E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Jamie and Caitlin phone home and chat about E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
On the Bechdel Cast. The questions asked if movies have.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and
husbands or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, z
efphin best start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Ja me phone ho, okay, yeah, call me please, Jesus
call me now. I like how the whole pot of
the movie is like Et just like trying to text
his friends to come pick him up.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
He's just trying to text his mom. He literally is
just like, I need to text my mommy. And it
was the eighties. You couldn't just text your mommy. Back then.
It was the whole thing.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
You had to build a whole machine and set it
up in the woods.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Today, E t would have just texted his mommy and
it would have been fine. Welcome to the Bechdel Cast.
My name is Jamie Loftus.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Okay, my name is Caitlin Dorante. Is that okay?

Speaker 1 (01:05):
M that's okay, that's okay. And this is our podcast
where we talk about your favorite movies using an intersectional
feminist lens. And today we're talking about Et the Extraterrestrial
nineteen eighty two. Ever heard of it?

Speaker 3 (01:20):
Yeah, I have.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
But what is the Bechdel Test, Caitlin, Have you ever
heard of that?

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (01:25):
No, oh, but.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
I'll do my best to explain it. It is a
media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called
the Bechdel Wallace Test. It has many versions. Ours is
this two characters of a marginalized gender must have names,
they must speak to each other, and their conversation has
to be about something other than a man, and ideally

(01:48):
it's a narratively meaningful conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
If this is your first episode, the Bechdel test is
not the point of the show. It's a jumping off
point for discussion, as we've said for many years. But
this one, I feel like you could make an argument
based on I think that Elliott projects gender onto et yes,
which I think is intentional because I watched A Hole

(02:14):
behind the Scenes documentary. I went deep Bonnie Tea and
every time, and obviously, you know, it's like, I think
that documentary was made in the nineties, so it was
still like Spielberg was using binary gendered language, but he
was always saying like with E T when they find
him or her like He's always basically acknowledging that Elliott

(02:36):
is just pretty I mean, which makes I mean not
canceling Elliott. I'm not canceling Elliott. It's just like he's
projecting himself onto his friend. And so I feel like
conversations about ET do pass the bechdeltas basically in which
case the movie does pass.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
I was gonna make a similar argument.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, and I get it Elliott, but like he's wrong, Like,
you know, T has no conception of gender. ET is
literally just trying to text mother.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Or father.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
No, I'm kiddings the genderless parent from the Graape Beyond.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
For all we know, ET comes from a planet that
has no concept of gender. He might come from a plant,
or they might come from a planet.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
We're going to use he him pronouns, but we know
that ET has not spoken out on this issue.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
This is true. ET might come from a planet that
has one hundred genders, none of which are you know,
man or woman.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
I just found that very like because as we were
turning this movie on last night, I was like, is
Spielberg gonna do the weird minion thing where he's like
ET is a boy? Like like when Pierre Coffin famously
insisted that the genderless minions had to be boys. They're
all boys, and thankfully to criticize about Spielberg, but at

(04:01):
least he is not a freak about projecting gender onto Et,
an alien, Et and just characters in general. But yeah,
I am glad we both thought of that. But I'd
never really noticed that until this viewing that, like Gertie
asks is he a girl or a boy? And Elio
just is he's a boy, and You're like, well, he

(04:21):
doesn't know that, but he wants his friend to be
like him, and they just sort of roll with it.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Well, then there's that scene later on. We can talk
about this further, but where Gertie dresses Et in a
dress and like a woman's long wig presumably.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
And ET's vibing.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Yeah, Et loves it. Et is a drag performer.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
It is awesome that Et is a drag performer. Did
you see? I just love I mean, again, we'll talk
about it, but I do really admire and appreciate a
director who because I have all these complicated feelings around
child actors, all three kids in this movie are incredible. Yes,

(05:05):
And I really like, you know, in a world where
it's like, well, child actor. It's not just gonna stop
because Jamie has complicated feelings about it. But I really
admire watching like directors who are really thoughtful about like
directing children, and like, I just I don't know, I
really enjoy watching This sounds creepy, I don't mean it creepy.

(05:26):
I enjoy watching footage of Spielberg and Shymelan directing kids
because I feel like they're so uniquely good at it
and they're just talking to kids like their people. It's
very gentle and thoughtful, and you can always like the
kids parents is always like within sight, and they get
great performances out of kids, I think because they kind

(05:47):
of like feel safe and like it's a natural environment.
And yeah, I just really admire that skill. And like
the Henry Thomas performance and this is like, holy shit, that.

Speaker 3 (05:59):
Damn I'm kidd Have you ever seen the video of
his like audition tape where he's crying on cute it's
so fucked up and then they tell him he got
the part at the end of the video.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yeah, Yeah, I feel like that's like the kind of
clip that goes viral every so often again, but it
always hits. It's so beautiful. Also, Hayley's Forest Gump audition
goes viral every so often.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
I've never seen that one.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
He's quite small in it, but the Henry Thomas audition
is terrific. It's so like you're just like, who, how
does how he do that? And he didn't really act
very much after that? Right, I don't really know what.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
His No, he he like went on to have a
pretty illustrious career, like.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
He whoa, oh my god, no, wait, he's chilling. Never mind.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
He isn't in any like huge thing really like not
much in the way of like starring rolls after this.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
But he's like a Mike Flanagan guy now right, Like
he's a all of Mike Flannagan's.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
Yes, I need to look up who that is exactly,
but I'm sure you're correct.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
It's a younger Mike Flanagan directs like or it usually
directs like another horror series for Netflix every year. So
he did like a Hillhouse Haunting a blind manner and
got it. Yeah, Henry Thomas is in all of them.
You're like, hey, I know that guy my friend.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
Anyway, Well, Jamie, what is your relationship with E T.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
That's a little weird. I did not have any attachment
to this when I was a kid. I know I
saw it, but I just like I associated this movie
with like my older cousins and I was like, that's
kind of a them thing and let them have it.
And I wasn't scared of ET, but I did think

(07:52):
that he was a bit ugly and not cute.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
Okay, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
ET unfortunately is busted. Looks he looks bad.

Speaker 3 (08:02):
Not to like shame, but like he looks bad. Let's
be honest, He's not pretty to look at. And I'll
get into this, but that's a large part of why
I think I was like not the biggest consumer of
this movie as a child. But anyway, go.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
On, Yeah, I mean I think I was like kind
of too young for this movie to be any sort
of touchstone for me. I don't remember us having it.
I do remember watching it, but it just like didn't
really resonate with me when I was a kid, and
so I never really revisited it. There's a great Lindsay
Ellis video on Nebula about like how this is like

(08:39):
ET is like uniquely kind of one of the biggest
movies ever to never get a sequel and not have
like kind of all the stuff that we associate with
all of these eighties movies that we can't stop getting
like bashed over the fucking head with where it's like
Ghostbusters forty five, Jurassic Park, Hell or whatever, like Eten
they never really did and it's like a beautiful kind

(09:01):
of standalone thing.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
Anyways, Well, I have a whole story about the ET
sequel that never got made.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
About that, Okay, she talks about it a little bit.
I want to know more about it. And also I
just did oh cross promo alert. I didn't write the series,
but I hosted a series on iHeartRadio, the network you're
listening to right now, called The Legend of sword Quest
that's about Atari, who famously made that bad ET game

(09:29):
that they like buried literally right. Yeah, yeah, I love
that story. I mean I know it like people love
that story because it's like a folk legend that ended
up being true. It's like so awesome. Anyways, focus Et.
I thought he was ugly. I wasn't interested. I had
no I said, that's none of my business. And then

(09:53):
a couple of years ago, a group of friends and
I went to see Et in Imax. It was re
released very quietly for whatever reason for its fortieth anniversary,
and I hadn't seen it in like decades. I didn't
really remember even the story. I just remembered like Reese's

(10:13):
Pieces Pez Phone Home, you know, just kind of the
cultural osmosis stuff. And Yeah, when I saw it two
years ago, it like wrecked me. It was like sobbing.
I didn't see it coming that it was going to
like hit so hard, and I was like, holy shit,
this is like one of the greatest movies I've ever seen.

(10:36):
It was. Yeah, I came all the way around on et.
I loved watching it as an adult. I think it's
also partially a response to like the level of complexity
that happens in children's films now, which I think is
like less in many cases. Yeah, but this movie is
so sincere and so like just the biggest feelings possib Yeah.

(11:01):
I just it absolutely wrecked me. And then watching it again,
I was like thinking about my dad a lot, and
I just I don't know, I really I've come completely
around on this movie. It made no sense to me
as a kid, I didn't get the appeal, And as
an adult, I'm like, this is like a masterpiece. I
think It's my favorite Steven Spielberg movie because there is like,

(11:23):
I mean, you have the action sequences, you have the
sci fi, but it like it is just like such
a feelings story and I just love everything about it
is so great. The relationship between the siblings where they're
like assholes, but they don't hate each other. There's no
like I get why people are like, well, this is

(11:43):
like overly sincere, but it's like, I just I don't
know right now. I love it and it was making
me feel gigantic feelings and I was crying, crying, crying,
and I love it. What's your history with Et?

Speaker 3 (11:57):
Well? I was thinking about parallels between this movie and
the first Paddington movie, where Paddington is basically e t
if Et stays with the family and they adopt him
and really she did, but.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
He has to go in to go it's the saddest
thing to ever happen. And the score, I mean, the score,
come on, come on. Anyways, I feel very lucky I
get to see it in IMAX because it was like unbelievable.
Is so good?

Speaker 3 (12:29):
Yeah, so my history, we had it on VHS and
my home growing up, and according to my mom, I
watched it all the time. Interesting, I do not remember this.
I remember it being on sometimes, but I think it
was probably my older brother who's five years older than me,

(12:50):
watching it, okay, and I was in the room and
you were there as well, and it was kind of
like before I was really storing memories the plight of
the young sibling. So I was consuming it, but I
think I wasn't as interested in it, partly because I
thought et was creepy and ugly, and I thought that

(13:10):
was gonna be such a controversial take and for you
to share that opinion, but also like Spielberg was like,
he's got a face that only a mother could love.
They like acknowledge how ugly he is.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
So I mean I also think, like, again, that's another
choice as an adult. I was like, what a weird,
wild choice. I feel like that is such a like
Spielberg flex that he was even able to get away
with it, because unless you were super successful, no studio
would let you make something that ugly, like they would
be like, no, it has to be cute, Like it

(13:42):
can't look like that.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
If this was a Disney movie, they'd be like, make
this thing have big, beautiful eyes and little eyelashes and
this cute little button nose and all this stuff.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
Because Spielberg was like involved in Gremlins to hear like
he made Gizmo, like he knows how to make something cute.
But he's like, but I just don't want. I wanted
to look like shit. I love it. Et looks bad,
he looks like shit, but he's like, he's beautiful.

Speaker 3 (14:07):
I saw a clip of I want to say it
was Matt Rogers, not Bowen on Lust Culture, just where
he's saying like, if I ever encountered Et, like in
the forest, I would have like, No.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
It's Colin Crawford, my coworker on Star Trek. Colin Crawford,
one of the best comedy writers ever, had a tweet
that said, me and my friends would have killed Et
with hammers. I can tell you that much. That's the
sweet It's it's just so true. Most kids would have
killed Et with hammer.

Speaker 3 (14:42):
One of the hosts of Lust Cultures has said something
very similar recently. So it's a common thing that I
didn't realize how common because this movie is so beloved
and Et is so beloved the character, so I just
assumed everyone thought he was cute. But m hmm, it's
coming out that people think he's ugly.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
I'm trying to think. I'm like, what are other I mean,
I know that kids always were scared of him, but
it also kind of reminds me like the Chuck E
Cheese animatronics, where like kids were always scared of them,
but they were just very ugly and popular. And you're like, well,
why was it I don't know, I don't.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
Know, I don't know, because they could make.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
A cute animatronic. We had Gizmo. Well, I guess it
was Gizmo after when did Gremlins come out?

Speaker 3 (15:25):
That was a couple of years after. Yeah, they're just.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
Like et looked too horrible, But it didn't matter because
this movie made eight hundred million dollars off of a
ten million dollar budget.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
It was some highest grossing movie basically from like nineteen
eighty three to ninety three.

Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yeah, and then yeah, he like outdid himself with Jurassic Park.
And then Jimmy Cameron came around and said he's.

Speaker 3 (15:51):
Just like ever heard of Titanic?

Speaker 1 (15:53):
And furthermore, Avatar and Spielberg hasn't been seen in public since. Unfortunately, Sorry,
we keep cutting off the experience with Et.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
Now this is just gonna be a chaos episode. It's fine. Yeah,
I watched it as a kid, although it was before
I was like fully storing memories, and so I only
had very vague recollections of watching this movie as a kid.
And then I watched it once as probably like a teenager,
maybe in my early twenties or something, and then not

(16:27):
again until I started prepping for this episode. So it
was something from like my very early childhood, but not really.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
That's like it's just stored in your brain before you
could store things in your brain.

Speaker 3 (16:41):
Right, So I only remembered I very distinctly remembered the
scene where Michael finds Et when he's like lying in
the river and he's like discolored and like looks very ill,
and I remember being like haunted by that. But most
of the other stuff I didn't remember.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
I forgot when I saw it in IMAX. I forgot
that they literally are like Et died. You're like, what
the fuck are you talking about? Like, yeah, I really could.
I mean I really couldn't handle Et being dead last
in the body bag like they and then he said,
I love you Et. It was if I had been

(17:17):
thinking I would have been like, maybe let's cover this
movie next year instead, but it's so like again, it's
just like that's something that would not be allowed really
in a children's movie. Now, for the most part, I
think you can like handle the themes of death, but
it's more of like a Moana like my Grandma's a
beautiful ghost now instead of like you're not seeing Grandma

(17:39):
in a body bag like looking bad. That's like would
not have and it's wild. I don't even know if
I like it, but I think it's really bold that
they did it. Did you see also that ET's voice
by a woman?

Speaker 3 (17:53):
Yes, I did. I have a couple thoughts on that
that we can get to.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
Okay, so you didn't like when you're a kid, but
what about later?

Speaker 3 (18:01):
It's not even that. I mean, I did find him
scary looking, but I was like in the room while
it was on, according to my mom, didn't leave. I
wasn't leaving.

Speaker 4 (18:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
And then I watched it as an adult ish like
you know whatever, probably nineteen years old or something, and
I was like, oh, wow, yeah, I remember this, And
then I didn't give it much thought until again prepping
for this episode, and then I was like, oh, I
see why this is such a beloved It's so earnest
and it's so like, yeah, the kids developed this bond

(18:33):
with this little guy, and I love a little movie
where they find a little guy and they be friend.
I mean again Paddington. So I was like, oh, this
is really sweet and it's sad and I felt some
feelings and so I get why it's such a beloved classic.
So true. Let's take a quick break and then we'll
come back for the recap, shall we.

Speaker 5 (18:55):
Let's do it?

Speaker 3 (18:56):
Okay, we'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
And we're freaking back.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
We've phoned back home.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
We're locked in. We've got our speak and spell, We've
got our what else. There's so much product placement in
this movie.

Speaker 3 (19:18):
There's like a buzz saw blade. Oh yeah, there's cores light,
and there's Reese's pieces and.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Pez Paus, various Star Wars consumer products. Yes, shall we
just dive right in?

Speaker 3 (19:32):
Let's dive in so et. The movie opens on a
spaceship that has landed in the wilderness not far outside
Los Angeles. Ever heard of it? No. Several little aliens
are gathering up plant specimens and bringing them onto their ship,

(19:55):
and one such alien has kind of wandered off from
the group.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
He's just a little guy.

Speaker 3 (20:00):
He's just a little guy. This is, of course, the
alien we will come to know as Et, and he
has to run off and hide when a bunch of
guys in trucks show up. Men and trucks scary. They'll
be revealed to be like government agents. We're not really

(20:20):
sure from what entity, but they're these ominous like bureaucratic eight.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
These movies have such a wild attitude towards characters from
the government, like they cannot decide. They can't decide if
they're good guys or bad guys. They're always like, well,
there's a few, I feel like kind of the logic
of this movie is like, well, there's a few bad apples,
but ultimately everyone is doing their best, and you're like, okay, okay,

(20:47):
see whenever you say.

Speaker 3 (20:50):
And any case, there are men and trucks and Et
has to run off and hide, and the other aliens
have no choice but to fly off in their spaceship
and leave Et behind. We then cut to a house
where a bunch of kids are hanging out. We meet
Elliott played by Henry Thomas. I think he's nine or ten.

(21:12):
His older brother Michael is maybe thirteen or fourteen, played
by Robert McNaughton, and a few of Michael's friends are
all playing D and D I think, and they make
Elliott go outside to grab the pizza delivery. And while
he's out there, Elliott hears something in the tool shed.
He thinks it might be his dog, Harvey, so he

(21:34):
tosses his baseball into the shed, and then the baseball
gets tossed back at him and Elliott freaks out. He's like,
dogs can't toss baseballs? What's that?

Speaker 1 (21:45):
Oh, that's so good.

Speaker 3 (21:46):
But when the boys, as well as Elliott and Michael's
mom Mary played by Dee Wallace, go to investigate, all
they find are some strange tracks on the ground. They
think it might be a coyote. I go back inside,
but we see that it is in fact, Et, the extraterrestrial,
hiding in the shed. So later that night, Elliott goes

(22:10):
back outside to look for this creature again, and sure
enough he finds him and screams because again Et looks
like shit.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
He looks, I mean like yeah. The beginning of the
movie plays out like a horror movie, and then it
just eventually like a half hour and They're like, oh,
he's nice. Never, he's nice.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
Never. N it's kind of fin Yeah, don't judge a
book by its cover.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
Whoops.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
But anyway, he doesn't know this yet, so Elliott is
scared and he runs away, but he's also determined to
find and possibly befriend this creature, so the next day
he takes his bike and some Reciss pieces up into
the woods near his house to look for the creature.
But Elliott doesn't find it, and he, presumably off screen,

(23:00):
tells his family that he encountered a goblin he calls it,
and they don't believe him, especially his older brother Michael.
He's like teasing Elliott about it. We also meet Elliott's
younger sister, Gertie, played by a young Drew barrymore famously,
and we also find out that their father is no

(23:22):
longer in the picture.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
He went with Sally to Mexico.

Speaker 3 (23:25):
Yes, and this is something that their mom Mary is
having a hard time with. And then I think it's
later that night, Elliott is outside hoping to encounter this
creature again, and e t appears and approaches Elliott with
a handful of the Reese's pieces that Elliott had dropped
in the woods and so, realizing that Et is friendly

(23:50):
and won't hurt him, Elliott lures Et into his room
using the Reese's pieces, and we see e t like
mimicking Elliott's movements and gestures, and we're like, wow, they're
becoming friends.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
I just love that he just is doing what like
a nine year old wide He's like, here are my guys,
here's this one, here's this one, here's this one. ET's
like yep, yep, got it? So sweet? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yeah. That happens the next day where Elliott fakes being
six so he can stay home from school to hang
out with Et, and he's like, here's my Lando cal
Rizzy in figuring, here's my Grido figurine. It's so embarrassing
how much Steven Spielberg wants George Lucas to like think
he's cool. It's really it's embarrassing the Yoda cost him.

(24:41):
It's like, we get it, we get it. Well. They
had collaborated with each other at this point because Raiders
of the Last Art comes out the year before, so.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
In the making up documentary, George Lucas is so like taciturn,
like he appears in it for a second and it's
like Spielberg being like, and I put these little things
in and I was like, I think George is gonna
like this. I think he's it's really gonna make him smile.
And then it cuts to George Lucas and he was
like I saw it and that I thought, you know,

(25:13):
that's nice, Like he was like, not very impressed by it.

Speaker 3 (25:16):
It was so I was like, oh, wow, rude bitch.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
I mean, yeah, I'm comfortable saying he's a billionaire. We
can he's a bitch.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
Yeah, he's a bitch. Anyway, Elliot's siblings, Michael and Gertie
come home that day and they find out about Et.
Elliot makes them promise not to tell their mom, and
then they're pointing to maps and globes, telling e t
where they are and asking him where he's from. And

(25:44):
then Et levitates some like balls of clay or something
to symbolize a solar system to show them where he's from.
So we learned that Et has telekinesis powers. He also
can make dead plants come back to life because we
see him revive a potted flower plant. We'll also learn

(26:08):
that he has like healing powers for humans because he
heals a little cut on Elliott's finger. Later meanwhile, the
men in the trucks from the beginning, who have been
searching for the aliens in their spaceship, they're still looking
for this creature that they know has been left behind.

(26:28):
One of them is this guy with like a bunch
of keys on his belt loop and his character's name
is Keys, so that's really creative, played by Peter Coyote,
So he's, you know, looking for Et. The next day,
the three siblings go to school. They leave Et at home,

(26:51):
who gets into the fridge, drinks a bunch of cores
lights or maybe just regular cores, and he gets strung.
And it also seems to make Elliott drunk in class
because there's some kind of like telepathic or empathic connection
between them. So what Et feels, Elliott feels, and vice versa.

(27:15):
So Elliott is supposed to be dissecting a frog in class.
And first of all, I'm like, did they let ten
year old dissect frogs in school in the eighties? Like
I didn't do that until I was like a junior
in high school.

Speaker 1 (27:29):
I never even did it. I think they were like,
you can watch a video, like you're not a scientist.
You're fourteen. But I was like, ANGI they gave them
to them a lie a lot.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
Also, why was that necessary? Every time I've seen a
frog dissection, like even in a movie, like they come dead.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
Yeah, yeah, they're like informaldehyde or whatever, and then they're
already dead.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Spielberg said that this is something that he did, that
he released a frog.

Speaker 3 (27:57):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (27:58):
I was like, I don't believe you.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
Well, that's what ends up happening in the movie where
Et influences Elliott to save his frog and all the
frogs in the class. So Elliott, drunk as fuck, let's
loose all the frogs.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
He surprised kisses a young girl.

Speaker 3 (28:17):
We'll get back to that.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
Kids like Ellie.

Speaker 3 (28:21):
Yeah, Elliott hates drag performances, and he surprised kisses a
girl in his class. So he's actually bad news.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
Yes, he's a pestilent.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
Anyway, when the kids come back home from school, they
discover that Et is learning to speak. He shows Elliot
a comic strip where a spaceman is receiving a distress
call for help, and this is when we get the
famous like E T Phone no scene, and they realize

(28:51):
that Et is trying to build some sort of homing
or communication device so that he can contact his alien
friends so they can come pick him up. And Michael
points out though that Et is looking kind of sick
lately and we see him like wheezing and stuff, and

(29:13):
so we're like, hmm, what's happening here? Is Earth killing him?

Speaker 1 (29:19):
And it makes you think?

Speaker 3 (29:20):
It makes you think. Then the kids take Et out
on Halloween. They like throw a sheet over him and
dress him up as a ghost, pretending that Gertie is
the one under the sheet. And Elliott brings Et into
the woods to try this like communication machine that he's built,

(29:40):
and this is also when we get the very famous
scene of Et making Elliott's bike fly through this guy
past the moon. And then they land in the woods
and set up the communication device and it works and
Et is able to send out a signal into space.
Although Elliott is set at the thought of Et leaving

(30:03):
and suggests that he stay, but ET's like, no, I
kind of.

Speaker 5 (30:09):
Gotta get out of here.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
It's fucked up here, Like who could blame He's like
Earth fucking sucks. Yeah, Like so true, so true, so true. King.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
So because the kids have stayed out past their curfew,
Mary goes out looking for them, which is when the
scary men in their suits show up at their house
and like bug it. I think, I'm not really super
clear what they do here, but they've been surveilling them,
and then they like bug the house.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yeah, they like descend. It's pretty scary, especially when you
hear like yeah, Mary be like this is my house
and I was like yeah, yeah, wait wall.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
So then Elliott passes out in the woods and when
he wakes up the next morning, e T is gone.
So Elliot returns home distraught that Et is nowhere to
be found, so Michael goes out looking for him, and
this is when he finds him all sick and lying
in the river looking.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
Somehow worse worse, so hard.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
So Michael brings it back, but Et and Elliott are
both dying because they have this empathic connection. And the
kids finally show Et to their mom, but before she
can really do anything about it, a bunch of like
NASA astronauts and scientists and hazmat suits.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
It's all so like vague but scary.

Speaker 3 (31:38):
Yeah, very scary, And they show up and they set
up this like quarantine tent in and around their house
and they run a bunch of tests on Et, and
then Keys approaches Elliott to be like, tell us how
we could save e T. And Elie's like, he has

(31:58):
to go home. Meanwhile, the connection between Et and Elliott
starts to sever. It seems like maybe Et sacrifices himself
to save Elliot, and then Et dies and the kids
are devastated, especially Elliott. And then the scientists put ET's

(32:19):
body in some like science coffin and they're about to
take him away, but Keys lets Elliott spend some time
alone with Et, and he's crying and he says.

Speaker 4 (32:30):
He I love you, which makes Et come back to
life awesome, and his heart light is glowing and the
potted flower revives, and then Et says.

Speaker 3 (32:44):
ET phone home because apparently his spaceship is on the way.
So Elliott and Michael form a plan to hijack the
vehicle that they put ET's body in so that they
can save him and bring him to a spaceship. And
the cops were chasing them, and the kids are on
bikes and at one point they're surrounded.

Speaker 1 (33:08):
It's that part I feel like I'd heard this before,
but how during that period in the early two thousands
when George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were like putting bad
CG and they're older movies that he edited out the
guns and made them walkie talking slashlight.

Speaker 3 (33:26):
Oh I thought it was flashlight, but it might be
walkie talkies. It's something either way.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
It's something that. So then like that whole sequence is
weird because they're like, what's Elliott? So like, right, what
are they gonna do? Like it's like cuts to a
walkie talkie and then Elliott's.

Speaker 3 (33:40):
Like, ah yeah, and the theatrical cut and the version
I watched it was like shotguns that the cops had.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
They put the guns back.

Speaker 3 (33:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:50):
I think he was like, Okay, that was an overcorrection.
It does have to be guns.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
Yeah, So you know, the cops with the guns have
the kids surrounded at one point, but then Et makes
them all fly on their bikes with his telekinesis powers,
and they arrive at the clearing in the woods and Elliot,
Michael Gerdy, and Mary say a tearful goodbye to e

(34:15):
T as his spaceship arrives, and he says I'll be
right here, meaning that he will be there. In Elliott's thoughts,
and feelings and then he flies away at the end.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
It's so awesome, it's so beautiful.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
That's the movie. Let's take a quick break and we'll
come back to discuss.

Speaker 5 (34:47):
Okay, and we're back.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
God where like where, where where do you start? When
it comes to Eat the Extraterrestrial? I wanted to touch
really quickly one because I forget if we talked about
this in our The Color Purple episode. I think that
was the last Spielberg movie we covered.

Speaker 3 (35:18):
Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
In any case, I just wanted to acknowledge at the
top of the discussion because it's like something that's made
it challenging to interact with a lot of Spielberg's work
is that. Honestly, I was having trouble like getting good
information about this in detail. But suffice it to say,
Steven Spielberg is pro Israel and has made a lot

(35:41):
of very both sides comments around an active genocide being
perpetrated by Israel, and that feels horrible to know and
to just have sort of looming over his catalog. And again,
like I haven't done a deep dive into Steven Spielberg's politics.

(36:02):
I know that he made Munich, I haven't watched it,
I really have no desire to, So I just wanted
to acknowledge that at the top, because I love this
movie and I really don't like when Spielberg tries to
say something important. It doesn't work for me at all,
and now knowing this element of his personal politics, it

(36:25):
just it's it's horrible.

Speaker 3 (36:27):
Yes, yeah, definitely worth acknowledging. And as someone who loves
a lot of movies made by him, it's very disappointing.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
I wanted to acknowledge that it doesn't necessarily have a
place within the discussion of this movie. Obviously, if we
were covering Munich, which we wouldn't, it would be coming
up more, but just that we're aware of it. And
also I would be interested in more just information in
general because I was kind of having a hard time,
but I would be curious what folks think. Yeah, this movie, however,

(36:57):
comes out before Spielberg like really says anything political in
his work. Ever, I feel like so much of his
early work is just like I say this with love,
but it is like my parents got divorce. That's all
of them, that's all of what they are. Elliott is

(37:19):
clearly supposed to be him like d is supposed to say.
I think I've said this on the show before. I'm
gonna wait to get pneumonia before I'm gonna watch the
damn Fableman's I have no interest.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
I didn't care for it at all.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
I also kind of can't believe if you're like a
director who has infinite blank checks, you're gonna make a
boring biopic about yourself loser.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
It felt so self indulgent, and I found it really
unpleasant to watch.

Speaker 1 (37:50):
Well, and isn't it also like so many of his
early movies have these mirror dynamics anyways, right where it's like, yeah,
I think you said that, Close Encounters and et like
two back to back movies. We get it. Men hate
when they're like I. It reminds me of I mean,
very few people like whe their parents get divorced. It's

(38:10):
a complicated experience to learn.

Speaker 3 (38:13):
But like.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
I feel the same way about The damn Saftie Brothers,
where they're like the worst thing that's ever happened to me,
My mommy and daddy didn'tkiss anymore, and you're like, I
just find a new struggle, find a new struggle. Anyways,
that said, this is my I think I mean I'm
guessing Jurassic Park or Indiana Jones.

Speaker 3 (38:33):
What's your favorite Spielberg Ooh, it's probably Jurassic Park. Indiana Jones.
Last Crusade comes in at a close second. I also
really love Minority Report, I've never seen that, and a
handful of others that he directed.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
I think for me it's a tie between this and Jaws.

Speaker 3 (38:54):
Oh, Jaws is so good too.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
I'm an early really Spielberg head fair but sorry, where
do we want to start?

Speaker 3 (39:02):
Well, to speak a little bit more about the development
of this movie. So, as you mentioned, it was kind
of inspired by Spielberg's parents' divorce, where in nineteen sixty
when his parents were splitting up, he basically created an
imaginary alien friend who he would later recall as a

(39:24):
friend who could be the brother I never had and
the father I feel like I didn't have any more.
So he created a little friend and based et.

Speaker 1 (39:37):
Off of that.

Speaker 3 (39:38):
Although there were some other bits of inspiration for this movie,
where he started developing a project called Night Skies after
he made Close Encounters of the Third Kind, in which
malevolent aliens terrorize a family. But in that project there
was a subplot where a friendly and the only friendly

(40:01):
alien of this group of evil aliens, named Buddy, befriends
a child with autism.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Oh yeah, isn't this script like publicly available and is
not good?

Speaker 3 (40:13):
If so, I.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
Haven't read it, nor have I, and furthermore I won't.

Speaker 3 (40:17):
It also kind of inspired the Et sequel, which, oh,
I meant to actually bring that up in my relationship
with this movie. So there is a sequel to this
movie that obviously never got made. A treatment was written
for it by Steven Spielberg and Melissa Matheson, who wrote

(40:40):
the screenplay for the first Et movie. And of course
we want to talk about her.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
Yes, I cannot wait to talk about her because her life,
first of all too short. I didn't realize that she
had passed so young, but also fascinating.

Speaker 3 (40:52):
But sorry continue, Yes, so they co wrote this treatment
basically just a synopsis for a CQ that would never
be made, and it was also partially inspired by Night
Skies because the treatment involves evil aliens coming to search
for Et, knowing that he got left behind on Earth.

(41:17):
And in this treatment, Jamie, I have something very important
to tell you. In the treatment, you find out that
ET's real name is Zrek. Almost Shrek, but Zrek with
a Z.

Speaker 1 (41:33):
E entertainment ts like extra entertainment terrestrial e E T.

Speaker 3 (41:42):
Nope, Nope, it is Shrek Shrek.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
I saw West Side Story in the Museum with an
introduction by Rita Moreno last week. And anyways, the police
officer is called like officer Shrag, like it's really close
to Shrek. It's just such a tease, and you're just like,
just say Shrak, just say it.

Speaker 3 (42:06):
Well, it's like in Batman Returns when Christopher Watkin's character
is named Shrek and you're just like, Shrek is everywhere.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
Yeah, and at least they go for it. They go
they go for it, like just say say his name,
like speak Strek's name.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
It's like the end of Oh my god, what's that
movie never ending story?

Speaker 1 (42:29):
Say my name, Say my name? I was thinking Bele Shrek, Shrek, Shrek.

Speaker 3 (42:37):
Anyway, Okay, so back on track.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Wait, that's wild.

Speaker 3 (42:40):
His name was Shred. We learned his name is Shrek.
The point of this whole story is that I teach
this treatment in my screenwriting classes because I have my
students do a mock workshop just to like get them
acquainted with the workshopping process, and we read the treatment

(43:01):
and then you know, analyze it, and the treatment's not good.
It is kind of a mess, and then they pulled
the plug on it. I think it was a combination
of the studio being like, I'm not sure about this
and then Spielberg being like, never mind, sequels, bad idea
for this, actually.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
Something he would reverse. But it is interesting because it's
not like he is obviously not opposed to sequels, like hmm, Indiana,
John like there's no shortage of sequels, right, but that
there was no sequel for this movie. I really hope
there's never a sequel to this movie.

Speaker 3 (43:38):
It would be very unnecessary.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
Yeah, especially when it's like, yeah, something that is like
focused on, like, well, what's the lore of Et? And
you're like, respectfully, it doesn't matter. That's not why we
go to Et to be like, well but what is
the culture? You're like, it doesn't matter. He made a
friend and Elliott will never know, so we can never know.

Speaker 3 (43:58):
Yeah, So in any case, Spielberg had this imaginary alien
friend as a kid to help him cope with his parents' divorce,
and then in nineteen eighty he told screenwriter Melissa Matheson
he was like, yeah, I was developing this project called

(44:18):
night Skies. Here was this subplot. I feel like there
might be a movie there. And then she wrote the
script for ET, formerly called ET and Me then simplified
to E. T. The Extraterrestrial, and she wrote the first
draft in I think like eight weeks or something. Spielberg

(44:40):
loved it. It went through a couple rewrites, a few
changes were made, But what I want to point out
is that this movie was written by a woman, And
I feel like that's something that a lot of people
forget or overlook because people so closely associate movie with

(45:01):
like Spielberg and assume that he had the sole creative
vision behind this movie.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
I really love because I honestly forgot as well. And
I feel like it's probably partially because we don't talk
about Melissa Mathison very much, even though it's like her
credits are wild. And I also saw that she was
like so involved in the day to day production of ET,
Like she was writing dialogue on set, She worked with

(45:28):
the kids, she sort of oversaw like when the kids
could improvise when they couldn't, Like she was so hands on,
and her career, it appears, was kind of derailed by
being an ally to Tibet, which is unfortunately a very
prescient conversation to have right now. This is something that

(45:49):
I want to do more research into, but I feel
like it's not something that's very frequently discussed. I read
a book a couple of years ago called It's called
Red Carpet. There's a chapter in it that basically unpacks
like a series of entertainment careers that were indefinitely put
on hold because someone was too vocal about being allied

(46:10):
with the Free Tibet movement. Yeah, and the biggest example
of that, I honestly don't understand how Scorsese recovered, but
he directed a movie in ninety seven that I feel
like so few people have seen called Coundon, which is
basically a biopic about the Dalai Lama, and I think
that Dalai Lama was like meaningfully included in it. Melissa

(46:32):
Matheson wrote the movie and became a close friend of
the Dalai Lama while they worked on it for years,
and this turned her into a lifelong activist for Tibetan freedom.
And at the time she died, she was like on
the board for the International Campaign for Tibet and just
really did like a lot of really effective advocacy work.

(46:54):
But you can see after she writes Condon, her career
like it falls off. And I don't know necessarily, I
wasn't able to find confirmation necessarily, or if she just
wanted to step away to focus on advocacy work. But
it just feels like she wrote et she wrote The
Black Stallie, I mean, and the only things that we

(47:16):
really see her right after that is she wrote one
more movie for Spielberg, she wrote the BFG, But even
that seems like well because they had a good working relationship,
But there's not other big directors that she really works
with after that, Like you see a very similar story
with Richard Gear who also was a very loud advocate

(47:37):
for Tibet.

Speaker 3 (47:38):
Oh, I don't realize that.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
Yeah, it's weird. I don't know why it's not, especially
like in recent years. I think it would make a
lot of sense to just kind of revisit those stories.
But yeah, Richard Gear, he was kind of the focal
point of that chapter. I've got to remember exactly what
the book was called, but that he was such a
huge deal in the eighties and nineties and then towards
the end of the nineties he became a very vocal

(48:01):
advocate for Tibet, and he stopped getting cast and you
really don't see him very much after that outside of
like Chicago. But like I mean, name of Richard gear
Roll from the last twenty years.

Speaker 3 (48:12):
Like Knights in rodanthy was he in that?

Speaker 1 (48:17):
There we go? I bet asked, let's call my mom,
let's see, let's get my mom on the horn, and
she would know. But yeah, like Tibet obviously a very
complicated history that I'm not an expert on. But basically
it's like, if your blockbuster movies were vocally pro Tibet,
they would not play in China, which is a gigantic
movie market, and so anyone who was too vocally supportive

(48:40):
of Tibet would be kind of soft blacklisted. I'm curious
if there was anything written let us know, listeners, if
there was ever sort of this line drawn directly with
Melissa Matheson. But anyways, what a cool lay. Also, Francis
Ford Coppola cheated on his wife with her.

Speaker 3 (48:57):
Oh whoa oh you mean the director of megalopolypse go
Off Kateles go Off cinematic masterpiece Megalopa lips megal what's
it called Megatropolis. I don't have that movie gave me
a lobotomy, so I don't know how to use my

(49:18):
brain anymore.

Speaker 1 (49:19):
Anyway, Megal, what's the name of the Aubrey Plaza character.

Speaker 3 (49:23):
It's like, oh, Platinum Wow, plank Wow, something like that.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
We can't let him get away with this. Not Platinum Wow.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
No.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
Melissa Mathieson. Outside of being Gone Too Soon, just a
great Wikipedia experience. It's early Years, screenwriting and production credits.
Dalai Lama Personal life. She has a whole section called
Dalai Lama and you've gotta love that.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
I love it. She also wrote the screenplay for The
Indian in the Cupboard, which I vaguely remember from my childhood.
And she was a story consultant on Ponia that studio.
And I never know if it's Ghibli or gible so
someone please tell me gibley Okay, I.

Speaker 1 (50:09):
Think so, But her personal life section is awesome. It's
Matheson had an extra marital relationship with Francis Ford Coplo
while working as his assistant on Godfather Part two, an
affair that lasted through the production of Apocalypse Now. So
that's an affair of the five years damn Wow and
then she was married to Harrison Ford for twenty years.

Speaker 3 (50:28):
Oh my gosh, I did not realize that either. Apparently
I did not research enough about Melissa Matheson.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
They had two kids together.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
Wow. Harrison Ford was in et as a principal that
they never show on screen.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
Wait, I didn't know that, but you like.

Speaker 3 (50:45):
Hear his voice reprimanding Elliott in the scene where he's
like drunkenly letting all the frogs. Go oh yeah, but
then they cut it.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
That's really funny. Gosh, what an incestuous kind of like groom.
Because I'm like, is that how they met? Like because
they got married in eighty three, the year after this
came out. But they were married for twenty years and
had two Like yeah, they married in eighty three, divorce
and O four So wow, look at that.

Speaker 3 (51:12):
In addition to this movie being written by a woman,
it was also edited by a woman, an editor named
Carol Lyttleton. And two of the major producers of this
movie are women, one of course being Melissa Matheson, the
other one being Kathleen Kennedy.

Speaker 1 (51:27):
Young Kathleen. Kathleen Kennedy produced this damn movie when she's
twenty nine. I'm like, shut up, shot enough, stop up.
I was pleasantly surprised to see how many women were
meaningfully involved in this movie, and I just I don't
know everything again, like not to just like geek out

(51:49):
about it, but everything about the set and environment of
this movie just seemed so sweet and like thoughtful. And
there's footage of like they were shooting on Howen and
Spielberg dressed up in drag all day because I think
like Henry Thomas like dared him too, okay, and he

(52:09):
was like this is so Spielberg. There's I mean, and honey,
he looks great. He really does. And it's like it's
very I don't know, just like really sweet, because I
think it was like Henry Thomas was like, if you're
gonna make Et dress up in drag, you have to too,
and he's like, I'll do it and it's very cute.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
Wow. Well, speaking of shall we talk about the gender
projections of et Et and gender?

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Yes, let's do it.

Speaker 3 (52:36):
We talked about it a little bit already, but like
we mentioned, when Gerty first encounters Et, she says is
he a boy or girl? And then Elliott very definitively
says he's a boy, and then Gerty asks if Et
was wearing any clothes when Elliott found him, and he
says no. So it's just like, yeah, he's just a

(52:59):
boy because I said so. And later Gerty puts Et
in women's clothing, you know, a dress, like a pearl necklace,
this long blonde wig, a little missus nesbit hat kind
of thing. And Elliott comes home and finds Et in

(53:20):
drag and gets upset and says, you should give him
his dignity. This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.
And we're like, Okay, Elliott hates drag.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
Yeah, I think Elliot's denying something within himself. He's a
confused child during the Reagan administration. I want to believe
in him. I want to believe yeah, he grows up
to do better. But I do think it is like
not like I mean to the point where I never
really even thought about it until this viewing, but how

(53:54):
all of the kids are trying to understand Et based
on what their limited conception of the world and themselves
are right. And obviously a big part of that is
like the limited gender expression in like Suburbia in the eighties.
And there's not really a big comment made, but I
thought it was like pretty thoughtfully done.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
Right, because like, Elliott finds this creature who he befriends,
and presumably he wants a friend who he can closely
identify with, and that for him would mean a friend
who's a boy. Meanwhile, Gertie is hoping that Et is
a girl, and presumably that's why she dresses Et in

(54:41):
a wig and a dress and all that kind of stuff,
because she wants a little girl friend. And Et is
like whatever, He's like, I don't care.

Speaker 1 (54:49):
It a crap. Yeah, I thought that that was like, again,
especially for the eight there's I think like this movie
sincerity is like so much of like why it holds
up so well because you think of like even other
eighties kids movies that would have gone so far in
the other direction, and you do get a little bit
of like, yeah, he needs his dignity, but that's like

(55:11):
as severe as it gets, right, and I appreciate that.
And Ets so he's such a chiller, he just wants
to text his mom.

Speaker 3 (55:24):
Yes. Another reason I think this movie holds up as
well as it does is its exploration of the emotional
intelligence of the male characters. Because you have Elliott being
this generally sensitive, gentle, compassionate kid. He wants to again

(55:49):
befriend Et and protect him. They develop this empathic connection
where they feel each other's feelings, and that is a
power that we'll see in movies, but that is almost
always ascribed to women in movies, where if there's like
a super hero character I'm thinking of, is it mantis

(56:10):
in like the Marvel Universe, characters like that, where like
their power is empathic, And again it's almost always ascribed
to women, So it's not typical for a like empathic
power or ability to be ascribed to a male character.
But we see that with Elliot, and it is generally

(56:35):
a nice connection except that one time where Et does
make Elliott surprise kiss a girl at school, But other
than that, it manifests in a really like sweet, nice way.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
Yeah, And I mean that's like another thing that I
think is also contrasted between the brothers, because this is
definitely not like, yeah, a movie about women, but it
is a movie, like you're saying about, especially in the eighties,
Like I feel like that would have made a real difference.
It's like celebrating like this young boy's ability to express

(57:12):
and want to understand how others are feeling, and I
really like again, it's I feel like the movie sort
of like evades this trope of like the older brothers
just like a piece of shit who doesn't get it
and blah blah blah, where it's like they are different,
they're also just at different stages of development. But it's

(57:33):
d Wallace is raising these kids, right. They care about
each other. Yeah, and even though they like whatever, antagonize
each other the way the brothers do, Like Michael's a
sweet kid. He cares about Elliott and yeah, I just
think it's really nice. I'm gonna start crying. And even
with their sister where they antagonize her, but it doesn't

(57:55):
feel like I don't know, again, it just it feels
very natural and they all genuinely do care about each other.

Speaker 3 (58:02):
Yeah. I felt that too about Michael, who I think
he's probably like fourteen, so he has a few years
on Elliott and has been exposed to more socialization of
like what boys are supposed to be. Like, he's displaying
more like quote unquote typical masculinity compared to Elliott, because

(58:25):
you know, you see him with his like teen boy pals,
and they tend.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
To like smoking SIGs.

Speaker 3 (58:33):
I'm like, oh, they'll gang up on Elliott and kind
of give him a hard time and tease him and
call him names and stuff like that. And Michael just
seems to be a little bit more like easily aggravated
and hostile compared to Elliott, but not in a way
that is cruel necessary. It's just again, he's been exposed
to more like masculine social conditioning.

Speaker 1 (58:55):
Yeah, Elliot's embarrassing him in front of his friends.

Speaker 3 (58:57):
Uh yeah, right, his friends who all want to dress
as terrorists for Halloween. I'm like, what the fuck?

Speaker 1 (59:05):
But then you see them and you're like what I
was whatever that joke was. I was like, baby, you
had to be in nineteen eighty two, but I was
not because I was like, it's a guy with an
ax through and said what.

Speaker 3 (59:16):
Well, I think that's what he changed into because his
mom was like, Mary said, you're not going dressed like that,
So he switches to a different costume.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
Oh I don't love that choke.

Speaker 3 (59:26):
Yeah, I don't know about it. But either way, yes,
Michael has had more like typical social masculine conditioning, but
he also has compassion. You know, he looks out for
their mom. When Elliott makes a comment about their dad
being in Mexico with his new girlfriend and he knows
that this upsets his mom and he wants to protect her,

(59:49):
and Michael tells Elliott, like, think about how other people feel.
For a change, that's not an exchange that you would
usually see in a movie between two male care Yeah,
one encouraging the other to consider other people's feelings. So yeah,
I found that to be like refreshing and interesting. And
then even for Keys, who is presented as an antagonistic force,

(01:00:14):
a lot of movies, I feel like would frame him
as just like this blatant, big, bad, cruel, greedy, heartless,
but he also displays compassion too, because you know, he
understands that Elliot has this empathic connection with et and
that he would want to say goodbye to e T
when he dies, and he gives Elliott some time alone

(01:00:38):
to say that goodbye. And in the sequel treatment that again,
sequel never existed, but the treatment for it does have
Keys and Mary getting together romantically, which feels unnecessary and annoying.

Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
Cares I was like, again, that's like the movie is
too good for that. That's another thing that I like,
where they don't say like, oh, well, what we need
is a new father for these kids. It's like, I
really like Dee Wallace's performance in this movie because it's like,
we don't know a lot about Mary, but I feel
like a lot comes through in the performance. She's a

(01:01:18):
good mom, but also she's the sole breadwinner, so sometimes
she's you know, it's like a latch key kid thing.

Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
Yeah, breadwinter and caregiver. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
Their house is so nice. I was like, oh my god,
their house probably would cost two million dollars today, if
not more. But you know, I think that there is
room to know more about her. But because we're seeing
this from the kid's perspectives, they wouldn't be like, what
is mom's job? Like, we just know that she has
to go to work. She's around them as much as
she can be. And again, it's just like really sort

(01:01:47):
of like a genuine feeling family dynamic where her kids
love her, but they're also little assholes because they're kids, right,
But she's not made out to be like the I
feel like a lot again and another like kid's movie
trope where it's like the parents are totally goofy and
like I have no idea what's going on, And she

(01:02:08):
doesn't know what's going on for a while, but when
she finds out what's going on, she takes her kids
feelings about it seriously mm hmmm. And I just like
she Yeah, I like that she is, I mean, a
good parent, but also like a complicated person, And you
get those moments to know like she's also going through

(01:02:29):
a lot for sure, but they don't try to resolve
that by being like, here's a new husband, which is
like the laziest thing you could possibly do.

Speaker 3 (01:02:38):
Right. There's one scene where she has a few like
close encounters damn of the third kind.

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
That's et.

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
The scene where Et is like hiding among the stuffed
animals and she doesn't notice, or the scene where Et
is literally like right there walking around the kitchen and
Gertie is trying to like introduce her mom to Et,
and Mary is too preoccupied with like putting away the
groceries to notice. And I feel like you could argue, oh,
that's like a mother character being written to be so

(01:03:12):
cartoonish that she doesn't even notice the alien that's right there.
I honestly chalked it up to like she is the
sole provider and caregiver for this family, and so she
is going to be preoccupied, especially because like two of
these kids are pretty young and right, So I'm like, yeah,

(01:03:33):
she's just like handling the responsibility that she needs to
handle as a parent. So it didn't feel written to
me that she was like, oh, women or mothers are
so oblivious. It's just that she's like got a lot
on her plate.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
Right, the things that she doesn't know about. It makes
sense and it doesn't make her negligent. And also just
like her having to deal with like I guess Harrison
Ford calling her and being like, Elliot's drunk at school.
She's like, what, No, Yeah. I feel like she had
like just the right amount of presence in the movie

(01:04:10):
and is still like a very complicated, well thought out character.

Speaker 3 (01:04:15):
I also appreciate that you can tell that the kids
miss their dad, that you know, there's a scene where
Elliott and Michael find a shirt of their dad's in
the garage and they're like smelling it and they're like, oh,
it's old spice, dad's old cologne. And then there's another
part where Elliott has told his family about finding whatever

(01:04:36):
this creature is before they know what it is, and
no one believes him, and he says, like Dad would
have believed me. So you get little hints of that
throughout the movie, but there's no sense of like the
kids deeply resenting their mother, that no, it's not parents
have split up, or that the like brothers have like

(01:04:58):
a desperate longing for a man parental figure. You don't
get those like very I think tropy senses that you
would see.

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
Right, And it's just like the reason that it's painful
is just because it's different and they feel like abandoned.
But I, yeah, you're told, I didn't even connect that
where it's like some divorce narratives involved the kids being like, well,
what did mom do wrong? She must have done something wrong.
And I feel like there's another really good moment that
I liked between Michael and his mom when Elliott has

(01:05:28):
that moment of being like, well, dad's in Mexico with
Sally and she has a moment and Michael gets really
defensive of his mom, which feels just really like would
totally make sense for the eldest kid because he was
the most cognizant of what would have been going on
and how it would have affected his mom, And that
was just like I thought a really nice moment between

(01:05:51):
you know, you don't really get any moments between Michael
and his mom besides hearing off screen that he has
a fucked up Halloween cause but like that moment you're like, oh,
that totally makes sense and I feel like really endears
you to Michael early in the movie where he wants
to you know, be there for his mom. But also
he's fourteen, right, it's just really thoughtful and yeah, like

(01:06:16):
effortless where it's like his absence is there, but it's
not like ET is my dad now, it's like like
nothing weird like that. I did read that there was
a like one of those like novelizations of ET where
it's heavily implied that Mary wants to fuck Et whoa

(01:06:40):
that she has a little bit of a crush on
Okay Kinky kind of like I would read that book.
I was like, yeah, forget.

Speaker 3 (01:06:48):
Keys, Yeah, ET's right.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
But mom, fuck e T meet your new father. It's ET.

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):
Well. The other thing about Mary is that she doesn't
believe Michael about finding this like Goblin in the Woods
or whatever. But she doesn't not not believe like it's right.
She even says it's not that we don't believe you,
but maybe you did imagine it, So she kind of
dismisses him, but not entirely. We've talked about like children

(01:07:21):
being believed or not being believed in different episodes as
sort of a representation of how children are often not
believed in real life and not taken seriously about certain matters.
So I appreciate that that was addressed, and it felt
like a realistic response, where like, yeah, if a kid

(01:07:41):
comes up to you and it's like, yeah, I met
a goblin in the field, you'd be like, are you
sure it was a goblin?

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
So well, but like she takes the concern seriously.

Speaker 3 (01:07:54):
Yeah, she doesn't entirely dismiss him, but she's also just
like are you sure though, And it turns out he
was sure because it is an alien, so egg on
her face. But I felt like that was handled realistically.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
At least I agree.

Speaker 3 (01:08:10):
I agree, And then I wanted to talk a little
bit about who is inside of ET because there were
three people who took turns wearing the ET costume. So
ET was a combination of like animatronic face stuff that
was like done by puppeteers offscreen obviously, and then there

(01:08:32):
were also people inside an Et costume, and so depending
on what scene was being filmed, there were three possible
people who it might have been. Two of them were
little people. Their names are Tamara de Troux and Pat Bylon,
and there was also a twelve year old kid named

(01:08:54):
Matthew Demerit.

Speaker 1 (01:08:55):
I didn't know any of this.

Speaker 3 (01:08:57):
Wow, yes, I found it on scholarly journal Wikipedia. So
Matthew DeMarre was born without legs, and he walked on
his hands, and he played all the scenes where Et
walked awkwardly or fell over, which is the phrasing that
scholarly journal Wikipedia uses, like.

Speaker 1 (01:09:18):
When these like drunk kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (01:09:20):
Okay, yeah, I think so.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
Wow, I did not know that.

Speaker 3 (01:09:23):
Yes, So what I want to say is that little
people and people with other physical disabilities get so little
visibility in media, and if they are involved in a movie,
it's often in a capacity like this like The Lord
of the Rings, like Force perspective stuff comes to mind,
where they would have little people playing the Hobbits and

(01:09:46):
things like that, where it's very rarely characters who are
actually seen visibly on screen as little people living in society.
It's actors who are little people playing some creature or
something like that, or it's you know, other actors with
other physical disabilities doing something where they're not actually seen

(01:10:09):
visibly on screen as they are there being some creature.
So I wanted to acknowledge those actors and performers for
the work that they did on the movie, and also
acknowledge that there's that major lack of visibility for absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
I mean I just like I didn't know at all. Yeah,
there were and that ET's voice, yeah, Pat Welsh like hmm, uncredited.

Speaker 3 (01:10:35):
Yes, she smoked two packs a day of cigarettes to
give her the like quality of voice that Et has.
It reminded me of the thing we talked about on
The Exorcist where Mercedes McCambridge.

Speaker 1 (01:10:49):
Oh yeah, just like got fucked up all day long.

Speaker 3 (01:10:51):
And yeah, like would drink whiskey and ate rags and
stuff to make the demon voice sound as intimidating.

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
As it was. Like check in with me later, freed kid. Yeah,
it's certainly an approach, but also I appreciate that the
people who brought Et to life also not prescriptive to gender,
Like it's that knife like that's further kind of lays
out that you know, Et genderless icon gender doesn't give

(01:11:22):
a shit, Like he's literally just trying to phone home.
That's all. That's it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:30):
Yeah, yeah, is.

Speaker 1 (01:11:32):
There anything else you wanted to talk about with it? Oh? Well,
I guess the surprise I thought the surprise kiss was
so unnecessary in the middle of that, Like I thought
that just felt very dated, and also knowing that like
Henry Thomas, I guess was really really really uncomfortable being
asked to do that and like didn't want to do

(01:11:53):
it because he was just a little kid who was
not interested in kissing. So I don't know. I mean,
it's a smallish thing in the scope of eighties kids movies.
ET is doing almost everything right, but I just did
want to single that out. It's like not necessary, especially
if they're not going to bother to like characterize.

Speaker 3 (01:12:15):
Little girl that Yeah. Yeah, it just feels very very
reflective of the time where a surprise kiss was considered
to be a romantic gesture, and the way it's framed
in the movie is like ET is like helping Elliott
do all these good things, such as release frogs from

(01:12:39):
being killed ugly, that's a good thing, but also kissing
a girl in his class without her consent, not good,
not the same thing, Like, why would you pair those
two things together?

Speaker 1 (01:12:51):
This is all like both seen as like heroic.

Speaker 3 (01:12:54):
Acts, right, and it was yucky.

Speaker 1 (01:12:59):
Sorry, I just saw my rug moving on the floor.
What the fuck Casper got under the rug?

Speaker 3 (01:13:06):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:13:06):
Okay, around he was scaring my ass. Sorry, everything I'm saying, I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:13:12):
Safe now, Okay, good, glad to hear it. But no,
that was really all I had. I'm sure there's some
lure that we're missing, you know, there's so much with
this movie. But yeah, those were the main points that
I had. Did you have anything else?

Speaker 1 (01:13:27):
No, I think just the last This isn't a discourse thing,
but the last thing I just wanted to single out
was the creator of ET, or like the designer of ET.

Speaker 3 (01:13:37):
I guess yes.

Speaker 1 (01:13:38):
It was a guy named Carlo Rambaldi, and he just
has an incredible resume. I just wanted to share other
movies he did special effects on, including he had previously
done Close Encounters with Spielberg. He did Alien one the
seventy nine to one and won an Oscar for it.
I believe he did Possession in the year before ET,

(01:14:01):
which is like just wild. He did David Lynch Dune.
He did just like all of these kind of incredible
iconic special effects designs, and yeah when they Oscar twice
once for Alien and once for et nice. And also
I think that this is like a time that just
something you don't see a lot or as much of

(01:14:23):
anymore where It's like this huge blockbuster also got a
lot of awards recognition because it's good, like and I
think hopefully it seems like we're kind of turning a
corner there where you can't just make a movie that's
so bad and like I'm just like talking about Marvel stuff,
but like, you can't just make a movie that's like

(01:14:43):
a big piece of shit and expect to make a
billion dollars. Like I think there is a turning audience
expectation too. You do have to write to make it
be good. It can't just look like shit.

Speaker 3 (01:14:54):
Yeah, Francis Ford Coppole, you can't just spend one hundred
and twenty million dollars of your own money embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (01:15:01):
I mean, at least it was his money.

Speaker 3 (01:15:04):
True, Yeah, he should honestly just redistribute his wealth by
making bad movies.

Speaker 1 (01:15:10):
Bad movies. At very least when I see someone like
Blow that amount of their own personal accrude wealth. I'm like, well,
at least they're not using it to hurt anybody. They're
just except Caitlin's head.

Speaker 3 (01:15:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
True, But yeah. ET was nominated for nine Oscars how Wild,
including Best Picture, It's Amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:15:31):
And Best Director, and it won Score, Original Score, Best
Visual Effects, Best Sound, and Sound Editing. So more of
the technical stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:15:43):
I still feel like Henry Thomas should have gotten like
Best like it's such a special performance.

Speaker 5 (01:15:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:15:50):
Anyways, Yeah, that's all I have to say. I'd say
it does pass the Bechdel test because ET's genderless icon
and there is a conversation between Mary and Gerty about
E T.

Speaker 3 (01:16:03):
Yeah, I would agree with that. So even though they project,
you know, man gender onto ET, I think ET rejects
that projection.

Speaker 1 (01:16:16):
I think ET is like, there's bigger We've got bigger
fish to fry. Can we stop?

Speaker 3 (01:16:21):
Yeah. As far as our nipple scale though, the scale
where we rate the movie zero to five nipples based
on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens, yeah, I
mean characters of marginalized genders are not necessarily the focal
point of ET, unless you count Et himself or themselves,

(01:16:46):
but as far as like the human Women and Girls,
which is pretty much only Merry and Girty, and Girty
gets less screen time compared to her two brothers, and
Mary doesn't get a lot of screen time because it's
you know, coming from the kid's perspective of hiding this

(01:17:08):
creature from their mom, so she's less of a presence
than maybe some other kids movies. But I still appreciate
how the movie handles emotional expression from the male characters
and how it's presented as a strength, and the fact that,

(01:17:28):
like the big connection between Et and Elliott is a
like emotional one and an empathic one where they feel
each other's feelings, and you don't really see that in
most movies where there's some strong, like empathic connection between
male characters or between a boy or man and anyone else.

(01:17:51):
So I liked that. I liked that the other male
characters are similarly compassionate, but also like multi dimensional. All
the characters feel multi dimensional, and I feel like I
want to feel like three nipples. I don't know why,
but it just feels right in my heart, light and

(01:18:13):
my in the tip of my finger.

Speaker 1 (01:18:17):
I love that, who are you giving your nipples?

Speaker 3 (01:18:19):
To I'll give one to the scene where Et gets
plastered off of like one and a half cans of
cores Iconic. I'll give one.

Speaker 1 (01:18:32):
To little Drew Barrymore, who.

Speaker 3 (01:18:37):
Was you know, her dad was an abusive parent and
not really present in her life, and Steven Spielberg kind
of adopted her slash became her godfather and like felt
very responsible also wanted to maintain the illusion that Et
was real. For Drew Barrymore, I love that story because

(01:19:00):
she thought he was real and she would like have
lunch with him on set and stuff. And one day
she found like the various puppeteers and stuff who were
controlling the like animatronic stuff with Et, and She's like,
what's all this? And Spielberg was like, don't worry. Et
is so important that he has eight assistants, Like those

(01:19:20):
are just his little his assistants.

Speaker 1 (01:19:23):
Yeah, they're like Et is a diva. He has a
lot of people, don't worry about I really like I again,
it's like Spielberg is, he's a fucking Zionist. I will
say that in the past, and still I mean it's hard,
Like I really again appreciate especially like if you're we

(01:19:44):
talk about this a lot, but not necessarily with like
directors directing children, but like having you know, like if
you are bringing an actor you know who is somehow
vulnerable into your space. I also think about like when
people cast non actors in their work, it's like you
are to some extent I think responsible to like look
out for them and like realize what incredible trust it takes,

(01:20:08):
especially for a kid to trust you. It's like it's
I'm glad that he like provided support even when she
wasn't doing.

Speaker 3 (01:20:15):
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, And I'll split my final nipple
between the three performers who were in the et suit
and made et come to life in that way.

Speaker 1 (01:20:31):
I'm gonna go three and a half. I think I'm
grading it probably on a curve because I just think
it's such a beautiful movie. Again, I think, like there's
absolutely not even a shred or a suggestion of any
diversity within the casting of this movie, which is embarrassing.
This takes place in southern California in eighty two. There's
absolutely no reason that there shouldn't be a more diverse cast. Yeah,

(01:20:55):
I mean I do think, yeah, like you're saying that
a movie that, yes, it is a boys on Bikes movie,
but it's my favorite boys on Bikes movie because it
is all about like sensitivity and emotional intelligence. But they're
not like Mary Sue kids. Like they still are obviously kids,
and they still kind of give each other shit, and
like it feels like really authentic relationships between the kids

(01:21:20):
that encourages, you know, young boys at a time where
nothing about culture was encouraging young boys to feel their
feelings and not be like ashamed of it, and that
that's like a strength. And yeah, the way that the
family dynamics I kind of wonder. I mean, I don't
think obviously this is far from the first movie that

(01:21:40):
presents a divorced family, but even so, I think, like
doing that on such a large scale and doing it
in a way that is not blamey or shamey towards
their mom, it's just difficult things really beautiful and yeah,
I just love this damn movie. Et looks ugly though.

Speaker 3 (01:22:01):
There's no getting around it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:03):
But yeah, even though the characters we generally focus on, well,
I mean, Elliott is a boy et genderless icon, but
I just feel like there is equity not in screen time,
but in how the care that every character is treated
with and considered, and that feels so rare. I feel
like so many mom characters or little sister characters just

(01:22:26):
fade into the background or they're the joke, and that's
not the case for this movie. So I'm gonna give
it three and a half nipples. I'm gonna give one
to Melissa Matheson. I'm going to also split one between
the three performers. I'm gonna give one to d Wallace
because I feel like she is so good in this
and also like I'm sort of giving the nipple mostly

(01:22:48):
too when she can't stop herself from laughing when Elliott
calls Michael Penis breath. That felt like, that's just like
such a great moment. And I'll give my last half
to Pat Welsh and her cigarettes.

Speaker 3 (01:23:03):
Yes, indeed, Well, listeners, there you have it.

Speaker 1 (01:23:08):
Do do do do do? Dude? We phoned home, but
we didn't phone it in.

Speaker 3 (01:23:12):
We didn't phone it in, but we did phone at
home to your home and to your ears. What if
we recorded the podcast using the same device like communication
device that ET uses.

Speaker 1 (01:23:24):
This whole thing has been recorded with a buzzsaw and
a spell it sounds, so if it sounds bad, that's
a lie.

Speaker 3 (01:23:31):
That's why. Well, but yeah, thank you for listening, and
you can follow us on social media on Instagram at Bechdelcast.
You can subscribe to our Matreon.

Speaker 1 (01:23:48):
Uh huh.

Speaker 3 (01:23:49):
This month we did the poll and the winners of
the pole. It's Women Thieves Ary aka.

Speaker 6 (01:23:57):
Women's Wrongs Right and Women's Wrongs Women be Stealing is
the theme because it's the Bling Ring and Ocean's eight.

Speaker 1 (01:24:10):
I'm very excited. I have seen neither, so I'm very
excited to get into that month. We referenced our recent
episode on The Exorcist. That's over there. We just finished
our Horror Month. A lot of good stuff going on
on the Matreon, so please go over. It's the best
way to directly support the show. People sometimes will ask
like what is that is the way to directly support

(01:24:32):
the show?

Speaker 3 (01:24:32):
Way to do it? So go to patreon dot com
slash Bechtel Cast and pledge only five dollars a month.

Speaker 1 (01:24:40):
What a bargain for a back catalog of over one
hundred and fifty episodes. You can also grab some merch
of your so inclined at teapublic dot com slash the
Bechdel Cast and with that let's freaking go home. My
mom just got here. My mom's here to pick me up.
My mom's here to pick me up. I gotta go.

Speaker 3 (01:24:57):
We gotta go by.

Speaker 1 (01:24:59):
My mom's here. Gotta go bye. That's what he says.

Speaker 3 (01:25:08):
The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by
Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited
by Mola bord Our. Theme song was composed by Mike
Kaplan with vocals by Katherine Voskressensky. Our logo and merch
is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to
Aristotle Assevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit

(01:25:30):
linktree slash Bechdel Cast