George Miller’s version of Contact would have been “much more ambitious intellectually,” says one of its writers

George Miller’s version of Contact would have been “much more ambitious intellectually,” says one of its writers May 3, 2016

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I’m not the biggest fan of Contact, Robert Zemeckis’s 1997 film adaptation of Carl Sagan’s novel. That’s partly because the film tosses out the more nuanced relationship between faith and science that Sagan put in his novel and replaces it with a bunch of Hollywood clichés, such as fundamentalist Christian suicide bombers.

Still, I’m intrigued to hear that the film was originally going to be directed by George Miller — the Oscar-winning creator of the Mad Max, Babe and Happy Feet franchises (that last one is the one that got him the Oscar) — and that Miller was going to do something potentially more interesting with all that faith-and-science stuff.

Last week, “junior writer” Mark Lamprell — who worked on the script with primary screenwriter Menno Meyjes — told the Australian website If.com.au:

“It was a much more interesting screenplay, and I think George would say this too.”

An old boy of Sydney’s St Ignatius College, Riverview, Lamprell was interested in exploring the nexus between belief and hard science.

“Because of my Jesuit connections I was able to get all those amazing Jesuit scientists in, to talk to us about how you operate as a man of faith in the world of science.

“We were having really interesting conversations, and Carl [Sagan] was thrilled to be having those. It wasn’t about being populist or talking down to an audience. Not that Contact necessarily did that, but ours was much more ambitious intellectually. . . .”

The Jesuit influence might still be present in the film due to Matthew McConaughey’s New Age celebrity character, who as I recall was a Jesuit seminary dropout.

The thing is, in the original novel, the McConaughey character wasn’t a Jesuit at all, ex- or otherwise. Instead, the book describes him as a “fundamentalist preacher” who tried “to steer a middle course, to reconcile caricatures of science and religion.”

I don’t think it’s particularly controversial to say that Hollywood, in general, is more comfortable with Catholics than evangelicals. Consider how a film like Amistad is very cautious around the historical evangelical characters while it affirms the faith of a fictitious Catholic. Or how films like Space Cowboys feature Baptist ministers who say Hail Marys. (Yes, all my examples here come from films made in the late 1990s.)

Zemeckis’s Contact — and the way it changes the McConaughey character from a sincere “fundamentalist” to a sexually active ex-Jesuit — is part of this overall pattern of displacement. But Miller’s film might have been too, from the sound of it.

Ah well. At least we have Sagan’s novel (and its surprising ending).

And maybe, some day, someone will release the script for Miller’s film so that we can get an even better sense of how it might have improved on Zemeckis’s film.

P.S.: I think my favorite comment on Contact came from Paul Rudnick via his “Libby Gelman-Waxner” column in Premiere magazine: it’s the sort of movie in which all the world’s religions agree on a single God just so they can gang up on Jodie Foster.


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