Did You Know?

Ralph Fiennes was considered for Palmer Joss, but not cast.

Francis Ford Coppola filed breach-of-contract suits against Carl Sagan's estate and Warner Brothers, halting the film. He claimed that Sagan had developed the "Contact" premise for Zoetrope Studios (possibly for a Children's Television Workshop program). The suit alleged that Sagan had not paid the required $250,000 when he had turned the concept into a novel, and in any event was prohibited from selling the film rights to the story.

The dish at the beginning of the movie is the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. It is actually used for SETI research. Some of the time SETI scientists actually have the huge telescope for themselves, but mostly they use data collected by their "piggybacked" receiver that listens to any part of the sky other astronomers are observing.

William Fichtner's character in the film, a blind astrophysicist with enhanced hearing as a result of his condition, is named Kent Clark, a play on the name of Superman's alter ego, Clark Kent. The character is based on a real-life blind SETI scientist, Kent Cullers.

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. Another model for the character's work was real-life SETI researcher Jill Cornell Tarter.

The sounds heard during the film's opening shot include: - "Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind - "Angry Days" by Lagwagon - "Wannabe" by Spice Girls - "God Shuffled His Feet" by Crash Test Dummies - "Obviously a major malfunction..." (Challenger Shuttle disaster quote) - The theme to Dallas - "Sometimes You Feel Like A Nut..." (an old commercial for Mounds & Almond Joy chocolate bars) - "Funkytown" by Lipps Inc. - Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook" speech - Walter Cronkite announcing the assassination of President John F. Kennedy - Neil Armstrong's "One Small Step" speech - "Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" by Brian Hyland - "I Have A Dream..." a Martin Luther King speech - Theme from Twilight Zone - Transition music from Seinfeld - "Broken Wings" by Mr. Mister - Senator Joseph McCarthy's infamous interrogation question ("Are you now or have you ever been...") - Douglas MacArthur's "Old soldiers never die..." quote - Franklin D. Roosevelt's 8 December 1941 address to Congress ("a date that will live in infamy") - "The Gold Diggers' Song (We're in the Money)" by Al Dubin and Harry Warren - Opening speech by Adolf Hitler at the German 1936 Olympics, being the first transmission in history that was aired with sufficient power to escape the Earth's atmosphere - "White Bird" by It's a Beautiful Day - "Nel blu dipinto di blu" also known as "Volare" by Domenico Modugno - "Boogie Oogie Oogie" by A Taste of Honey - "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" sung by Judy Garland - Theme to The Andy Griffith Show - "Please, Mr. Postman" by The Marvelettes. Most of the samples are chronologically arranged.

The Dynamics officer, addressed only as "Gerry" in dialogue, is Gerry Griffin, who in real life was a Flight Director at Mission Control in Houston during the Apollo program.

During one of the most intense scenes in the pod ("I had no idea...") Jodie Foster shows a wide range of conflicting emotions. Director Robert Zemeckis had asked her to repeat the scene six times, each time with a different expression (intense joy, fear, sadness and so on) and then the SFX crew quickly morphed her face from one take to the next. For a brief moment they also used the face of Dr. Arroway as a child. When Dr. Arroway starts receiving the alien signal, we follow her from the parking lot to the lab in what appears to be a long, continuous shot. Actually the scenes were shot in two different locations, and then digitally composed to make them appear seamless.

Young Ellie's father calls her "Sparks". Sparks is a nickname given to early radio operators who used spark-gap transmitters.

The remark made throughout the movie by different characters that if humans were the only life in the universe it would "be a terrible waste of space" is a famous quote by author Carl Sagan.

Dr. Arroway hypothesizes that the message could be an "Encyclopaedia Galactica", a concept envisioned by Carl Sagan as well, featured prominently in the TV series Cosmos and meant to be a planetary database for all the worlds within the Milky Way Galaxy. The term originates from Isaac Asimov's science-fiction novel "Foundation".

Sidney Poitier was announced for this film but was replaced before filming.

The long shot of Ellie as a child running up the stairs to get medicine for her father starts off on the stairs and rounds a corner, down the hall, into the bathroom and out of the medicine cabinet mirror a shot that is practically impossible. The shot was actually filmed as a normal shot would have been and then flipped and placed in the mirror which, at the time of shooting was a blue screen placement in the cabinet.

President Bill Clinton's appearance was taken from an actual press conference on the White House South Lawn in 1997 - if you look closely at his hair, it appears brighter than that of the other people in the shot. His remarks were regarding the real-life discovery of an arctic meteorite discovered to be from Mars.

Jenny McCarthy, when her popularity was boosted when she hosted Singled Out, tried to audition for the role of Eleanor.

In the scene where Ellie returns to her apartment, just before receiving the first message from Hadden, as she enters the room we see her reflected in a mirror; at the bottom left of the mirror is a photo of Carl Sagan, the movie's writer.

During the scene where Eleanor is pitching for funds at the boardroom, she is wearing the trademark turtleneck and beige suit that Carl Sagan is famous for.

The MIT yearbook showed with Jodie Foster's character is the actual MIT undergraduate yearbook Class of 1983, and other photos are those of the actual graduating students.

The Carl Sagan book "Contact" is different from the movie in several key places. First, the book had three machines built; one in the USA, one in the Soviet Union, and the third built by Hadden on Hokkaido, Japan. The movie had only two machines. The second major difference is that the book's machines held five passengers, and Ellie was accompanied on the voyage by four diverse intellectuals from around the world. Further, in the book semi-retired Ellie discovers "message" in the number pi (certain pattern of digits in it), thus revealing that our universe was indeed created or tweaked by other intelligent beings, as she has been told during her journey. Finally, there is no previous romantic relationship between Ellie and Joss, although the book hints at a potential relationship between the two as the story nears its end.