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Starring Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, James Woods, Tom Skerritt, Angela Bassett

Director Robert Zemeckis

Opens July 11

Since radio waves sent into space apparently keep going and going and going, what happens when we intercept alien sound signals? The question, which inspired the late great astro-guru Carl Sagan to write his 1985 best-selling novel, Contact, could make this summer's movie version a kind of Close Encounters for the new millennium. Foster plays an astronomer who receives the first extraterrestrial radio response from space. McConaughey, in his first lead role since last summer's A Time to Kill, costars as an influential spiritual leader who's further enlightened by the cosmic connection. And the director who gave us Forrest Gump is overseeing the computer-generated images. ''This is by far the biggest and most technical movie I've ever worked on, and probably ever seen,'' says Zemeckis. ''It had huge sets, a huge cast, huge effects. Huge, huge, huge!''

Contact also had some huge problems. Nearly 12 years in the making, the production, shot in two countries and four states, was plagued by heat, fog, and killer sandstorms. Shooting the crucial ''contact'' moment at a government satellite station in the middle of New Mexico was probably the trickiest endeavor. ''We had battle conditions,'' says producer Steve Starkey. ''The whole point was to film a crowd rallying around these giant satellite dishes, and the wind was so strong we couldn't see anything. No crowds, no dishes, no nothing.''

Like Gump, Contact is rich in the sorts of morphed-in effects that take our heroes into unfathomable situations. ''It's like [Zemeckis] is in the sandbox making these unbelievable sand castles,'' McConaughey says. ''Anything his imagination brings up goes on film.'' Cases in point: The thousands of space devotees swarming around the New Mexico satellite station are mostly computer-generated clones of a few hundred real extras; ditto the hordes of alien-obsessed earthlings marching on Washington.

The effects, however, are small compared with the filmmakers' big, decidedly un-summerlike ideas. ''We want people leaving the theater asking who they are, why they're here, and what our destination as human beings really is,'' Starkey says. Adds executive producer Lynda Obst: ''Those were the questions Carl Sagan forced us to ask ourselves. He was the most amazing man I've ever known. I only wish he could have stayed alive to see this film through to the end.'' UPSIDE With a stellar cast and timely Hale-Bopp themes, Zemeckis' first post-Gump flick could be another giant box office chocolate. DOWNSIDE The director's occasional missteps (Back to the Future, Part III; Death Becomes Her) proves you never know what you're gonna get.


Posted May 16, 1997 | Published in issue #379 May 16, 1997 | Order Article Reprints