The science fiction movie Steven Spielberg called a “total visual orgasm”
As one of the all-time great directors of the cinematic medium, it has invariably followed that Steven Spielberg has contributed to some of the most intense and brilliant visual experiences ever projected onto the big screen. After all, cinema is nothing without its images, and Spielberg certainly knows how to affect his audience in the most visceral of ways.
Looking back over his catalogue of movies, we find so many instances through which Spielberg has simply amazed us with his prowess from the director’s chair. Whether in the joyous, fantastical moments of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, the choppy and treacherous waters of Jaws, or the awe-inspiring scenes of Jurassic Park, it’s fair to say that Spielberg certainly has the eye for a visual feast.
Of course, we experience intense emotions and feelings when we see a beautiful scene in a movie, but could a Spielberg film bring us to the point of orgasm? Well, on the surface, anyone sexually aroused inside a theatre, gazing upon the likes of Schindler’s List or Lincoln, might need their heads checking, but the director himself thinks that he once directed a movie akin to the culmination of sexual pleasure.
In an interview with Roger Ebert, Spielberg once spoke of his 1977 science fiction drama Close Encounters of the Third Kid, starring Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban and Francois Truffaut. The film focuses on the Indiana blue-collar worker Roy Neary, whose life invariably changes when he encounters a UFO.
Spielberg had longed to make his science fiction movie and explore the nature of close encounters with extra-terrestrials. With a production cost of an impressive (at the time) $19.4million and special effects legend Douglas Trumbull, known for his work on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, on hand, Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released to huge critical and commercial success.
Interestingly, Spielberg had been concerned of letting the events of his 1977 effort slip free into the press, telling Ebert, “The final 43 minutes of the movie are all classified information. Absolutely secret… We had total security. I learned my lesson on Jaws – no free previews.” In addition, Spielberg had said that it would be difficult to give Ebert any clue as to how the film ends.
After all, the final moments of Close Encounters of the Third Kind are some of the most awesome moments of Spielberg’s entire career, and he noted the difficulty in explaining them in words. “Besides, it’s almost impossible to describe what happens in the last 43 minutes, anyway,” the director said. “I’m finding that out because I’m writing the paperback novel version of the film, and what does the movie end in? A total visual orgasm. An orgy.”
Evidently, Spielberg felt that there was something special in Close Encounters of the Third Kind that might actually make his audience members expire in a state of physical bliss. Perhaps that fits in with the themes of the movie, the kind of strange abilities that extra-terrestrials might possess that play into our physiognomy as human beings.
“A close encounter of the second kind would be some sort of interaction between the Unidentified Flying Object and the environment – some effect on people, animals, plants, the ground, anything,” Spielberg said, so perhaps the “third kind” would be a visual orgasm of the most intense variety.
