contact · /ˈkɒntakt/ · noun
This is the
Contact page.
The movie. Not a form. Well, there's a form too, at the bottom.
But first: Robert Zemeckis, 1997, Jodie Foster, Carl Sagan.
Stick around. The universe is big. You've got time.
01 - The Film
What is Contact, exactly?
Just a movie that I loved as a young boy and as a sci-fi fan. A love letter to science, skepticism, and the terrifying vastness of the universe wrapped in a two-hour existential crisis you'll thank me for later.
1997 · Sci-Fi · Drama
Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Based on Carl Sagan's novel of the same name, published in 1985 because Carl Sagan was the kind of person who wrote sci-fi novels on weekends.
Jodie Foster Is Perfect
She plays Dr. Ellie Arroway, a scientist who dedicates her life to SETI: the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Her commitment to the role is the reason this film works at all.
Still Holds Up
In a world of CGI everything and plot holes you could park a spacecraft through, Contact aged like fine wine. Mostly because it cared more about ideas than explosions.
02 - Quotes
What the film says
Young Ellie: "Dad, do you think there's people on other planets?"
Ted Arroway: "I don't know, Sparks. But I guess I'd say if it is just us... seems like an awful waste of space. The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space."
- Contact (1997)
Michael Kitz: "Explain this to me. If the source of the signal is so sophisticated, why the remedial math?"
Senator Valencia: "Exactly, why don't they speak English?"
Ellie Arroway: "Maybe because 70 percent of the planet speaks other languages."
- Contact (1997)
S.R. Hadden: "First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?"
- Contact (1997)
Alien: "You're an interesting species. An interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other."
- Contact (1997)
03 - Things You Should Know
The Contact crash course
For when someone asks if you've seen it and you want to sound like you have.
We Get a Signal
Ellie picks up a signal from Vega, 26 light-years away, encoded with prime numbers. Because apparently aliens are also nerds. Relatable.
Politics Ensues
Governments, militaries, and one spectacular villain in a suit immediately make everything complicated. Humanity's first contact with aliens: mostly HR drama.
She Goes
Ellie enters a machine built from alien blueprints, experiences something transcendent, and returns with zero proof. Eighteen hours of data. Nobody believes her. The film ends. You stare at the ceiling.
04 - Behind the Scenes
Things you probably didn't know
Contact is full of details that reward the curious. Here are some of the best.
The book came second
Sagan and his wife Ann Druyan wrote Contact as a movie treatment in 1979. When it got stuck in development hell, Sagan turned the script into a novel which became a bestseller in 1985. The film finally caught up with him, but he passed away during production in December 1996. It ends with a dedication card: "For Carl."
Based on a real scientist
Jodie Foster's character is heavily based on Dr. Jill Tarter, astronomer and former director of the Center for SETI Research. Foster spent time with Tarter before filming, observing how she worked, how she talked, and what it meant to be a woman fighting for funding in a skeptical, male-dominated field.
Hitler opened the transmission
The alien signal contains a broadcast of Adolf Hitler opening the 1936 Berlin Olympics, because it was one of the first TV signals strong enough to escape Earth's atmosphere. Scientifically accurate: it would have reached Vega around 1962, leaving just enough time for a return signal to arrive in the late '90s. Sagan really did his homework. Grim homework, but homework.
Kip Thorne invented a wormhole for this
Sagan originally wanted Ellie to travel through a black hole. He asked Nobel laureate Kip Thorne to check the math. Thorne pointed out a black hole would instantly crush her, so he worked out the theoretical physics for a stable, traversable wormhole instead. Thorne later used this same work to help Christopher Nolan make Interstellar.
The impossible mirror shot
Early in the film, the camera tracks young Ellie running upstairs and reaching for a medicine cabinet, then, as she opens it, we realize the entire shot was filmed through the cabinet mirror. Physically impossible (the camera would have passed through her body). Zemeckis pulled it off with a green-screen composite, digitally flipping a separate take and blending it into the opening door.
She couldn't actually hear that
The iconic scene of Ellie on her car hood, headphones on, listening for signals at the Very Large Array? Radio telescopes detect radio waves, the data arrives as numbers on a computer graph, not sound. Also, the headphones and the car's own engine would have caused massive interference. Great scene though. Sometimes cinema wins.
The alien signal sound effect, that low, pulsing hum, was built by sound designer Randy Thom from a sports car idling, a jet engine, and an old audio speaker being switched on and off rapidly. No synthesizers. Just things that exist, repurposed into something that sounds like it shouldn't.
So, did aliens build this website?
No. But if you haven't seen Contact, I'd highly recommend it.
Have a look at it on IMDB →05 - Actual Contact
Now you can actually reach out
Unlike Ellie, I'll respond. Probably. I can't promise 18 hours of recorded data, but I'll do my best.
// awaiting signal · can't decode · missing transmission //