August 2018 - Sneak Peek

Joe Alves, production designer and location scout for
Stephen Spielberg’s movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind
(1977), said the choice of Devils Tower as the site of the film’s
climactic alien encounter was significant, according to an article
on the Travel Wyoming website (www.travelwyoming.
com/devils-tower-landmark).
“ ‘I’ve been fortunate to work on a lot of films and scout
a lot of places in the world. I don’t think there’s any singular
place like Devils Tower,’ ” said Alves in the Travel Wyoming
article. The article continues, “Spielberg, who both wrote and
directed Close Encounters, sent Joe out to find ‘an unusual
piece of topography’ for the film. He visited several unique
landmarks, as far away as India, but Devils Tower stood out
among them all. ‘Nothing that I had seen, whether you go to
Zion or Bryce … nothing comes close to seeing this thing.
This incredible shape,’ ” Alves said. “He explains. Spielberg
shared Joe’s enthusiasm. ‘When he got here he was so taken by
the possibilities of what this would do to his film,’ Joe recalls.
“It wasn’t until later in the process that Joe became aware
of the spiritual significance Devils Tower has in the American
Indian community. ‘We just liked the shape of it and then
we find out it has this incredible spiritual value,’ he reflects,
and reveals that the spiritual pull of the place extends beyond
the Native American stories. There’s something about this
imposing rock that is powerful throughout the ages. ‘It’s so
perfect because of the theme of the film, that there really may
be some spiritual sense in the mountain, which just adds to
the credibility of what the whole film is about. That if aliens
were to come, why wouldn’t they choose a place like this?’ He
ponders. ‘It heightened the creative and spiritual sense of the
film which led us to make it a much bigger film.’ ”
In December 2007, the film was deemed “culturally, historically
or aesthetically significant” by the United States Library
of Congress and selected for preservation in the National
Film Registry.
774 AMERICAN PHILATELIST / AUGUST 2018