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For the Atari 2600 video game based on the movie, see E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600).

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Image:E t the extra terrestrial ver3.jpg
Directed by	Steven Spielberg
Produced by	Steven Spielberg Kathleen Kennedy
Written by	Melissa Mathison
Starring	Henry Thomas Dee Wallace Robert MacNaughton Drew Barrymore Peter Coyote
Music by	John Williams
Cinematography	Allen Daviau
Editing by	Carol Littleton
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	June 11, 1982 July 19, 1985 (re-release) March 22, 2002 (20th anniversary edition)
Running time	115 min. (1982) 120 min. (2002: 20th anniversary edition)
Country	USA
Language	English
Budget	$10,500,000 USD (estimated)
IMDb profile

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Steven Spielberg. Telling the story of a young boy named Elliott, as he befriends a benign alien being dubbed E.T. that is stranded on Earth and how he helps him find his way home. The film was produced by Amblin Entertainment and distributed by Universal Pictures, and starred Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore and Dee Wallace.

The film was produced on a low budget of $10 million, but when released in 1982, it became the highest grossing film of all time. Since then it has become a popular family film. It was re-released in 2002 with additional scenes and altered special effects to a lower gross. To this day, Spielberg calls it the film that epitomises him the most.<ref>. (2006-11-04). The Culture Show [TV]. BBC. </ref>

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Production 4 Reception 5 20th anniversary edition 6 Tie-ins 6.1 Sequels 6.2 Michael Jackson's E.T. Storybook 6.3 Games 7 Alleged plagiarism 8 Cultural references 9 E.T. in popular culture 10 References 11 See also 12 External links

[edit] Plot

An alien botanist becomes stranded on Earth after a chase from government agents. 10-year-old Elliot discovers the alien in his garden, and despite his brother and his friends' taunts, he manages to lure the alien into his house with Reese's Pieces. He feigns illness and introduces it to his older brother Michael and his younger sister Gertie. They manage to avoid the watchful eye of their mother Mary. E.T. shows remarkable telekinetic powers, and even makes a dead plant come to life again.

At school Eliott begins to experience a psychic experience with E.T., as he becomes drunk, frees the frogs from a dissection class and kisses a girl to the style of The Quiet Man which E.T. watches on T.V., which gets Eliott promptly sent to the Principal's office. E.T. learns to speak English from the T.V. and instructs Eliott to help him build a device to contact his people to bring him home. Eliott cuts his finger whilst constructing the device but E.T. heals it with a touch of his glowing finger. At Halloween E.T. and Eliott leave to the forest to make the call, where E.T. makes their bicycle fly. But when Eliott wakes up E.T. is gone, and Michael runs to find the alien dying. As Mary sees both E.T. and Eliott ill, she gets frightened, at which point government agents invade their home.

The scientists set up a medical facility in the house as scientists hospitalise the two, finding their psychic connection. The link soon disappears as E.T. dies. Eliott is left alone with the dead creature, at which point it comes back to life. Eliott gets the supposedly dead E.T. into a car and Michael steals it, ensuring into a chase. The two boys meet up with Michael's friends and escape on their bikes, which fly thanks to E.T.'s powers. The boys reach the spaceship, to which Mary, Gertie and Keys, a government agent, also show up. E.T. and Eliott make a tearful goodbye, and the alien leaves in his spaceship, though he promises "I'll be right here".

[edit] Cast

• Henry Thomas as Elliott: A lonely 10 year old boy.
• Robert MacNaughton as Michael: Eliott's older brother. He is also adapting to driving a car, even without a license.
• Drew Barrymore as Gertie: Eliott's younger sister.
• Dee Wallace as Mary: The children's mother, coming off a recent seperation from her husband.
• Peter Coyote as Keys: A government agent dubbed as such due to jangling his keys at times. He has waited his whole life to meet an alien.
• K.C. Martel as Greg
• Sean Frye as Steve
• Tom Howell as Tyler
• Debra Winger as the voice of E.T.

[edit] Production

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Spielberg and screenwriter Melissa Mathison, then the wife of Harrison Ford, may have come up with the idea of the film during the filming of Raiders of the Lost Ark.^{[citation needed]} Early in the discussion stages, Spielberg considered making this a sequel to his Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in which the departing alien craft had left behind one of its own.

E.T. was designed by Carlo Rambaldi, while his voice was performed by several people, including Debra Winger (for the rough cut), Pat Welsch, a chain-smoking housewife from Marin County, who was overheard in a bank line by the film's sound effects editor and got the part for the final version of the film, and even director Steven Spielberg himself. E.T.'s face was modelled after poet Carl Sandburg, Albert Einstein and a pug dog. Debra Winger recorded her voice of ET for the rough cut of the film but it is not used in the finished film. However, she has a brief walk-on cameo in the film as a trick-or-treater. The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing Jell-O between their hands.

Originally the script called for the use of M&M's (which survived into the novelization). However, Mars did not agree to the contract (because they thought E.T. was ugly and would scare children) and instead Reese's Pieces by Hershey's were used. A week after the movie premiered, sales of the candy tripled.^{[citation needed]}

Spielberg cited classic cartoons from Chuck Jones and other Looney Tunes as a stylistic influence, in which adults could rarely be seen from the waist up.

The house where E.T. was filmed is located at 7121 Lonzo Street, Tujunga, California (34.270879° N 118.287407° W, Windows Live Local link).

Harrison Ford had a part as the principal of Elliott's school; he was only seen from behind. The scene was later cut from the film. At the time of the film's release, Ford was married to screenwriter Melissa Mathison.

An epilogue to the movie, filmed but not used, showed Elliott playing Dungeons & Dragons with his brother and his friends, now running the game as dungeon master. The camera shows them from above, then slowly raises to the skylight and out onto the roof, where the communicator E.T. made sits on the roof, still calling out to the cosmos.

[edit] Reception

At nearly $400 million, the film's domestic box office take remained the highest in history until the 1997 Special Edition release of Star Wars. Currently it is 16th Worldwide. At one point following the film's meteoric success (it had achieved the unusual feat of increasing returns as it remained in theatres), E.T. was due to appear on the cover of Time magazine, had it not been for the escalation of the Falklands War in the same week.

The film was nominated for nine Oscars at the Academy Awards, and won for 4 of them: Best Original Music Score, Sound, Sound Effects Editing and Visual Effects. It was also nominated for Best Picture, Director, Writing - Screenplay written directly for the screen, Cinematography and Film Editing. Composer John Williams received three Grammy Awards for the soundtrack: Best Album of Original Score Written for a Motion Picture Or Television Special; Best Arrangement on an Instrumental Recording; and Best Instrumental Composition. In addition, the Quincy Jones -produced spoken word recording with Michael Jackson also won a Grammy, for Best Recording for Children.

A rather bizarre critique of the film is said to have come from President Ronald Reagan who, in a special screening of the movie at the White House Theatre, told Spielberg "You know, there aren’t six people in this room who know how true this really is." Similar praise was reportedly give by the president towards Close Encounters of the Third Kind; Spielberg himself once jokingly admitted to being a government agent out to make the world conducive to accepting an alien neighbour.

It was #25 on American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Movies and #44 on its 100 Years, 100 Thrills, and has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. The quote, "E.T. phone home," was listed as #15 on the American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes, a list of top movie quotes. E.T. topped a Channel 4 poll of the 100 greatest family films in 2005.

[edit] 20th anniversary edition

An extended version of the movie, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: The 20th Anniversary, was released theatrically by Universal Studios on March 22, 2002 in the United States and later that year also on DVD (along with the original version). The new edition adds five minutes to the film's run time, and includes special effects scenes that were not included in the original because of technical limitations or budgetary constraints.<ref name="20edition">Bouzereau, Laurent (writer, director). E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial: The 20th Anniversary Celebration (2002, documentary on the E.T. DVD edition)</ref>

Examples of these changes include a couple of full body shots of E.T.: one in which he is seen running after his departing spaceship (which is flashier and sparkles more in the new version) and later taking a bath (this scene was shot for the original movie, but did not work out because the E.T. puppet turned out not to be waterproof). In addition, E.T's facial expressions have been digitally enhanced in almost all his scenes, making them more fluid. A previously deleted scene is included that features Gertie unwittingly telling Mary where Elliot was: "Anyway, why would Elliot go the forest? Why would he do such a thing?" (This scene actually creates something of a plot hole, as afterwards Mary continues to act like she has no idea where Elliot is.)

Other changes had a different genesis. In the scene near the movie's end where the kids are fleeing on their bicycles, all the police officers' guns have been digitally removed and replaced with walkie-talkies, because Spielberg now finds himself uncomfortable with scenes of policemen preparing to use guns around children<ref>David Templeton. E. Tease. Metroactive. Retrieved on March 5, 2006.</ref>. A second prominent change is the replacing of the word "terrorist" with the word "Hippie" in one scene where Mary forbids Michael to dress up as a terrorist for Halloween; the wording change was reported to have been made to fit with a "post-9/11 environment",<ref>E.T. - The Edited Terrestrial. The World Wide Rant. Retrieved on March 5, 2006.</ref> although the entire line was simply omitted from the VHS and televison versions.

When the movie was released, Steven Spielberg, a Porsche 928 aficionado, had his sunroof button re-designed with the movie's logo as both a gag for passengers and a tribute to the movie's success.

[edit] Tie-ins

[edit] Sequels

While Spielberg repeatedly stated that he had no intentions of doing a sequel to E.T.; a treatment has circulated titled E.T. II: Nocturnal Fears, supposedly written by Spielberg with Melissa Mathison. The legitimacy of this treatment is disputed. More recently, in 2005 it was rumored that Drew Barrymore was trying to persuade Spielberg to do a sequel as she "thinks the world needs another feel-good movie like 'ET' right now"<ref name="ET2">Barrymore and Spielberg discussing E.T 2?. Clint Morris, Moviehole (July 19, 2005). URL accessed on October 3, 2005</ref>.

A sequel in the form of a novel, E.T.: The Book of the Green Planet, was released in 1985. Based on a story by Spielberg, it was written by William Kotzwinkle, who also wrote the official novelisation of the film. In the novel E.T. is punished by his people because he interacted with humans on Earth by being demoted from space exploration and confined to duties in the gardens of his home world. Finding himself missing Earth and Elliott (who is shown in a series of interludes, starting to experience the growing pains of adolescence), he develops a series of increasingly foolhardy plans to return to Earth.

[edit] Michael Jackson's E.T. Storybook

In late 1982, MCA Records released a E.T. storybook box set on vinyl and cassette, which had Michael Jackson reading the story from the film, as well as two versions of Jackson's song "Someone In The Dark". However, Jackson's record label Epic Records sued MCA for including the original Jackson song on the album, and it was withdrawn. Despite the fact that the album was no longer available, Jackson still won the 1984 Grammy Award for Best Album for Children for it.

The song "Someone In The Dark" later appeared on the 2001 special edition of Jackson's album Thriller and on 2004's Michael Jackson: The Ultimate Collection.

[edit] Games

Atari attempted a home video-game version of the film. However, due to the game's rushed development, sales proved to be poor and Atari disposed of a large number of cartridges in Alamogordo, New Mexico in late September, 1983.

[edit] Alleged plagiarism

Academy Award-winning Indian director Satyajit Ray wrote a script entitled The Alien in 1967 with many similarities to E.T., and attempted to raise funds for its production in the late 1960s. After a falling out with a prospective producer, he lost interest in the project, and rejected later interest from Hollywood in the script. After E.T. was produced in 1982 by the same company that had contracted with Ray in 1967, many saw similarities to The Alien script - Ray discussed the collapse of the project in a 1980 Sight & Sound feature, with further details revealed by Ray's biographer Andrew Robinson (in The Inner Eye, 1989). Ray stated that "E.T. would not have been possible without my script of The Alien being available throughout America in mimeographed copies." In that same year, when questioned about this, Spielberg denied this claim and said that he "was a kid in high school when his script was circulating in Hollywood."<ref>UC Santa Cruz Currents online article URL accessed on 21 March 2006</ref>

[edit] Cultural references

In one scene, Mary reads Peter Pan to Gertie. The book itself was one of Spielberg's favourite bedtime stories, being one of his happiest childhood memories, and he even directed it as a school production aged 11.<ref>McBride, Joseph (1997). Steven Spielberg. Faber and Faber, p.42. ISBN 0-571-19177-0.</ref>

When E.T. is covered with a sheet and goes "trick-or-treating" with the children, he sees a child in a Star Wars character's mask (Yoda) and begins to follow that child saying "Home....home....". Also, composer John Williams includes a snippet of his "Yoda Theme" from The Empire Strikes Back to accompany this scene.

The poster bears similarity to Michelangelo's Creation of Adam.

[edit] E.T. in popular culture

• Silhouettes of E.T. and Elliot are featured in the Amblin Entertainment logo.
• E.T can be seen in the crowd watching the Boonta Eve Podrace scene in Star Wars Episode I. Members of his species can also be seen in the Galactic Senate scene. Some fans have seen this as making events of the film E.T. low level Star Wars canon, but this causes some plot holes as Star Wars exists as a fictional movie within the E.T. film's universe.
• In the episode "A Star is Burns" of The Simpsons, in one of the scenes in Mr. Burns's movie, A Burns For All Seasons, Burns himself plays E.T. and says "Remember, Elliott, I'll be right here" before boarding E.T.'s starship and blasting away. A robot of E.T. can also be seen in the Japanese restaurant Americatown in "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo," pointing up Marilyn Monroe's flying skirt. Also, in the episode where Homer saw the alien that turned out to be Mr. Burns, when they sent the video to Kent Brockman, he said, "E.T. phone Homer!"
• Image:ETbuckleup.jpg In 1998, the title character was licensed to appear in television public service announcements produced by Progressive Insurance in which E.T.'s voice reminded drivers to "Buckle up" their safety belt. Traffic signage depicting a stylized portrait of E.T. (wearing his safety belt) was also installed on selected roads in the USA. Some of the signs remain extant to this day.<ref>Madigan, Nick. "E.T. to drive home safe road message: The Buckle Up program to air alien's plea during Super Bowl XXXIII", Variety, 1998-12-29. Retrieved on 2006-11-26.</ref>
• Around the same time, British Telecom featured the character and his famous "phone home" phrase in advertisements. The campaign presented E.T. making friends with an average British boy and his family. He was also featured at the Millennium Dome as part of the BT-sponsored "Talk" zone, which allowed visitors to take a full-body image of themselves, which would be scanned into a computer and pasted onto a 3D model which would be displayed on a screen re-enacting the famous flying bicycle scene.
• In Peter Jackson's directorial debut Bad Taste, the character Derek explains that the aliens invading New Zealand are hostile by saying, "There's no glowing fingers on these bastards."
• E.T. can be seen in the episodes "Da Boom" and "Stewie Loves Lois" of the popular animated series Family Guy. Also, in the creator's later series American Dad!, many references to the film are made, particularly around the character of Roger the Alien. He comments that E.T.'s finger-healing ability is "a load of crap".
• E.T. can be heard (off-screen) in an episode of Muppet Babies.
• Aliens of E.T.'s race can also be seen in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in the Senate Chamber during the "vote of no confidence" scene. This is a friendly response to Spielberg prominently using Star Wars toys and references in E.T. as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are good friends. Some have joked that E.T.'s abilities are actually the result of his use of the Force.
• The film The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear spoofed E.T. during a scene where Lt. Frank Drebin accidentally damages Dr. Meinheimer's motorized wheelchair and (after falling head-down into Meinheimer's lap) the two speed off of a high balcony and soar across the sky with a full moon in the background, screaming in terror.
• The movie inspired the hit song "Heartlight," written and performed by Neil Diamond.
• The band S.P.O.C.K made a song, based on E.T.'s adventure and naturally the name of the song is "E.T. Phone Home".
• In the late-1982 film Airplane II, early in the film a pay-phone is seen along with a hand resembling E.T.'s. He lifts the phone off its cradle, and off-screen is heard "E.T. phone home!" When the operator tells E.T., "Please deposit 6 million dollars for the first 10 minutes", the extraterrestrial hangs up.
• The Australian TV series Fast Forward sent-up E.T.
• In Joe Dante's Gremlins (1984) there is a scene near the end of the film where Stripe, the leader of the gremlins, hides behind an E.T. doll amongst stuffed animals in the department store. Earlier, when one of the gremlins rips out a phone connection, he snarls, "Phone home".
• One of the Krites in the horror film, Critters 'interrogates' an E.T. doll when the aliens rip apart the boy's room, asking it, "Who are you?" and prodding it.
• In the Chris Shadoian webcomic Popcorn Picnic, the role of E.T. was played by surgically altered actor Roger Johansson, who is now the bitter, has-been roommate of Marlon Brando.
• In the Drawn Together episode "Little Orphan Hero", the bicycle ride with E.T. in the basket is parodied, and the device E.T. constructs to 'phone home' is depicted as being Captain Hero's sex robot. The episode "A Tale of Two Cows" shows Wooldoor Sockbat hiding a cow in a closet similar to the way Elliot hid E.T.
• At the near end of the computer-animated film Shrek 2, the giant Gingerbread Man, Mongo, says to his smaller counterpart - "Be Good."
• A song by Toybox titled E.T. is a parody of the character. This song itself is also the basis for a webcam video parody, winning a pop competition on Google Idol.[1]
• In the "Fear of a Krabby Patty" episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, the Krabby Patty reminds SpongeBob that he'll always be with him and points to his chest with a brown, withered-looking hand with long, nailless fingers and a glowing index finger (similar to E.T.'s own hands). Spongebob thinks he will be in his heart, then the Krabby Patty tells him he'll actually be in his arteries. This spoofs E.T. saying "I'll... be... right... here".
• In Kevin Smith's film Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, the title characters race on a bike through a Hollywood backlot with an orangutan in the front basket. During the chase, the bike flies through the air, and past a billboard with a moon on it. The billboard is advertising "Moonraper", a fictional film who Kevin Smith's best friend Ben Affleck is starring in.
• In the 2003 film In America, the Irish family imagines that their dying neighbor Mateo flies away like E.T. Earlier in the film the family goes to watch E.T. in the movie theatre.
• In the film Balto a dog looks through various ice formations. In one of them his head takes the shape of E.T.'s and his voice sounds like he is saying "ouch!"
• In the South Park episode titles "Free Hat", the creators parodied the 20th anniversary editon by making fun of the walkie talkies and the substitution of the word "hippie".
• In an Animaniacs episode, the Warners help Michelangelo paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling, but can't figure out what to put in the last blank space (the one withGod touching fingers with Adam), so the Warners paint it for him instead. When "his eminence" arrives to inspect the ceiling, Michelangelo is horrified to see that the Warners have painted E.T. touching fingers with Elliot like in the movie. As it turns out, "his eminence" is Steven Spielberg, who comments that he likes it.
• In the episode Modern Primitives of the cartoon, The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy Billy, Mandy, Irwin and Grim fly on the bicycle, while the full moon is glowing in the background (a parody of the famous scene). As they're flying past it, Billy notices that "this is like in that one movie with the "Extra-Terrestrial" which makes friend with those kids... and Grim always cries at the end!" Grim starts to cry, and yells "Shut up, Billy!".
• In Drew Barrymore's second time hosting Saturday Night Live she mentions the first time she hosted was when she was in E.T. and then E.T. comes out and says he came to do a spot on VH1's I Love the 80's setting off a chain of events of characters from other movies that they thought she was in from Star Wars to Poltergeist and back to Star Wars when Darth Vader comes out and says "Drew, I am your father" prompting him to read a Valentines Day card. After, Drew says she wishes that she could be all the characters Valentines and E.T says, "Not me, I'm holding out for Kelis, I love her Milkshake".
• In Robot Chicken, E.T. returns home and it is revealed his was abandoned on Earth by three bullies at his school. They make fun of his real name (Kleeborp), calls him retarded and make fun of his inability to glow more than one finger. After E.T. flips them off, they take him and dump him on the home planet of the Xenomorphs from the Alien film series.
• In the Everybody Hates Chris episode "Everybody Hates Greg", Rochelle tells Chris, "You be like E.T., you phone home!".
• In Banjo-Tooie, when Alph, Beti, and Gammo tell Banjo and Kazooie that there is a problem, Kazooie says, "Let me guess, you need to phone home?" to which they reply, "No, we have a cell phone for that."
• In the Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo episode "Next Stop... Holy Guacamole Land!" when Bobobo and the others crash their train cars into the room with the aliens, one of them says, "I need to phone home!"
• In the film Flight of the Navigator, the main charecter, David, pulls into a Gas Station in a Space Craft. The owner of the Station comes out and David asks if he can use a phone. The Owner looks aimlessly at the ship. After David has made his call, he leaves. A family ask what the owner is looking at and he says "He wanted to phone home"
• Near the end of Richard Kelly's 2001 film Donnie Darko, Donnie, Gretchen, and their 2 friends ride their bicycles through the woods in a manner similar to the scene in E.T. Donnie is also wearing a grey jacket similar to Elliot's. Drew Barrymore was also in the film as Karen Pomeroy, an English teacher.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Mac and Me
• Night Skies

[edit] External links

• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial at the Internet Movie Database
• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial at Rotten Tomatoes
• www.ET20.com (official homepage for the 20th anniversary edition)

Films directed by Steven Spielberg

Duel • The Sugarland Express • Jaws • Close Encounters of the Third Kind • 1941 • Raiders of the Lost Ark • E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial • Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom • The Color Purple • Empire of the Sun • Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade • Always • Hook • Jurassic Park • Schindler's List • The Lost World: Jurassic Park • Amistad • Saving Private Ryan • Artificial Intelligence: AI • Minority Report • Catch Me If You Can • The Terminal • War of the Worlds • Munich • Indiana Jones 4 • Lincoln • Interstellar

cs:E.T. - Mimozemšťan

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