Creative Inspiration: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Back in 1977, there was one scene in Spielberg's Close Encounters that helped influence who I am today... outside of all the UFO, alien and conspiracy theories that I now believe in that is.

I know when Richard Dreyfuss is seen having completely destroyed the inside of his home working on a model of Devil's Tower it was meant to make the audience gasp at his lunacy, but I felt inspired to create something.


Ironically 35 plus years later, my career did let me live that scene a hundred times over. Many apartment security deposits were forfeited in my younger days after landlords discovered paint and glue splotched walls and floors from making stuff while I lived there. I'll even miss Days of our Lives since it's been cancelled. Whenever it came on TV while working on some crazy project, I always smiled recalling this Close Encounters scene.

I've also been known to sculpt my mashed potatoes at dinner. But only while waiting for the gravy to be passed around. Not by alien influence... unfortunately.


While on the subject of Close Encounters, this moment from the movie is one of the scariest I've ever seen in any movie but nothing is actually seen. I miss this Spielberg.


4 comments:

  1. It's not that I want to build a mud mountain in my living room, but this scene always gets me itching to make something, too. I think it's the sheer size of the thing.

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  2. Mr. Chicken, yep, that's what always got me... the enormous project in the small space. As a kid I thought cool. Now making stuff I curse ever thinking that.

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  3. When I've talked about the movie with people I've noticed that people see it as a sign of crazy UNLESS they are people that cook/bake a lot or artistic types. Seriously, my best friend who bakes sees it like talking all the ingredients for a cake & making it. I've always thought it would be awesome to have for a train set.

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  4. I grew up in Wyoming and was just showing old home movies to my husband. When the inevitable trip to Devil's Tower popped up my husband was dumbfounded. He had no idea that it was an actual real place, he thought that it was only in that movie. I guess I should drag him around my home state like my parents did my siblings and me when I was young.

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