape of Baker’s animatronic prototype and Sayle’s draft in the summer of 1980,
while shooting Raiders Of The Lost
Ark abroad in London and Tunisia.
As he was under contract to direct his next film for Universal, Spielberg decided on producing the film,
which was slated to begin filming
once Raiders had wrapped.
The project was offered to Texas Chainsaw
Massacre director Tobe Hooper, who declined,
but suggested the two collaborate on a ghost story.
This collaboration became 1982s Poltergeist,
and the Kentucky farmhouse
invaded by aliens from Sayle's script
became a suburban California home
infested with spirits.
Upon having Spielberg read her the script
to Night Skies,
Harrison Ford’s then-girlfriend,
screenwriter Melissa Mathison,
was moved to tears by the connection between the young, autistic boy and Buddy the alien.
Mathison convinced the director
the sub-plot was worth expanding.
Spielberg, too, felt a need to return
to a deeper spiritual story
akin to the connection he presented
with the finale of Close Encounters.
And so, Mathison was put in charge of further
developing the premise of interplanetary friendship
into a script that eventually became
E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial in 1982.
Columbia passed on the film, calling it a
“wimpy Walt Disney movie,”
and since Spielberg was recommitted
to direct the more personal project,
it became his contract fulfilling film for Universal.
Sometime after the release
of Poltergeist and E.T.,
Spielberg came across a script by
screenwriter Chris Columbus titled Gremlins,
about a small town becoming overrun with
short, green, goblin-like creatures.
Without a doubt Spielberg saw similarities between his shelved project and Columbus’s script when he bought it.
and Spielberg oversaw re-writes that
drew even closer comparisons
- Gremlin’s Stripe is reminiscent of Night
Skies’ Scar,
while the Mogwai Gizmo mirrors the role of Buddy
in being the sole innocent being
of an otherwise unruly species.
Again looking to Piranha, Spielberg hired
its director, Joe Dante, for the picture,
and it was released in 1984.
Nods to both Night Skies and E.T.
can be found in the film,
as their working titles - Watch The Skies, and A Boy’s Life - are displayed on a movie theatre marquee.
These projects emphasize an important
aspect of Spielberg’s creativity,
of knowing when ideas aren’t working, and when
and how they can be better implemented.
The director had previously experimented
with this on a smaller scale,
with a coat-hanger gag he cut from 1979s 1941,
and reworked for his following film,
Raiders Of The Lost Ark.
Although Night Skies was never made,
in many ways what audiences did get...
...was better.
