50 Fun Facts About E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

E.T. builds his 'phone home' communicator around which toy?

Speak & Spell. Gertie's spelling toy becomes the keyboard of a transmitter cobbled together from a record player, a saw blade and other household junk.

Which animals does Elliott set free from his school science class in E.T.?

Frogs. The class is about to dissect them when Elliott lets them all loose, and the classmate he then kisses is Erika Eleniak, later of Baywatch.

Which candy is used to lure E.T. into the house?

Reese's Pieces. Mars refused to let M&M's appear, worried that E.T. would frighten children, so Hershey's new candy got the part and its sales soared.

Who played Elliott, the boy who befriends the alien, in E.T.?

Henry Thomas. After a flat reading, he improvised a scene pleading to keep E.T., crying real tears, and Spielberg hired him on the spot.

Which future star played Gertie, the little sister in E.T.?

Drew Barrymore. She first auditioned for Poltergeist, but Spielberg steered her to E.T. after the six-year-old spun him a tale about touring with her punk rock band.

Who wrote the screenplay for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial?

Melissa Mathison. Spielberg pitched her the idea on the Tunisian set of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and she delivered a first draft in under two months.

What was the title of the darker abandoned alien project that E.T. grew out of?

Night Skies. In that script hostile aliens besieged a farm family; Buddy, the one gentle alien left behind at the end, became the seed of E.T.

Which studio rejected E.T. as 'a wimpy Walt Disney movie'?

Columbia Pictures. Its research said only small children would come, but the handover deal left it 5% of the net profits, more than it made on any of its own 1982 films.

Which studio bought the E.T. script for $1 million after a rival turned it down?

Universal. Spielberg took the rejected project to Sid Sheinberg, president of the studio's parent company MCA, who bought it and left the rival a 5% share of the profits.

On Halloween, E.T. toddles after a trick-or-treater dressed as which film character?

Yoda. E.T. calls 'Home!' after him, a joke Spielberg slipped in using a costume he had not told George Lucas about.

Who designed E.T.'s animatronics?

Carlo Rambaldi. The Italian artist, who had built an alien for Close Encounters, made the $1.5 million puppet to Spielberg's brief: a creature only a mother could love.

E.T.'s eyes were modelled on poet Carl Sandburg, novelist Ernest Hemingway and which scientist?

Albert Einstein. Spielberg wanted eyes as wizened and sad as theirs, and had them made by a specialist in glass eyes from an eye institute.

How did Matthew DeMeritt, a boy born without legs, perform E.T.'s stumbles and falls?

Walking on his hands. He took the suit for scenes such as E.T.'s drunken tumble, sharing the role with two little people while a mime in prosthetic gloves supplied the hands.

Which actress friend of Spielberg read all of E.T.'s lines for a temporary soundtrack?

Debra Winger. Spielberg loved her low, husky voice, but most of the final lines came from Pat Welsh, a two-packs-a-day smoker the sound designer overheard in a camera shop.

Which star's scene as the school principal was cut from E.T.?

Harrison Ford. He played the principal who lectures Elliott, yet the camera never showed the star's face, and the whole scene was lifted out in the edit.

Under what cover name was E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial shot to keep the plot secret?

A Boy's Life. The working title hid the alien from anyone who might copy the plot, and it fitted: Spielberg based the lonely boy on his own childhood after his parents' divorce.

What was unusual about the sequence in which E.T. was filmed?

It was shot roughly chronologically. Spielberg reasoned that the farewell would hit harder if his young cast had lived the whole story first and were really saying goodbye.

E.T.'s forest scenes were shot among which towering trees near Crescent City, California?

Coast redwoods. The crew spent the last six days of the shoot in the forest in far northern California, after weeks on soundstages and suburban streets.

Which children's TV show helps E.T. pick up his first words of English?

Sesame Street. Gertie has it on while minding him, and as the show drills the letter B she coaches him into his first phrase: 'Be good.'

Which children's classic is Mary reading to Gertie while E.T. listens from the closet?

Peter Pan. She reads the scene where Tinker Bell drinks poison to save Peter, and critics have long compared E.T. himself to the boy who cannot stay.

What game do Michael and his friends play at the kitchen table in E.T.?

Dungeons & Dragons. The young actors kept playing it between takes, and a closing scene with Elliott now running the game himself was shot but cut.

Which comic strip inspires E.T. to build his communication device?

Buck Rogers. E.T. spots the spaceman calling for help in a newspaper strip, then holds the page up to Elliott and says 'Phone'.

Which 1952 film is E.T. watching on television when Elliott kisses a girl at school?

The Quiet Man. As John Wayne pulls Maureen O'Hara into a kiss on screen, Elliott, who feels what E.T. feels, grabs a classmate and does the same.

Home alone, E.T. gets Elliott drunk at school by raiding the fridge for what?

Beer. Elliott feels whatever E.T. feels, so as the alien works through a six-pack at home, the boy turns tipsy in the middle of science class.

What does E.T. revive as an early sign of his powers?

A pot of wilted flowers. The plant, a geranium in the script, droops as E.T. sickens and blooms again when he revives, and Gertie hands it to him as a farewell gift.

What is the name of the lead government agent played by Peter Coyote in E.T.?

Keys. For most of the film he is shown only from the waist down, known by the ring of keys clanking on his belt, and the credits name him after them.

Who plays Mary, the children's single mother, in E.T.?

Dee Wallace. Spielberg shot the other adults from the waist down for much of the film to keep a child's-eye view, and hers is the one grown-up face shown throughout.

Which actor played Tyler, one of Michael's bike-riding friends, in E.T.?

C. Thomas Howell. Ralph Macchio was also in the running for the part, and a year later the two ended up side by side as greasers in The Outsiders.

Who composed E.T.'s score, including the famous Flying Theme?

John Williams. When the finale would not sync with the orchestra, Spielberg told him to conduct it as pure music and then recut the film to fit the recording.

Which pop superstar narrated the E.T. storybook album in 1982?

Michael Jackson. Quincy Jones produced the storybook while the two were making Thriller, and it won Jackson a Grammy for best recording for children.

At which film festival did E.T. premiere as the closing-night film?

Cannes. A crowd known for snubbing Hollywood fare began clapping and stamping fifteen minutes before the end, and at first the film-makers thought it hated the film.

Which film did E.T. overtake in 1983 to become the highest-grossing film ever?

Star Wars. George Lucas's film had taken the record from Spielberg's own Jaws only a few years before, so E.T. won the title back for its director.

Spielberg broke his own E.T. box-office record with which later film?

Jurassic Park. It ended E.T.'s eleven-year reign in 1993, and Spielberg finished it by satellite link from Poland, where he was already shooting Schindler's List.

What does E.T.'s spaceship leave across the sky as it departs?

A rainbow. It arcs over the forest as the ship shrinks to a point of light, and the film ends on a close-up of Elliott's upturned face.

Which film beat E.T. to the Best Picture Oscar in 1983?

Gandhi's director Richard Attenborough said he was certain E.T. would and should have won.

Which Oscar did E.T. win?

Best Visual Effects. Nine nominations brought four wins, all for craft: effects, score, sound and sound effects editing, while the directing and writing prizes went elsewhere.

Which word does E.T. say, hand on his heart, as he leaves Elliott?

Ouch. E.T. picks the word up when Elliott cuts his finger, heals the wound with a glowing fingertip, and at their parting Elliott says it back.

Which honour did Spielberg receive when E.T. was screened at the United Nations in September 1982?

A UN Peace Medal. The film's plea for understanding had travelled far beyond cinemas by then, and it is also said to have left Princess Diana in tears.

Which Indian filmmaker claimed E.T. drew on his unproduced 1967 script The Alien?

Satyajit Ray. Copies of his script had circulated in Hollywood after a studio deal collapsed, but he chose not to take Spielberg to court.

What replaced the federal agents' guns in the 2002 Special Edition of E.T.?

Walkie-talkies. Spielberg had come to regret aiming guns at children on bikes, then regretted the digital swap too and went back to the 1982 cut for later releases.

Which word replaced 'terrorist' in Mary's line about Michael's costume in the 2002 cut of E.T.?

Hippie. The line was redubbed in the wake of the September 11 attacks, a swap one critic called implausible, and later releases went back to the 1982 dialogue.

Which animated show mocked the 2002 changes to E.T. in its episode 'Free Hat'?

South Park. In 'Free Hat' the boys try to stop Spielberg and George Lucas from digitally 'improving' Raiders of the Lost Ark the same way.

Where did Atari bury truckloads of unsold cartridges, E.T. among them, in 1983?

Alamogordo, New Mexico. Long written off as an urban legend, the landfill was dug up in 2014 and the crushed cartridges were really there.

About how long did programmer Howard Scott Warshaw have to make Atari's E.T. video game?

Five weeks. Atari wanted it in shops for Christmas 1982, when a game normally took six months or more, and the flop is often blamed for hastening the 1983 video game crash.

What title was proposed for the E.T. sequel that was outlined in 1982 but never made?

E.T. II: Nocturnal Fears. Evil aliens would have kidnapped Elliott and his friends, but Spielberg dropped it, feeling a sequel would only spoil the original.

The image of Elliott and E.T. cycling across the moon became the logo of which production company?

Amblin Entertainment. Spielberg's own company took the silhouette as its emblem, first showing it before Gremlins; the moon itself was filmed near the effects studio in California.

Members of E.T.'s species appear as background senators in which George Lucas film?

The Phantom Menace. A small delegation of E.T.'s kind sits in one of the floating pods of the Galactic Senate, a cameo George Lucas added as a nod to his friend's film.

Which company's 2019 holiday commercial reunited a grown-up Elliott with E.T.?

Xfinity. The cable brand's holiday advert brought back the actor who had played Elliott as a boy, 37 years after the original film.

What is the name of Elliott's family dog in E.T.?

Harvey. Elliott calls the name into the dark when he first hears something in the backyard, and the dog later tags along on the Halloween walk.

How does E.T. say goodbye on the E.T. Adventure ride?

By name. Riders give it to an attendant before boarding, it is stored on the pass they are handed, and a computer feeds each name to the animatronic E.T. for the farewell.