Spielberg reveals how 'E.T.' was the divorce movie that turned him into a dad

A detailed explanation of the writing of 'E.T.' involved the recollection of how 'Black Stallion' screenwriter Melissa Mathison, then Harrison Ford's girlfriend, at first turned down his offer to have her do the screenplay when he pitched it on location for 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'

Speaking about his film 'E.T.' on its 40th anniversary at the TCM Classic Film Festival, renowned filmmaker Steven Spielberg explored how the split in his own family growing up informed his original story.

The director explained how making the film was the actual trigger that made him suddenly flip a switch from eschewing the prospect of ever being a father to putting parenthood on his vision board, reports 'Variety'.

"What happened was, I had been working on an actual literal script about my parents' separation and divorce", in the late 1970s, Spielberg told host Ben Mankiewicz.

"I was shooting the (climactic) scene and I suddenly thought, 'Wait a second. What if that little creature never went back to the ship? What if the creature was part of a foreign exchange program? (Richard) Dreyfuss goes and he stays? Or she stays?'"

It struck him that he could turn his family drama "into a story about children and a family trying to fill a great need and great responsibility? Divorce creates great responsibility. If you have siblings, we all take care of each other (in the wake of divorce). And what if Elliott, or the kid, I hadn't quite dreamed up his name yet, for the first time in his life becomes responsible for a life form, to fill the gap in his heart?"

The filmmaker told the opening-night crowd at the TLC Chinese Theatre about the devastation he felt as a teen child of divorce.

"I think when you go through something like that, when any child goes through an episode where your parents who you trustA love and trust unconditionally (both) come to you and your sisters and say, 'We are separating, and we're going to be living not just in two different houses but two different states', the world collapses. The sky falls on your head."

He said that children of divorce or those who've been the divorcing parties "know the responsibility of how you have to super take care of your kids. It's something that never goes away and it comes out in the wash, and it certainly has come out in a lot of my movies, both indirectly and subconsciously".

"And in the latest film that I've just made, it comes out very directly," he added, referring to 'The Fabelmans', the semi-autobiographical film he co-wrote with Tony Kushner that's set for release in November.

Asked by Mankiewicz if he'd ever imagined himself being a father up to that point in his career, Spielberg said: "No. I didn't want to have kids because it was not a kind of equation that made sense for me as I went from movie to movie to movie, script to scripta It never occurred to me till halfway through 'E.T.': I was a parent on that film.

"I was literally feeling like I was very protective of Henry (Thomas) and Mike (McNaughton) and my whole cast, and especially Drew (Barrymore), who was only six years old. And I started thinking, 'Well, maybe this could be my real life someday'. It was the first time that it occurred to me that maybe I could be a dad. And maybe in a way, a director is a dad, or a mom."

From that point on, he said, "I really felt that that would be my big production".

When Mankiewicz, in characteristic tongue-in-cheek fashion, asked: "Did you have children, Steven?," the director answered: "I have seven kids and six grandchildren. So 'E.T.' worked for me very well."

In the space of a half-hour preceding the showing of a new IMAX rendering of the 1982 film, Spielberg and Mankiewicz did not make attempts to tackle a complete career overview (and the only mention of the recent 'West Side Story' was the host's contention that TCM fans had put aside their disinclination toward remakes just for that).

Spielberg also talked about Joan Crawford, on 'Night Gallery', was the first SAG-card-carrying actor he ever worked with, then amended that to say that he shot all the interstitial segments with scriptwriter/host Rod Serling prior to that.

Crawford, he said, was no "Mommy Dearest" on the set, but as a Pepsi products pitchwoman at the time did expect everyone on the set to partake in the ice chests full of Mountain Dew she brought to the soundstage, reports 'Variety'.

Mankiewicz brought up 'Duel' to point out that Spielberg belonged to the generation of renegade filmmakers like Martin Scorsese as much as he did the studio system.

Spielberg came close to conceding that maybe '1941' might have benefitted from a bit more studio oversight, something he was happily doing without in the wake of the blockbuster successes of 'Jaws' and 'Close Encounters'.

He joked: "The explosion that never got made for 'Duel', I make it fit for '1941'. That was the biggest detonation, at that moment in my career.

"It was my longest schedulea, even longer than 'Jaws', which would have been seemingly hard to beat, since on that we shot 158 days, more than 100 days over schedule. But because we were shooting back to back, the studio just started writing checks, saying 'Let's see what happens'. And they gave me an unlimited celling to make '1941'. And it took me 178 days to shoot the picture, because I directed all the miniature work. That was the worst mistake you could have made. But I had a great time making the film.

"And then I showed the picture for the first time in Texas, at my good luck theater, the Medallion Theater in Dallas," where he'd experienced thrilling reactions to 'Jaws' and "Close Encounters', only to take '1941' there, where "you could have heard a pin drop" for what he called acethe first comedy ever made without laughs".

A detailed explanation of the writing of 'E.T.' involved the recollection of how 'Black Stallion' screenwriter Melissa Mathison, then Harrison Ford's girlfriend, at first turned down his offer to have her do the screenplay when he pitched it on location for 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'.

They had story sessions during editing lunch breaks on 'Raiders', and Spielberg credited her with adding some of the script's best conceptual ideas, as well as doing the actual writing by herself, resulting in what he called the best first draft ever and Kathleen Kennedy called the best screenplay she'd read, period.

The director said it was that first draft that got shot.

Actors Dee Wallace and Robert McNaughton were among those in attendance at the Chinese, but Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore, who'd been billed as sharing the stage with Spielberg at the re-premiere, were absent for reasons not explained.

Spielberg had plenty to say about both present and absent cast members.

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