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Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Written by: Melissa Mathison
Music by: John Williams

Filming: from September 8, 1981 to December 1981 in Laird International Studios
Released on:  June 11th, 1982 (re-released in March 22nd, 2002)
Running Time: 115 minutes

Box-Office: $399.804 million in the U.S., $701.4 million worldwide; $228.168 million in rental
 

Elliot... Henry Thomas
E.T.... Voice of Pat Walsh, with help from Debra Winger
Gertie... Drew Barrymore
Mary... Dee Wallace-Stone
Keys... Peter Coyote
Michael... Robert MacNaughton
Greg... K.C. Martel
Steve... Sean Frye
Tyler... C. Thomas Howell
Pretty Girl... Erika Eleniak
 
 
 
Original: Law enforcement agents wield guns
Now: Guns erased digitally and replaced with walkie-talkies

 

Q : What do you think about the news that people believe you're actually a government agent for aliens because of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T.?
Steven Spielberg : I'm part of government conspiracy to make America and the world conducive to accepting an alien neighbor? Great!
 

E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL

Screenwriter Melissa Mathison was married to actor Harrison Ford for 18 years.After 18 years of marriage, Harrison Ford (star of Star Wars and Indiana Jones) and Melissa Mathison (screenwriter of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial) filed for divorce in late 2001. They have two children, Malcolm, 14 at the time, and Georgia, 11. Harrison Ford also has two adult sons by his first wife Mary Marquardt, whom he divorced in 1979.
 

  Spielberg and the Swedish board of censors have a history of conflicts that goes back 20 years. ``E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'' was given an 11-rating because the censors thought some scenes were scary and presented the adult world in a hostile way. The film's distributor fought for a lower rating but lost.

  Stan Winston, the special effects guru who created the dinosaurs for the Jurassic Park movies, turned down one of Steven Spielberg's earliest offers.  Spielberg wanted Winston to design and build the extraterrestrial for E.T.  "I would have had to work with another special effects person and he and I did not, and still do not, see eye-to-eye so I turned down E.T.," recalls Winston.  Instead he did Piranha Part Two: The Spawning.  "What can I say. It was Demi Moore's first movie," concedes Winston. And it also happened to be directed by James Cameron!

  Interview of Leah Adler, mother of Steven Spielberg, for Fre Bernstein's book "The Jewish Mothers Hall of Fame" at her kosher restaurant "The Milky Way" in Los Angeles.

  "When he was growing up, I didn't know he was a genius. Frankly, I didn't know what the hell he was. I'm really ashamed, but I didn't recognize the symptoms of talent. I did him an injustice. I had no idea back then that my son would be Steven Spielberg.

  For one thing -and he'll probably take away my charge accounts for saying this -Steven was never a good student. Once, his teacher told me he was 'special' -and I wondered how she meant it.

  You see, Steven wasn't exactly cuddly. What he was was scary. When Steven woke up from a nap, I shook." Long before Gremlins, Steven was a master of creating terror. He practiced on his three kid sisters. Says Leah, "He used to stand outside their windows at night, howling, 'I am the moon. I am the moon.' They're still scared of the moon. And he cut off the head of one of Nancy's dolls and served it to her on a bed of lettuce.

  The first thing I'd do when we moved to a new house was look for a baby-sitter. But it didn't work, because they wouldn't let us go out for more than a few hours without taking Steven.

  Once, I took Steven to the Grand Canyon. He said, 'This is nice,' and then he threw up. With Steven, you held on to your dear life.

  I mean, I didn't know how to raise children. Maybe we were more normal than I remember -but I sincerely doubt it. Steven's room was such a mess, you could grow mushrooms on the floor. Once his lizard got out of its cage, and we found it -living- three years later. He had a parakeet he refused to keep in a cage altogether. It was disgusting. Once a week, I would stick my head in, grab his dirty laundry, and slam the door.

  If I had known better, I would have taken him to the psychiatrist, and there never would have been an E.T."

... When he was fourteen, Steven made his first full-length movie, a sci-flick called Firelight, and he got a theatre in Phoenix to show it. It was Leah who put up the letters on the marquee. "I thought, 'This is a nice hobby.' " Incredibly, the film made money, and there was no stopping Steven. Once, Leah says, "he wanted to shoot a scene in a hospital, and they closed down an entire wing. Another time, he needed to shoot an airport, and they gave him a whole runway. Nobody ever said no to Steven. He always gets what he wants, anyway, so the name of the game is to save your strength and say yes early."

  At least once, she should have said no -early. Steven wanted to do a scene (similar to one in Poltergeist twenty years later) in which something horrible came oozing out of Leah's kitchen cabinets. She not only agreed but went to the supermarket and bought thirty cans fo cherries, which she cooked in a presure cooker until they exploded all over the room. "For years after that," she jokes, "my routine every morning was to go downstairs, put the coffee on, and wipe cherries off the cabinets."
 
 

"In the case of E.T., John asked that we simply let him perform his theme without trying to measure it closely with the edited film. We shut off the projector and John performed the theme for E.T., just letting the spirit come from his heart. It worked so well that we took the last scene back to the editing room and conformed out pictures to John's interpretive conducting. This score won him his fourth Academy Award (the third was for Star Wars), and my continued admiration and gratitude.

I've always felt that John Williams was my musical rewrite artist. He comes in, sees my movie, rewrites the whole thing musically, and makes it much better than I did. He can take a moment and just uplift it. He can take a tear that's just forming in your eye and he can cause it to drip.

In our ten year and six picture association, John Williams has been an immeasurable creative force in all of my movies. This should be obvious to anyone who realized that John was the voice of Jaws, the soul of the mothership from Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the furious heartbeat from which Raiders of the Lost Ark flowed. John's score to the movie E.T. is unlike any of his others. It is soothing and benign. It is scary and suspenseful and, toward the climax, downright operatic. For me, this is John Williams' best work for the movies. John Williams is E.T."

-Steven Spielberg, director

 
 

  Working titles included A Boy's Life, E.T. and Me and Night Skies.

  Universal is hoping to release Steven Spielberg's classic E.T. on March 22nd, 2002. The film will include deleted scenes and also some footage that will be re-edited the way Spielberg wanted it.

You mentioned that E.T. was the movie that encouraged Kubrick to guide this work into Spielberg's hands. Do you think that A.I. can have as deep an impact on movie-making and marketing as did E.T.?

Author Brian Aldiss (Super Toys Last All Summer Long). : It was my impression merely that Kubrick greatly admired E.T. He liked the opening in particular, where we see (if memory serves) a man from waist down only, with keys jangling at his hip, shot from a low angle, as if we are looking through the eyes of a child. We have the same effect in Kubrick's "The Shining", when we follow little Danny, speeding his pedal car through the ghastly corridors of the Hotel Overlook. Kubrick always wished he made more films. He took such pains over everything. He admired Spielberg's production rate of high-quality, high-profile movies. As to the effect on future movies, with there ever again be such a collaboration as the one between Kubrick-Spielberg? I doubt it. Nor can anyone else trump my claim to be the only guy who who has sold stories to both Kubrick and Spielberg!
 

July 2001
Steven Spielberg is planning to release a 20th anniversary "director's cut" of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial next year that will contain nearly 10 minutes of additional footage, according to producer Kathleen Kennedy.  In an interview with the Calgary Sun, Kennedy described the footage as "bits and pieces ... little moments [that had been] cut from various scenes" in the original. She also said that now "E.T. says 'Phone Home' much better." Kennedy insisted that Spielberg's intention was not to push E.T. back to the top of the all-time box office list again. (With a box-office take of $400 million, it currently ranks behind Titanic, the original Star Wars and The Phantom Menace.) "It's not about money. It's about introducing E.T. to a fourth generation of kids in a movie theatre where they should see it for maximum effect," she said.

She says Spielberg is also planning "a wonderful behind-the-scenes feature to accompany the release. There is a great little interview with Drew Barrymore when she was six. The documentary takes a 'Where were you 20 years ago?' approach."

Kennedy says there will never be a sequel to ET: "We never intended ET to be a franchise movie. Before we even began shooting, Steven was adamant he'd never allow a sequel. The movie stands on its own."
 

Director Steven Spielberg removed the guns used by the government agents from the 20th anniversary version (something Spielberg says he regrets having put in)
 

ET's face was modeled after poet Carl Sandburg and Albert Einstein.

At the auditions, Henry Thomas thought about the day his dog died to express sadness. Director Steven Spielberg cried, and hired him on the spot.

Harrison Ford played the school principal that Elliot and his mom go to after the frog incident, but his only scene was cut as Spielberg considered Harrison's presence would be too distracting. Ford's wife Melissa Mathison wrote the screenplay, and also had a cameo as the school nurse -which was cut as well!

Reese's outbid M&M's for product placement. There is a rumour that M&M's were used initially, but the company asked for them to be removed, suspecting that the film would flop.

ET's voice was performed by Pat Walsh, with help from Debra Winger.

ET's communicator actually worked, and was constructed by Henry Feinberg, an expert in science and technology interpretation for the public.

Young co-stars Drew Barrymore and Erika Eleniak later posed nude for Playboy Magazine.

When E.T. watches John Ford's Quiet Man, The (1952) on the family TV, composer John Williams quotes a few
lush bars from the Victor Young score as John Wayne embraces 'OHara, Maureen.

Steven Spielberg personally screened his film at the White House for Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

When the film was released on video in the U.S., the cassette was made from green plastic as a measure to confound video pirates.

When it was test-screened at the Cannes Film Festival as an unofficial entry, it brought the house down, receiving a standing ovation that had eluded most of the official entries.

Biblical similarities?


 
 
 
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