This article brought to you by Goodwin’s Market and Mountains Community Hospital
By Nathan Hurlbut
In the early 1980’s, director Steven Spielberg was on quite a roll. Having survived a disastrous shoot back in 1975 helming a film based on a best-selling novel by Peter Benchley, Spielberg watched as his troubled production went on to become the biggest movie of the year. “Jaws” also helped usher in the era of the modern blockbuster.
His follow-up, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977), was almost as big a financial success, and garnered nine Academy Awards nominations in the process. While 1979’s “1941” was a rare misfire, Spielberg again ruled the day when “Raiders of the Lost Ark” became the biggest movie ticket seller of 1981 as well.
So, once you’ve achieved that level of success, what do you do for an encore? Following the success of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, Columbia Pictures expressed interest in creating a sequel. Although Spielberg had no interest in directing a sequel to the film, he started considering a sort-of follow-up that took the idealistic notion of aliens visiting our planet and turning it into something much darker.
The project was called “Night Skies”, and was based on the idea of malevolent aliens visiting earth and terrorizing a family. Spielberg enlisted renowned filmmaker John Sayles (then working primarily as a screenwriter) to take the story idea and compose a screenplay draft. After considering the horror elements of the story, Spielberg even started thinking Tobe Hooper of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (1974) fame should direct the film instead of Spielberg himself.
However, Spielberg soon found “Night Skies” was starting to become a little too dark for his tastes. Within the script, though, he did find something else that caught his eye. Deep within this terrifying story was a gentler subplot, the tale of a single benevolent alien who befriends a young boy and subsequently becomes stranded on Earth. This single-story idea so moved screenwriter Melissa Mathison when Spielberg read the script to her that he decided this was the direction his new film would take.
The rest, as they say, is history. The project, re-titled “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial”, was released in 1982 and became not only the biggest movie of the year, but also the highest grossing film of all time (until Spielberg’s own “Jurassic Park” knocked it off the top spot eleven years later in 1993).
Of course, almost everyone is now familiar with this moving tale of an extra-terrestrial that befriends young Elliott (Henry Thomas) after becoming stranded on Earth. The fact that Elliott has divorced parents and is able to find solace in his new alien friend has become one of the most touching stories ever committed to film.
Perhaps Spielberg’s wisest decision in making the movie was choosing to shoot the film in chronological order. It gave his young cast the opportunity to experience the story in sequence and help build the emotional arc of their performances.
The payoff was clearly a success, as the film famously builds to an emotional final scene in which there isn’t a dry eye to be found in the house. The screenplay even originally had a follow-up scene in which Elliott had become more integrated into the boys’ group after he had introduced them all to his alien friend. However, that scene was wisely excised from the movie after everyone involved realized there was no way to follow up the heart-wrenching scene that had just come before it. As a result, “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” remains Spielberg’s most popular film to this day.
“E.T. the Extraterrestrial” is playing for one night only at Blue Jay Cinema as part of its Classics Series on Wednesday, June 12th.