I’m working this afternoon and Contact is on my TV. The 1997 film was years before 9/11.
In the sequence in which a radical religious terrorist blows up the travelling pod on the spacecraft they built… it wasn’t the explosion itself, but how that small explosion in one compartment led to a chain reaction destroying the whole device… very much like the World Trade Center, billowing smoke and all.
I must admit, I heard myself gasp out loud.
amit on: Review: Frozen 2 (spoiler-free)
movieman on: BYOB Fall Back, Film Forward
Christian on: BYOB Fall Back, Film Forward
movieman on: Review: Marriage Story (spoilers only in the broadest sense)
movieman on: BYOB Fall Back, Film Forward
movieman on: Review: Frozen 2 (spoiler-free)
YancySkancy on: Review: Little Women (no spoilers)
Hcat on: Why You Should Be Afraid Of The End Of The Paramount Decree
movieman on: BYOB Fall Back, Film Forward
movieman on: I Should Be Doing Box Office
Review: Little Women (no spoilers)
Why You Should Be Afraid Of The End Of The Paramount Decree
Review: Frozen 2 (spoiler-free)
Review: Marriage Story (spoilers only in the broadest sense)
see all »
[twitter-widget username="DavidPoland" hiderss="true" hidereplies="true" hidefrom="true" items="3" showts="60" title=" " targetBlank="true"][twitter-widget username="MCNTweets" hiderss="true" hidereplies="true" hidefrom="true" items="3" showts="60" title=" " targetBlank="true"]
It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
I didn’t think anyone would ever, ever reference that movie again.
“Contact” has one of my favorite openings of any movie. The rest of it’s okay, but those first two minutes are great.
That’s probably the strongest section of the movie. The ending, as I recall, is a bit of an anticlimax.
I meant the scene DP refers to, not the opening.
contact is highly underrated. sure the end is weak and all, but there’s so much good stuff in there. zemeckis is a master.
Contact’s one of my favorites, ending and all. One of the few movies where I was literally shaking with excitement when I watched it in theaters. Book’s better, of course, but I don’t think anyone gives Zemeckis the credit he deserves after Forrest Gump’s success and backlash. How he executed the sheer scale of the opening and many of the epic moments that followed was well ahead of its time. The story has its problems, but that’s why I said it’s a favorite. The flaws are not as much of a problem when it’s a favorite and not a “best film ever created” list.
Contact a good movie? Compared to what? It was long and boring. The ending was anticlimatic.
Jake Busey’s finest moment?
I haven’t seen it since I saw it in 1997. I remember thinking afterwards that it was a bit flabby and could have been trimmed by 15 minutes. Don’t remember if I thought the ending was anti-climactic or not. But I can see why someone might think that, since basically the ending is “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
The best part of this movie was the ridiculous romantic subplot between Jodie and Matthew. Like why couldn’t they just make her a lesbian like her character really was? Would that have turned off audiences? Because no one bought that.
I love Zemeckis.
I love Forrest Gump; even more after the backlash (gotta enjoy stickin’ it to the “summer of love” type boomers) but Contact is and was a piece of trivial crappola.
Mostly because it doesn’t deliver on what it says it will.
It promises a debate between religion and science and instead gives us a one sided diatribe that presents the religious side as hysterical and one dimensional. Typical Hollywood cliche.
Could have been a classic if it allowed both sides a rational voice…
and that ending…whoa nelly…just awful!
I love Jodie Foster as an actress but I have to say, for an actress of her stature she doesn’t have that many truly ‘great’ films to her credit.
Interesting you should say that, Nicol, since the ending of the movie leaves Foster’s character on the side of faith (and therefore religion). At least that’s my reading of the movie.
Matthew McConaughey looked like a lion in that movie. A big, ferocious lion.
That’s all I remember about it.
Contact is definitely one of my all time favourites. The second act of the film (from when Jodie discovers the signal) is some of the most interesting, intriguing, thought enducing and thrilling stuff of the last decade. What would happen if it occured like it did. It’s scary but hopeful.
THe opening scene is magical as well.
I had a similar moment rewatching Starship Troopers a few months ago. The reaction people have to Buenos Aries being smacked by an asteroid reminded me of the post 9/11 world.