The following is an article from the February '92 (Vol. 1, #1) issue of The
REALL News.  It may be reprinted by other skeptics organizations as long as
proper credit is given. REALL also requests that you please send a copy of 
ny
publication that reprints one of our articles for our files.  This article 
ay
also be cross-posted onto other appropriate conferences.
This article represents the opinions of its author, and does not necessarily
represent the opinions of REALL or its officers.
==============================================================================
                         Pencil-Neck Aliens
                       by Martin S. Kottmeyer
     Aliens with long, thin necks are currently "in."
Reports and drawings of these pencil-neck Greys seem to be
everywhere.  They've turned up on T-shirts, made for TV
films -- _Intruders_ (1992) -- and in dozens of magazines
and books.  The proliferation of this trait among
contemporary aliens may be a telling indication that our
taste in aliens is as subject to fadism as our taste in
clothing styles.
     One has to grant that pencil necks have more aesthetic
logic than biologic sense.  The slenderness of these necks
undeniably lend elegance to present-day aliens and enhance
their overall anorexic appearance.  Propping oversized
craniums on top of such skinny supports however raises
concerns this species is whiplash bait.  What business have
such aliens in vehicles which legend has it have a benchant
for bone-bending right angle turns and ultra-air-brake
stops?
     The pencil-neck is a strikingly recent innovation.
Early studies of ufonauts -- Coral and Jim Lorenzens's
_Flying Saucer Occupants_ (1967), Charles Bowen's _The
Humanoids_ (1969), and James McCampbell's _Ufology_ (1973)
-- say nothing about aliens with long thin necks.  They
certainly weren't common.  I'm doubtful there was a single
unambiguous instance of a pencil-neck alien prior to the
Eighties.  I've rummaged through the drawings of all the
major cases -- the Flatwoods monster, Kelly-Hopkinsville,
Barny and Betty Hill, Herb Schirmer, Pascagoula, Charles
Moody, Travis Walton -- and they are nowhere to be seen.
They aren't visible in the first two books of the Betty
Andreasson series either, but they do put in a cameo
appearance in _The Watchers_ (1990).  They seem to arrive en
masse in 1987 with no less than five drawings of pencil-
necks in Budd Hopkins' _Intruders_ and the very prominent
example staring out from the cover the Whitley Strieber's
_Communion_.  These works were popular and influential to
the degree that it is now part of the stereotype of the Grey
as noted by David Jacobs in his abductee study, _Secret
Life_.
     The source of these pencil-necks is not hard to guess
at.  The alien which communicates by hand gestures at the
climax of _Close Encounters of the Third Kind_ (1977)
possesses a long, slender neck.  Like Hopkins' drawings,
there is also a notable lack of sense organs, hair, and no
white to the eyes.  The similarities are too obvious to
dismiss as coincidence.  _CE3K's_ aliens were the first in
the long history of film aliens to possess long, thin necks.
A few readers at this point will object.  It is widely known
that J. Allen Hynek was a consultant on the film.  Hynek was
one of the most knowledgeable students of the UFO phenomenon
in this country.  He may have avoided the popular cases
mentioned earlier because of their controversial status and
gave Spielberg some little known, but high-quality cases
from his investigation files.  Surely Hynek's presence means
the aliens were based on "real" cases.  Hopkins' drawings
merely corroborate the existence of those little-known
aliens.
     While this scenario sounds highly plausible, it happens
to be wrong.  Interviews with Spielberg and the designers of
the film's aliens in various forums document the creative
process behind the construction of the Mothership aliens.
No "real" UFO reports or alien drawings were used.  The Fall
1978 issue of _Cinefantastique_ provided a fully detailed
history of how the aliens that appeared in the film evolved
from initial desires to the final product.  It's as amusing
as it is eye-opening.
     Frank Griffin, a make-up artist on _Westworld_, _Star
Trek_, and _Time Tunnel_, was involved in the earliest
stages of the project.  He states that Spielberg, from the
beginning, wanted aliens with large heads and long limbs,
but beyond that everything was very abstract.  There were at
least eight sketches from which Spielberg selected bits and
pieces.  From an alien with an ant-like or cricket-like head
it gradually got transformed into something resembling
Casper the Friendly Ghost.
     Tom Burman got the job of building the masks and molds
which took about three months.  Spielberg balked when he saw
the actual product in three dimensions.  Julia Philips, his
assistant, freaked and threatened Burman with a twenty
million dollar lawsuit.  Three new designs were quickly
sculpted and sent to Spielberg for approval.  In ten days
the new selection was fashioned over the original framework.
Spielberg, on seeing them, just sighed and headed for the
film site in Mobile, Alabama, hopeful he could re-think
things.  Spielberg ended up using Burman's masks, but he
carefully avoided any close-ups and tended to keep them
backlit so they wouldn't be easily scrutinized.  Burman
didn't get screen credit because of Spielberg's
dissatisfaction.
     While in Mobile, Spielberg got the idea of an alien
with a long neck and lithe arms which could wrap around a
person three or four  times.  Bob Baker, a puppet maker, was
called in to develop the concept.  Initial drawings had a
neck which came forward making it a lazy "S."  The eyes had
light beams coming out of it.  The brain could be seen
moving in it.  Skin trailed off of it.  It wa a bit too
much.
     Carlo Rimbaldi, who had just done some technical work
for the disastrous King Kong remake by Dino De Laurentiis,
next got the assignment.  Spielberg gave him no designs, but
gave various suggestions about what he wanted such as a
smile which would look like the ancient lama from _Lost
Horizon_ and a general faint resemblance to the child that
played Barry.  Rimbaldi incorporated his own notions of what
a being might look like that was ten or twenty thousand
years more advanced than us.  With increased reliance on
pure intellect, the head would be larger, but the sense
organs of the nose and ear would atrophy.  Increased
reliance on technology would reduce the amount of
musculature.  All this is basically a variant of an argument
once common in science fiction that H.G. Wells first put
forward in his 1893 essay "The Man of the Year Million"
(reprinted in Peter Baining's _H.G. Wells Scrapbook_).
Wells' argument tends to be viewed as flawed nowadays
because it ignores processes like sexual selection,
brainpower being shunted into computers, and genetic
manipulation of the human form for aesthetic purposes.  No
matter though.  Spielberg loved it.
     It should be incontestable from these facts that _Close
Encounters'_ aliens were shaped by creative imagination and
not prior UFO reports.  But for the happenstance that
Rimbaldi was available when Spielberg called, we might today
be confronted with a fad for snake-necked, laser-eyed aliens
rather than the Wellsian pencil-neckers currently
fashionable.
     This history also presents clear problems for those who
plan to entertain the notion that Spielberg was an
unconscious abductee.  Some abductees draw aliens more
reminiscent of Burman's aliens than Rimbaldi's, but
Spielberg clearly felt the final form was wrong.
Spielberg's unconscious apparently wanted wildly-long
wraparound arms, but that notion got down-sized in the final
product.  Where are the abductee accounts that match
Spielberg's initial impression?  It is also puzzling that
Rimbaldi's designs should have been closer to the mark than
Baker when you consider that Europeans (which Rimbaldi is)
don't seem to have abduction experiences involving pencil-
neck Greys.
     A final question:  Why didn't ufologists throw away the
reports of pencil-neck aliens?  People abducted by Spock,
E.T., or Alien would certainly never be written up in the
UFO literature assuming they didn't themselves recognize the
cultural influence.  The answer of course is that Hynek's
association with the film misled ufologists into thinking
there was a valid basis to the film's creation in the "real"
UFO phenomenon.  Only people who subscribe to magazines on
science fiction film would know the whole story.
Ufologists, Hopkins most especially, care little about
science fiction.  (See my article "Entirely Unpredisposed"
in _Magonia_, January 1990, which is also available on
Usenet and Bitnet "Skeptic".)  [This is also available
locally on David Bloomberg's BBS, The Temples of Syrinx. -
Ed.] The pencil-neck fad must ultimately be regarded as a
cultural phenomenon since it was, in orgin, a human
creation.  Knowing the full story makes acceptance of them
as a real extraterrestrial presence, you should pardon the
expression, hard to swallow.
[Martin Kottmeyer lives in Carlyle, IL.  He has written
articles for several British publications, including
_Magonia_, _UFO Brigantia_, and _The Wild Places_.]
--- msgedsq 2.0.5
---------------