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[colin]

Jodie Fosters best film & a real heart rencher too boot

[kg redhead]

Author and producer Carl Sagan died during production of the film. He was reportedly taking great care to ensure that "science" was accurately depicted in the film.

The dish at the beginning of the movie is the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico.

Through the entire filming of the scenes at the Very Large Array, the array was actually collecting data.

The character of Kent Clark is based on real-life SETI Institute scientist Dr Kent Cullers.

The spilled popcorn near the beginning of the film is in the shape of a crescent that reappears throughout the movie. It reportedly represents the constellation Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown, which was Carl Sagan's favorite constellation due to its resemblance to the dish of a radio telescope.

The character of Dr. Arroway was modeled after two of the pioneering radio astronomers of the 1930s and 1940s, Grote Reber and John Kraus; both men were ham radio operators at an early age.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (featured in the film) has a club station which, with the permission of Reber, had acquired his old call sign "W9GFZ" earlier in 1997. Zemeckis, learning of this tribute, planned to use the same call sign for Arroway in the movie. However, in the end "W9GFO" was used instead. While viewing the film after release, David Wilson of the Internet recognized this call sign as that of his father Robert (Bob) Wilson from the late 1930s. W9GFO and K4WLD are currently assigned to ham radio operators in the USA.