22/09/2025
On this date in 1983, at the 55th Academy Awards, "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" (1982), nominated for nine Oscars, took home four.
Steven Spielberg is said to have gotten the idea for the film from the end of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977) when the aliens show up. Spielberg wondered what would happen if one of those aliens was stuck on Earth. He began to develop a darker project he had planned with John Sayles called "Night Skies," in which malevolent aliens terrorize a family. Filming "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981) in Tunisia caused a sense of loneliness in Spielberg, far from his family and friends, and made memories of his childhood creation resurface. He told screenwriter Melissa Mathison about "Night Skies," and developed a subplot from the failed project in which Buddy, the only friendly alien, befriends an autistic child. Buddy's abandonment on Earth in the script's final scene inspired the concept of "E.T."
The doctors and nurses who work on E.T. were all real emergency room technicians from the USC Medical Center. They were told to treat E.T. the same way they would treat a real patient, so that their dialogue and actions would seem real. Spielberg felt that actors wouldn't be able to make the medical dialogue sound natural so he recruited them to deliver the lines.
Richard Attenborough later said that he felt bad that his own film, "Gandhi" (1982), beat this film to the Best Picture Academy Award because he considered his friend Spielberg's film more deserving of the award, and was convinced before the ceremony that it would win. Attenborough described "E.T." as "a quite extraordinary piece of cinema." He ended up working with Spielberg on "Jurassic Park" (1993) and "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" (1997).
A couple of years after the original theatrical release, Spielberg was looking to buy a new house. When he found one he liked and agreed to buy it, he received a phone call a few days later from one of the executives at Universal Studios saying the board has bought it for him as a present. When Spielberg asked why they did this for him the executive replied "As a thank-you for making 'E.T.' That film took more money in Bolivia alone than the house cost us to buy for you.". (IMDb/Wikipedia)
