When thinking about ‘ET the Extraterrestrial’, the legendary Steven Spielberg film, I’m sure you all remember Drew Barrymore, Henry Thomas and of course, that brown alien whom His finger was burning and he was obsessed with phones.. With the passage of time and advances in technology, it has also been established in the collective imagination that that visitor from another planet was an automaton, a predecessor of the Five Nights at Freddy’s animatronics. But not. Underneath everything there was a person of flesh and blood: Matthew DeMeritt.
In the early eighties, when Spielberg began working on the film, four ETs were created that they did work like automatons, but it was impossible to credibly move those masses of foam rubber, fiberglass and polyurethane. The robots were only useful if they were stationary and only for short shots. Then the director came up with the idea of putting someone underneath, which didn’t seem easy either given the height and narrowness of the character.
In search of a solution, Universal Pictures tried organizing a casting at a physiotherapy center, an occurrence that allowed them to find Matthew DeMeritt. “They gave me a test in which they took measurements and They recorded me walking on my hands. He had never shown anyone that he could do that and he didn’t know what use that would be for them, but it seemed to work for them,” the actor explained in an interview on the occasion of the film’s 20th anniversary.
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DeMeritt admitted that the filming It was very physically demanding., especially due to the temperature reached by wearing the suit. “It was very hot even without lights. I wish it had a zipper or something on the back, but no. They put it in your head and you were trapped like a sausage“, remember. Even so, he also assures that Steven Spielberg was very close and that he wanted him to be comfortable at all times:
“When it was hot, Spielberg would come over and ask me if I was okay. He also made sure he didn’t hurt me. I don’t remember protesting, I guess because the suit was padded and I felt comfortable inside. It was made of rubber and on the outside They sprayed him with some kind of substance to make it look sticky. He had a slit in his chest that I could look through and his head sat alone on top of me. They used me in all the scenes where they wanted ET to fallbut I don’t remember the falls being especially bad.”
About the experience of working with Spierlberg, the actor admits that before the film he didn’t know who he was. “I hadn’t even seen ‘Lost Search’. But he was a really nice guy. He wasn’t arrogant or unpleasant. He had his office door open and he invited us to come in and play video games in it. She had a kind of recreation corner in her office. She was a video game fan and every time we had a meeting with him we ended up playing a game.”
Despite the years gone by, and even though he doesn’t think much about ‘ET the Extra-Terrestrial’, DeMeritt admits that every once in a while he sees something that reminds him of the movie and he realizes what he did and how great it was. “When it became a hit and the hype started it was nice for a while, but I didn’t let it change me”.
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After that he participated in some more science fiction films, such as ‘Cyborg 2: Crystal Shadow’, in which he also participated a very young Angelina Jolie, but his film career did not last much further. Matthew always says that he never had any illusions and that he is fine with remaining anonymous, because even in the credits of ‘ET the Extraterrestrial’ he does not appear as the alien, but as “ET Special Movement”. He ended up being an English teacher in Los Angeles, becoming fond of music and wheelchair basketball, and today, at 54 years old, He is married and has a stepson..
As a curiosity, DeMeritt is not the only “ET Special Move” in the credits. Tamara De Treaux and ‘Little Pat’ Bilon also played the Martian, actors with dwarfism and capable like him of getting under those strange shells. The character would end up associating with actress Pat Welsh, who gave her voice and engraved in our memory forever that endless “My caaasa. “Telephone”.
