Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Writer(s): Steven Spielberg, Hal Barwood, Jerry Belson, John Hill, Matthew Robbins

Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Teri Garr, Melinda Dillon, Bob Balaban, J. Patrick McNamara, Warren J. Kemmerling, Roberts Blossom, Philip Dodds, Cary Guffey, Shawn Bishop, Adrienne Campbell, Justin Dreyfuss, Lance Henriksen, Merrill Connally, George DiCenzo, Amy Douglass, Alexander Lockwood, Gene Dynarski, Mary Gafrey, Norman Bartold, Josef Sommer, Michael J. Dyer, Roger Ernest, Carl Weathers, F.J. O’Neil, Phil Dodds, Randy Hermann, Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins, David Anderson, Richard L. Hawkins, Craig Shreeve, Bill Thurman, Roy E. Richards, Gene Rader, Eumenio Blanco, Daniel Nunez, Chuy Franco, Luis Contreras, James Keane, Dennis McMullen, Cy Young, Tom Howard, Richard Stuart, Bob Westmoreland, Matt Emery, Galen Thompson, John Dennis Johnston, John Ewing, Keith Atkinson, Robert Broyles, Kirk Raymond, Bennett Wayne Dean Sr., Charles Drubin, Dale Dye, Basil Hoffman, J. Allen Hynek, Monty Jordan, Shay McLean, Dejah Moore, Carl Neal, Monty O’Grady, Julia Phillips, Murray Pollack, Stephen Powers, David Rambow, Howard K. Smith, Dian Van Patten

Synopsis: Roy Neary, an electric lineman, watches how his quiet and ordinary daily life turns upside down after a close encounter with a UFO.

Release Date: December 14, 1977 (USA) | Length: 138 min | Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi | Certificate: PG

Note: There was a problem identifying the black actor playing the air traffic controller. It was cleared up by Kevin E. Walsh on the Madison blog. What made it hard is the guy does sound an awful lot like Morgan Freeman and IMDB has him wrongly credited as a different actor with the same name. I’m not sure how many of the credits are wrong but the actor from Close Encounters is not the same actor from “Mr. Monk and the Red-Headed Stranger (2002)”. I also wasn’t able to identify one of the guys in the red suits.