Contact is a 1997 American science fiction drama film co-produced and directed by Robert Zemeckis, based on the 1985 novel by Carl Sagan. It stars Jodie Foster as Dr. Eleanor "Ellie" Arroway, a SETI scientist who finds evidence of extraterrestrial life and is chosen to make first contact. Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom Skerritt, William Fichtner, John Hurt, Angela Bassett, Rob Lowe, Jake Busey, and David Morse co-star. It features the Very Large Array in New Mexico, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the Mir space station, and the Space Coast surrounding Cape Canaveral.
Sagan and his wife, Ann Druyan, began working on Contact in 1979. They wrote a film treatment and set up the project at Warner Bros. with Peter Guber and Lynda Obst as producers. When development stalled, Sagan published Contact as a novel in 1985, and the film reentered development in 1989. Roland Joffé and George Miller planned to direct, but Joffé dropped out in 1993, and Warner Bros. fired Miller in 1995. With Zemeckis as director, filming ran from September 1996 to February 1997, while Sony Pictures Imageworks, Weta, Ltd. and Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) handled the visual and special effects. Sagan died before the film was completed.
Contact was released on July 11, 1997, and received positive reviews, winning the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and two Saturn Awards. It grossed $171 million worldwide.
Plot
Astronomer Dr. Ellie Arroway arrives at the SETI program at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The film's prologue reveals that she was encouraged to pursue science by her father, who died in her youth. In the film's present, Arroway studies radio emissions from space to detect signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life. While in Puerto Rico, Arroway meets Christian philosopher Palmer Joss. They have a brief romantic encounter, but Arroway does not contact him again.
David Drumlin, the President's science advisor, cuts SETI funding, deeming it futile. Arroway is furious and instead pursues and receives financial support from S. R. Hadden, a reclusive billionaire industrialist. Arroway re-locates her team to the Very Large Array (VLA) radio dish observatory in New Mexico.
Four years later, Arroway is about to lose access to the VLA satellite dishes. Before being evicted, she discovers a signal containing a sequence of prime numbers originating from the star Vega. Drumlin and the National Security Council, headed by Michael Kitz, arrive and attempt to federalize the facility. Meanwhile, Arroway's team detect a video embedded within the signal: Adolf Hitler's opening address at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany. The Hitler transmission was the first to penetrate the Earth's ionosphere and reach Vega. A press release at the White House is organised and, following an address from the President, Drumlin appropriates Arroway's discovery as his own and speaks to the press instead of her.
The project is put under federal security and its progress is monitored globally. It is discovered that the signal contains over 63,000 pages of encoded data, though it is undecipherable without a primer. Hadden breaches the government's computer systems and discovers the primer, providing Arroway the means to decode the data. It reveals schematics for what could be a transportation device for a single person. Multiple nations provide funding for the construction at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.
An international panel is assembled to select a candidate to travel in the machine. An American is preferred, and Arroway is a leading candidate until Palmer Joss, a panel member, focuses on her atheism during the interviews. The panel selects Drumlin. During the first tests, a fanatical religious terrorist destroys the machine with a suicide bomb, killing Drumlin and several others. Hadden, terminally ill with cancer, is now residing on the Mir space station. He informs Arroway that the US government and Hadden Industries have secretly built a second machine in Hokkaido, Japan. Arroway, the only remaining American candidate, will use it.
In Japan, Joss and Arroway are reunited. Joss explains he voted against Arroway because he feared she would not survive the experiment. Equipped with multiple recording devices, Arroway enters a pod which is dropped through the massive machine's counter-rotating rings. She seemingly travels through wormholes and observes a radio array-like structure at Vega, signs of civilization on an alien planet, and a celestial event. Arroway finds herself on a beach similar to her childhood drawing of Pensacola, Florida. An alien assuming her deceased father's appearance approaches. He explains that the aliens detected humans' radio emissions and judged it worthy of a first step into the cosmos. Arroway is soon sent back through the wormhole.
Arroway regains consciousness inside the pod. The mission control team reports that the pod fell through the machine into a safety net and that the experiment achieved nothing. Arroway insists she was gone for hours, but her devices recorded only static. A Congressional Committee headed by Kitz speculates the signal and the machine were a hoax perpetrated by Hadden, now deceased. Arroway admits she cannot scientifically prove her experience and requests the committee accept her testimony on faith.
Joss tells the press that he believes Arroway's claim, and they leave the hearing together. Kitz and White House official Rachel Constantine discuss the confidential information and observe that Arroway's device recorded 18 hours of static. Arroway receives ongoing financial support for the SETI program at the VLA.
Cast
Production
Development The scientist Carl Sagan conceived Contact in 1979. That year, Lynda Obst, one of his closest friends, was hired by the film producer Peter Guber as a studio executive for his production company, Casablanca FilmWorks. She pitched Guber the idea for Contact, and he commissioned a development deal. Sagan and Ann Druyan (who later married) finished the film treatment in November 1980. Druyan said they hoped "to write something that would be a fictional representation of what contact would actually be like, that would convey something of the true grandeur of the universe". They added the science and religion analogies as a metaphor of philosophical and intellectual interest in searching for the truth of both humanity and alien contact.
Sagan incorporated Kip Thorne's study of wormhole space travel. Druyan denied that Arroway was inspired by Jill Tarter, the head of Project Phoenix of the SETI Institute, though Foster met her to research the role. The name Ellie was short for Eleanor, which was taken from Eleanor Roosevelt, whom both Sagan and Druyan adored; Arroway was selected based on both Voltaire's real name (Arouet), and that Ellie "was going to travel like an arrow through the cosmos", according to Druyan. Tarter was a story consultant, and advised on how to portray career struggles of women scientists from the 1950s to 1970s. The writers debated whether Arroway should have a baby at the film's end.
Although Guber was impressed with Sagan and Druyan's treatment, he hired various screenwriters to rewrite the script. New characters were added, including a Native American park ranger turned astronaut. Guber suggested that Arroway have an estranged teenage son, whom he believed would add depth to the storyline. Guber said: "Here was a woman consumed with the idea that there was something out there worth listening to, but the one thing she could never make contact with was her own child. To me, that's what the film had to be about." Sagan and Druyan disagreed and did not incorporate the idea.
In 1982, Guber took Contact to Warner Bros. Pictures. As the film's development stalled, Sagan rewrote Contact as a novel, which was published by Simon and Schuster in September 1985. The film adaptation remained in development, and Guber left Warner Bros. in 1989. Guber became the new president of Sony Pictures Entertainment and tried to purchase the film rights from Warner Bros., but the studio refused. In 1989, Obst was hired as a new executive at Warner Bros. and fast-tracked the film by hiring more writers. Roland Joffé was hired to direct, using a screenplay by James V. Hart. Joffé almost commenced pre-production, but dropped out. Obst hired Michael Goldenberg to rewrite the script, who finished his second draft in late 1993. Goldenberg's draft rekindled Warner Bros.' interest in Contact, and asked Robert Zemeckis to direct; he refused in favor of making a film based on the life of Harry Houdini. Zemeckis liked the script, but did not like the ending, which had "the sky open up and these angelic aliens putting on a light show".
In December 1993, Warner Bros. hired George Miller to direct, and Contact entered pre-production. Actresses including Julia Roberts expressed interest in the role of Ellie. Miller considered Uma Thurman before he cast Jodie Foster. He approached Ralph Fiennes to play Palmer Joss, and considered casting Linda Hunt as the US president.
In addition to having aliens put on a laser lighting display around Earth, another version of the Goldenberg scripts had an alien wormhole swallow up the planet, transporting Earth to the center of the galaxy. Miller also asked Goldenberg to rewrite Contact to portray the pope as a key supporting character. Warner Bros. was hoping to have the film ready for release by Christmas 1996, but pre-production lasted longer than expected. Warner Bros. fired Miller, blaming pushed-back start dates, budget concerns, and Miller's insistence that the script needed five more weeks of rewriting.
Zemeckis decided to accept the offer to direct. Warner Bros. granted him total artistic control and final cut privilege. Zemeckis cast Matthew McConaughey as Palmer Joss; McConaughey dropped out of the lead role in The Jackal to take the role. Despite being diagnosed with myelodysplasia in 1994, Sagan remained involved in the production of the film. For the cast and main crew members, he conducted an academic conference that depicted a detailed history of astronomy. The production crew watched Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) for inspiration.
Filming
Principal photography began on September 24, 1996, and ended on February 28, 1997. The first shooting took place at the Very Large Array (VLA) near Socorro, New Mexico. "Shooting at the VLA was, of course, spectacular but also one of the most difficult aspects of our filming", producer Steve Starkey said. "It is a working facility, so in order for us to accomplish shots for the movie, we had to negotiate with the National Science Foundation for 'dish control' in order to move the dishes in the direction we needed to effect the most dramatic shot for the story." After arduous first weeks of location shooting in New Mexico and Arizona, production for Contact returned to Los Angeles for five months' worth of location and sound stage shooting that used a total of nine soundstages at Warner Hollywood Studios in West Hollywood, and Culver Studios. The art department created more than 25 sets.
In an attempt to create a sense of realism for the storyline, principal CNN news outlet commentators were scripted into Contact. More than 25 news reporters from CNN had roles in the film, and the CNN programs Larry King Live and Crossfire were also included. Ann Druyan makes a cameo appearance as herself, debating with Rob Lowe's character, Richard Rank, on Crossfire. In January 1997, second unit filming, directed by producer Steve Starkey took place for one week at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.