An oral history ofContact,the sci-fi movie that defied Hollywood norms and made it big anyway.
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The problems were myriad.
Tragically, by the time Sagan and Druyans long-cherished dream had manifested, he wasnt around to witness it.
We used to do that, said Foster.
We used to make movies that were resonantandwere entertaining.
Ann Druyan:This is 1978.
Carl and I are still working onCosmos.
This made both of us furious.
People were throwing everything at Carl then.
He was such a phenomenon in the culture, and everybody wanted to do something with him.
So we knew we could get a book and a movie contract.
Lynda Obst, producer:Nora Ephron was one of my best friends and mentors.
She gave the greatest dinner parties in the world, and this was a particularly great party in 1974.
We became very close right after.
Ann and Carl met at that party, too.
When they were working onCosmos, it was the first year of my being a movie-development executive.
We would exchange our pages every day as we were weaving the story together.
Our daughter, Sasha, was 2 years old.
Sasha Sagan:The first thing that comes to mind is giant whiteboards.
Theyd be like, Dont touch this.
They really were in love.
Druyan:Of course we were stoned while writingContact.
When I read something he wrote that I loved, I would just jump on him and scream.
To me, it was the highest form of happiness.
Sagan and Druyan finished theirContactfilm treatment in 1980.
It would remain in development hell with the studio for seven years.
Druyan:The 110-page treatment was pretty close to a screenplay.
But tragically it didnt come together as a movie project for a long time.
Obst:I was working for Casablanca at the time with Peter Guber, who boughtContact.
When I left the company to go off on my own, he continued to develop it sort of.
Peter changed the hook of the idea.
It was so misogynist it was unbelievable.
In the meantime, Sagan and Druyan wrote the bookContact.
It would become a best seller.
Obst:The first thing I had to do was reuniteCarl andContactafter Warner Bros. eventuallytook it away from Peter.
I laughed so hard.
They had no idea that Id originally developed it.
James V. Hart, writer:I just kept saying no.
It didnt matter how much money they were going to pay me.
I thought it was a very difficult adaptation.
I found out that there had beenseven writers on the project before me.
I said, Okay, send me a couple of the scripts.
One had her son stowed away onboard.
Hart:I finally asked, Didnt anybody talk to Carl about the adaptation?
So Lynda designed a weekend where all of our families got together.
That weekend, we found the movie inside the book.
Mainly, it was around the father-daughter relationship.
Im going to burst into tears right now.
Hart:In the book, it didnt really exist.
They didnt have any kind of emotional connection.
To Carl and Anns credit, they said, Well, lets build that.
We worked for another year on the drafts.
Then George Miller came on to direct in 1993.
He told Carl and Annie that they should take a pass at the screenplay at some point.
It was such a moment of joy for me.
We created something that a really distinguished director thinks is worthy.And then the phone rang.
That was the beginning of this two-year struggle to find a way for Carl to survive.
II.TheStrangeFilmThatCouldHaveBeen
In 1994, Sagan was diagnosed with myelodysplasia, a rare bone-marrow disease.
Jodie Foster, Ellie Arroway:The George Miller movie was very different.
It was an incredibly long script like, 200 pages.
It felt a little bit more likeLorenzosOilor had even moments of, like,Eraserhead.
It was stranger because that was the idea.
The universe is strange.
George Miller declined to comment for this story.
In a 2015 interview withCollider, he described his version ofContactas less safe and less predictable than Zemeckiss movie.
He likened his script to another Matthew McConaughey movie (also produced by Lynda Obst),Interstellar.
Hart:George brought in Menno Meyjes, a wonderful writer, to work with him on the script.
Id rather not go into Lynda replacing me.
I mean, she had every right to.
I had done a very difficult adaptation.
I think the studio was disappointed because it was too heavy and too mathy.
Menno Meyjes, uncredited writer:I think George and I met at a barbecue.
I gave some off-the-cuff, fairly subversive suggestions.
The next thing I know, Im on the plane to Sydney.
Hart:Menno Meyjess work was exceptional.
The terrorist did not exist in book I created that.
Meyjes:I was fired before George was fired.
People loved the draftexcept for Jodie.
Obst:George was happy with Mennos work, but the studio wasnt.
So then we hired Michael Goldenberg, who had done a draft before Menno.
I saw that in Ellie as a character.
Obst:His script was terrific.
So we had our bigcontretemps: George, are you going to make this movie this year?
And George was like, Probably, if the script is there.
And the studio executives said, Well, we think the script is there.
And he says, Well, I dont think its there yet.
The studio organized a really bigdum-da-dumkind of meeting.
Hispartnerback in Australia was saying to him, Theyre just bluffing.
I kept saying, George, theyre not bluffing.
He came into this meeting with a very complicated diagram about what he wanted to do with the script.
They said, George, will you commit to shooting this movie by Christmas?
This was the do-or-die moment.
We were all praying he would say yes.
I remember sinking into my chair.
Druyan:George was fired.
Warner Bros. wanted a tentpole.
They wanted to put it on the schedules.
And then he was gone.
Obst:It wasvery painful for George.
It took him a long time to shoota big movie again.
I think its a tender spot in his history.
They had Robert Zemeckis on the movie the next day.
Robert Zemeckis, director:Ive always been a giant fan of Carl Sagan.
I loved theCosmosseries that he did on PBS.
I knew when theContactbook came out.
But to be honest, I never, ever have been a fan of alien stories.
And I just said, No, thank you.
So I passed on it.
Then I think I made another movie, and then I madeForrest Gump.
I would not have made any movie without final cut again.
Goldenberg:Jodie was super-insightful.
She had some notes.
Bob was lovely with them.
I got credit on the film in arbitration.
They had to go back and change that.
Goldenberg:I remember being devastated.
You know, it was my first big movie.
I felt very proprietary about it.
But its all water under the bridge at this point.
Hart:Menno did not get credit.
And that always disturbed me.
He and I actually watched the film together.
I kind of watched it and just thought,What the fuck?
Zemeckis:All I know is that Michael Goldenberg worked his ass off.
Foster:In a weird way, I got to see two different possibilities forContact.
One was the super-philosophical, artsy path.
This sort of human disconnection that we feel from everyday life in highly technological life.
And the question of faith, and if faith can repair that connection or can science repair that connection.
Druyan:I always had this secret fantasy of actually seeing the George movie.
But Bob wasextremely welcoming of our input.
This is not a diss of him in any way.
Obst:I think Zemeckis did a bang-up job.
But I wish I could have seen Georges movie.
III.ARareKindofRole
How do you solve a problem like Ellie Arroway?
Who in Hollywood had the range to play her, the intellect and empathy to understand her?
Who was she based on, anyway?
And which actor could measure up to her as the high-minded philosopher Palmer Joss?
And did he need to be hot?
Obst:There were people vying for Ellie.
Julia Roberts wanted to do it.
George Miller flirted with Uma Thurman for a second.
But there wasnt really anybody who attached or anybody we all got excited about except for Jodie.
Goldenberg: Every actress in Hollywood wanted the part.
Its a rare kind of role.
Foster:I didnt have to audition.
Pretty sure I had already wontwo Oscarsby then.
Zemeckis:The fact that I was going to work with Jodie was really the main attraction.
Goldenberg:I remember her saying to me once, Make Ellie spiky!
Dont be afraid to make her spiky.
So many actors, they want to be sympathetic, they want to be likable.
Matthew McConaughey, Palmer Joss:Jodie is nobodys fool.
I think that speaks to her longevity.
I wouldnt call it lonely so much as I would call it solitary.
You know, its sort of deliciously lonely.
Its a part of Ellie Arroway and something that connects to me too.
Sagan:The character of Ellie is my parents child.
They created her together.
Druyan:She was named Eleanor for Eleanor Roosevelt, whom we both adored.
Arroway because that was Voltaires real name but spelled in a different way.
But there is a convergent evolution at work here.
Obst:Theres another scientist who thinks its about her, too.
I dont think I should give you her name.
Itll be too controversial.
But trust me, theres a big planetary scientist who thinks its about her.
Sagan:The way that Jodie plays Ellie, it just reminds me of my dad so much.
Obst:The way Ellie talks reminds me more of Annie than Carl.
I think Annies more of an influence, but shes not going to say that.
Hart:Jodie was channeling Carl.
I think that maybeAnjelica Hustonput in a good word for me.
They said Jodie wanted to meet me.
I was really nervous.
We sat and talked.
It wasnt even really about the script.
I just could tell she was watching me like a hawk.
Hart:We created the romance between Ellie and Joss, which was not in the book.
I didnt envision Joss asa stud.
Obst:At that time, it was kind of compulsory to have a romance.
But what Warner wants Warner gets, and Matthew was great.
You put Matthew in a movie and someone gets attracted to him.
Zemeckis:Hes a very sensual hunk of a man, right?
He had just enough Texas twang in his voice.
I thought he was perfect.
Sagan:Proximity to him I think expedited my puberty.
Foster:He was quite young.
He had only doneA Time To Killat that point.
McConaughey:Ive never taken an acting class.
I stepped into the role of Wooderson inDazed and Confusedand worked for three weeks.
I didnt know what acting was, but I seemed to have instincts for it.
I went on a little spiritual walkabout for 22 days with myself in Peru.
Ive always been a believer.
I had spent time in my life considering being a monk.
I wrotepapersabout it in college.
My belief has always been that science is the practical pursuit of God.
I didnt audition for it.
I did meet with Zemeckis.
Then I believe I had to meet with Jodie.
Jodie had approval of who played the role of Palmer.
Then I got offered the role.
Zemeckis:They looked great together.
Theres a truth to this thing called screen chemistry.
Foster:That was a new and interesting thing onscreen an erotic connection thats about the brain.
With Jodie and I, it was coming together through an intellectual confrontation.
Traditionally in literature, women stay home and men travel.
Ellie Arroway is an explorer, shes a navigator, shes Galileo.
He is the thoughtful one who stays home and talks about the interior life.
McConaughey:Im a man of the cloth without the cloth.
It let me and Bob go, Yeah, he doesnt have a haircut right here.
It let him go, Yeah, unbutton another button on your shirt.
I said, I dont understand why that character would present himself like this.
Hes this sort of media spokesperson.
He finally gave in.
Just as Sagan did,Contactgrapples endlessly with questions of faith and science.
Foster:I wanted it to feel real.
Fichtner:Im a criminal-justice major from Buffalo.
Im not knocking myself, but listen, I played an astrophysicist.
Obst:In the beginning, we had workshops where we brought in experts from all these different areas.
There were very serious Christian theologians who talked to us about Josss stuff and what apocalyptic Christian thinking meant.
Jill Tarter came in and talked to us about radio astronomy.
We wanted to get the essential debate between science and religion right.
We wanted science to win, but we didnt want religion to lose.
Foster:Honestly, it was mostly the computers.
Nobody was computer literate at the time.
I remember the first day with thetechnical adviser.
Id say, I dont understand.
What am I doing at my computer?
He sat down and told me, and it took 25 minutes and I didnt understand anything.
Bob came in and said, Okay, no, no, no.
Youre going to hit that key, and then that key and then that key.
I kept wanting to understand, and there was just no way.
Carl was there once during production.
He came and gave us a lecture about the cosmos.
He wore a little turtleneck, and we got to ask him questions.
Thats our galaxy that were in.
Its ever expanding, and there are many universes.
I was on the edge of my seat the entire time.
Everything he had said was filling me up and making me more of a believer than I already was.
He got to the very end and he goes, And therefore God doesnt exist.
I went, Wait a minute.
You had me believing God existed more than ever, and thats your punch line?
He was like, Yep.
Id love to discuss it.
For example, Ellie was initially traveling to a black hole.
Carl sent the novel to Kip Thorne.
Kip was the worlds expert on black holes.
He did some calculations, and he said, Theyre going through awormhole.
And thats when Carl rewrote that section of the novel to be a wormhole.
Thats the kind of checking he did.
It could be speculative, but it couldnt break the laws of physics.
Druyan:What Carl and I wanted was Eleanor Arroway as a skeptic.
Because she literally believes that she saw her father in heaven.
But Matthewwould not do it.
Thats a small God.
But a God who can conceive of a birthing forth of life forms thats a big God.
McConaughey:I cant imagine saying that line because that would have undercut who I was.
That was a lie.
I cant go on and lie on my character.
Zemeckis:I would definitely get into it with Carl.
Like, he didnt like the line It would be a terrible waste of space.
Because the actual literal words dont mean anything.
Its just kind of a bad pun.
Zemeckis:We tried to make it as believable as possible.
As for the suicide pill?
I dont think thats true.
But if they did things like that, they do have to deny it.
Foster:Robert is such a lovely, nice, happy-go-lucky guy.
You cant ruffle him.
Zemeckis:I worry about everything.
Making a movie is a leap of faith, right?
You spend all this money, and you spend all this time.
And youre like, Okay, well that cant be done.
And hes like, You know what?
Were going to work on it.
Even when something doesnt look like a visual effect on the page, it can turn into one.
So I figured,Well do this project.
Well jump in head first.
Ralston:That mirror shot, for one.
Zemeckis:The girls got to run upstairs and get her fathers medicine, right?
Or you say, How can we do this in a way that no one has ever seen before?
Its the mirror from the medicine cabinet, and shes chasing it to get the medicine.
Thats actually what the shot looks like.
When you cut to the mirrors point of view, everything in the set is reversed.
The staircase is on the wrong side; her face is flipped.
Malone:Now I feel like fewer films are as technically proficient.
They just put everything in post, and its not premeditated.
I just love when people actually take a stab at get a shot on set.
Ive seen him go apeshit, and he knows it.
OnCastaway,I actually overheard him saying, I know this is my own fault.
Foster:The whole movie was also weather cursed.
When we went to Puerto Rico, we had terrible storms with mudslides.
When we went to D.C., we had just bitter, bitter cold for all these exterior scenes.
Thats the worst weather movie Ive ever had in my life.
McConaughey:I dont remember if it was cursed.
It seemed to be wet a lot.
We were shooting in helicopters and the weather turned really ugly; it started snowing like crazy.
You could barely see what was happening.
That day they went to change the film because it was 35-mm.
film and they exposed it all.
So they had to go back and reshoot everything.
The poor guy who exposed all the film by accident, the assistant cameraman, was fired.
So I have this massive goose egg on my head.
Im in terrible pain, and I had this big thing on my neck.
I see them in the film: the big red splotch on my neck, the giant goose egg.
Im telling you, it was a little cursed, the movie.
Zemeckis:I dont think we had any difficulty.
VI.TheProblemwiththeMachine
Zemeckis and his team took some creative license when bringing Contact to the screen.
For example, Ellie probably wouldnt have beenlistening for radio waves, she would have been lookingfor visual signals.
We wanted the ship to be super-simple.
He said it reminded him of a carnival ride.
So the machine was basicallyall my design.
Theyre all really quick.
There wouldnt be a journey.
And from a physics standpoint, hes right.
But I felt strongly that you needed the journey.
I said, This is like going to Oz without riding the tornado.
We asked Carl to suggest things that she should see on the way.
Zemeckis:Ellie traveling through the wormhole is completely arbitrary.
Foster:All of science fiction is about our own fears and desires.
Its not really about whats possible or real.
Morse:Im pretty sure it took them two weeks to shoot that.
Im always astounded when I look at the scenes there because I know she was alone.
She was having to create for herself all that emotional life.
Foster:It was like three weeks of just me by myself with mostly blue screen.
It doesnt make you ever want to do a blue-screen movie again, thats for sure.
McConaughey:A screen doesnt react to you.
You kind of go, Does this look as goofy to yall as it feels to me?
Goldenberg:I got a call: We need dialogue for this scene.
But her whole sort of narrating whats going on I wish Id cut it.
It wouldve been more powerful if it was just silent because her face is just so powerful there.
Foster:We did a bunch of stuff where I talked and moved backwards.
So I would have to learn dialogue backwards, do the scene backwards.
They shouldve sent a poet that whole part.
Zemeckis:We morphed Jena in there too.
I couldnt move my head.
Foster:I said Im okay to go too many times,obviously.
Thats what NASA people say.
There were things that we did that if we had to do it again we might do differently.
Like, I was bolted into that costume.
Zemeckis:We gave Jodie this Joan of Arc armor that was part of the chair.
She was actually locked in that chair.
We shook her pretty bad.
I mean, it was pretty violent.
Foster:Before I started shooting, Bob sent me to Magic Mountain.
Somebody took me on like ten rides back to back with no time in between.
Zemeckis:And the set caught on fire.
Foster:My stunt double, Jill, was bolted in.
They had to get her out quickly.
It must have been an electrical thing or something.
Zemeckis:But we only lost a couple of hours.
It took an unbelievable amount of work to get the scene right.
Druyan:When I was a kid, my brother was a ham-radio operator.
There was one time when we got a call signal from Pensacola.
Reaching out into the world and finding another soul in the world.
Zemeckis:The aliens have pulled that memory out of her brain.
They created her idyllic idea of a beach.
But then we want it to be alien.
Maybe its my idea of heaven.
Ralston:Shes not on another planet.
Its in her deepest subconscious.
Zemeckis:Theres always a possibility that she couldve had a ministroke or something.
She couldve been dead for a couple of seconds.
Morse:When I read the script, that scene was more expansive.
I traveled all over the Earth and went to the Grand Canyon and all these places.
I thought,I cant wait to do this.
So I said yes to the film.
Goldenberg:The instinct was to just be as simple as possible.
Ralston:We got Jodie and David Morse for a pre-shoot.
Bob set it up and shot everything as if it was for the movie.
Then we all went home, waiting for the day we were going to actually shoot that scene.
And we werent going to be doing it on some beach.
It was going to be shot in Fiji without us.
Ralston:I ended up being the guy that went over there with my own crew.
We lived on a boat.
There were no actors.
And we had to pretend everything else.
Theres a part of me thats how can I say this?
Im not a hundred percent sure what that accomplishes.
Morse:All we needed really was each other and that little plate of sand.
We could do everything we needed to do.
We had no idea what it would look like, of course.
When we finally saw it, oh my God, it was spectacular.
Goldenberg:I know we disappointed some audiences who wanted to see something more.
It was Bobs conviction that there was no way to showthe aliensin a way that wasnt silly.
Theres a higher probability that it would look like a squid with a doorknob on its ear.
We have been so brutal and selfish that we assume that thats all that is out there.
I think thats a failure of the imagination.
Contactsending had held its development back since its inception.
How do you wrap up a story like Ellies should it be ambiguous or conclusive?
Scientific or tipping its hat to faith?
Obst:It wasnt thestorythat was difficult to crack.
It was the ending.
It was always our challenge.
Once she comes back from the galaxy, what are we trying to say?
What were the aliens trying to say?
What did they want to put her through?
What happens when she comes back and she knows this happened but she has no proof?
Everybody had their own idea about what it should be.
Hart:I loveContact.
I dont like the ending because it wasnt Carls ending.
It wasnt ambiguous the way it is at the end of the film.
Goldenberg:There were a number of versions of the ending.
I met with Steven Spielberg about it.
I was just trying my best to come up with something.
Zemeckis:I wouldnt dare to make it anything other than ambiguous because it just would be false.
How did that happen?
Goldenberg:The 18-hour tape was my idea, and it was an 11th-hour idea.
Ann is right it tips the balance a bit more toward This did absolutely happen.
But it is still ambiguous.
From a logical standpoint, it doesnt change anything.
From an emotional standpoint, it changes everything.
McConaughey:It felt open-ended to me.
I felt like that was the right spot for it to be or the truest spot.
Morse:I think its a really smart ending because we dont know yet whats out there.
We only have our hopes and our faith our search which probably is as important as anything.
Druyan:I would have preferred the ending to be different.
The idea was that Ellie learned humility.
But I wanted Palmer to learn humility, too.
Why should his version of reality still prevail even though it doesnt hold up?
Sagan:My dads philosophy throughout his life was We dont have enough evidence.
Obst:Zemeckis added that addendum to the ending, where shes teaching.
I never watch that part.
I dont mind it I guess I feel like its a prosaic end to a profound question.
Im very fond of thesparkling sandslipping through her fingers, though, because thats what life is.
Its just slipping through our fingers and just that little bit of sparkle.
That we may never understand.
Foster:I went back and forth.
I was like,Im an atheist.
I dont believe in God.
But, wait a minute, do I believe in God?
And whats the difference if I do?
But its just a pyramid scheme.
Okay, but the pyramid scheme works …Im still questioning.
Druyan:We are babies.
We are so new.
Humility is the only appropriate position to take.
IX.TheGreatestLoss
On December 20, 1996, Carl Sagan died at the age of 62.
Then the litigation began.
Obst:He was so heroic at the end.
He worked up until he was getting a stem-cell transfusion.
Druyan:Just a month before Carl died, we came to Washington to see the shoot.
Carl was very depleted but was able to give a spellbinding talk about the meaning of the movie.
Foster:Sadly, he died in the middle of the shoot.
Druyan:Carl only saw one tiny scene, which wasBill Clinton talking about the aliens.
Obst:I was with him and Annie when he died.
Sagan:So much of my association withContactis tied to losing my dad.
Zemeckis:I was sad.
But what a privilege to be able to spend all this time with Carl.
I really wanted him to see the final product.
But who knows, he might have not liked it.
And this car pulls up.
I assume somebody had sent flowers or sent food or something because they know Carls died.
And this guy hops out and serves me with a summons.
And nothing ever came of it.
He had 20 years to do something, and he never did it.
This was his way of getting an injunction to prevent the movie from going forward.
Only a little bit of the movie had been shot at that point.
Druyan:I couldnt even believe that anyone would be so heartless.
The executive in charge at Warners, Courtenay Valenti, she was like, Dont worry about it.
We have your back.
He is angry at us overPinocchio, and thats why hes doing this.
And theres no reason why you should even be involved.
Zemeckis:What did he want?
No, I dont know anything about that.
I dont know, but thats crazy.
Obst:Nobody took it very seriously, but it was very vicious.
One day, out of the blue, Carl said, I give us ten years.
And I went, What do you mean, ten years?
He said, Im worried that we wont be here to answer the call.
It took me a long time to realize he was talking about himself.
Goldenberg:It was Bobs idea to put For Carl in the last shot there.
I was surprised by that.
Foster:To be responsible in a way for the legacy of Carl Sagan is really amazing to me.
That feels just like a really big deal in my life.
Druyan:The sheer joy of thinking with him throughout our 20 years together was phenomenal.
It was so romantic.
Everything we did together was romantic.
Whats more romantic than theVoyagerrecord?
I still cant wrap my head around it.
I think about it every day.
Ive been thinking about it every day since 1977.
The premiere had shots in it that werent done.
No one knew it, remembers Ralston.
Druyan:I remember sitting and watching the premiere, not even a year after Carls death.
Im holding Lyndas hand, and were seeing those first three minutes.
Both of us just started to relax.
I dont even know who whispered to who, Its going to be okay.
The first three minutes Im very proud of.
Do you remember what a piece of idiocy that was?
With aliens shooting at computers?
Its a movie that I irrationally despised for this reason: I hated them disproving Carl.
I wantedContactto be No.
Then it opened againstMen in Blackand came in second.
It made me really angry for a long time that the stupid movies won.
But now people tell me they just watchedContactwith their younger daughter for the first time.
I realized, well, its about longevity, isnt it?
Its a long race.
And they all rememberContact.
McConaughey:The movie did pretty well, didnt it?
And if its a blockbuster, then it means its going to be a franchise.
But Bob Zemeckis always makes big epic films that are about small personal things.
I think people were surprised by the amount of resonance.
We used to do that.
We used to make movies that were resonantandwere entertaining.
I think that the ambiguous ending most likely did not help to make the movie a gigantic blockbuster megahit.
An ambiguous ending can never do that.
I think the best commentary onContactwasSouth Park.
Thats my favorite commentary on the movie.
McConaughey:I had people come to me personally afterward: That was the wrong career choice.
I was like, Maybe for you.
Foster:It did feel brave.
Inside of the movie ofContact, theres this whole little treasure.
If you unlock it, youll also see Carl Sagans book, and youll also see George Millers movie.
Theyre still in there somewhere.
Obst:One of the greatest things aboutContactis that there are more women in astronomy now.
Foster:I feel like people always pass overContact, and I dont really understand why.
Sometimes I think because the poster looked a little, I dont know …
I shouldnt saycheesy, but it just looked like a Hollywood movie.
Matthew was sort of the hot young guy.
People really didnt understand what a great actor he was yet.
McConaughey:Ill be interested to see when my kids are old enough to watch it what they think.
I dont know that thats my vocation.
Although, as Ive said, I for quite some time thought that being a monk was my calling.
Hey, Ive still got time.
A father was there with his young daughters, and the girls kept looking over at me.
He said, The girls mother died a couple weeks ago.
And we saw the movie.
And we want you to know how much it meant to us and what hope it gave us.
I was like, Do you want to see mama when she was a child?
And he is like, Yeah, mama.
Zemeckis:Many people say, My favorite movie of yours isContact.
A lot of people say that.
Goldenberg:Ive got a pitch for a sequel.
Like a limited series that would follow up on it.
Obst:Everybodys spoken about a sequel, but I dont know.
Zemeckis:This movie probably could not be made today.
Movies can be about things if they cost nothing to make.
None of my movies that I made in the 90s or in the 80s could ever be made now.
Obst:Well, the movie business sucks, but one of the things they do like is sci-fi.
I sure would like to make another realistic fiction movie.
Will they make an original movie for $100 million without a Marvel character attached to it?
Zemeckis:I had a good run.
Movies, theyve been around for 120 years.
Were at a tipping point.
Maybe itll be okay.
Hey, it could be the birth of the next golden age of cinema.
