1. François Truffaut - Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
When it comes to moviemaking curveballs, one of the best came in 1977, courtesy of the tenth entry on our list, Steven Spielberg. Alien-seeking adventure Close Encounters Of The Third Kind needed a convincing presence in the part of European boffin Claude Lacombe. His face may not have registered much with most cinema attendees, but connoisseurs of the craft were doing backflips when François Truffaut rocked up. Truffaut, key member of the French New Wave, represented the sense of wonder from the establishment end of the equation. His opposite was Richard Dreyfuss's Roy Neary, a seemingly average guy whose fixation on extraterrestrial life created a form of madness in him. The two men eventually found each other in the same room, prior to an iconic sequence involving the landing of a spacecraft and some creative keyboarding. The auteur had toplined occasionally in his own films, but Close Encounters performed the dual function of taking him out of his comfort zone and launching him on Hollywood at the same time. The filmmaker was no avoider of Tinseltown - he memorably admired the likes of Hitchcock - but Lacombe became his most high profile movie character.
I am a journalist and comedian who enjoys American movies of the 70s, Amicus horror compendiums, Doctor Who, Twin Peaks, Naomi Watts and sitting down. My short fiction has been published as part of the Iris Wildthyme range from Obverse Books.
