Man, I cannot hear that without turning on the waterworks, my friend.

I don't know. My heart is glowing.

Yes, it is. So, my name is Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

And I'm Paul Alvarado-Dykstra.

And it is June 11th of 1982. This is our second movie because we went to the multiplex and we did not get in line for ET early enough, so we had to see Grease 2. Thank you, Paul. And we're watching one of the greatest films of all time. It's ET., which we have a lot of thoughts about. And just to give you, if you have not seen ET recently, I'll give you a very quick recap of the plot. It is the story of a broken suburban family. A mom who is parenting her kids after her husband has split with his secretary, which very much a condition of childhood in the 1980s for about 50% of the people of our generation. And her youngest son, Elliot, finds a creature out in the woods behind the house. And that creature is an alien from another world who is beneficent and magical and is being pursued by what appeared to be sinister government agents. The alien hatches a scheme to phone home. And on that note, the government arrives, they study and take over the alien, but there is a very, very amazing plot twist that happens with that, which allows Elliot to escape and return the alien to its brethren in space. That does not in any way do justice to the incredible emotional depth of this film. Let's just start it by saying, Paul, the name of this podcast is, end.

Overthruster. Summer of 82.

Oh, yeah.

Hey, producer Brad, did you crank that up a little bit more today? Because I'm feeling a little more punched in the face by our theme today than usual.

I'll tone it down next time. No, I love it.

No, I think blast it even louder. I think, literally, I want my cans to explode.

I think every episode, we just need to incrementally dial it up a notch.

I agree. Because as we say at the beginning of every episode, it is just the greatest theme ever, isn't it?

I'm too close to it to make an objective judgment. But clearly, I cannot disagree.

It's Friday, June 11th, 1982. We saw Grease 2 because we couldn't get into ET. This is the second movie this weekend. It's actually Saturday, June 12th. We saw Grease 2. Paul, where were you when you saw ET.? What was your experience of it?

I mean, so many sense memories of that and a lot of it being the anticipation of knowing that it was coming and it being somewhat shrouded in a sense of mystery, both in terms of the iconic John Alvin poster and a lot of different elements of it. There was all this anticipation of this new thing and what was ET and where was it going to go in terms of tone? One of the things that I remember feeling was that there was this real sense of mystery, just not in terms of holding things back to not reveal them, to not spoil them, but also a sense that this might be a sci-fi mystery as a genre, that it felt cloaked in that blanket and then revealing it, and then finding what the discovery I think that all of us had and shared that summer was this sense of discovery of this movie that has so many classical roots and foundations, but felt so original and new in terms of an alien encounter movie that we had not seen or experienced and felt before in terms of the emotion of it.

So you're coming in with this huge sense of mystery, right? You're coming in with. And where did you see the movie?

And I'm also 10 years old. So it's like I'm Elliot. For this whole generation of going in to see this movie and seeing ourselves at the center of this movie and this story and this adventure to a degree, to a degree. To a degree, to a degree.

To some. And that's a big part of our conversation, actually. Because I have a lot of feelings about this movie. And they're not the usual feelings. So it's funny because you've just described sort of what I think is an archetypal experience of having seen ET and its cultural impact. And this is the podcast where people are going to realize that I am a monster of depravity and not a good person because I am actually not a fan of this movie. And there's a couple of reasons for that. But so I'm glad that you had sort of the iconic, you know, very much the experience of that American viewer going to see this film and having that. And I'm not hateful about it. I'm not pissed off about the movie. I'm not angry about the movie or anything like I'm not one of those guys. But I had a very different experience, I think, than most people did watching this movie.

I can imagine. And I want to hear because I was a kid that related to living in a small town, sort of suburban-ish neighborhood that and who would ride bikes with friends.

But so were we all. I mean, I had a BMX bike too, so, you know. Now, Paul, you still have to answer the question. Where did you see ET.?

So I think this was at the Twin Cinema on Atlanta in, yeah, in the incrementally bigger town over from the small town I grew up in, a two screen. That's where I saw a lot of the movies of my, I believe that's where I saw this.

I saw this movie at Plaza Las Americas in Puerto Rico. We were on vacation, not on vacation, we'd go visit our family every year. And I actually saw it weeks after it had opened. So by the time I saw it, but you know what, we should talk about this after the ding, but I think it's going to be a different podcast than usual, because I don't know that we're going to go scene by scene or anything like that. I think we have a bigger discussion to have. Yeah. But the movie had been out for a while. I had seen Poltergeist and then we went to Puerto Rico and movies in Puerto Rico didn't open until much later. But I had seen a lot of the hype for the movie and all of that. So a lot of that sort of changed my experience of it. And I didn't see it until several weeks after it had come out. But yeah, Plaza Las Americas Multiplex, where they also had the first Sbarro in Puerto Rico. And fuck, I love Sbarro. It's my favorite thing about air travel is that airports have Sbarro's in them and nobody else does.

Damn it, now I'm craving a slice.

And don't forget, Sbarro's right across from the Briarwood United Artists Theater.

That's right. That's right.

Our multiplex.

Yep. So shall we ring the bell and let her rip? Or you have something you want to say?

I'm sorry. Well, I'm just going to say you hit on a really critical point, I think, because there's a, I think, a stark differentiation in terms of the experience of seeing this movie. If you got to see it, that opening weekend, just as it was emerging versus later when it had grown into this overwhelming commercial cultural emeth.

No, no, you're, you're, you're, you're wearing it. Let's ring the bell and get into it. Cause we got, we got shit to do here, Paul. We got shit to do. This one's going to be more like the therapy session for Javi. Let's just get you, just get ready. Shall we producer Brad? That's so funny. I love that. I'm sorry. Every time we do this, it's a, I just remark on how much I love that. But anyway. So yeah, Paul, I think, I think you're hitting on something really important, which is for me, this is the first movie that I ever saw where the hype, if not soured me on the movie, made me really weary of the movie before I saw it. The hysteria surrounding this film was so overwhelming culturally that, I don't want to say I was predisposed to this like it, but I was like, look, my, our friend Alan and producer Brad and, and I are both friends with Alan from, from childhood. And you know, he'll probably be a guest, guest shot on the show sometime. Tells me that the black hole was one of the most important movies in his childhood because it was the first time that he went to see a movie and realized that movies could suck. Like it was his 10 years old, it's literally the first time we went like, this is terrible. And it was the first time that he realized people in Hollywood were wizards, right? And for me, ET is literally, you know, like today movies, they're so heavily hyped that like you can literally sour on a movie months before it opens because all you do is just fucking hear about them, right? And this is the first experience that I had where the cultural footprint of the movie was so overwhelming that it actually changed the experience of watching the film for me.

I completely get that.

This is also for me really the last movie where I genuinely believe Steven Spielberg had a vision that came from his soul and not a desire to win an Oscar. You always read interviews with Spielberg and George Lucas during this time, and George Lucas always seemed like he was very proud of being an outsider of his San Francisco stuff of being friends with Coppola, all of this stuff. Spielberg always seemed to me to be like the kid who snuck into the lot and, you know, just wanted to be Hollywood. And for me, this is the last movie before that need to be Hollywood's darling overwhelmed Spielberg's vision as a filmmaker. And I don't think it's across the board the same, but for me, this is the last movie that feels like pure actual Steven Spielberg from his heart and not Steven Spielberg as a businessman or Steven Spielberg as somebody who really, really wanted a best director Oscar. Any thoughts about that?

Yeah, I want to try to choose my words, both carefully, which is easier said than done, because obviously I don't know Spielberg. I don't presume that I ever will.

But I'm not talking about, I don't know Steven Spielberg. I met him once at the Schindler's List premiere or something like that, and I shook his hand. And of course, it was a transcendent moment. But here's the thing, the hype about Spielberg was as big as the hype for the movie. You know, you, from all the interviews that I read with Spielberg and all that, Spielberg was a major cultural figure. So I'm not talking about Spielberg, the guy. I'm talking about Spielberg, the construct, you know.

Right. And to clarify, that was that was intended. But I was saying to preface what I was going to say, not in any way to comment on what you did say, which I don't disagree with. But a corollary thought or feeling that I have is that and some of this, you get the sense of even on the behind the scenes of the making of it and his interactions and the fact that this is a relatively small movie and that he kind of set out to make a smaller movie.

It plays like an independent film, doesn't it? And it's a chamber piece in that house. The majority of it is set in small rooms.

So much of this movie is a small little movie. And that that was an intentional choice. And it feels like this was his last chance as a person living and rooted in the real world before he became Steven Spielberg, which this ironically really fully catapulted him into the stratosphere of deifying him. Because it's so huge. And then I think there's just this sense, and it may be completely unfair, but just subjectively that after this film, he doesn't feel quite as rooted and connected and grounded a filmmaker where he does here. He still is that scrappy, aspiring filmmaker who snuck onto the universal lot, like claimed a desk in an office and just doing things on a shoestring and making things work and trying to figure it out and having... Yeah, and it's magical in that way, but it does very much feel like it's this fulcrum, it's this turning point.

No, absolutely. And look, I think that it's really... This is an interesting discussion because, like I said, I can't judge Steven Spielberg as a human being. I don't know him. Nobody knows him. But we have lived in a world that is Steven Spielberg and George Lucas' world for 40 years. They defined the Hollywood blockbuster. They have been in equal parts rebelling against it and embracing it ever since. I'll tell you what, though, and I do have some negative things to say about Spielberg, the director, although I will begin by saying there will never be, and you can contest this as much as you want, but I don't believe that there will ever be as great a visual intuitive director as Steven Spielberg. Look at Crystal Skull, right? I read some parts of the shot where he introduces Indiana Jones, where he gets dragged out of the trunk of the car, and then you see him come up in shadow and all that, that he made up that shot on the day.

Yeah.

And so literally, I don't think that there will ever be as great a filmmaker, just a teller of stories visually. He is the pinnacle of mise en scene directing, as far as I'm concerned, in terms of blocking the camera and actors masterfully.

Yes.

And there's a shot in Minority Report where Colin Farrell is using this gun. So you learn how to use the gun, right? And then the gun gets in the hands of one of his henchmen or something. And then Tom Cruise beats up the henchman. And then he does something with the gun that is even more cool than anybody else has done before. So he literally teaches you a piece of alien technology, has the hero take the alien technology away, and then do something cooler with it than anybody else has. And it's all in one shot. I mean, I don't think the guy has an equal.

It's difficult, I mean, with all of these films, but I think this is one especially to look back on it through the lens of the intervening decades of lived experience, but also cinematic experience of knowing where he goes as a filmmaker and also the towering influence and ripple effects that this film had. And in terms of changing his trajectory as a filmmaker, but also the whole industry in many ways, and that it's still being referenced and quoted, and all these things that we take for granted are like, oh, yes, there it is. That's kind of where it came from. But yeah, also not knowing the context of his personal story, that he's of childhood divorce and such, that he's channeling in stark contrast to, as we discussed in Poltergeist, of what that family and home life is with those kids and their parents, and also shifting the POV from parents and Poltergeist to the kids here in ET. But yeah, now there's like all this stuff that's been unpacked or excavated as far as Spielberg's own story, and it's made it more complicated to untangle.

I think also if you look at like, and again, we're not talking about Steven Spielberg. We're talking about Steven Spielberg, the public figure, the myth, the deification of this guy. And what's really interesting is you're absolutely right. This movie changed everything. And for the record, by the way, I hadn't seen it since 1982. And watching it again, I cried through the entire movie for any number of reasons, which we'll get into. You know, after this movie, he made Temple of Doom, right? Yeah. And something happened when I watched Temple of Doom. I loved Temple of Doom the first time I saw it. And then I went home and I picked up a copy of Time magazine that had a review of Temple of Doom. And the review was called Keeping the Customer Satisfied. And it was all about how Temple of Doom was a piece of business and not a heartfelt individual statement. And you look at how Spielberg was covered in the media. You know, like he had married Amy Irving, you know, and that was like the great sort of Hollywood story. You know, and then he makes Temple of Doom a few years later. And then he winds up, you know, dumping Amy Irving for Kate Capshaw, who is basically your blonde goddess, you know. And it's like the Spielberg narrative, the narrative of his life and who he is and his struggle to win that Oscar and all of that is so much of like a part of the narrative. It occupies as big a cultural footprint as any one of his movies for me, you know?

Yeah. And Doom, of course, also being his first sequel after steadfastly refusing to make sequels for Jaws, for Close Encounters, for ET. And apparently some time was spent a couple of weeks after ET exploded to explore the possibility, like he actually contemplated that and then closed the door on it pretty firmly.

And the other thing I'll tell you is watching this film, and like I said, I wept through the entire movie, partially because Elliot's voice sounds exactly like the voice of my son, especially when one of the things my son does is he offers, he's a very generous little boy, and whenever he has anything, he offers it to me and he goes, want some? And literally it's the same cadence as Elliot when he offers ET the recess pieces, and I just, I couldn't stop crying, you know? And look, this is an incredibly effective and potent film.

And I was just going to echo something you said earlier, because it is an exhilarating showcase of him at the height of his power. And as you discussed, this sort of intuitive mastery of cinema, at its most pure, but also shamelessly manipulative way.

Thank you for saying that, Paul, because you know what? It's interesting because this movie, when I was a kid, I remember feeling, and look, I'm 12, okay? And I'm not saying I'm so sophisticated or whatever. I generally felt manipulated by this movie. And I think that might also have been part of what the hype kind of brought me to, was everybody kept talking about how they cried during this movie. Oh, I cried so, ET died, I cried, I cried, I cried, I cried, I cried. And I just remember being there like, why are you people crying when we're being made to cry? And that is a more adult sort of framing of that sensation. I get it. I'm not trying to retrofit myself into a bigger intellectual than I was. But I generally remember just sitting there going like, he's making me try to do this. And I don't know, it was such a weird experience because the hype itself made me predisposed to not want to play along. And I'd never had that experience before.

Yeah. And also I think that you and I had very different experiences because I remember feeling like I was in on it, in on the discovery of it when it first came out. I was among these first people, this first wave of people to see it. There weren't people telling me how great it was and that it made them cry because people hadn't seen it yet. And so I was part of that initial first wave. But then, yeah, the accumulation of that afterwards, the hype of it combined with the fact that he is not holding back. He now has command of these tools as a filmmaker and is using them with such confidence and assertiveness where he is not holding back. And also, I think a huge part of why we all cry in this movie is at least 50% John Williams.

Oh, yeah. Well, look, John Williams, you can assume he's doing a lot of heavy lifting in anything he does, you know?

But I think particularly in this, and I can't not talk about the upgrade of Spielberg from Jaws and Close Encounters and Raiders to ET along the same trajectory that we're seeing John Williams coming into just full unstoppable power, just potency of emotional impact and of being unafraid to just go all in and just say, we are going to just put all of this on the table. We're not holding anything back and daring us not to feel and not to cry.

Well, I got to tell you, watching it as an adult, look, producer Brad will back me up on this. I was a pretty strident, opinionated, loud kid. I was the kid who, like, you know, like, I hate this movie! Back then, people would say, well, can you make a list of movies you like? It'll be much shorter. I was that annoying kid who, you know, as an adult, I kind of forgave myself that part of my life and let myself experience the movie. And I think you're absolutely right. And I think, but I think there is, they're both coming into their power wholly, but they're kind of new enough to their mastery that it doesn't feel taken for granted in any way. And that makes the movie so special and so sort of poignant just within the context of the movie. But also when you look at the rest of both men's careers, it generally feels like there's a fire in this movie's belly. And it's a genuine human fire. It's not the, I want to win an Oscar fire. It's the fire of like, this is my story. And in a weird way, this story feels so much more like about Spielberg, the man, than something like The Fableman's, which is apparently seen by seeing his life story. Because this feels like he literally just... When I was working on Lost, one of the things that made that show so special, regardless of anything negative that happened there, is that during that first season especially, during the first like 10 episodes of that first season, Damon Lindelof would walk into the writer's room and he would literally just take a cleaver to his own breast bone, rip off his ribs and say, here's my bleeding heart, go. And that energy, I think, is what powered that season of that show. And I feel it in this movie. It just generally feels like you're just seeing this guy's heart.

It feels like a pure, earnest, personal expression. Yes, artistically.

Yes. And I think that there is just enough roughness around the edges. I was thinking about the shot. There's the tracking shot where the kids are riding their BMX bikes at the end of it to evade the government. By the way, sidebar, how come all the government cards literally have stickers on them that say US. Government?

Well, you know.

We've got to talk to those guys about their tradecraft. OK, but let's leave that for later.

Yes. The other thing, too, and again, this connects with something you pointed out earlier, it's uncalculated. They're entering into this project without an aspiration of this being a blockbuster. On the contrary, their expectation is they're going to make a modest, small, little personal movie that he kind of wants to get back to and connect with and ground himself. And he feels like he has the clout to go do that.

Right.

And he's going to take that opportunity. But his big concerns, as he's talked about in interviews and things, extras, when I rewatched the movie, were that the only comps for this were sort of these B live action Disney movies, family films, that never broke out as hits, that had very limited success and appeal, were modest base runs. And that was his aspiration. He said, you know, if we pull this off, you know, that might be it, but at least moms are going to love this movie. But he said he was making this for moms and their kids. And that was it. And the whole time of making it, apparently, especially with the lessons he learned from Jaws of having to fight the mechanical shark, of putting all this work into ET., into this creature who also has to help carry the movie as a performer and of not knowing is that going to work and our audience is going to buy and connect with ET as a person, as a character who they'll feel about it and not knowing all the way through the process until he says when they got their first cut, which apparently was 40 minutes longer, which is really something to imagine and then realizing, oh, I think it worked and then honing it down from there. But another thing too is that this sort of lightning in a bottle aspect of it of this starting as a completely different project. John Sayles wrote for him, the dark skies thing that was going to be another darker alien encounter.

Night skies.

Night skies. Sorry about that. Night skies. Dark skies was a short lived genre show.

Which I wrote for.

Yes. That's what's in my brain. And then taking this left turn and combining it with his story, personal story he wanted to tell about children of divorce. And blending that and then, you know, the magic of Melissa Matheson and Dee Wallace has talked about that she'd never seen a script that was almost all white pages. And Spielberg says it's like the greatest first draft that he'd ever seen, that they just were able to capture that. So there's some real alchemy at work in right place, right time in terms of where these collaborators were in their life experience and the career that collided in this cauldron. And yeah, this emerged.

And it's just rough enough, you know, like it doesn't feel polished. Like I was saying about that tracking shot, the dolly jiggles just enough. It's a weird feeling because sometimes when movies don't, aren't completely perfect, the way that the fablements is complete, there isn't a single dolly jig in the fablements, you know. Obviously, there's no grain because it was shot digitally. You know, there isn't, there's never a disconnect between, you know, types of stock or anything like that, right? Everything is hyper real. And in this movie, the, there is just enough grit to make you feel like you're there, which is actually a good kind of segue into, I think our generation, you know, like we're maybe one generation away from, you know, like we're basically, if not the last, the second to last generation to have grown up without the Internet. You know, we didn't even get it as teens. I didn't get AOL until I was 26 years old. So watching this movie, you know, I was so, a couple of things. One of them is I don't like 80s nostalgia very much, especially when it's Amblin movie based nostalgia, because I feel like people are people who don't understand my shit are taking my shit and packaging it in a slick package and trying to sell it back to me. I'm like, I know this shit, guys. I live there. But the other thing is like this movie shows a childhood that no one's ever going to have again, you know, and you can watch a movie from the 1920s. And there is just enough commonality between the 1920s and the 1980s that you can relate to it. But this is this is a child, a type of childhood that will never exist in America again. And that alone made me so melancholy and so just sad, you know. The kids, they're not unsophisticated kids, but they're just not kids who know every every like, I mean, they have the pop culture references and all that. But it's like the way they interact with each other and with the world is so much different than what you see portrayed with children in movies today. And it definitely feels real to me in terms of like the dungeon. Well, you know, producer Brad and I used to play Dungeons and Dragons together, you know, in 1980 when the red and the blue box were out, right? And those scenes felt really lived in and real to me. And in a way that I feel like in a way that reflects not modernity, but antiquity, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. And that's how we're introduced to our characters is through a D&D game. And it's not an act of nostalgia like Stranger Things. It's like, no, that's what they were doing. That's what we were doing.

Yeah, exactly.

It feels real. One thing before I forget, you mentioned that you had not seen this movie since you saw it as a kid.

Yeah.

So I went a long stretch without having seen this movie and had a similar distance for it because over time, it did accumulate all this stuff around it that made me kind of push it away as I got older and grown up, almost as if the inflation of hype and stuff around it. But then years ago, this was maybe eight years ago, I don't remember exactly when, our Faithful Alma Drafthouse periodically does great screenings of classic films. So they were showing it and I saw it on the calendar and I thought, oh my God, I have to show my son ET and he's the right age. And I hadn't seen it, but I thought, well, this is a thing I'm looking forward to and I have not seen it. I had the most surreal experience and I may want to wait till we talk into the movie about it, where I had very vivid memories of this movie and of seeing this movie. And as I'm watching it again with my son, I know what's coming until a certain point where then I had a black hole of memory until the finale and it was like I was watching it for the first time and seeing a new movie again for much of the third act, which was very surreal. And so I just rewatched it again now and it's been several years. My son is now a teenager. I will not get him. I tried to see if he wanted to watch it again. He politely declined. We've been watching anime together instead. But yeah, but it was it was interesting to now rewatch it juxtaposing my two prior experiences with it, seeing it as a kid and then also seeing it as a dad with the with him when he was my age when I had seen it.

I got to tell you, I had a very similar experience watching this again in that, you know, like the hype has passed. I don't see Spielberg as a living God anymore. You know, I now understand that he's a person who makes movies. Some of them are good. Some of them aren't so good. Some of them are fine. And some of them are great, you know, and he's had a long career. And, you know, it's one of those things where like now Spielberg, the media created deity. Like we've been living with him for so long that he just feels kind of like an uncle now, you know, like like a great uncle. Like literally, he's just he's just become this avuncular. It's the same the same with Scorsese. You know, Scorsese used to be the young the young rebel. And now he's like America's film school teacher, the elder statesman. Yeah, exactly. But but but also like your film school teacher, like like he's literally taken of that role of being like that guy. And he's so obviously. But but you know, like being able to enjoy ET as a movie, I have this dream that I can take ten years off of watching Star Wars. And then I can literally pull out my late my old laserdisc of the version before they changed everything and put all that CGI in it and just watch it and enjoy it as somebody's little independent film.

You know, I'm still hoping Disney actually will release those original versions that are towering milestones of our shared cultural heritage.

It's funny because the thing that's been stopping them from putting out those movies is George Lucas. But at the same time, like the money they would make if they just released those cuts, you know, it would be amazing. Everybody would buy them all over again. So but you know, like like and I think that's a big part for me about ET. It's like it's like just being away from the hype and just being able to look at it. And I was I was very moved by it. I did have the first 10 minutes, I was like, oh, this is like that old hype feeling came back. And then I just sort of let myself go with it. I think that it speaks something about how our reliance on branding, marketing franchise ever present. Here it is. The next movie is coming out in six months. Then the TV show. Then like that actually really taints the movie going experience in a very strange way and watching this again really brought that home for me, you know?

Yeah. And I think that it lives in a very singular space.

Yeah.

As I was going to say, a modern classic, but now it's as much time has passed. I don't know if we can still say that.

As much time has passed between when that movie came out and now as it had when Casablanca came out and this movie came out, so.

Damn you. If listeners have not revisited this movie in a long time, I think it is well worth seeing. And I also just think it's somewhat of a, it's a magical thing to share if you're a parent with kids. But also there's that, yeah, like you said, I just want to echo the melancholy of seeing this childhood portray and this world that is never coming again. That is gone forever.

You know, you know, the thing that weirdly I was most moved by, you know, there's a couple of things that I was very moved by. But one of the things that unexpectedly moved me is the scene where they're watching the commercial for MCI. Do you remember MCI? Like in the before times, you know, like, and this is, and this is very much a part of my life because having left Puerto Rico to come to the states, communication with my family back in Puerto Rico was not the easiest thing. There was a big time difference, but also long distance calling. You were charged by the minute and it cost a shit ton of money, you know. So like we couldn't call Puerto Rico during the daytime. You have to call after like 8 p.m. when the rates went down. And then MCI was the service that came out where you would do your long distance through their system and they would charge you less. And that was sort of and just the idea, just how much that reminded me of what it was like to. And I think that's another part of why I maybe didn't enjoy this movie so much when I was a kid is that I was not a part of the life that this movie portrayed. I had just been thrown into it. I was two years into my life in the United States. I, you know, producer Brad and I lived in a suburb, not quite like the San Fernando Valley suburb, but it was, you know, this sort of town, you know, and we had our subdivisions and all of that. But I was still an alien to that. You know, I still had an accent in 1982. And it was interesting to me because I also felt very other watching this movie as a kid, especially watching it in Puerto Rico. It didn't feel like it was my experience. And I had this weird, even though these kids, they're not well to do, their dad is in Mexico with Sally, you know, he wears Old Spice. It's like these kids are not rich kids or whatever. There was a sort of, if not inferiority, envy at the Americaness of their lives versus the sort of Puerto Ricaness of my life, you know, and how this life could be presented in such a just wonderful, glowing, idealized way. And I knew that my life in Puerto Rico, great as it might have been, was never going to be that. You know, and I felt very, and I think that one of the reasons why I was predisposed to, if not dislike the film, just sort of, I felt very othered by it. You know, and that's something that I can only realize now as an adult watching it. That must have been part of my, it's kind of like when I saw The Breakfast Club when I was in high school, I was like, I don't know who any of these kids are. You know, I'm sure there's kids like this in my high school and maybe I know some of them and all that, but like, I am not from here. And I think this movie made me feel that in a huge way, which is why I think I identified with Star Wars much more, because it was an abstraction, you know? And I think Spielberg did such a good job of not glorifying, but presenting this slice of American life in a very warm way that made me feel like I will never have that. Yeah. But yeah, so, hey, so we just had Mexico with Sally. Should we just talk a little bit about the actual movie? There's a great shot in the movie during the Mexico with Sally conversation where D. Wallace Stone's back. Because she got married after making this movie or something like that. Her back is turned to the camera while the kids are talking about the dad. And you don't know that she's crying. And then she turns around and walks from the shadow into the light and you can see her expression. And holy fuck, that is a great bit of storytelling. Like I literally I'm getting chills as describing the scene because it's so much what Spielberg is great at, you know, is that kind of using light blocking and camera to tell the entire tale. That was just hit me really hard.

Yeah, I'm definitely going to want to rewind and talk about the opening. But of course, since we're in that scene, because it's it's such a momentously impactful scene emotionally. Yeah, where it becomes clear that, oh, this isn't just some silly like kids movie. Yeah, this is a sophisticated story about a family going through the wreckage of divorce and has real emotional depth and stakes and isn't afraid to go confront those feelings.

Absolutely.

It's also from a screenwriting and filmmaking standpoint, I love setups and payoffs and the setup of this throwaway thing that Elliott can't help himself out. His older brother Mike would know better and then he's mad at Elliott for spilling the beans that their dad is not just off in Mexico, but off in Mexico with Sally with another woman. And then she, Dee Wallace, the mom has to get up and to go to the, because she can't hold it together and she goes and her back is to us. So because we aren't seeing her, we're just seeing her from behind. And then the kids are arguing this is like created a scene, a moment, and Elliott doesn't realize what he stepped in because he's a kid. And Mike is making it worse by judging him and blowing it up instead of just whatever, instead of comforting his mom. Like they're all in their own feelings. They're not there for each other.

Yeah.

And then the turn and the reveal of D. Wallace than saying he hates Mexico, like quietly to herself as the payoff, as the punch line to really drive that home is just devastating.

No, it is. And look, I also want to say fucking dad with your old spice and your blue shirt, your piece of shit running off with Sally. I'm not going to put all of this on Sally. OK, Sally, Sally was probably just a very nice person who fell in love with a man. But fucking dad, because dad is actually Roy Neary from Close Encounters. You know that, right? I mean, it's like this is Spielberg's answer to what happens in Close Encounters after Roy gets in the ship. But the other thing I wanted to say about this is there's a great thematic payoff to the dad's absence at the end of the movie. And I'm sorry to skip. I want to hit on this because he's the character keys is always presented as a threatening presence. Yeah, the John Williams theme for the government is, you know, that it is ominous. And then at the end of the movie, you realize that's the real dad. Yeah. You know, keys actually turns out. Yeah, go ahead.

It's not just the real dad. It's.

Yeah. He gives that amazing monologue about saying I've wanted this since I was 10 years old.

I think we have that. He came to me, too. I've been wishing for this since I was 10 years old. I don't want him to die. What can we do that we're not already doing?

Stop it. Just stop. Stop this. I can't handle this. It's too much, Brad. Producer Brad, stop. I can't even remember to call you producer, Brad, because this is so emotional for me.

So many things to say about this, but yeah, go.

The redemption. The one thing you don't you don't see a lot of, especially in these movies and especially now that Generation X is writing the narrative, we're almost actually about to leave the stage. It's weird. So we've got 20 years of stories about daddy issues and having written on Lost. I know that. And the thing about it is what this movie does, what is so generous and big hearted is that the real dad shows up at the end. It's everybody's dream dad. Peter Coyote has such a sensitive, beautiful face and the way he delivers that monologue and you realize that Spielberg isn't vilifying the absent father necessarily. He's saying that it is possible for a great father figure to show up. And I found that so moving, you know, and I'm not even a child of divorce, but I just I found it so moving because I think as a dad now, and I think we touched on this in the in Poltergeist, you know, it's like as a dad, you're sort of always subordinate to the mother because the mother is always not always traditionally the mother is the primary caregiver to the kids and also the kids bond emotionally with their mom because, you know, I mean, she carried them for nine months and, you know, fed them. I mean, it's a whole thing. So so just the idea that that a dad can show up and have that kind of emotional impact on a child was so touching to me as a dad, you know, I think it's a profound storytelling choice.

Not only is it just a fantastic reveal, like what a great twist. And this and the long patience set up to get there because one of the things the film does that is so clever and clearly intentional. The whole movie is Charlie Brown largely in that we only see the kids faces and ET. We don't see the adults faces. Yeah, we see their bodies. We see their legs. We see the moving, except for the mom, who's sort of like one of the kids.

Yeah, she's lost to she's lost to.

And he's as introduced early on. And the opening of this movie, I think, is magical.

And it's not about the opening because it's it's phenomenal.

It's eight minutes with no dialogue and it is mysterious. It is evocative. It is atmospheric. It is spooky. And it's this juxtaposition of space, of the sky, the stars and the forest. And that's like so much the connection of these two worlds that are that are colliding or intersecting. And then without any holding anything back right out of the gate, we're shown the spaceship. We are shown not just ET. We're showing shown a whole bunch of E.T.s. Yeah, like the curtain is pulled wide open right out of the gate.

You go into the ship and see the ET., the weird crystalline ET eggs that like if they get pissed off, the bad E.T.s come out of, right? That's my headcanon. Okay, maybe not.

But the other big reveal is that they're apparently space botanists. Yeah, like these aliens are just out doing botany and collecting plants and they're gardeners and like they're just like, oh, look at these cool things. And then there's the whole thing with the heartlight linking up and kind of implying that there's some sort of psychic connection among all of them.

Yeah, which then comes back with how he communicates to Elliot.

Yes, which is this important setup.

Yeah.

And then ET is shown as being the sort of rebellious one, the young little one who's not quite part of the pack, who's venturing out on his own, maybe against his better judgment. And sees the town, sees the suburban development on the edge of the forest, kind of beckoning him and luring to him. But then it's this invasion of men, of the feds, of cars, and the introduction of keys, who we do not see.

Never.

Except from the torso down and the jangling of his keys like spurs. And the ominous Williams theme that's like a Jaws theme.

Yeah.

That's like, here's the monster. Here's the threat. It's this government agent, this official, this faceless.

No, it's almost, I mean, it's funny because as you said it, it sort of clicked for me that, you know, the whole movie, especially this beginning, it's like the people are the aliens. You know, especially the government people, they are what the aliens in a Ridley Scott movie would be. You don't show them a lot. Like you said, with the shark and Jaws, they've got the ominous theme. They have the technology that is threatening. You know, the ship, the ET ship has no corners in it. It's just all egg shaped.

Yeah, designed by the great Ralph McCrory.

The great Ralph McCrory, absolutely. So it's interesting because, yeah, the people are, in a weird way, adulthood is more alien in this film. And in a way, when you talk about the mom and the mom being lost and the mom being like one of the kids, it's like, you know, they have this idyllic suburban life and this very, very adult situation of infidelity has broached it. And that puts the mom in a place where she, you don't know whether she was working, a working mom. I think she's a realtor in the movie. I don't know if it's ever said or if I just inferred that from her jacket.

Hopefully she's not working on the Poltergeist development.

She goes to work at Cuesta Verde? Can you imagine that? The missing scene from Poltergeist is Craig T. Nelson goes into his co-worker, who's the second best salesperson in Cuesta Verde, and it's Dee Walton. That's almost as good as the people from The Matrix come out of Zion, and there's John Connor going, thank God you're here. Anyway, that's great.

But the keys thing, and then we'll jump back, but I just want to tie this together.

But it's like the mom is very much one of the kids because adulthood, a very adult situation has intruded in her idyllic life, and now she's forced into a role as a single mom that she is learning, that she is new at in the way that the kids are new at their whole lives, you know?

Yeah, and she's trying as best she can to hold everything together and put on a happy face and create this, and maintain this environment of normalcy for her kids, but also for herself, to keep herself from just breaking down at any given moment, because, again, in that kitchen scene, the unspoken is spoken, and you can't unring that bell, and that hangs over the whole rest of the film. And meanwhile, Keyes, the shark, is circling, and over the course of the film, he's circling closer and closer. And the way that that is intercut and interplayed as this looming threat is just so simple and so effective. But then, yeah, then that twist when we finally meet him and we finally see his face, and it's the great Peter Coyote who then gets to pull this great twist of that he is Elliot. He was Elliot in his youth, and he has been chasing this the whole, his whole life. And that does so many things at once. One is it immediately connects them, not just him as a father figure, but also as validating Elliot's experience.

Something every child wants from a parent and needs. Yeah.

It also catapults us forward in time, imagining what the impact of this is going to be on Elliot for the rest of his life. Because we're seeing a vision of what he could turn into in the form of Peter Coyote. But another thing that it underlines and accentuates, which is to me the heart of this movie, and I think what makes it so moving, is the shared sense across all these main characters of longing. This is a movie about longing. ET longs to go home. He longs for connection. Elliot is longing to belong to the friend group and then also to have a friend and connect. And D is longing to have her family connected over the loss of the dad. They're all burdened by and wrestling with longing. But only through each other can that longing be fulfilled.

One of the things I find really interesting is that the paranoia that Spielberg deployed so wonderfully in Close Encounters, the anti-establishment paranoia, the conspiracy mindset, all of that stuff, you see it here in a really interesting way. There's that scene where the truck is going around the neighborhood with the dish like eavesdropping on people. Which, by the way, now we're just used to, we just assume, I think Alexa has heard every fight I've ever had with my wife and whatever fucking, if Jeff Bezos wants to know about that, great. I hope it burdens him. In 1982, that was a real intrusion that was socially transgressive. And it's almost like bad dad is waiting there to come in and ruin it for all of us, you know? And the way Spielberg was able to turn that paranoia from anti-establishment into a very discreet anti-familial threat, like we now have our little makeshift family. It's Gertie, it's Michael, and it's Elliot, you know, and ET. And dad is out there waiting to fucking ruin our little family now. And it's so, it's such an amazing way that Spielberg was able to take something that was more abstract and turn it into something so personal. It's phenomenal. And it's funny what you say about Longing. You're absolutely right. I mean, it's a movie. I think that's one of the reasons why I think it's so emotional. And look, I think for me, the most emotional film seen in the movie, actually, is when the machine starts working, the little Fisher Price machine with the saw blade and the umbrella and the sound it makes and the fact that it's on a Fisher Price turntable that every child, you know, had either seen or had. It was one of the iconic toys of the 50s, 60s and 70s and 80s, you know. And I remember thinking the idea that owning a home is hard, which I touched on earlier, you know, and the idea that it's slow and it's this process and it's sort of, I mean, for me, the idea of all of these childhood toys being repurposed into a device to try to communicate with family on an abstract level, but then on a personal level was just amazing. And Elliot waking up without ET there with just the device, it was the two scenes that have actually stuck with me are not any one of the personal scenes. It's that scene and then ET laying at the bottom of the reservoir, you know, sort of pale, you know.

So much to say.

I mean, we're kind of going all over the place. So you might, you know.

Yeah, it's okay. We're just assuming people have seen the movie. If you haven't, like, I'm so sorry. Hopefully you've paused by now and got to watch it and come back because this is like a nonlinear explosion that we're having. The MacGyverism of ET figuring out. It's so beautifully done. The whole process of ET learning how this world works, of Gertie and Sesame Street teaching him how to speak is so brilliant. But also the connecting the dots.

Producer Brad, would you like to play Soundbite number three, please?

What? It's just so great. And that is like packed up. It's like a present within a present in that scene. Because that scene again, we're jumping all over the place. But I'll get back to the MacGyver stuff is that Elliot has had to go and Mike out. They've been out. So Gertie has been left at home with ET. And it's like, oh, this is exciting. Like, you know, this is going to be fun and great. And also just my God, the Drew Barrymore in this movie, the magic of her performance and the interaction with ET., which apparently was largely fueled by the fact that she actually thought ET was real on that set and interacted with him even between takes as a real person. And the crew, Spielberg notices this and then has the crew play along during the whole production. It's just it's incredible. And that she has spoken in interviews that she still misses ET., her friend that she made on that movie.

It's funny because my son has a puppet Jurassic Park dinosaur, you know, that you squeeze a trigger on its tail and its mouth opens. And I use that to talk to my son. And he knows it's me puppeting the dinosaur. So even even at the age of three and obviously because he sees me doing it and I'm the voice of the dinosaur. But, you know, he says things to the dinosaur when I'm the dinosaur that he doesn't say to me as a dad, you know? Yeah. Just the story just told is very poignant to me. But I was also going to say there's something really interesting about again revisiting this movie now that everybody has sort of gone away for 15 years, all we fucking ever heard about was Drew Barrymore's battle with addiction, her struggles against her mom, who was a stage mom who stole all her money, who wasn't nice, and then the mom would give interviews. Like, I feel like Drew Barrymore herself almost became, again, like this media construct of a person that you kind of know, you know, like she's on People magazine talking about her addiction and how she was addicted to cocaine at age nine and all this shit, right? And then again, she wasn't Drew Barrymore to me. She was just this girl. Drew Barrymore to me is like a woman who has a talk show.

She's a celebrity, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And she's, you know, a little bit younger than me, but she's like my age, she's got three kids, whatever, she's got a talk show. And I don't have her life story, unquote, as designed by a bunch of PR people jammed into my face through People magazine anymore. So I was able to kind of, the same way that I was able to sort of forget about the hype surrounding the movie, I was able to just forget that and evaluate it as a performance. And I gotta say, the way that you've stated it, it's amazing because yes, ET is a great creature design. Yes, ET was masterfully done. However, the majority of your emotional response to ET is on the faces of those kids. There's a lot more coverage of those kids in this movie than there is of ET. And the directing of these child actors is impeccable.

And we need to talk about Henry Thomas, too. And I think he's also just a miracle. But Drew Barrymore is startling. Especially being so young and so pure and so funny. Naturally. And this scene, so many of these interactions of believing that these kids are a family, that they're siblings, that that is all played so naturally. And then there are different interactions and relationships with ET. There's something also interesting in this, looking at it now, where immediately ET is, Eliot is identifying ET and introducing him as a he, as a male. Because he's seeing, he's reflecting himself. Gertie gets a day alone with them. And ET is a girl to Gertie. And Gertie is dressing ET up.

ET in like the wig and all of that, yeah.

And because that's her version of ET and that's her interaction. And ET is really clearly, and I think Spielberg has said this and stuff too, is intentionally not gendered. I think that there's a quote where they say, well, we kind of imagine these aliens are plants. They're sort of plant-based aliens and they're non-binary. They're ungendered.

Absolutely.

And looking at that now through a contemporary lens, it's so wonderful. I just find it so warm and fuzzy and endearing how this is kind of accepted in the interplay and the innocence of these kids interacting with ET. But also taking possession because they are forming their own, they're kind of imposing their own sense of identity on ET to reflect themselves, to feel seen. And then like it's in this moment, we're girdy through the magic of Sesame Street and Speak and Spell and all these things that we grew up with and related to has taught ET how to speak. And then ET., who is an explorer, who's curious, who's sort of a creature, an alien, who at this moment, once he starts speaking, she starts speaking they as a person.

Yeah.

And that changes things in the story. It's like, oh, OK, this is there's a personality here emerging who then also starts exhibiting humor and, you know, and a lot of other things and then has this prowess and this puzzle making ability. And I just love how we are cinematically following along in a procedural manner from a Flash Gordon comic strip to like the MCI commercial. ET is connecting these dots to figure out how they can call home, how they can send a message. And then to your point, to then build this anticipation of, oh, is it going to work? And the conspiracy that then the kids team up to enable and facilitate so that ET can do this, when we get to that scene in the forest, it's like, is this device going to work? Sending this message with the yearning that it's going to be heard. But then also immediately juxtaposing and hitting us with Elliot saying, you know, you could stay. And knowing that now he is yearning for ET to stay because he's found a friend. But then you touch on the thing that was my breaking point, clearly for my childhood psyche. When Elliot wakes up, can't find ET looking everywhere and is then lost. And we cut back to the house and D. Wallace is living every parent's nightmare. Her kid has gone missing and they've got a faceless share for somebody there. And then a great reveal with the refrigerator door closing. And then there's Elliot, who looks not good. And has been looking everywhere and can't find ET. And is sick and is in trouble. But he gives Mike, who has kind of been in the shadow more than a little bit of Elliot and Gertie, not just in terms of centralized to the story, but also in terms of audience sympathy. Because he really kind of has been a jerk a lot of it, but is slowly kind of coming around.

I think you get to like him in the scene where they talk about dad's shirt and his cologne and all that stuff. Let me pivot for one second, because I want to talk about, not talk about, I want to mention three things. In that scene, by the way, they find a fuzzbuster. Do you know what a fuzzbuster is?

Oh, yeah, had one.

Does anybody who was born after 1990 know anything? Fuzzbuster was a radar detector. It allowed you to detect when, again, it talks about our relationship with surveillance. That we literally, the radar, the cops using radar to measure our speed was so offensive to America that a company created a device that would warn you when cops, so that you would slow down, so that you busted the fuzz. The other thing is, you know, the infamous penis breath scene, by the way, is also the first time I think in recorded media, at least to my knowledge, that I heard the word douchebag used as an insult.

Uh-huh. Well, anyway, that's another thing in terms of the sense of authenticity and subversiveness and kind of rebellious aspect of this film. I remember seeing it as a kid. It felt so transgressive that we're hearing these kids talk like kids and speaking in ways that they shouldn't, like that are forbidden. And that even just the act of watching this film as a kid felt like you're getting away with something, because I couldn't, I'd be in trouble if I said that at home. But here's what they said in the movie.

But it's very much about kids, kids getting away with things, I think, is a really fun, but it doesn't feel like this is not at the kids built a time machine movie. You know, this is a movie where the kids have BMX bikes and Dungeons and Dragons and a Fuzzbuster. And that's what it feels so genuine. But, you know, you're talking about Michael and sort of Michael has his moment now in the movie where he's the one who goes and finds ET. Right.

There's this whole stretch in the first act where Elliot is completely disrespected and is clearly an annoyance to Mike, is an intruder to Mike's social fabric with his friends that Elliot only yearns to be a part of and is always treated with derision and rejection over and over again. And they're making fun of him for thinking there's a goblin or something in the back or whatever. And then the moment, it's a great iconic moment of the reveal of Elliot, of ET trusting Mike. But in part, he needs to enlist him to help with things, but also he really just wants to prove to Mike that he was right and to earn his respect, which is great. But then from there, then there's this pivot, this of Mike and Elliot forging a whole new relationship as brothers where Mike then is forced to kind of see him in a different way and respect him. And they bond in ways they would not otherwise be able to do if this hadn't happened. And it culminates in this moment where Elliot returns and Mike is the only one he can turn to and asks him, tells him you have to go find him. And it's Mike who then is entrusted to go find and save ET. And then we get really the maybe the most horrifying thing I had seen in my young life, at which point I erased all memory of the movie is this horrific site of sickly pale ashen ET by this drainage ditch.

He's like in a sewer. It's horrible.

On the side of the road. It is just awful. And there's a raccoon there that Mike has to shoo away. And you're like, is ET dead? But then he's clearly near death. It's so manipulative. But like we've systematically been drawn in to connect with and love this creature as a person. And also through the lens of the kids loving and connecting with this alien. And then now we're seeing this nightmare of, oh my God, ET is going to die.

But I think before we get into E.T.'s death, because that leads us right into the endgame. One of the things that you talk about how much this movie is about longing, right? And as somebody who had a kind of, let's say, difficult relationship with his older siblings, one of the things that struck me as an adult, and I get along with my brothers just fine now, but childhood was a little bit rough. One of the things I found really poignant is that Mike does become that dream older brother you want. He helps, he drives the car, and they're escaping from the government. Even though he doesn't know how to drive forward, he's only driven out.

He's only been allowed to back the car out of the driveway.

But I think that there's also one of the really nice payoffs in this movie is how much that relationship becomes the older brother relationship every younger brother wants, which is that your older brother is actually helpful and helps you navigate the world. And I think that that's also in a much subtler and less pronounced way because there's other things going on in the movie, obviously. That's a really nice note that the movie hits, I think. Paul, do you have any siblings? I actually don't know. Do you have siblings?

I have a younger sibling, yes. Okay.

Oh, so you're the older brother?

Yeah.

Well, fuck you.

No. Sorry. I'm kidding. You would probably appreciate that. No, he's amazing. Yeah, I think that these characters, seeing the impact and effect that these events have and that ET has on their dynamics, again, in a way that they're granted the ability or afforded the opportunity to change that they would not have otherwise had.

Yeah. And it's wonderful.

Yeah, and it's really, really so satisfying because especially when we get to a point of what they're going to lose, the movie is making sure we know they've all gained something that they get to keep when we get to that. And I don't want to get to the end or everything after near death ET because there's so much stuff we've skipped over and some things that I want to touch on. The whole discovery sequence of the initial encounter, the first contact between ET and Elliot and then the redo, so there's the tentative things and then this colliding in the corn and screaming and then Elliot finding more courage and then figuring out, and then the greatest product placement of all time with aside from Coors beer later in the film, which has momentous impact is the recent pieces.

Aside from the Box of Cheerios and Richard Donner's Superman.

Well, yes, yes, there you go. But that whole, I mean, that whole sequence, the whole setup and introduction and bringing Elliot and ET together is so masterfully constructed and done and then he has the secret that he's keeping and then the circle of the secret starts growing and then grows out of his control. It's all of that stuff is just so beautifully, wonderfully done.

I think that one of my hot take on that is the thing I love about Elliot as a character and he reminds me of my own son, who I hope this trait never leaves him, is he's really generous and big hearted. Even though he kind of spars with his brothers and all that, he's a genuinely big hearted kid and a genuinely generous kid and I think that whole sequence makes you love him because he's scared but he's caring, you know, and he's empathic in a really interesting way.

Yeah, and we've seen him kind of been beaten down for being big hearted. For only being punished by it. And ET affords him an experience where he is finally validated and rewarded for being big hearted. And that changes him. It allows him to start to bloom and flourish and also assert himself. Because there's a certain point, a trajectory, where ET fundamentally kind of becomes the older brother. He sort of asserts himself as, oh, he's now in control. And Mike, over the course of the film, cedes that to him because ET earns his respect. It's a wonderful thing about positive masculinity. There was a scene that growth and evolution. But there's a moment where in that first interaction where the circle is complete of trust in the secret, after the great, hilarious screams of Gertie and ET yelling and screaming at each other.

And the telescoping neck.

Yes, the telescoping neck and Mike falling backwards and knocking the shelves down, which was not planned, but that just happened. It's such a magical, great scene. But Elliot asserts he's made this choice. I'm keeping him. Elliot is asserting that. I mean, it's such a big statement. It's so simple. And one of the things I love about this movie is there are these little, tiny, few word phrases that land and carry so much weight behind them. And him just saying, I'm keeping him. Not only is asserting Elliot as being able to make such a decision, the fact that he feels like that's a choice, he has the power to make. He's also asserting that it is a choice in and of itself, that there is that possibility. And he goes all in. And I just think that it's such a momentous moment for him kind of emerging as an individual in contrast to who he starts out as. And as we get to the ending, one of the things that impressed me, and I don't know that I caught it on a previous viewings, was that when Elliot has snuck him into the house and is showing off his Star Wars action figures and clunkily explaining things like cars and all these concepts about how we live. And ET probably is not understanding any of it, but he's indulging him because he's just fascinated and is like, what is happening? And asked him, are you hungry? He'll go get something. And then he tosses off a line so casually in a way that we can just go by it, but it is planting this enormous seed that is going to pay off at the end and hit us in the gut. But it is just snuck in as a setup in the first act, which is… Stay. I'll be right here. I'll be right here.

So, I mean, look, the ET dies, he releases his psychic hold on Elliot, that Elliot may live. ET is put in a cryo facility, and then he comes back to life, his heart light glows. One of my favorite shots in this movie is that shot of the kids putting on their sunglasses and the ski masks and all that, when they're getting ready to pull off this caper. It's literally, I've never understood Gen Y's love of the movie The Goonies, right? But I imagine that shot says everything the entirety of The Goonies has to say without any dialogue, which is this whole idea of friendship, thrill, adventure. I mean, I don't know, it's a beautiful thing.

Well, the other thing, they're the Lost Boys. This movie, and again, in terms of little setups that are so brilliant, that then loom and pay off in bigger ways. There's a scene where ET and Elliot are hiding in the closet, watching Dee Wallace, the mom, reading a bedtime story to Gertie, and it's Peter Pan.

It's Peter Pan, yeah. It's not just Peter Pan, it's Tinkerbell's death scene, and then the resurrection. Yes.

Yes. And ET is Tinkerbell.

Oh, totally. Totally.

And ET comes back to life, like Tinkerbell. It's just shameless. And then they go off and need the Lost Boys to help them. And it's shameless, but it's so good. It's just perfect and brilliant.

But I think that's, you know, as you go from this sequence, and obviously this has the great thing where the bicycles fly, and I don't know which version you saw. Mine, they had guns, which is great, because Spielberg famously took out the guns and turned them into phones or some such shit.

Yeah, there was a period where there was a special edition, and luckily that has been erased, and it's been restored to the original because he thought better of it.

I mean, I think, again, when we just talk about this movie, the way it plays out, it is so shamelessly manipulative. It is so shamelessly earnest. And yet it all works. It's fantastic because it's a movie that works because they mean it. And how frequently? I don't know. I have a hard time looking at a lot of movies and going, they mean it. And I don't know how to better say it than that. It's just he meant it. And that gets you past the feeling that you're being manipulated, the feeling that the music is really kind of dictating the emotions to you. That quality of meaning it is the undefinable to me that makes this movie great and a lot of other things not so great.

There's a clip we have that I feel like we have to play because it says it. It kind of is the mission of this movie. And it also sets up the great bike sequence. And one of the two most or three biggest music cues of John Williams. I mean, the other thing we skipped over the whole first time when ET and Elliot fly in the bike, which is just jaw dropping. And it's so sudden. And it's the first time we hear the full theme in All It's Glory by Williams. And it's just like, oh, God, we're like, there's no holding this back. But they've gone through the heist basically and rescued the revived ET and are trying to escape. And then they meet the lost boys who don't have any idea what's going on. And all they need to know is this. And we're taking him to his spaceship. This is reality, Greg. It's beautiful.

It really is.

I mean, that's everything. And it's just that efficiency, like it is distilled into such simple clarity.

Yep.

This movie is so uncomplicated.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's interesting because you talk about the first time they fly. And of course, famously, that has become the logo for Amblin, which is Steven Spielberg's production company, right? And it's the brand. Amblin is the brand. Whenever somebody talks about the 80s and movies from the 80s, they talk about, oh, we want that Amblin spirit, you know? And honestly, I think that's part of what kept me from wanting to watch this movie for 41 years, because even the most iconic shot in the movie has become the icon for the commercialization of everything, having to do with cinema, you know, and for a whole genre and all that. And I think watching it just on its own, you know, here, the fact that I forgot that, I think is magical, you know? Dude, at the ending of this movie is just simply, I mean, I don't know. It left me speechless, you know?

I think it's one of the greatest endings of any movie ever made. It's staggering in terms of how beautifully it lands. And again, with such elegance and simplicity, it does not overdo it, it does not overstay its welcome, but it is both big and small at the same time. And it pays everything off, it ties everything up.

Well, not just thematically, but also in dialogue. Like, for example, if...

Come.

You just turn on the waterworks, you know? And that's the thing, you know, like again, the thing for me watching this movie again after so long is that it's very moving. And, you know, I have so many mixed emotions and so many negative emotions about this movie. But here's the thing, the movie itself is clearly a thing of beauty and a work of art and something that I don't think anyone has replicated or come close to, you know? And I think the only time I was ever this emotional at an ending for a movie was cinema parody. So I think ultimately one of the big lessons for me in this movie is that a movie can occupy an annoying amount of popular culture space that is overwhelming and that can actually ruin your experience of a movie. But being able to come back and watch it outside of that, and I have a question for you, Paul. Is this movie a lost classic because it is a classic, but people don't talk about it because it hasn't been sequelized, a TV show has been made, it hasn't been remade, rebooted. It feels like an object that stayed the biggest object of its time but has not remained the biggest object of all time. Does that make any sense? Am I smoking weed here? What am I doing?

No, I think you're right. And I'm kind of anticipating over time where and how it's going to live in the cultural firmament. Because if anything, going back and looking at it again, it almost feels underrated in the current context. It kind of sounds ridiculous, but it's undeniable. It is a masterpiece, but it is not as much of the discourse as it should be. And it's, I think, kind of taken for granted because, as you said, the Amblin brand has asserted itself in its reach and its impact on this broader level that is separate from the foundational core, which is this movie.

It's also the thing that Spielberg rebelled against for the rest of his career. And again, I don't know what's going on in Spielberg's mind, but the popular narrative was Spielberg made Raiders and ET and now he wants to grow up. So he's going to make Schindler's List, An Empire of the Sun and The Color Purple. And it feels like in some way, like this movie became the touchstone for what our great cinematic genius of our time needed to left behind. And then Amblin became the brand. So like, you know, he relinquished that to Richard Donner and Robert Zemeckis, you know, Back to the Future and Goonies and even Batteries Not Included or Cocoon, which is not an Amblin movie, but it might as well be, you know. Amblin becomes a brand. And Spielberg very publicly says that he needs to grow up now, you know, and go make adult movies. And that sense of rebellion, I think, has also devalued ET in the public discourse in some way.

Yeah. Meanwhile, having other filmmakers influenced by it, basically remaking it, whether that's Super 8 or The Iron Giant, which I think is also incredible.

It's a great film.

Stranger Things and on and on. But what's interesting to me, and I can't quite articulate it, is that there's a sense that the Amblin brand, the thing that it created, that it bloomed, arguably has overstayed its welcome. It's kind of maybe we've overindulged in. This kind of broader subgenre aesthetic sensibility that came out of it. Whereas ET itself, setting aside all the commercialization and the brand tie-ins and the pop culture embrace of it, but the movie itself understays its welcome. Not only is there no sequel, but the ending of this movie is so ruthlessly efficient. There's no epilogue. There's no coda. We have this just all-in, full tsunami of motion farewell that's paying off all these... I mean, it's the payoff of all payoffs in terms of the setups with the line. But not even just, I'll be right there. There's an earlier point where Gertie is teaching ET and telling ET to be good. And we get a payoff for that, where E.T.'s goodbye to Gertie is be good. And she kisses him on the nose, and we're just dying, and it just escalates and escalates through these farewells. We also get the dog who wants to go with ET on the ship, and you're like, oh my God, the dog's going to go, but then comes back, and that could be a whole other movie. And then the farewell, the faces, and it's almost become a cliché of the Spielberg shot, of reaction shots and close up, of faces looking on in awe and wonder and emotion. And one of the interesting things in the making of this is that, whereas it's traditionally scored to picture by Williams, and brilliantly so, there apparently was it not clicking in the ending when he was trying to score it. And Spielberg then took John aside and said, you know what, take down the picture from the screen. You play the ending to get the best performance that you want. Don't worry about trying to match picture. And I'm going to recut the ending to your best performance. And that's what this ending is. The inner cutting of those closeups and the farewell, that's cut picture to score, not score to picture.

That's incredible. I didn't know that story. That is amazing. And look, I think ultimately what we're saying, and I think this is our wrap up, is the movie and the culture surrounding the movie are very different objects. And you need to be able to look at the movie in and of itself. I mean, for me, I don't know. I think that's sort of the lesson that I took from it in addition to all of the melancholy and all the other stuff is that you need to approach a work of art on its own merit and not necessarily on what's what's happening outside. But I would like to give you the last word, Paul.

There's a scene and this does tie you to the ending. This is not just me trying to cheat. Talking about the intuitive natural power of Spielberg, harnessing cinema. He's also clearly so rooted and this is coming from his love of movies and his yearning from being a kid of all he wanted to do was make great movies. And there is this scene that kills me. It's just sheer overwhelming cinematic beauty of when ET and Elliot are psychically linked. ET hits the fridge, cracks the cores open, while Elliot is in the biology class with his crush, who's crushing on him, Eric Elaniak, who would later be on Baywatch. And it's the frog death section scene. It's this iconic Americana suburban school scene. It's so earnest and pure and ET is watching TV and he sees it's the quiet man. It's John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara and the storm is blowing in and the inner cutting of ET experiencing cinema as we are experiencing this movie. And he's watching this classic movie and one of the great cinematic kisses of all time. And he's psychically sharing his intoxication with Coors, the King of Beers, and the quiet man, psychically with Elliot across town. And there's this perfect, beautiful cinematic thing. And this is one of these things that cannot be a stage play. It cannot be a work of literature. It cannot be work in any other medium than cinema. Is the inner cutting of this kiss in the quiet man with Elliot, then grabbing his crush. But he can't reach her so that he climbs on top of the crawling bystander kid and grabs her and gives her this great cinematic kiss. And then the coda of that scene, as we're down on the floor with the frogs and her feet in the shoes, as in the distance, Elliot is pulled away by the principal or the teacher or whatever.

Laid by Harrison Ford, by the way.

Laid by Harrison Ford. Yeah, the principal's office is cut. And then her ankle twists in wistful longing. I think it is one of the most romantic scenes in all of cinema. And it's also this love letter to a love of movies. And it kills me. It's just that sheer beauty, but also just the poetry of Spielberg's command of filmmaking and of storytelling. It's just it's so beautiful. And I just I love this movie. It's so undeniably pure and magical. And this perfect moment of time of him and his collaborators coming together. Kathy Kennedy's first full producing credit as well. Like there's so many great things. Alan Davio's incredible cinematography. You know, the miracle of casting these child actors. That's just this doesn't happen. But for this movie, it did.

I can't think of a better ending than that. Producer Brad?

Well, the movie did well.

It was just the best.

It was number one for the week, for the summer, for the years. Number one of all time until 1993, Jurassic Park. It's also number one for 16 weeks, non-consecutive, and no other film has done that.

Because we couldn't get enough of it.

And for our next episode, we have to look ahead to June 18th, 1982.

What am I seeing in the Ann Arbor news as coming soon in the movie ad page?

Your first option is Firefox. Clint Eastwood has to go to Russia to steal a plane, a Russian plane.

Oh my God, I love that movie. No, I love that movie.

Or Arthur Hiller's author-author Al Pacino as a writer juggling his family life while staging a Broadway play.

I've seen it.

Never seen it. Don't know that I need to.

So Firefox next week?

Firefox!

Firefox.

Firefox.

Fire the rockets. You must think in Russian. You must think in Russian.

Oh, yes.

Oh, it's on. Oh, this shit is on.

I'm so excited for the badassness of Firefox.

Alright, so until then, we will see you at the multiplex.