François Truffaut Wasn’t Impressed With Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters Of The Third Kind Set

The French filmmaker was a fish out of water on the set of “Close Encounters.” Truffaut was not accustomed to being in productions of such a massive physical scale. The environment was so foreign for him, he was apparently unimpressed by the set altogether, per Close Encounters… The Ultimate Visual History. There was one more modest set in “Close Encounters,” however, where Truffaut did feel at home.

When the protagonist, Roy, sees a newscast revealing Devil’s Tower, it breaks his alien investigation wide open. Spielberg later decided that another major UFO-obsessed character in the film, Jillian, should have a parallel scene where she sees the same newscast. Jillian is on the hunt for her kidnapped son in New Mexico, so Spielberg imagined her seeing the broadcast in a dingy motel room covered with her sketches of Devil’s Tower. A Southwestern motif in the room decor also acted as a nod to her location, a subtle way of telling the audience where she was.

This motel room was by far Truffaut’s favorite set in the “Close Encounters” production. “He walked on this little three-walled structure,” Alves recalled, “and he goes, ‘Oh! This is a set!” The set reminded him of the smaller ones that he worked on in his own productions, many of which were heartfelt dramas. “That was the kind of set he was used to in his own films. He liked the intimacy,” Alves continued.