All language subtitles for 1982.Greatest.Geek.Year.Ever.2022.2022.1080p.WEBRip.x264.AAC-[YTS.MX]

♪♪♪

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AUTOMATED VOICE: E-F-P.

That is incorrect.

The correct spelling
of "nuisance" is N-U--

...soon to compete are some very
dazzling science fiction films.

If you, like millions
of Trekkies, across the galaxy,

then you're waiting
for "Star Trek II," the movie.

MAN: "Blade Runner"
is a detective thriller

set in a very crowded
Los Angeles in the year 2019.

[MTV theme playing]

In a bold move to get
the kids out of video arcades

and back into the theaters,

Disney Studios
is offering "Tron."

The Columbia is back after
spending seven days in space.

The movie
has plenty of ice, blood.

and things
that go bump in the night.

We'll also be reviewing
two eagerly awaited films

from producer Steven Spielberg.

MAN #2: Americans popped in

between $5 and $9 billion worth
of quarters.

MAN: "E.T." is heavy
in visual effects.

It's set for release
on June 4th.

♪♪♪

I can't think of a year
during my life

that the lineup was equivalent
as far as depth of storytelling,

epicness,
significant storytelling.

I've...seen things
you people wouldn't believe.

They liked to think
back in the '80s.

All those...moments will be
lost...in time.

There's still a little hangover
from the '70s,

And the '70s was,
I think, a golden age.

That was a time
that just blew everything up,

and so we were kind of
reaping the rewards.

Coming out of the '70s,
there was more of a sense

of character,
the antihero and the everyman.

Then all of a sudden we're going
to take that language

and put it into genre.

-[growls]
-In the '70s, you had "Jaws."

♪♪♪

Biggest summer blockbuster ever.

Why, you son of a...

[gunshot]

Followed up two years later
by "Star Wars,"

which changed the world.

That was, I think, where so
many of us got hooked on movies,

when Spielberg and Lucas
changed everything.

After 1977, it was game over.

REPORTER: "Star Wars"--
it is more

than just a successful movie.

It is a box office phenomenon.

The film is breaking attendance
records all over the country.

Not since "Jaws"
have so many people

stood in line to see a movie.

"Star Wars" was a gateway.
We were hooked on sci-fi.

That's what we talked about
when we went to school.

Box office
was very much dominated

by high concept ideas.

Then in the wake of "Star Wars,"
you had "Superman," the movie.

You had "Alien."
You had other indie films

like "Dawn of the Dead"
and "Phantasm, "Halloween,"

and all of the studios
are trying to figure out

how can we duplicate
both the indie success

and the studio success
of these one-off movies?

We were doing very well
in the '60s and '70s.

but when "Star Wars" came out,

I thought, the major studios

have figured out
what we've been doing

on a low budget,
and they're taking these ideas,

and we are going to be
in trouble.

'Cause they saw
that stories of the fantastic

had a really wide appeal

and not just
for a teenage audience.

So they started making
studio-level genre films.

PENN:
People were starting to feel

they could do something
interesting

in a blockbuster template.

The idea that you
could make movies as varied

as "Poltergeist,"
"E.T.," and Blade Runner,

it's kind of a maturing
of the summer blockbuster...

It's too bad she won't live.

But then again, who does?

...a lot of which is
science fiction.

People want to see
science fiction,

and so we gotta give that
to them, and I think '82 is

the year mass market
science fiction blockbusters--

that's the year
their voice broke, if you will.

You could certainly argue
there were better years

for cinema than 1982,

but there's no greater geek year
than 1982.

There are a lot
of great years for movies.

You could look at 1939
with "Wizard of Oz"

and "Mr. Smith
Goes to Washington."

So many people look at 1977
as the greatest geek year ever.

but really,
when it comes down to it,

1982 is the greatest year ever
for movies, period.

Week after week, you have one
classic movie after another

that holds up 40 years later.

MILLER: The reason 1982
was such a unique year,

it was a turning point
in a lot of ways.

It was this great moment where,
for whatever reason,

nerds accidentally won.

FILONI: It was just a great time
to be a kid growing up.

I think our imaginations
were running wild.

We loved these adventures.

They were all
pretty hopeful, too.

You know, the feeling of the
films was something optimistic.

As your teacher,
Mr. Spock, is fond of saying,

I like to think that there
always are possibilities.

They weren't cynical.
Somehow that really affect us.

There's a feeling
to those movies...

-Aloha, Spicoli.
-[laughs]

...a sense of wonder
that is just in all of them,

and that's something
that to this day I chase

and try to capture,

'cause you really wanna
pass it on to people.

MEYER: So, when you're a kid,
kid experiences,

it's about people,
scenery, books, movies--

that's what imprints on you.

The works of art, for example,
that you fall in love with,

that are most lasting.

You see "Star Trek" at age 12.

You know, if it's any good,
it's going to be major.

Or maybe
even if it's not any good,

it's gonna be major.

That's when
you're really consuming

art, movies, and music

that shape and mold you to who
you become later on as an adult.

You can't separate people my age
from the movies

of the early '80s
because they're so part

of who we were growing up.

BURNETT:
We were free-range kids.

We got to go out. Our parents
were like, "Hey, man,

come home when the sun
goes down. Be home for dinner."

My parents didn't know
what I did.

They just knew you had
gone off for the day,

and you'd be home for dinner,
maybe.

BURNETT:
Ride our bike somewhere.

Nobody cared.
We had our secret lives.

Even if "E.T."
wasn't about an alien,

kids today would think
it was a science fiction movie

because the kids leave
in the morning on bicycles.

Their parents
don't know where they are.

They show back up at dinner.

Parents don't ask
where they were.

They're not calling 'em
on cellphones.

That was the life we had.

I'm a proud geek, was one
before it became fashionable.

Yeah, which I'm a little bitter
about....

[laughs] because I feel like
I had to choose

between cultivating
being attractive

or reading comic books.

Look, an authentic voodoo doll.

And now you can technically
do both,

and that's
a little frustrating.

Everything felt awesome,

and the movies
really reflected that.

♪♪♪

When you get to '82,
we're coming out of Watergate,

we're coming out of Vietnam era.
Everyone's having a good time.

Yeah. Britain went to war
with Argentina

over the Falkland Islands,

but it wasn't
any kind of huge wars.

It coincided
with a time in America

where everything seemed
possible.

Reagan was in power.
People were more optimistic,

The economy was better,
and the movies sort of reflect

a sunnier, more fairy tale time.

Who would have ever
thought that Ronald Reagan,

the former movie star,

that he would be the President
of the United States?

-Bonzo!
-Mr. Boyd!

Bonzo, that wasn't
a nice thing to do.

The oldest President of
the United States at the time.

REAGAN: You don't
really become president.

The presidency
is an institution,

and you have
temporary custody of it.

That was all part of it.

It was all part of the fantasy
landscape that we lived in.

It was morning in America.
I wasn't politically aware.

I didn't know about

Ronald Reagan's sort
of politics.

I mean, I didn't know that I
didn't agree with the politics.

You just felt good
to be American.

The groundwork has been laid,

and now we will move forward
to capitalize

on the tremendous potential

offered by
the ultimate frontier of space.

The '80s became about
Reaganomics and making money.

People were feeling good,
so they wanted to play.

But I feel like it was more of
a social-physical interaction

with the entertainment
that we had back then.

When I think of 1982,
I think of the arcade

as being the clubhouse
of the teenage people.

The joke is
that teenagers have to find

their own place because
they're not civil yet. [laughs]

That's why I loved
being a young teenager in 1982,

because part of going
to the movies is you had

to go to the movies
to see the movie.

BIASELLI: We didn't have
the internet at our fingertips.

We didn't have the opportunity
to have everything on demand.

You couldn't press a button
and suddenly

have these things appear.
You had to work for it.

You had to take a chance.
Sometimes you'd ask the guy

who sold you the ticket,
"What's good?"

Our idea of social media
was standing on line

waiting three hours to get
into a film

where we would talk about
our enthusiasm, our excitement.

It's the fun, the excitement.

We get out here with all our
friends, and it's a good time.

Waiting in line
is even a good time.

You're like, "Oh, I'm not
going to see this movie today,"

'cause there'd be
a long line around the block.

Why are movies
called blockbusters?

Because the anticipated movies

have people
lined up around the block.

I did like when
there were less choices

and people
watched movies together.

The experience that you have

when you are
part of an audience

is an experience that is
intensely intimate and personal

and collective at the same time.

We've gone
on this journey together.

We have shared something.

People we didn't even know
next to us laughing, crying,

doing whatever it was,

sharing that
unifying human bond.

Stepping back from what makes
going to the movies magical,

we have to look at entertainment
as medicinal.

It takes us out of our pain.

It takes us out of our trauma
and allows us

to go someplace where we can
feel safe for those two hours

and not worry
about our troubles.

These days,
with the way the world is,

there's a lot to escape from,

so it's a good bet
that many Americans this spring

will be going to that galaxy
long ago and far, far away.

I think that's one of the things
that whenever anybody

dismisses fandom of any kind,

my first thought is that
you don't really understand

what it is to hurt
in a way as an adolescent

and to find solace and safety.

At that time, certainly for me,

growing up
in a very abusive home,

movies were my safe space.

Why wouldn't I want
to stand in line

to have that ticket to peace
and escape?

Recently, it's hard
not to look back on 1982

and see it as a pioneering time
for original stories.

Some of the formulas
that we would now say,

"Oh, this is a formulaic movie,"

sometimes you were seeing
that formula for the first time

you know, in '82.

Telling you, man, I've been
in places like this before,

and white cops came and [bleep]
with me and my friends.

The only thing that stopped us
from kicking their [bleep]

is they had guns and badges.

Takes years of experience
to handle a joy like this.

Wanna bet?

As you move into
this new decade,

and you've got the benefit
of technology behind them,

they were like,
how do we make a story

that people care about
that also looks unbelievable,

like nothing
that's ever come before?

There is nothing like
that spirit of innovation

when everything was new
and iconic.

The movies that got made
are jaw-dropping.

Was an unbelievable year
for culture in America.

MALTIN: It didn't feel that way
at the time.

I didn't think I'm in the midst
of a golden,

you know, rainbow here.

-What about "Swords of Glory"?
-Crap.

-"Amarillo."
-Crap.

-"Sands of the Sudan."
-Crap.

Benjy, you want to see movies?
Get a job as an usher.

The rest of us are here to write

professional
show business comedy.

Now, looking back,
I say we'd be lucky

to get half as many good films
right now. [laughs]

It was kind of a magical time

when the commerce
was supporting art

in a way that created
lasting legacy films,

so we get
the best of all worlds,

because somehow culture and
money meet around that time.

You sort of see
the auteurist filmmaking

converging
with the blockbuster mentality,

so you have people
like Paul Schrader

doing "Cat People"
for Universal.

You have somebody like
Nick Meyer doing "Star Trek II."

You have these
really original visions

merging with more
commercial sensibilities.

So many of these movies
feel so personal

even when they're
in the mainstream space.

These film brats were telling
you everything

about what was important to them

and what they had loved
growing up,

and that's what all
these genre movies were.

Could you even imagine
what the conversations

were like at that time?

"We're going to make
an entire movie

with puppets, no people,

and it's gonna cost just
as much as a movie with people.

It's gonna be risky and crazy,
and we're gonna take chances."

That's the spirit of

"We're going to do something
that no one has done before."

A lot of those movies in '82

would never be made
these days

because they are risky.

Studios don't want to take risks
the way that they used to.

No one actually can make
a creative decision

without someone sitting down
and doing a spreadsheet on it.

I mean, when you look at 1982,
the number of successes seem

to really outweigh
the number of failures.

I would say to the people
making the decisions,

you know,
maybe take a few more chances.

We are living in the age of IP
and--and sort of IP hackery

in a sense that, like,
movies do not exist

or have any sort of support
unless they are

an existing property
of some kind.

With the new way
in which they decide

what big movies are made,

you'd never have
a "Star Wars" today,

you'd never have
an "Indiana Jones."

Back then, these decisions
on what to make

were made with instinct,
not algorithms.

I went out with a movie
a few years ago,

and all the studios said
it was a great script,

but they were passing on it,
and finally,

the very last studio
that passed on it,

I went to the head
of the studio, and I said,

"I don't understand this.
Everyone's saying how much

they love the script
and no one's making it.

Why won't you make it?"

And he said, "Well, it's not
based on something else."

And I said, "Well, you made
'Independence Day' with me.

That wasn't based
on something else."

And he goes,
"I wouldn't make it today

unless you called it
'War of the Worlds.'"

It's sad,
and I think it ultimately

hurt the movie business.

There were
over nine studios at the time.

I think there's four now.

This consolidation
really stifles competition,

and the good thing
about competition was

everyone wants to try
and do something different.

That year is when I was hired
by "Entertainment Tonight"

to be a film critic
on their show.

I think audiences
are responding to sequels

when the sequels are good.

I don't think there's any
other criteria that they have.

If the word of mouth
gets out that a sequel

is just a ripoff and is, uh,
taking them for a ride,

so to speak,
they're not going to show up.

It was the first show
of its kind,

but the other phenomena
was Siskel and Ebert,

longtime newspaper critics
in Chicago,

but their television show
made them household names.

Imagine, film critics
becoming household names.

1982 was the best year
at the box office

in the last 30 years.

You never saw people talk this
passionately about art on TV.

Gene and Roger
were not scripted,

and they disagreed,
and it was fun to watch.

It seemed to me
that "Sophie's Choice"

was about the fragility of love.

I don't get
the treachery of the hearts bit.

I also don't agree with you
that this film's that good.

-We disagree.
-Okay.

In 1982, Tribune hires them
to do a syndicated show

called "At the Movies."
It's immediately success.

They became
the nation's movie critics.

And they end up really
influencing what people see.

With the success
of Siskel and Ebert,

this idea of, well,
you've got two guys together,

and are they doing two thumbs up
or one thumb down?

And suddenly it became about
aggregation of two critics,

which then led on
to Rotten Tomatoes

and this whole idea
of aggregating critics.

DEVLIN: The strongest memory
I have of that year

was the second week of June.

And no other month
before or since

has matched the quality
of June of 1982.

That's the month and the year

that I officially
fell in love with movies.

Sometimes two or three
classic movies

opening on the same weekend,

and it's like,
jeez, what do you choose?

On June 4, 1982,

you had "Star Trek II:
The Wrath of Khan,"

and "Poltergeist" opening
on the same freaking day.

One week later, June 11th,

you have
"E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial."

For, like, decades, it was like

the highest grossing movie
of all time.

All of a sudden, there are
two Steven Spielberg movies

coming out
within a week of each other,

and the first one
that came out was "Poltergeist."

"Poltergeist" was another film
that was fanciful in nature,

with some scares built into it,

almost any age group
could and did respond to.

I think it was using
the child...

Hello?

...being sucked
into the television.

She was so tuned in.
She was truly an empath,

and she was 5.

Mike Fenton and I were casting
"Poltergeist" and "E.T."

almost simultaneously.

So Heather O'Rourke
initially came in for "E.T."

Steven saw her at
the commissary, and he's like,

"Oh, you should really come in
for--for 'Poltergeist.'"

[singsongy] They're here.

It went more for the heart
than for the scare.

Reach back into our past when
you used to have an open mind.

-Remember that?
-Uh-huh.

Okay. Just try to use that.

I remember less the moments
I jumped

than I do how much
I was rooting for these people.

Whoo-hoo! Whoo! [laughs]

[yawns]

Stephen and Tobe both felt

very strongly that the family
was the most important aspect.

-Good night, sweetie.
-Good night.

Okay, lights out.

Closet light! Closet light!

-My fault. My fault.
-[thunder rumbling]

Turn it on, Mommy!

[switch clicks]

Tobe really had a real sense
of the horror,

how to create the darker moods,

but I think
it was Steven's influence

to keep the family stuff
really strong in the foreground.

That was the key in all
of Spielberg's movies,

is that it really focused
on the heart.

Are you with us now?

Can you--Can you say hello
to Daddy?

[indistinct whispering]

CAROL ANNE: [distorted voice]
Hello, Daddy.

[whimpering]

Hello, sweet pea.

A lot of this comes back
to verisimilitude,

these art forms finding
a reality

that's much closer
to your own experience,

your own lived experience
than you expect it to be.

Can you see Mommy?

[indistinct whispering]

distorted voice] Mommy,
where are you? Where are you?

Why can't it be fantastic
and very real at the same time?

Just sort of based
the lifestyle on a lifestyle

I'm familiar with, growing up
in suburban Phoenix, Arizona,

in tract homes with
cul-de-sacs and 2-car garages.

And this
suburban lifestyle breeds

a certain kind of individual.

Seeing the parents
in their bedroom at night,

trying to hide a joint
from the family,

you know, I'd never seen
that in a movie before.

-Hi, honey.
-[thunderclap]

Is everything okay?

And yet it still felt like
a wholesome family.

Also has, like,
super babelicious mom and dad.

Like, this... [laughs]

Like, that era,
they're, like, very hot,

cool mom and dad characters,
but it's also scary.

EDWARDS: "Poltergeist"
scared me straight to 1983.

Static on a television
still scares me,

and we all owned
TVs like that in 1982.

I'm like,
no, I'm not here for that.

I don't understand the title.

I still don't know
what it means.

-What does "poltergeist" mean?
-No one knew what it was.

We found a--
We found a German book, uh,

that had--
it was "poltergeist,"

And, uh, it was all in German,
so, you know,

but we knew it was about ghosts,
and we showed that to Steven.

He said, "That's the title."

He gave us a page.

There were some bullet points
that he wanted to hit.

He wanted it to be
a ghost story set

in a middle class
housing development,

that the ghost comes
out of the TV.

It had originally been
written by

Michael Grace and Mark Victor,

but Steven Spielberg
wrote the shooting draft.

We only had six weeks
to write the screenplay

because we were set
to go on strike.

Film was in production, and we
were striking our own movie.

Steven sent a PA out to get
us from the line... [laughs]

'cause he said, "I think you
guys want to see this."

It's a really cool scene.

So we went in, and we
saw the room was on a gimbal,

and it turned around
and all this.

Steven is a strong producer.

He was the guy who brought
Tobe Hooper in to direct.

He was quite generous,

offering it to this guy
who had only done

the genius "Texas Chain Saw"
and then "Eaten Alive."

It's very intimidating to have

the world's most successful
filmmaker producing your movie

and kind of talking about how
to do what he saw in his mind

as a screenwriter.

I was on the set
of "Poltergeist,"

and I watched it happen.

This thing
is growing out of her,

and it's getting larger
and larger,

and the shoulders are almost
going up to the ceiling.

Just when you begin to see
the fingers, it goes, whoosh!

Breaks up like blowing
a smoke ring apart in the air

and then goes shooting up
into the area by location.

He's an enthusiastic filmmaker.

You know, he says, "Hey,
what about a two shot here?"

And we move in, and Tobe was
hesitant to come in and say,

"Well, how about this?"

The collaboration
between Tobe and Steven

was very interesting.

Steven was there.
He was there every day,

and I think truly, Steven
wanted to direct it himself,

but because
he was going to do "E.T.,"

he couldn't really do both,
and his price was too high.

He was getting ready
to shoot "E.T.,"

and he was under
a contractual obligation

to Universal to make "E.T.,"

which meant he couldn't work
on another film as a director.

What we saw there was that

Tobe was
in the director's chair,

and Steven was standing
right behind him

with his hands on the chair.
[laughs]

Tobe, I think, respected Steven
and went along with it.

I'm sure it was very hard
on Tobe in many ways

'cause Steven is
a strong personality.

I think the result
really had both influences.

GARRIS: Tobe directed the movie.
He called "action" and "cut."

His creative influence
was there,

but both of those men
made that movie.

Yes, there were a lot
of fights about who did it,

but it was not
between the two of them.

It was a collaboration,

but doesn't feel like
a Hooper movie.

It feels like a Spielberg movie.

"Poltergeist" does feel
like a Spielberg film,

but it is absolutely the lensing

and framing
of a Tobe Hooper film.

[both scream]

I'm embarrassed to say I cried
in "Poltergeist."

I remembered being so connected
to Heather,

but I had no idea that it would
be that well received,

not only critically,
but at the box office.

I think that movie
is the perfect metaphor

for the summer of 1982
because Tangina says...

This house has many hearts.

And the summer of 1982
has many hearts.

ANNOUNCER: MGM has "Poltergeist"
for release on June 4th.

This Steven Spielberg production
is about a suburban family

terrorized
in their spooky new house.

"Poltergeist"
is anxiously awaited

by those who like to have
the heck scared out of them.

[singsongy] They're here.

Also from the mind
of Steven Spielberg is

"E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial."

Little is known about this film

except that it stars
a friendly alien,

lost and alone,
100,000 light-years from home.

I had just joined the staff
of a still-new television show

called "Entertainment Tonight,"
or "E.T,"

and along came a movie called
"E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial."

What a glorious movie--
A film that reminded the child

inside you that there was
still such a thing as wonder,

that that was a quality
that you didn't have to discard

just because you're
growing older chronologically.

[buzzing noises]

[screaming]

For me, the pinnacle of
Steven Spielberg's career.

Since then,
they've come up with this jargon

about four-quadrant movies.

Screw the quadrants. He just
knew how to tell a great story

that would have broad appeal.

The craziest thing is that

"E.T." started off
as a horror film.

It began as an unofficial sequel
to "Close Encounters."

Columbia wanted Spielberg
to do a sequel,

and he wasn't
that interested in the sequel.

He came up with the idea
for "Night Skies,"

which was aliens landing
at a farm

and attacking a farm family.
It was, uh, he described it as

"Guns Along the Mohawk,"
um, with aliens,

and it was a horror film.

The screenplay was
written by John Sayles.

Ron Cobb was going to direct it.

Steven Spielberg was going
to be the executive producer.

They had this basic idea

based on research

Spielberg had done when he was
working on "Close Encounters"--

this, uh, incident that had
happened in a rural farm

where the people claimed

that they had been surrounded
by these little E.T.s.

and this is during the cattle
and horse mutilation period.

They're inside. The things
are trying to break in

and, uh, fought them off with
shotguns and various things.

And Rick Baker took the time
and designed these five aliens.

They are pretty spectacular.

The lead alien
is pretty terrifying.

He's got this long,
bony finger with a blade,

and that's what he's cutting
and dissecting the cattle with.

There was
a character in the story

who was a friendly alien,

and there was a young child
in the story who was autistic,

and Buddy and the autistic boy
created a connection.

When he's clicking
with this alien,

it's, like, touching,

and John Sayles just nails
these scenes of this alien

and this boy while all
this horror is going on.

They had this plan,
and it all kind of fell apart,

because eventually
what Steven Spielberg realized

was that that wasn't the movie.

I think it was at Columbia then,
and they said,

"Oh, we've got this other movie,
'Starman,' with Jeff Bridges.

We're not going to make some
big space fantasy for kids

when we've already got
a space movie,"

and I think that's when
he moved to another studio,

and with that move,
I think, kind of rethought it.

So he rethought it
with Melissa Mathison.

She had co-written the script
for "The Black Stallion."

She was also
Harrison Ford's girlfriend.

She was with Harrison
on location in Tunisia

when they were doing
"Raiders of the Lost Ark."

They got together,
and they, you know,

really didn't take much from--
from what I had done.

The ending of the script,
I think,

is what probably got her,

because the last paragraph
of the script,

Buddy, the nice alien,
is, like, kind of lost,

walking around terrified, like
a stranger in a strange world.

And because you see
his relationship with the boy

throughout the whole movie,

and just to know that he's now
stuck on Earth all by himself,

it's like
a heartbreaking ending.

Like, you really
feel bad for him.

And that ending of "Night Skies"

is the jumping off point
of "E.T."

SAYLES: It was, really,
what about this thing,

of this "E.T." who gets left
behind? Wouldn't that be cool?

The intersection
of the two scripts

is that I got to read it.

When the Writers Guild said,
"Well, you were one

of the writers
who was near this thing.

Do you think you should get
any credit?" I just said,

"No, not at all,
but this is really good."

If Spielberg can
keep the budget down,

he's got
a nice little Disney movie here.

It got put into turnaround,
and then Universal was like,

"Hey, Columbia, could we just,
like, buy that off you?"

This story goes that Universal
gave Columbia 5% as the gift,

thank-you for selling them
the script

and getting it
out of turnaround.

And quietly, Columbia said
they made more off that 5%

than any of their studio's
films that year.

Okay, Mom, you can look now.

Aah! [laughs]

-Oh, that's great!
-[squeaking]

[laughs] Stay there!

WALLACE: I auditioned
for "Used Cars,"

and I didn't get it,

but Steven
works very far ahead.

He was already
playing around with "E.T.,"

and he knew whatever adult
appeared in there,

he wanted them to be childlike.

And so when "E.T." came about,
they called and offered me...

Bye!

...the role of Mary.

They had me come over
to the studio,

and in a room
behind a locked door,

I read what was entitled
"A Boy's Life."

And I remember calling my agents
on a rotary phone

and saying, "You know,
I don't know how much

this is gonna do for me,

but I think it's gonna do
a lot for the world,

and I really wanna be
a part of this film."

E.T...

home phone.

E.T. phone home.

It's not a film about divorce,

but it is about
the after effects of it,

and that comes from
Spielberg's own life as well.

His depiction of families,

like this incredibly
naturalistic depiction

that he had
in "Close Encounters"

and in "Poltergeist,"
the fact that in "E.T.,"

that felt like the most
real version of sitting around

a dinner table to someone
who had a brother and sister.

What are you going as
for Halloween?

-Not going to stupid Halloween.
-Why don't you go as a goblin?

Shut up.

We're dropping in
on these people's lives.

There was
a clutter to the house.

There was a lived-in sense
to the house.

Messy homes, messy lives.

I remember the moment
I walked onto the soundstage,

and E.T. was standing
over there,

and I walked in,
and I just stopped,

and I looked at him and I went,

"Oh, my God. He's beautiful."

I mean,
you just got him right away--

all the love that the movie
brings forward through him.

Carlo Rambaldi
did such an amazing job

capturing the heart of who E.T.
was in his face and his eyes.

SPIELBERG:
On three. One...two...three.

-[screaming]
-No! Stop it!

-[continues screaming]
-No!

SPIELBERG: And cut. Cut.

We all saw E.T. as another
character that we worked with,

and for the kids,

Steven went to incredible feats
of keeping E.T. alive.

-And...
-He's really real.

-Crazy story.
-Then why all those wires?

These aren't wires.
Those are his feet.

Do you know that?

They would stick the hydraulic
E.T. over in a corner.

Well, one day
we found Drew talking to him.

So after that, Steven had
two guys on that E.T.

the whole time,

so he could make movements
and blink and do his head

so that Drew kept that illusion
of life about E.T.

What E.T. represents,
it's just imagination.

And when the adults come,

they're coming to destroy
this kid's imagination.

How other people
are allowed to see E.T.--

it's from Elliott being like,

"I want you to see
my imagination."

Grown-ups can't see him.
Only little kids can see him.

I remember Mike Fulmer
and his team

were building
the miniature bikes,

and I think it was Tom St. Amand
sculpted the kids,

and he had to sculpt
a little E.T.

to put in the basket.

Well, on his desk
were these photos of E.T.,

and I remember looking at it,
going,

"Oh, my God, this is the ugliest
thing I have ever seen.

No one is gonna see this movie,"
and I was so wrong.

BURNETT:
"E.T." was done in secret.

The teaser was just
clouds with lights.

You knew that it was gonna be
something to do with aliens,

but you had no idea
what "E.T." was.

Even I, who'd read Starlog,

I'd read everything about "E.T."
I didn't know what it was about.

Late May, they had
theatrical sneak previews

around the country,

and it just so happened
that in Fargo,

they had--they had one of these,
so I went to the theater

and had this experience
with this movie

that just blew me away.

And the movie obviously
hadn't opened widely yet,

so nobody else had seen it,

and I'm sitting here
trying to tell people,

like, what it was that
I had seen and experienced.

You just couldn't do it.
People looked at you

like you were--
like you were crazy.

We went over and stood in line
at the Cinerama Dome

with everybody else
for three hours to see "E.T."

People were screaming,

they were crying,
they were applauding.

It was the discovery
of that summer.

I'm getting chills
even thinking about it.

It was one of the most

magically transporting movies
I'd ever seen.

GRAIS: No matter who you were
or what ethnicity you were,

you could see yourself
in that story.

That's what made "E.T."
so special.

Like, when Elliot
takes off on the bike,

that's not Elliott on the bike.
That was me on the bike.

That was me trying
to get E.T. home.

That's the gift
that Steven Spielberg possesses.

My acting teacher, who is
this Cuban émigré...

[Cuban accent] ...who spoke
very strangely, um... [laughs]

[normal voice] uh, had seen
a movie that changed his life.

He said... [Cuban accent]

"I've seen the best performance
by an actor ever.

It is the E.T." [laughs]

E.T., E.T., E.T. be good.

And I remember
being so excited because, uh,

'cause E.T. totally
transported me, and I bought it.

I 100% bought that
this was an alien creature.

You know, I know
Carlo Rambaldi designed it,

and an army of technicians
brought him to life.

For my acting teacher,
who was my God at the time,

they had brought to the screen
the greatest performance ever.

Steven asked me
during the filming--

he said, "Dee, they're already
asking me about doing a sequel."

He said, "What do you think?"

And I said...

"I think you should leave it
the classic it's gonna be."

I'll...

be...

right...

here.

♪♪♪

[voice breaking] Bye.

"E.T." did a great job
with marketing

because I still have "E.T." toys
and "E.T." everything.

Like, you had to have
some sort of "E.T." toy

so your friends
knew you were cool.

E.T., E.T.

My kids are wild about "E.T."

Now there's a whole collection
of "E.T." toys.

-This one talks.
-Home.

The movie comes out.
Initially, there's no toys.

Spielberg realizes his mistake,

immediately
greenlights everything.

They were literally
chartering the 747s

with no passengers,

filling the plane
with the "E.T." things.

Luckily for Spielberg

and everybody who had points
on the movie,

the movie was in the theaters
for almost a year.

So by the time it came,
the merch still did very well.

There was an "E.T." game.
We actually had the "E.T." game.

I remember it.
It was really hard.

[laughs] No one could win it.

"E.T." video game? Wow.

ANNOUNCER:
It's the video game

that lets you pretend
you're E.T.

Basically, this game
comes out based on "E.T.,"

and it's--it's not a good game.
It's a really frustrating game.

I remember just, you know,
not really getting it

and not in a not getting
"Blade Runner" kind of way.

It was more like
it just wasn't fun to play.

You play for two screens,
and all of a sudden,

ET's in a hole again. It's
just--It's just a terrible game.

A video game's
the opposite of a movie.

It's how fun it is to play
that's important.

It's not a passive experience.

It's not something
you're watching.

The "E.T." video game probably
was the start

of what is a long lineage

of crappy adaptations
of mainstream media.

If this worked in this genre,

those people, those geeks,
are gonna like this, too.

I don't think
Steven Spielberg felt that way.

I mean, he likes
playing video games.

Best game--the game
that I still think

is the best game...
-"Centipede."

...they've ever made
is "Asteroids."

I do think there was this hubris

on the part of the people
running Atari at the time

that, "Well, it's gonna say.
'E.T.' on the box,"

and they loved 'E.T.'
Right? Isn't that enough?"

You would go into like a Sears
or a JCPenney.

The video game section

would just be nothing
but stacks of "E.T."

If any game ever deserved
to be headed for a landfill,

it was Atari's "E.T."

Literally, There was this
urban legend that Atari

was so ashamed of the game

that they buried all the unsold
cartridges in this landfill.

It was a far more interesting
and nuanced story

than I thought.

"E.T." just seemed like
a crappy game

that was made way too quickly,

and that's the story
that was told

and became
kind of the urban legend.

The day that Warner
inked a deal with Spielberg,

they set in motion a disaster.

It was Atari trying to achieve
sales through a license.

Now at Toys 'R' Us,
the new "E.T." cartridge,

only $33.97.

Help E.T. phone home with
the Atari Video Game System,

now just $124.87.

But it takes
a lot of negotiating

and a lot of time and such,

And by the time they were done
with a deal,

it was schedule
driving a game development,

which is never a good idea.

The deal was inked in August,

and the cartridge had to be
ready for release November 1st.

At that time,
it took a full year

to fully create a cartridge,
vet it, test it, tweak it.

So you had September, October--
two months.

The probability
of creating a good game

in that amount of time is zero.

And the creator of "E.T."
did a fantastic job

for the amount of time
he was given.

He actually
only had, like, five weeks,

and we typically took
10 months.

The heart
of the creative process

is the programmer.

I try and create
basically a sensory experience

that evokes
a certain feeling in the user.

I mean, I tend to program
from a concept.

Poor Howard signed up for it,

and he's been panned
as creating the worst game ever.

No, he created
the best game ever

that had ever been done
in two months.

Only from Atari, made especially
for systems from Atari.

The video game
that lets you help E.T. get home

just in time for Christmas.

Happy holidays from Atari.

Video games were so important
because it allows kids

to feel like they are
independent,

and they're having an adventure
in and of themselves

outside
of their parents' control.

It empowered a lot of people

who are not necessarily good
at sports

to all of a sudden
get street cred.

1982 is the--the peak
for the video game--

original early video game boom.

First of all, you think about
all of the great video games.

One of my favorite games
was "Pitfall!"

"Pitfall!"--designed by
David Crane for Activision.

It was Indiana Jones.

They didn't call it
"Raiders of the Lost Ark,"

but that's what it was.

I'll assume I was influenced
to put it in a jungle

instead of somewhere else
because of a popular movie.

No one ever seen
anything like that before.

I only had eight bits
to work with,

eight pixels to make
a character that looks human.

You felt like
you were drawn into this story.

Just last night, I was lost in
the jungle with Pitfall Harry,

surrounded by giant scorpions
and man-eating crocodiles.

There were
three different consoles

that were all very popular.

There was
the Mattel Intellivision.

Mr. Intellivision, how come
all you ever talk about

are sports games?
-Sorry?

Intellivision now has games
like the arcade.

I know.

Magnavox Odyssey.

More than 40 games in all.

Odyssey--
the excitement of a game,

the mind of a computer.

It was also
the Atari 2600 or the VCS,

they called it back then.

More color, more sound,
and more action,

and naturally, it's from Atari.

[electronic music plays]

♪ Have you played Atari today? ♪

Atari was almost like the Apple
of the time. It was huge.

The reason why
you see a big "Atari" logo

in "Blade Runner"
is nobody at the time

would have ever thought
Atari would go downhill.

Well, I was watching
"Blade Runner," loved the movie.

It was this vision
of the future,

and there was the Atari logo.
And I said, "Yo!" [laughs]

♪♪♪