How the film "E.T. Extraterrestrial" was filmed: footage from filming and 20 interesting facts about the film (24 photos)

A touching film about the friendship of children and a kind alien left few people indifferent.





1. Initially, Steven Spielberg planned to make a darker film about aliens from outer space who terrorized a farmer and his family. He hired screenwriter John Sayles to write the script, but his script was so dark that Spielberg abandoned the idea.

2. As you know, many directors and screenwriters come up with their new projects right during the filming of their other films. The same thing happened with Steven Spielberg, who began making developments for his film “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” right during the break between filming the film “Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark.”



As you know, the main role in this film was played by actor Harrison Ford. And it so luckily happened that his girlfriend (and in the future wife) Melissa Mathison, who was a screenwriter (but not a film about Indiana Jones, but just a screenwriter), was present at the filming of the film. Spielberg invited her to write a script based on his ideas, which Melissa happily agreed to.



Harrison Ford and Melisa Malisa Matheson

As a result, the script turned out to be so successful that Melissa Matheson herself received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay in 1983. But, unfortunately, the coveted statuette went not to her, but to John Briley for the script for the film “Gandhi”.



4. Screenwriter Melissa Mathison took her work very seriously. We are all used to the idea that aliens are hostile creatures who intend to take over the world, but here everything was different.

Melissa talked to various children to ask them what they thought an alien would be like. And as it turned out, many children wanted the alien to be a kind creature that could heal and drive away bad dreams. This vision of aliens struck the screenwriter to the core, and it was this image that formed the basis of this film.



4. Director Steven Spielberg wanted the viewer to feel like he was looking at the world through the eyes of the boy Eliot. Therefore, most scenes were shot at the child's eye level.

5. Baby Drew Barrymore auditioned for one of the main roles in the film "Poltergeist", which was produced by Steven Spielberg. She was not accepted for this role, but she successfully auditioned for the role of Gertie. By the way, Steven Spielberg is her godfather, but she didn’t get into the film through connections. If that were the case, then she would have gotten a role in Poltergeist.



Moreover, despite her young age, Drew improvised well, and some of these improvisations ended up on camera.

6. The alien himself was voiced by famous voice actress Pat Welsh, whose voice was very shallow and hoarse due to her addiction to smoking. Also, the actress voiced Princess Leia in the film "Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi", or rather the moment when Leia was dressed in the costume of the bounty hunter Boushkh.



Pat Welsh spent only one day in the recording studio and received $380 for her work. No, of course, her voice was not the only voice for ET, but the main one.

7. By the way, let’s talk about Harrison Ford. It turns out that he even played a small role in this film, namely the role of the school principal to whom Eliot was brought for freeing the experimental frogs.

But in the end, Spielberg abandoned this scene and did not insert it into the final version of the film, as he felt that it was too minor a role for Harrison Ford.



Steven Spielberg

8. In total, the alien ET was played by three actors who were involved in different scenes. But I would like to talk in more detail about only one of them.

Surely many of you remember the scene in the kitchen when ET opened the refrigerator and took a sip of beer. At that moment, a 12-year-old legless boy, Matthew De Merritt, was wearing the alien costume.



Steven Spielberg saw this boy in one of the Los Angeles medical centers. Unfortunately, the boy was born without legs, but he learned to walk on his hands, including in the ET suit. He trained his hands so well that he not only walked on them, but even rode a skateboard, which impressed and charmed the entire film crew.



9. ET's face is essentially a mixture of three images, namely the poet Carl Sandburg, Albert Einstein and a pug (dog).

10. As you know, the vast majority of films are not shot in chronological order. But there were still some exceptions, for example the film "Gladiator".



The film "Extraterrestrial" was also an exception. Spielberg intentionally shot all the scenes in chronological order so that the child actors could get used to each other, as well as become attached to the alien creature. So when the final scene was filmed, the young actors were actually saying goodbye to the friendly alien and to each other.



11. In the story, Eliot leaves round chocolate-covered candies for the alien to walk on like bread crumbs. It was originally planned that it would be M&M's candies, but the famous company refused to allow the filmmakers to use their products, so the bosses thought that an ugly alien chewing their jelly beans would only scare away potential buyers. Just “geniuses”, nothing less.



But the company "Hershey's", which the filmmakers then turned to, considered that such advertising would only benefit their products, so they allowed them to use their "Reese's Pies" candies for filming, and they were right, since after the release of the film the popularity of these candies sharply increased flew up.



12. When Henry Thomas, who played Eliot, auditioned for Steven Spielberg, he decided to turn to his past memories to squeeze out the emotion. To be more precise, he remembered how his beloved dog died, which immediately made him sad.



Actors often remember something painful in order to cry on camera. For example, when Patrick Swayze needed to cry in the final scene of the film “Ghost,” he remembered his beloved father, who was no longer alive.

13. The creation of the alien ET itself took a rather impressive amount, namely $1 million. And this despite the fact that the budget for the entire film was just over 10 million. The alien itself was made of special rubber, fiberglass and, of course, the electronics that were inside it.



In total, three mechanical dolls were created, each of which performed its own functions. And when it was impossible to use puppets, they used live actors.

14. With a budget of $10.5 million, the film grossed a simply unreal box office, namely 792.9 million, which became a colossal success. Moreover, the film "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" occupied the first place in the list of the highest-grossing films for as many as 15 years until 1997, when the film "Titanic" was released.



Spielberg was even offered to direct the second part of the film, but he refused this idea, considering that the story was complete and a sequel would only spoil the original. And I think this is the right decision.

Spielberg said that creating a sequel would be commercially viable, but not as sincere as the original, because the creators really put their soul into the original. But making a film about other children who met an alien would be banal and stupid.



15. The film "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" received 9 Oscar nominations, but ultimately took only 4 of them (technical only), namely for best music, best sound, best sound effects editing and best visual effects.

16. That same shot of Eliot flying on a bicycle with ET against the backdrop of the moon became the calling card of the film, and subsequently the logo of the Amblin Entertament film company, which shot this film.



17. The very scene when Eliot’s mother looks at her son’s toys, not noticing an alien among them, was proposed by Robert Zemeckis, who had recently directed the film “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” Steven Spielberg would later produce Back to the Future, which was also directed by Robert Zemeckis.



18. Steven Spielberg decided to make several references to George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy. For example, Eliot has toys from this franchise, and on Halloween the main characters meet a boy who wears a Yoda mask.



By the way, the music for “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and “Star Wars” was written by the same composer - John Williams.

George Lucas did the same, and in the film "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace" he placed several aliens of the same race as ET from the film "E.T."



19. Steven Spielberg also put a piece of his personal tragedy into the film, because his parents also divorced (like Eliot’s parents) when he was a child. And if the future director’s sisters stayed with their mother, the future director chose to stay with his father.



Steven Spielberg

Later, young Spielberg began to have conflicts with his father, which almost developed into enmity. His father did not want Stephen to make films and place filming equipment at home, and as a result, Spielberg moved out from his father. Subsequently, he regretted that he did not stay with his mother. That is why Eliot lives with his mother after the divorce.

20. John Williams, who created the music for the film, could not come up with music for one of the scenes. Whatever he wrote, it didn’t end up in the footage. Then Steven Spielberg told the composer to just compose the music without thinking about the film, as if he was composing just for himself. Williams followed the director's advice and created his own musical composition.



John Williams, composer

Spielberg himself was already adjusting the scene (re-shooting and re-editing it) to the melody written by Williams. And everything turned out just great. Let me remind you that Williams eventually even won an Oscar for his theme song for the film.