In 1977, the oil fields around Gillette, Wyoming were booming and a bunch of guys from Boulder, CO went there to get work. I was one of them. One evening several of us shooting pool in the Sportsman Bar when a woman came in and picked out perhaps a couple dozen guys and asked us if we wanted to be in a movie. The movie was ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’. They were paying $40 a day cash and they fed us breakfast and lunch with the opportunity to steal enough food for another meal. It was only two days work, but it was a heckuva lot easier than working in the fields.
So here’s the drill. Towards the end of the movie, Richard Dreyfuss & Melinda Dillon bolt from a helicopter and elude the soldiers attempting to evacuate the area (in some cuts they are accompanied by a third person – a man). I’ve seen at least three different versions of this, but in one a semi pulls away from the frame and reveals soldiers. I’m the next to last soldier on the right. I’m wearing white coveralls and have a stick of 3″ PVC on my shoulder.
In 1977, the oil fields around Gillette, Wyoming were booming and a bunch of guys from Boulder, CO went there to get work. I was one of them. One evening several of us shooting pool in the Sportsman Bar when a woman came in and picked out perhaps a couple dozen guys and asked us if we wanted to be in a movie. The movie was ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’. They were paying $40 a day cash and they fed us breakfast and lunch with the opportunity to steal enough food for another meal. It was only two days work, but it was a heckuva lot easier than working in the fields.
So here’s the drill. Towards the end of the movie, Richard Dreyfuss & Melinda Dillon bolt from a helicopter and elude the soldiers attempting to evacuate the area (in some cuts they are accompanied by a third person – a man). I’ve seen at least three different versions of this, but in one a semi pulls away from the frame and reveals soldiers. I’m the next to last soldier on the right. I’m wearing white coveralls and have a stick of 3″ PVC on my shoulder.