Many will remember Et the extraterrestrialthe science fiction film that went down in history to immortalize a small alien and to lock its director, Steven Spielbergwho nevertheless had other plans for him. As one of the actresses of the film has revealed more than forty years later, the original script of the film had a detail that the film would have made very different, although finally the case was not given.
Dee Wallace, who played the mother of Elliot (Henry Thomas) In the 1982 film, he has told the podcast Still Here Hollywood That there was a secondary plot that involved his character, Mary, in a direct relationship with the alien that gave name to the film. “There is a whole story B in E.T., About ET having a love relationship with Mary, an arrow with Mary. And there are little pieces of that“, The actress revealed, adding that she had to be the one who put a spielberg brake so as not that this strange aspect did not enter the film.
“There was a scene where I came to put some sweets Reese’s on my bedside table while I am asleep. Well, Spielberg wanted the sheet a little below what I felt comfortable”, Confesses Wallace so much later. Confronting the director of Schindler’s listthe actress assured her that “it was a family film”, which E.T. He was “very pure” in his eyes, and that he felt that somehow the film should reflect it. We will never know how the film would have been with that change, but what was the final result.
-Finally, Wallace went to the screenwriter of Melissa Mathison -Who would return to work with Spielberg in My friend the giant– Already the producer Kathleen Kennedy -Usual producer of the director and since the main years responsible for the saga Star Wars– To help you find a solution for the scene. “We arrived at an agreement and I raised the sheet almost to the shoulder blades, which seemed good to me,” recalls Wallace, who with this revelation has revealed Spielberg’s real intentions with the film.
There are those who have related this revelation to the form of the director of Pentagon files to approach parental figures, especially parents. The premiere of The Fabelman, The film freely based on the filmmaker’s life served for many to know the complicated relationship of the young Spielberg with his parents, and how the separation of these marked him forever.
Since then, his cinema has been marked by the figure of the absent father, as seen in Et the extraterrestrial. No one knows if the director intended that the alien exercised as “stepfather” of Elliot, as if it has happened with other characters in his cinema, but it would have been the strangest to see for the spectators, who finally found a much more pure and innocent version.
