Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Dr. Hynek's Silent Movie



Two more 1976 letters from Dr. J. Allen Hynek today. In one, he answers my complaint about a late publication.

In the other, he actually acknowledges how much money he made from his brief non-speaking appearance in the then still-unreleased movie, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," the answer to a question I certainly did not ask. But it was interesting to know.

If you read my earliest blog entries, you already know that one of my Argosy UFO articles turned up as a prop in the movie for a few seconds. Even in my life, this is one incredibly useless bit of information and impresses nobody. Drat.

It appears that Dr. Hynek banged this letter out on a typewriter or printer by himself, and I suppose he was just busy or tired when referencing the movie's director as "Steve Spielsberg" and leaving the "s" off the second word of the title. Too much time frittered away in astrophysics and not enough on the keyboard, apparently.