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.