E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (w/ Melvin Benson)

Eli Price (00:03.722)
Hello and welcome to the establishing shot a podcast where we do deep dives into directors and their filmographies I am your host Eli Price and we are here on episode 46 of the podcast Getting deeper into our early Spielberg Series and so we're gonna be covering ET today ET the extraterrestrial. I guess I should say the full name

And so, yeah, the full Christian name, ET, the extraterrestrial. That's great. Yeah, I'm excited. It's going to be a fun episode today. I am joined by our first time guest. I'm excited to have him on. Melvin Benson is the host of another film podcast called Cinematic Doctrine.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (00:33.626)
The full Christian name.

Eli Price (01:00.822)
And, uh, I, um, I've listened to the podcast on and off, uh, since it started back in, I think 2019 is that when it started Melvin? Yeah. And so, um, yeah, I've, I've listened on and off since then really enjoy, um, what you're doing over there. Uh, do you want to share a little bit about yourself and maybe, um, your podcast and why, maybe.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:10.902)
Roughly, yeah, early 2019, yeah.

Eli Price (01:28.606)
what your goal is for cinematic doctrine. What do you do?

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:32.566)
Yeah, what's my deal? Like, cinematic doctrine, I kind of just started out of like, it was almost like a self-necessity in the sense of, I wanted to do something creative that was a bit more than just, just a bit more. Like, it requires some learning some new skills. So getting better at public speaking, getting better at like really...

Eli Price (01:34.959)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:58.73)
collecting my thoughts and disseminating them in an informative way. Uh, so there's just a whole lot in podcasting that kind of offered that as well as things like editing and, uh, content writing, cause your show notes are no joke, you have to do a lot of prep and try to make it sensible. Um, and all that I just was like attracted to. And then in addition to that, I already liked film a lot. I was using letterbox for since about 2015, 2016.

Eli Price (02:12.318)
Yes.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:27.694)
And I was just always posting prior to that. I watched a lot of anime. So I was on my anime list since probably like 2009. Um, and so I had just kind of always been pushing some form of my opinion as far as it regards to film and storytelling out there. And so I just decided, all right, I'm going to set like a date. I'm going to do three months of doing this podcast.

If I don't like it after the third month, I'm going to stop. Um, but if I do like it, then I'm going to continue and I'll get to continue with three months in my backlog of like growing and training. And yeah, after the third month, I was like, Oh, this is great. Like I really enjoy doing this. It's fun. Uh, the grind is kind of nice of just like figuring out like what movie I'm going to do next, how I'm going to talk about it. I had really interesting experiences, like one of my early episodes. Uh, so one of the.

Eli Price (03:14.507)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (03:24.37)
I would read a lot about like what were practices that were helpful to get people to tune in again. So one of them was at the end of your episode, say what your next episode is because it'll get people to go, Oh, I really want to come back for that. And so I was like, Hey, come on back next week. We're going to do hell boy 2019. I'm going to theaters. Check it out. I'll let you know what I think. Hated the movie traumatized me, uh, notorious deep lore of the podcast is that I, I felt hurt by the film. Cause it was just so violent. I like violent movies. I think they're fun.

Eli Price (03:29.398)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (03:36.34)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (03:53.394)
I think they have value, but this one I thought was mean. So I left the film like audibly physically upset. And so I put an episode out about that about two to three episodes after that. I would stop saying what I was going to do next because I didn't want to lock myself into something that I didn't want to talk about or watch. I wanted to be able to turn it off. So yeah, it was awful experience. I hate that the episode is still good. I hated that movie.

Eli Price (03:56.919)
Mm.

Eli Price (04:15.582)
Yeah. I actually remember that. Yeah. I remember that. I remember listening to that episode. Uh, now that you say that. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (04:24.03)
Yeah, it's got to be like episode 11 or something. So it was after I decided let's keep doing this. Maybe if I did that earlier, I would have stopped. But very different story. But yeah, since then I've been doing an episode a week. Uh, there's a couple of periods of downtime. Um, it became kind of a routine thing that January, something would go wrong. So now I've just decided January is my month where we take a break. And, uh, then sometime in the summer, this break, but roughly.

Eli Price (04:32.514)
I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (04:51.926)
You can expect about 45 episodes a year from the cinematic doctrine podcast, varying types, uh, cause you have movie discussions where we do, uh, probably a more laid back version of what you do here, but still is very much like, here's some interesting insight that the film, uh, how did we perceive it? How do we observe it in the world? Uh, we do party pleasers, which are much more like other film podcasts, like the flop house or no such thing as a good movie podcast, or no such thing as a bad movie podcast.

Eli Price (05:04.158)
Mm.

Eli Price (05:19.606)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (05:21.45)
Where you describe the film from beginning to end and you're joking about it the whole time, and then at the end you decide, was this a party pleaser or party pooper? Um, so it's, I think those ones are a lot of fun because it lets us open up the door to watch other weird bad movies, honestly, but just because it's bad, doesn't mean it's not fun. So, uh, there's a lot of, I think really good episodes for that. And then we have let's talks, which are a little more, um, topic. They're very, not a little more. They're very topical. They're very much like.

Eli Price (05:35.218)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (05:50.41)
Conversational essays, somebody who's in the episode brings forth like a topic, why they feel that way. And then some movies as examples, the last episode being, I think, or one of the last ones, and the one that I enjoyed the most was our skin, a meringue one from last summer. Um, I proposed where like a lot of that fascination for that film came from. And then we talked about a couple other internet horror, um, not themed because if skin, a meringue is an internet horror, but if you watch it, it is.

Eli Price (06:18.463)
Right.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (06:19.318)
very much from the internet. And so, yeah, we have a lot of stuff like that. I think it's a good show, but I make it. So I'm biased. Ha ha ha.

Eli Price (06:21.363)
Yeah.

Eli Price (06:25.67)
Yeah, I enjoy it. I enjoy it and, uh, and I don't make it. So, um, yeah, um, yeah, I, I did enjoy it. It's gonna ring. So I don't know. I think I listened. I don't remember if I listened to that episode. I'll have to go back and see, um, if I did, uh, yeah, another one, another internet horror that was recent. Um, well, like.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (06:32.796)
That's good. Yeah.

Eli Price (06:52.862)
It's hard to say a movie that actually like releases on streaming is an internet horror, but in the same like in that same sort of feel or atmosphere was, We're All Going to the World's Fair. Did you see that one? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Cool.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (07:03.906)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yes. Yeah. We actually talk about that in that same episode. Yeah, I thought it would be so interesting to just do like types of them. So the first one is host in that episode, because that's like a popcorn Internet horror where people do a seance on a Zoom call and then they all get, you know, attacked. And then, yeah, we're all going to the World Fair, which is just the psychological, like sad film. It's it's amazing. And then, yeah.

Eli Price (07:15.052)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (07:20.861)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Eli Price (07:27.327)
Yeah.

Eli Price (07:31.822)
Mm-hmm. Just getting my rink. Yeah. It's so atmospheric too. It's like, yeah. Really good. Yeah. Very cool. I enjoy Cinematic Doctrine. You should go check it out for sure. By the time this episode is coming out, I'll probably, it'll probably be

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (07:33.818)
Skinner Mournk was like I thought just the perfect one to end on for that. So

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (07:42.355)
It's brutal. But if you don't connect with it, it sucks. So, oh man. Yeah, very divisive movie.

Eli Price (08:01.402)
out on your feet already, but I did join Melvin. We already recorded it, an episode covering Howl's Moving Castle for Anna May, and it will come out in May. So, yeah, it was a fun, fun discussion. So maybe that's your bridge from the establishing shot to cinematic jock train. Go listen to a familiar voice talk with Melvin about

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (08:03.842)
Possibly.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (08:14.186)
Yeah. And it was good. People got to tune into it.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (08:25.954)
Do it.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (08:29.826)
Feel safe.

Eli Price (08:30.654)
a great Miyazaki movie and yeah, then just keep listening to Cinematic Doctrine, you know, after that. Yeah, we are in a Spielberg series, so I always like to ask my guests what their introduction to our director was. Do you remember your first Spielberg movie?

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (08:55.918)
Gosh, I actually think my first Spielberg movie that I can remember is watching Saving Private Ryan. I remember being big into war movies growing up. I really enjoyed watching them with my dad. He was military and he obviously was super into war movies too. I mean, not obviously, not every military guy likes them, but a lot of them do. And...

Eli Price (09:04.681)
Okay.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (09:19.974)
So we were watching and I think I was playing like Call of Duty at the time. So it's like, and that and Call of Duty at the time was constantly in World War Two. So Saving Private Ryan, it was probably the first one and obviously a great movie. I do believe I actually watched it after having seen Banda Brothers. So I was already like familiar with the style, but for me, I went backwards because I know Banda Brothers and the Pacific really took their aesthetic from.

Eli Price (09:24.351)
Yeah.

Eli Price (09:37.048)
Hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (09:48.386)
from Saving Private Ryan, obviously a great movie. Very, very emotional, very powerful. It's challenging to its audience in every way. And then also just really good filmmaking. Yeah, just a gnarly film. Probably should not have, in theory should not have, because who knows what should even means anymore when people throw it around. But I definitely watched it at a very young age. Didn't affect me as much, or at least, I don't know, I thought I turned out fine.

Eli Price (09:57.183)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (10:15.586)
Um, what I think is most interesting though for me with Steven Spielberg is apart from Saving Private Ryan, I do believe every other movie I've seen of his I've seen for the first time in theaters. Uh, I had not, I had not seen Jaws except for, yeah, I had not seen Jaws until it was in theaters. Um, I went with my family. We got tickets to see it at like a, uh, re-screening at an independent theater.

Eli Price (10:34.295)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (10:40.19)
Obviously a great movie, really great to watch. And that, that one's excellent in theaters. If, if someone listening hasn't seen it there, uh, take a barf bag, you may get seasick and I'm not even kidding. It's very transport transportive. It takes you there, uh, when you're on the boat. Uh, and then I, it's great. I mean, every time people clap at the end, it's great. Um, I then saw ET in theaters for the first time when it did the re-screening a couple of years ago.

Eli Price (10:40.322)
Cool.

Eli Price (10:55.498)
Yeah, I'd love to see that in theaters.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (11:08.862)
Uh, cause I hadn't seen it yet and obviously it was great. Um, and then I was talking to my wife and she's like, you haven't seen Jurassic park. I'm like, no, I haven't seen it yet. And I was like, I think I'm going to wait though, until I see it's got a screening in theaters to keep this trend going. And then my wife, without telling me because she's the greatest for my birthday, rented out a movie theater to show me Jurassic park with all my friends. So that's where I saw that. That was a great time too. Um.

Eli Price (11:24.448)
Yeah.

Eli Price (11:33.078)
That's awesome.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (11:38.118)
So I want to. It's crazy.

Eli Price (11:39.11)
I have seen Jurassic Park in theaters because it was during like still like in COVID, but starting to like open stuff up. A lot of theaters were doing like, hey, you know, rent out for this much money the theater, we have some movie options and some friends of ours, like you can bring so many people that were like where you could space for COVID. And so they like invited.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (11:49.506)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (12:07.906)
There, there was probably like maybe 30 of us in a big theater. Uh, and they chose Jurassic park. And so that was really cool. Yeah. To go see Jurassic park.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (12:12.322)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (12:15.63)
Good pick. Yeah. If it feels great to watch, um, yeah, his movies, all three of those, seeing those in theaters was a great time. Um, but I know there's a lot of other material that is in his, you know, his wheelhouse that I haven't seen that really go beyond the less fantastical. Um, honestly out of the, oh, and I've seen close encounters in theaters. Um, I, I feel like ET is in my opinion, a better close encounters. I'm sure we'll talk about that as we continue.

Eli Price (12:30.945)
Yeah.

Eli Price (12:38.763)
Very cool.

Eli Price (12:45.097)
Yeah, for sure.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (12:45.67)
Um, but, uh, cause they have very similar, similar themes going on, but, but yeah, I saw that in theaters too, a good experience in theaters, didn't much care for the movie, but yeah, his, his stuff works on the big screen. So that to me is like, that's the memory I'll continue with going forward is just that his, his power over the screen, the silver screen is so palpable. Um, and so it just makes me want to see them in theaters all the time.

Eli Price (12:59.049)
Oh yeah.

Eli Price (13:07.618)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (13:13.254)
Yeah, that's really cool. I wish I've seen like more of his in theaters. I know I saw, I think I probably shared on the podcast that I remember seeing War of the Worlds for my birthday like with some friends when it came out. Because you know it's summer blockbuster, I have a summer birthday so it just kind of works out.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (13:32.235)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (13:39.254)
Perfect.

Eli Price (13:41.594)
And so I remember that and then, yeah, I saw Jurassic Park and theaters, but I don't know if I've seen like a ton of his others in theaters. It's, um, I mean, really like, I know I saw, um, I mean, I saw the fabled men's and West side story, his most recent ones, um, because I've in more recent years, like really tried to.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (14:04.204)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (14:08.21)
see big movies like that in theaters when I can. I think it's already player one in theaters too. Um, yeah, I would love to see just more of his in theaters. Um, I bet next year, Jaws is hitting 50 years next year. So I bet they, they put it back in theaters for the 50th anniversary. So I'm going to like, whenever I see that I'm marking it on my calendar and making sure I'm there because. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (14:10.722)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (14:19.618)
They're man, they're powerful.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (14:26.978)
They have to. They got it.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (14:35.458)
getting out there. Yeah. If anyone listening, you live near independent theaters or, or art houses, just check your listings. Cause like they'll screen these films. These are like the quote unquote blockbusters of those because ever whenever I saw Jaws and theater, I've seen it a couple of times. It's packed. Everybody's trying to see that movie at theaters. And so they, they definitely play flicks like that a lot. So

Eli Price (14:46.205)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (14:54.079)
Yeah.

Eli Price (15:00.102)
Yeah, our theater does like, I forget what they there's like a name for it. But they, they regularly like every Sunday and Wednesday, they're showing like an old movie. Um, and so, yeah, I got to take my son to see the land before time in theaters. Um, uh, like a month or two ago. Um, and that was so fun, uh, which Spielberg produced. So, um, related, uh,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (15:12.526)
Cool. That's neat.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (15:19.982)
Cool, yeah.

Eli Price (15:29.842)
somewhat to the podcast, I guess. Um, but yeah, it's, I'm definitely jealous that you got to see ET in theaters. Um, but that is going to be our, our topic of discussion for today. ET the extraterrestrial. I have, uh, I have my son, he has the little people, uh, like, what is it? Is that his little people Fisher price? I don't know. Um, but

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (15:30.53)
That's cool.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (15:39.596)
Feel it. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (15:56.622)
I'm not quite sure.

Eli Price (15:58.706)
If you're watching on YouTube, you can see the little Elliot, a little, uh, ET up here, kind of beside my head. Uh, they're hanging out. He let me borrow them for the podcast. Um, and so, uh, they're going to hang out with us while we, we talk about, uh, I just have really great film. Uh, but let's take it back to the beginning. Um, in, uh, 1978.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (16:04.014)
Mmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (16:19.242)
Yes, yes.

Eli Price (16:26.13)
Uh, obviously great filmmakers like Spielberg are always like churning ideas around in their head and Spielberg was thinking about an old, older idea he had, uh, for a movie called growing up, uh, about divorce from a child's perspective, rolling that around in his head, um, doesn't do anything with it then, uh, but we will get back to that. Uh, he, you know, of course he's making close encounters, uh,

Well, he was making Close Encounters, probably transitioning into 1941 at that time, then gets Raiders. So he really just like is pumping out movies during this time. It's really crazy.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (17:11.27)
Yes, I remember seeing something that was like his early films. They're like one or two years after each other. He kind of. Yes, which is smart. That's called diversification. Definitely do it if you can.

Eli Price (17:17.994)
Yeah, and he's producing stuff too.

Eli Price (17:26.266)
Yeah, which, um, uh, poltergeist, uh, was released. I want to say the week before or the week, I think the week before ET. And, um, there's a lot of like speculation as to like, was Spielberg like secretly directing the poltergeist. Um, which, um, I might talk a little bit, uh, about that and, um, as a little, little extra

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (17:44.842)
Yes, I remember hearing that. Yeah.

Eli Price (17:53.698)
to maybe the next episode. I might kind of just do a short little talk on that for context, but yes, I mean, he's producing, he's like half directing apparently movies and he co-wrote Poltergeist. He started Amblin Pictures in, or I think Amblin Pictures is the name of the production company.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (18:10.559)
busy

Eli Price (18:23.166)
Um, but he Amblin entertainment, that sounds right. Amblin entertainment. Um, he started that in, uh, 81 with, uh, Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy. So he has a production company, um, that he's, you know, coat has co-founded. And, um, I'm sure reading a lot of scripts that come through that. Just a really busy dude. Um, but in 1978.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (18:23.845)
Pictures or entertainment? I can't remember.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (18:49.174)
Yes.

Eli Price (18:52.598)
Columbia came to Spielberg. They wanted to do a close encounter sequel. And he's like, no, I don't wanna do a close encounter sequel, but maybe I can do a movie that has a less friendly alien invasion. And so they're like, cool. He had remembered this old story that Alan Heineck had talked to him about.

Um, Alan Heineck was a, he was one of the like, um, advisors for close encounters. He was a UFO ufologist, which is someone that is like an expert on UFO encounters. Oh, which is kind of strange, but really cool. Um, and, uh, he had told a spoolbill about this, uh, incident in Kentucky in 1955, where this farm was apparently invaded by these like human humanoid.

creatures less than three feet tall, sending cows everywhere and bringing some chaos to this rural Kentucky area. Yeah. Um, and so he, he was inspired by that story. He's like, Oh, maybe I can do a, um, not so friendly alien invasion this time. He, um, brings on John sales, um, who, um, has written some, some good movies, uh, Kathleen Kennedy, um, who produced ET.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (19:57.73)
This is critters.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (20:19.671)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (20:19.706)
uh, co-founder of Amblin with, with Spielberg. Um, she had seen, uh, the return of the Secaucus seven written by cells. And it's like, let's bring this guy in. Really enjoyed the writing on that movie. Um, they, they start a movie called night skies. Um, sales writes a script for it. They bring in this guy, Rick Baker, um, who is a designer to design the aliens. And, um,

So they're getting to work on Night Skies, and when Spielberg gets the script in 1980, while he's working on Raiders, he kind of realizes, man, I'm just not in the mindset to make something so violent.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (21:00.878)
Yeah. So that's something so interesting about his early like. I just I think of like, OK, Jaws, right? Like King of Horror turns. It's debatably horror because people, you know, it's a real animal. So people are like, oh, it's not hard. It's a horror movie. It's really scary. Yeah, it's just it's. And the shark is basically like on GMOs or something. He's taken.

Eli Price (21:10.943)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (21:19.423)
Yeah, it's a creature feature.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (21:28.398)
creatine powder every day before he eats more people. He's huge. Um, so that's a, that's a horrible, it's a monster. Yeah. Um, yeah, he's got that, but then like, he's got this streamline of like accessible films and even Jurassic park is pseudo horror, but also still like family accessible. I'm almost curious, like then what it was about that project he turned down. That might've been just like, I don't want to do a violent movie. Cause even his violent movies still feel.

Eli Price (21:28.496)
Yeah.

Eli Price (21:42.348)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (21:58.478)
grounded. They feel like documentaries. They don't, I don't know. So I'm curious.

Eli Price (21:59.826)
Yeah, sure. They're, yeah. Like, I mean, you think of his more like grounded movies that are maybe more violent and a lot of times they're like, very interested in like exploring something in history, like this happened in history, what does it mean? Um, uh, a lot, not all of them, but a lot of them are that way. Um, yeah, I think so what.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (22:15.531)
Yes, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (22:28.498)
I think that's a good, good question. And I think there is some insight if you do the research into that. One of the things, um, I wrote this quote down from Spielberg. He, he was talking about aliens and why would aliens come? Because, uh, we talked about in the close encounters episode that Spielberg was like actually really into UFOs and aliens and was like, maybe there's, you know, something to all this. Uh, he, he was just like really intrigued by it all. And so it's definitely.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (22:54.254)
cute.

Eli Price (22:57.374)
not just something he did to make entertainment. He was like thinking about this apparently. And this quote, he says, quote, I thought they would come, the aliens that is, I thought they would come here to either observe at a distance or to interact in some kind of healthy way, unquote. And so he's just like, he gets the script and he's been thinking about aliens apparently. He's like, I just like, I just can't get on board with this vision of an alien invasion.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (23:19.696)
Mm-hmm

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (23:24.394)
Yeah.

Eli Price (23:25.706)
Um, even though I thought I wanted to make this, I'm changing my mind. Um, and, uh,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (23:31.25)
I wonder if what some of those ideas then came back when he did, or the worlds then, because yeah.

Eli Price (23:35.366)
Yeah, I think maybe it was some of that and maybe also some of like, maybe he had heard some like people being like, Spielberg, he can't make a violent alien movie and he's like, oh yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (23:52.109)
Yeah, exactly. Plus, I don't even know if place Columbia being like make a sequel to Close Encounters. Why? There's barely a plot in the movie. And I don't mention that as part of my criticism. It's just like, what would the sequel even be like? Where you would go.

Eli Price (23:59.442)
Yeah.

Eli Price (24:06.066)
Yeah. Uh-huh. That's probably why Spielberg was like, no, let's not. Um, yeah, he, I mean, he's not. Typical. I mean, he has a huge filmography and so he's not really a sequel guy. Like Indiana Jones movies are like Lucas's baby. Um, like Spielberg directs them and he's like super involved in them, but like they're not his like baby. Those are like Lucas's.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (24:12.03)
Yeah, what's the point?

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (24:20.589)
Yes.

Eli Price (24:36.03)
like child project there. Yeah. And so like, he's just not really a sequels guy. Um, and so, um, another thing that going back to the growing up, he had still been rattling that around in his mind. And so he was, he had just, he was coming out of doing Raiders of the Lost Ark, uh, a loud movie away from home for a long time. Um, and, uh, he just wanted something quieter.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (24:37.454)
thing. Yeah.

Eli Price (25:03.786)
something that made him feel closer to home because he had been away for a long time. Still was thinking about this growing up project about divorce. And also like he still had rattling around in his head this idea when he finished Close Encounters of like what if like the alien stayed, like what would happen? And so it's just like this like crashing in of all these like ideas and feelings he was having.

And yeah, he decides, okay, I'm scrapping night skies. I'm thinking about like maybe marrying some of these ideas and feelings I'm having into a different kind of alien movie. So on the set of Raiders, he meets Melissa Matheson, who was then Harrison Ford's girlfriend and his future wife. And he got to talking with her. She had worked.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (25:47.841)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (26:02.11)
Uh on the sets of the godfather part two and apocalypse now Um, she had tried her hand at writing. Um, spillberg said that he remembers her telling him that she had like written some scripts Wasn't happy with most of them um I think she had like one that was actually made into a movie. Um And was like, uh, I don't spill was like well, maybe you can write this movie with me and she's like no And but they keep

They keep pressing her and finally she relents. And, um, I think I even read somewhere that like he got Harrison Ford to like really press her for him. Um, uh, but yeah, uh, so he gives her the night sky script. I get, I assume. Um, and she really connects with this one idea that was in that script, which is that, um, there's like this one alien.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (26:41.324)
the

Eli Price (26:58.674)
amongst, I guess, all these violent ones that has this benevolent bond with an autistic kid. And so I think he, I guess they dropped the autism part and just kept the kid. And but yeah, that was kind of the one thing she connected with from that script. And so they kind of move forward with that idea.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (27:05.985)
interesting.

Eli Price (27:28.158)
You know, he's thinking about a divorce story from the perspective of a child. And this is a movie. This idea is about a child and alien bonding. So there's something there to work with. Um, so he, yeah, completely abandoned his night skies. Um, he, uh, allocates like portions of the ideas that were in there into a little bit into ET as we just said.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (27:33.003)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (27:55.474)
A little bit into Poltergeist, a little bit into Gremlins. So yeah, not totally wasted ideas there. They just end up in movies that he produces mostly and not in movies he directs.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (28:03.688)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (28:11.35)
Well, he makes instead of one probably good movie, he makes several other very good movies. So I'm okay with that. Love me some gremlins.

Eli Price (28:15.458)
Yeah, yes, absolutely. Yeah, I don't think I'll ever forget watching a gremlin explode in a microwave and a bunch of gremlins cackling while watching Snow White in a movie theater, which is one of my like all-time favorite images in movies, is gremlins watching Snow White.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (28:37.238)
Yeah

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (28:42.08)
Yeah.

Eli Price (28:45.238)
Just great stuff there.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (28:47.198)
Yeah. And then you get gremlins too. And it's like, holy cow, how do we do this better? This is amazing. Oh my gosh. That's so good. Please you have to. It's so good. It's like one of my favorite movies.

Eli Price (28:51.326)
I've never seen Gremlins 2. I need to catch up with that.

Eli Price (29:00.69)
That's great. Yeah, I always, I do like, in October, I just like hit horror movies hard. And so I'll make sure to get it on the list for this upcoming October. But yeah, so Matheson comes on the project. She starts writing in October of 1980. And the story goes that she writes a first draft and Spielberg's like, this is almost just ready to make right now.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (29:08.502)
Yes.

Yeah, that one's still funny.

Eli Price (29:30.666)
He loves the first draft. Um, they work on it back and forth about eight weeks. Um, not making like major adjustments, but just like little things here and there. He'll give her notes. She'll go back and work for a bit. Um, I always love reading about like how those collaborations work. Um, that creative process of like the back and forth is just really cool to me. Um, yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (29:47.277)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (29:52.994)
I think it's, in my observation, art like this is one of the only creative fields that really requires a lot of input. When you look at painting, it's usually singular. Literature is usually singular. And even literature becomes a group of people only when it's nonfiction because you're doing essays or something, or scientific.

Eli Price (29:59.777)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (30:04.946)
Yes.

Eli Price (30:18.338)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (30:22.606)
proofs or whatever. And so like film is so communal and the term director, not to demean the whole existence of your podcast, but the term of a director and their vision is just a means of making it easier almost for cataloging. But in reality, it's the team that comes together. But ultimately we do still adhere to the

Eli Price (30:29.362)
Yes.

Eli Price (30:36.222)
Hehehehe

Eli Price (30:45.746)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (30:50.954)
importance of the director because they do the yes and they do the no. They decide ultimately what to do, but, but it is such a, when it's a good director, they observe that it's a team effort. It requires so much involvement. And that's just, it's just unbelievably different to, to other ways of communicating.

Eli Price (30:54.014)
Yeah.

Eli Price (31:01.045)
Yeah.

Eli Price (31:08.51)
Yeah, I mean, music is probably the closest art form that's collaborative, but I mean, not anywhere near to the degree of filmmaking. It's just, I mean, just like stick around in a theater and watch the credits for the movie and see how many names pop up. It's, it's crazy. Yeah. And yeah, director is like, the director has, it's almost like,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (31:12.243)
Yeah, it has to be. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (31:18.883)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (31:25.99)
It's crazy.

Eli Price (31:39.106)
Well, for one thing, like you never see a good director be like, yes, this is all me. They, they're very like, they're very like ready to like, be like, I couldn't have made it without these people. Um, and so, you know, I don't know that I've ever seen a director do an interview where they were like, I, I am the sole like person responsible.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (31:46.202)
Yes, exactly.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (31:51.968)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (32:02.03)
I've definitely seen Ridley Scott say some wild stuff, so I think I've probably seen that, but whatever. I've got some good movies, he's fine.

Eli Price (32:05.642)
That's fair. That's fair. Yeah. But, um, but yeah, it's almost like though, the director kind of like, it's, it's that idea of like, creating like boundaries so that there can be more creative freedom. The director like creates all the boundaries. We're not, this is what we're not doing.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (32:27.434)
Yes.

Eli Price (32:32.074)
this is what we can do. And then there's some freedom within that for every, all the creative efforts to kind of like move around and like give input and have like back and forth and feedback and yeah. But the director like kind of sets the boundaries of all of that. It's a very like, it's a very person relationship driven job, which I don't.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (32:36.067)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (32:45.888)
Yeah.

Eli Price (33:01.994)
know that a lot of people realize, you know, the director really has to know how to talk to every kind of person and how to work with every kind of person because they're working with introverts and extroverts and tech people and actors and writers and they're just they're working with everyone. So yeah, that's why like when you have someone like Spielberg that's had such a prolific

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (33:11.395)
Yes.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (33:18.42)
Yeah.

Eli Price (33:31.03)
career. It's like, man, this guy is like tuned in to how to work well with people.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (33:38.434)
Gosh, especially even as early as Jaws, where like, I'm sure you covered this extensively, but just like, the nightmare of making that movie. It ultimately really is just like this film that showcases a man who, as decisions, were perpetually coming to his door. He had the...

Eli Price (33:41.79)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (33:51.529)
Yes.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (34:06.346)
the combination of luck and wisdom to make the decisions that ended up being helpful to the project. And ultimately that works out to his favor because it becomes a blockbuster film, the first of its kind, beaten out by Star Wars just a little bit later, but still. And in that way, like, gives him credence as a director like super early on. It's amazing. And obviously with this movie too, it's present as well.

Eli Price (34:11.358)
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Eli Price (34:21.228)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (34:24.866)
Thanks for watching.

Eli Price (34:31.303)
Yeah.

Eli Price (34:36.134)
Yeah, yeah, it's incredible. But one of the things with, you know. The so, you know, Spielberg is giving Spielberg is always like entwined in the storytelling, in the storytelling aspect, which so he's always like he doesn't have like a ton of writing credits, but he's always like in that process is what I've found so far.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (35:02.616)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (35:05.186)
through these, man, what movie are we on now? I'm trying to think, Duel, Sugarland, Jaws, Close Encounters, 1941 Raiders. So this is his seventh film, If You Count Duel, which was technically a TV movie. And so to this point, I've found that he's always really involved in that writing process.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (35:25.911)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (35:34.858)
But Matheson is like taking influences from other places too. You know, um, one of the things that I thought was really cool was she is obviously Harrison Ford's girlfriend. He had some sons at that time. And, um, so she was like asking them stuff and cause I mean, you're writing a script with kids as the main characters. And so, um, one of the things she said that I thought was cool was that there, some of, uh,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (35:52.727)
Hehe.

Eli Price (36:03.134)
his sons and their friends had given input on what powers an alien would have. And so, um, the main three that she got were like telepathy, telekinesis, and healing cuts and bruises because, you know, kids get cuts and bruises. Yeah. And, uh, and that's, so that's what you get with ET. He's, he's got those powers basically. Um, uh, so really cool. Like she's integrating these ideas that she's getting from those kids. Um,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (36:16.942)
because that's what they get. It's cute.

Eli Price (36:33.974)
And, um, you know, her and Spielberg both agree that adults aren't going to come in until the final act, um, which, which ends up being the case. Um, and then, uh, I love this quote from Matheson, uh, she's talking about how the alien is going to spend most of the time of the movie with kids. She says, quote, so when he went back to his planet, he would basically be reporting on a planet populated by children, which we thought was a kind of poetic idea. Unquote. And.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (36:40.834)
Good choice.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (37:02.998)
That's so sweet. Yeah, that's good.

Eli Price (37:04.198)
Yeah, I was like, oh, that's awesome. You know? Yeah. And so, and then like the other big thing that they kind of were working through while writing the script was this idea of Elliot as a kid being able to exercise like power over his own life. Like basically like him being able to make decisions for himself and not adults making the decisions for him.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (37:24.055)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (37:34.098)
In most adult movies, if there's kids, they, a lot of times they're not like making their own decisions. Um, but in this film, the kid's going to be the focus. So he needs to be able to exercise power over his own life, which I thought was like a pretty insightful way to go about like structuring the backbone of like the character. Um, the narrative and the character in the film.

Uh...

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (38:04.118)
Yeah, you figure like, there's like one of two options that usually happen. The kid is the focus and the parents get in the way, which doesn't really happen here in ET because D Wallace, I think that's her name. Uh, she's off, off with the other family fighting off critters. So she has to go do her thing. And then in other movies where it's from the adults and they have kids in them, the kids are only there as plot devices to get to make mistakes and are usually annoying. And

Eli Price (38:12.028)
Yeah, sure.

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Eli Price (38:31.486)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (38:34.482)
and poorly written. And so like there's always kids aren't written well, is really what it gets down to. And it's oftentimes just easier for an adult when writing children to treat them like they probably already treat children, which is I'm just gonna tell them what to do. And in this, I was thinking the same thing too, that like this film, people obviously call it a coming of age story because it's very much Elliot coming.

Eli Price (38:41.29)
Yeah.

Eli Price (38:52.211)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (39:02.318)
through his emotional experience with his father and also learning about connecting with other people because he's a kid, he doesn't know how to do that yet. But unfortunately, this horrible thing has happened, this traumatic event, and he's just gonna have to grow up in one particular area a little quicker. And he is, through ET's introduction, is able to do these things that are independent and...

Eli Price (39:08.139)
Right.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (39:31.826)
important and ultimately like not bad ideas. They're just they're just done with the tools with which he's permitted to have as a child. So that's a good that's a neat insight that they had.

Eli Price (39:35.007)
Yeah.

Eli Price (39:40.066)
Right. Yeah.

Eli Price (39:44.138)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, kind of the last few things with like the beginnings of this, I thought it was one thing that I thought was notable was that when they did scrap Night Skies, John Sales was like, okay, whatever. I wrote the script, they're scrapping it, who cares? But Rick Baker, who was designing these aliens, he was like furious, because he had done all this.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (40:10.27)
Yeah, I could get that.

Eli Price (40:10.99)
Alien design work, it was being wasted. He wasn't interested in the new project. Um, and so, um, he was mad. We'll, we'll talk more about him, uh, later on. Uh, and, and what becomes of that. Uh, but so he's not interested in coming on, uh, the new project. So they've got to get some other people designing. They bring on, um, an illustrator named Ed Vero. He drew the first like ET designs and then Carlo Rombaldi.

who had worked with Spielberg on the aliens for Close Encounters, brought him on as well. He did some design and concept work early on and stuck around to actually design ET. But yeah, and then, Columbia of course, felt a bit cheated on their alien invasion movie. They decided to keep, they weren't,

too sure about E.T. which is fair because as we'll talk about later on, yeah, well, that and kids movies just like weren't money makers during this time. 1982 is like a lull for Disney even around that time and kids movies just weren't making money. And so it's, you know, it's a Columbia pictures. They want to make money.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (41:14.415)
It's a weird movie.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (41:21.762)
Mmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (41:28.846)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (41:38.846)
Um, so they, they had two alien projects. They kept on, uh, star man, which is a John Carpenter, um, alien movie. And so they were like, we'll keep this one. It's more adult and gave Spielberg, um, the, the ability to go ahead and shop ET. So he takes it to, um, his mentor, Sid Sheinberg, um, one of his, uh, early, um, you know, one of the early guys in his corner of the ring.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (41:38.894)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (42:08.862)
um, head of universal studios. Um, and he likes the scripts. He likes the design and acquires ET and me, which is what it was called at the time for $1 million. Um, good investment as we'll find out. But, uh, but yeah, so, um, one thing I will say is Columbia might have, um, lost out somewhat on letting ET get away.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (42:21.334)
That's a good purchase. Yes. Oh, man.

Eli Price (42:38.646)
But, um, part of, uh, their deal that they struck was that they would get 5% of like the net profits, um, of ET. And so they, they probably made more from that 5% than they made on star man, like altogether. I would, I would bet, um, because you team may, I don't know that. I think star man was a fine movie and pretty well received. Um,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (42:54.89)
Yeah, possible. Oh man.

Eli Price (43:07.678)
I wasn't around back then and I haven't researched it, but from what I can tell as well received, but it, it's not going to, it did not make anywhere near as much money as ET.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (43:15.486)
No, it's nowhere near one of Carpenter's highest rated movies either. So it makes total sense. Yeah.

Eli Price (43:20.082)
Yeah. So, uh, yeah, you know, of course they have to cast the movie. Um, it's Spielberg's first like cast of like mostly kids and teens. Um, you know, he's had a kid character here and there in his past movies. Um, and, uh, you know, probably the most popular, the kid in

Eli Price (43:50.098)
all of his kids in movies. But yeah, so he's got to cast some kids. The first one, we'll skip Henry Thomas for now and go to Drew Barrymore, who was the first to be cast in the movie, as Gertie, the little sister. And man, like, what a knockout-like kid performance.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (44:17.39)
She's great. Yeah.

Eli Price (44:19.862)
Just like, I mean, there's a reason she had like a career later in life, which a lot of child actors don't, um, because she was actually really good. Um, she, she had originally actually auditioned for poltergeist, uh, for the little girl in that and, uh, Spielberg was like, I think actually you would be good for this other role. And so he, he cast her as a Gertie for ET instead.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (44:23.978)
Yes.

Eli Price (44:45.738)
And one of the reasons Spielberg was impressed with her was she had invented this life for herself, where she was a punk rocker that was touring the US with her band. They were just talking and she starts spitting out this invented life of a punk rocker. And he was like, oh, yeah, I can use that imagination for this for this ET movie. That's exactly what I need.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (45:11.47)
That's great.

Eli Price (45:14.266)
And so, um, she had been, uh, in a film in 80 called altered states, which I have not seen. Um, so it wasn't her first movie, but, um, but pretty, I mean, I think she was six. Uh, five or six during the, the filming of this movie. Um, so. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (45:30.206)
Yeah, she looks super young for I mean, I don't even think I've seen a movie recently with a child cast that young, let alone like it's crazy.

Eli Price (45:38.686)
Yeah.

Yeah, not at least not like in a major role. Um, for sure. Yeah. And my son is five currently and I just like can't imagine him. Like being on set every day, like being able to like concentrate and yeah, it's, um, yeah, definitely like impressive. Um, and, uh, I love like, so in the special features for like, for the ET

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (45:44.554)
No, no.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (45:55.39)
All those lights. Yeah.

Eli Price (46:11.314)
Um, there's a lot of like really fun, like footage of the kids, like behind the scenes and then also like them older kind of thinking back on making ET. So all of that stuff is like really interesting and fun to listen to. One of the things, um, that she had talked about was like just loving that there were other kids to play with on set. Um, which has gotta be great. Like it's something you don't think about for child actors, but

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (46:21.208)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (46:35.502)
That's cool.

Eli Price (46:41.034)
It's gotta be like super boring on most movies they get cast in. You're just, yeah, your work, yeah, you're, I mean, you're working and then like there's no other, most movies are like, don't have very many kids in them. And so you don't have anyone to play with in between like shooting. Um, but this movie, you've got some friends to play with, um, in between shooting really, so really cool environment. They did of course have to do school, but you know, that's part of it.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (46:45.014)
Yeah, they're working. Yeah, that's boring.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (46:53.678)
No.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (46:58.7)
Mm-mm.

Eli Price (47:09.574)
But yeah, Henry Thomas, it took them six months to find the actor for Elliot, played by Henry Thomas. Jack Fisk was a director for a movie called Raggedy Man that Henry Thomas was in and suggested that Spielberg cast him. So he was 10 years old. They brought him in for an audition. Spielberg doesn't give him a script. He just kind of gives him some like, hey, this is the...

scene, this is what's going on, this is what you need to do, and then kind of let them just kind of improv with some dialogue back and forth. And it's basically like a scene where the government is taking ET away sort of thing. And one of the bonus features, you can watch his audition tape and it is actually like incredible.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (48:04.47)
Wow, that's so cool.

Eli Price (48:05.002)
Like I actually got a little bit teary eyed just from his audition. Um, he's like, he's like crying in his audition. Um, and, uh, and he like, like you can't take them. You can't take them, uh, like crying. And I'm just like, Oh geez, I'm getting emotional just watching this kid audition. Um, and so yeah, he, so he ends, he's like wiping his, his like tears.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (48:09.846)
Hehehe

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (48:24.363)
Holy cow.

Eli Price (48:32.382)
Um, and you can hear Spielberg in the background go, okay, kid, you got the job. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (48:38.686)
Yeah, well, that's wild. I one of the one of the things about the movie, too, is that like he is like he is the movie. Yeah, but like he's the movie and he is doing things that many actors have difficulty with just in general. And part of this might be that because he's already I mean, to the point that he was recommended by another director.

Eli Price (48:42.943)
Yeah.

Eli Price (48:51.251)
Yeah.

Eli Price (49:06.955)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (49:07.37)
He is already a, let's call it like he's already been in the field long enough as a being to feel comfortable there so that what I often bring up in episodes sometimes is that actors have to let go of ego. They have to let go of the fact that like, when you do something silly, mean, or embarrassing, it's not you anymore, it's the character. And if you can separate that, then you can do it.

Eli Price (49:33.687)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (49:36.202)
And you often find there's directors who do this perfectly. Jake Gyllenhaal is pretty much like the current staple of that, where like, it doesn't matter what role he's in, he's always perfect. He's basically the only reason to watch that second Spider-Man movie for the Marvel series, um, cause that movie, I, I remember rewatching it thinking like, man, I just not having this much fun. Um, but, but he's great. Um, but then.

Eli Price (49:50.635)
Yes.

Eli Price (49:58.582)
same.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (50:01.758)
You don't have just like that let going of ego, of which Henry Thomas does here, where like, he's doing things that are like very dramatic and strong, but then, and vulnerable. And then he's doing it, not even acting with someone, because he's acting against something that's not real. It's a puppet. And so like, he has to like fully believe and invest into the scene in a way that

Eli Price (50:09.922)
Hmm. And vulnerable to.

Eli Price (50:20.359)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (50:31.33)
I wonder if at the time he had awareness to know how he was doing it. Um, just because I know some adults even have difficulty understanding how they're doing the things they're good at other than just, I don't know, I can just do it. So it's, it's amazing. And like you said, even in the audition tape, whenever he's selling it, I mean, it is moving, it is moving. It's crazy.

Eli Price (50:36.064)
Yeah.

Eli Price (50:42.335)
Yeah.

Eli Price (50:52.37)
Yeah, it was. It really was. Yeah. I don't know if you can find that on YouTube, but if you're listening, like pause and go like search on YouTube like Henry Thomas ET Audition and see if you can you can find it. But if not, it's on one of the special features on the on the Blu-ray. Yeah, it's really incredible. There are, there were like two things that Henry Thomas did not want to do.

was not interested in doing, but had to do anyway. One of them was, uh, it's really funny watching him older talk about how, uh, embarrassed he was to say the line penis breath. Um, he like, he was like, I just remember like feeling like really embarrassed and I didn't want to say it. Um, and, uh, and Melissa Matheson was like, that's the line. You've got to say it. And, uh,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (51:32.662)
Well, yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (51:48.374)
wrote this line. My script is perfect.

Eli Price (51:48.922)
Yeah, I wrote this line. You've got to say it. Which is that was something she, that was something she said, working with, because she worked also as an assistant producer, kind of like, she did a lot of work with the kids and rehearsing with them. And she would be like, the kids would be, would be telling me like, oh, like, what if we do this instead? And she, you know, she, she worked with some of that, but she said, eventually, she would have to just say like, no, this is what I wrote. This is what you're going to do. And, and that's

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (52:17.299)
Yeah.

Eli Price (52:18.026)
That's what happened with penis breath. Um, which is, you know, it's, it's definitely an insult. Uh, I'll say that. Uh, and the other thing he didn't want to do, which is totally under understandable for a 10 year old is he did not want to kiss a girl. Yeah. Spielberg was like, he, uh, I think at one point Spielberg was like when that, when we were doing that scene.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (52:26.297)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (52:35.726)
Glad he did. It's the best scene in the movie, but I totally get it.

Eli Price (52:47.45)
I thought he was going to just like walk away from acting for all together. Um, yeah. Uh, but yeah, he, he made it through. It's, it was funny. He, he was like reminiscing, uh, as a, probably, I mean, he's probably like. In his late twenties, maybe 30 at the point of this, these interviews, um, that they do for the, I think the 20th anniversary, um,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (52:51.841)
Just throw up. Yeah.

Eli Price (53:14.962)
And so he's, he's talking about like how he was like, okay, I'm going to do this kissing scene. They, they do the first take. They kind of knocked teeths and like, he's like, ah, that was horrible. Why do people like doing that? And then, uh, and then he's like, okay, we're done. And so it was like, all right, another take. And he's like, what? I've got to do this again. It was like, they ended up doing like five or six takes. Um, just like great. It's like.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (53:26.939)
Well, yeah

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (53:32.558)
Hehehehe

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (53:42.702)
That's so funny.

Eli Price (53:44.39)
I mean, just like the exact content you want to like, funny content you want to hear about a kid having to like do a kiss scene in a movie. But he made it through. He got through the kiss scene and didn't walk away from acting altogether. So you know, that's good. Yeah, the other main kid is Michael, the character Michael played by Robert McNaughton.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (53:54.158)
Yes.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (54:06.478)
That's so sweet.

Eli Price (54:14.198)
He, um, he, I wasn't clear on if he had been in a movie before this or not. And I didn't look at his filmography beforehand, but I do know like he had failed like, uh, at least once for a movie called the entity, he didn't get it. Get a, um, a part. Uh, but he was doing like some New York stage acting. Um, and Spielberg liked that he had some sort of acting experience and.

Um, and liked the kid brought them on. Um, and he, Spielberg talked about how he felt like he, he would probably be, because he had some experience, a good like foundation for the younger actors. Um, yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (54:53.582)
I was just going to say he's a good anchor. He seems very much, even in the role as the character, he's like this thing that the other two play off of really well. And then he's able to kind of balance it. I thought he was good. Yeah.

Eli Price (55:05.343)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I mean, he just feels like an older brother. Like he, he's like, I don't even know if he's acting, like he's saying the lines, but he's just kind of like being the older brother to them. Both like on screen and probably off screen too. So probably like one of the easier jobs of the three. But like, yeah, I mean, he's just like, I mean, I wouldn't say like, he's like

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (55:11.722)
Yes, yes, absolutely.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (55:19.508)
Right. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (55:23.469)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (55:30.055)
Yes.

Eli Price (55:36.366)
Oh, he's phenomenal in the movie, but he's just like really solid. Um, so yeah, I enjoyed his performance. Uh, I, I love the way he like mocks, um, Elliot too, in the movie. Um, just like classic older brother stuff and, um, yeah, just really good. Uh, next cast was, uh, D Wallace who plays the mom Mary, uh, mother Mary, if you will.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (55:40.045)
Yes.

Eli Price (56:06.022)
Um, and, uh, yeah, Spielberg had seen her in this at the time canceled series called scag, uh, TV series that I know absolutely nothing about, but that's what Spielberg saw her in and liked her and brought her in and, uh, yeah, she's

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (56:06.147)
Yes. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (56:21.758)
And she'd be typecast as a mom for several movies after.

Eli Price (56:24.018)
Yeah. Yeah, as it goes. Um, but yeah, I mean, she's really good in this movie. Um, we'll talk a little bit more about her character, um, later on. Um, but yeah, the only other really main major character, uh, is keys. Um, as he's, as he's listed as in the, um, the credits, just keys. Um,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (56:32.778)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (56:46.599)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (56:50.302)
In the credits, too. That's so funny.

Eli Price (56:53.11)
But yeah, played by a guy named Peter Coyote, who Spielberg had met because he auditioned for Indiana Jones. Um, and the story goes that he was coming on a set to audition and like, gets his feet tangled up in a cable or a light pole post or something and like trips and falls and, uh, and yeah, and Spielberg's like, okay, this guy cannot be Indiana Jones.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (57:15.862)
Dish it over. That's.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (57:21.439)
Yeah.

Eli Price (57:22.466)
But yeah, he remembered him, ran into him at some like professional event around this time and was like, hey, you know, I think you would be actually really good for this role and offers him the job. And yeah, you know, well, yeah, well, that's the casting. We'll talk more about like, get deeper into the characterization of them later on. Yeah, I really think this is a, it's not like.

a huge cast. Like, you really only have a few major characters, which I think is important coming off of movies like 1941 and Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark, you know. He wanted to make a quieter, more intimate movie, and so like, having like a really small, tight-knit cast probably helped a ton with that.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (58:00.756)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (58:22.354)
I would imagine. When you have a cast like that, you end up, from what I gauge from all of the research I've done, you end up kind of feeling like a family when it's all said and done. And so that was probably just really important for this to not have this huge ensemble cast. It's really just some kids and a couple of not that well-known actors. And then, yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (58:35.948)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (58:51.758)
Well, I was just thinking to myself, he's got this small cast and yet the whole film, it feels like a very full suburban area. Like it feels very lived in. There's a lot of, like when I think of like, if I, you can just feel it with some movies where like, if you were there in this place and it were real, would you have a next door neighbor or would you be the only person there because.

Eli Price (59:04.051)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (59:16.456)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (59:20.822)
the world isn't realized. And him as a director, whatever it is, I don't know what it is per se, it could probably like throw out some ideas. But he has this way of utilizing it'll sound weird to say this way, but bodies to populate a location. And I think it's because he isn't so concerned with like, if someone's on screen, they have to be doing something, or they have to be saying something.

Eli Price (59:22.39)
Yeah.

Eli Price (59:40.723)
Yeah.

Eli Price (59:46.686)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (59:48.802)
but just that if they're on screen, their presence needs to be understood and like what's the vibe coming off of it? Cause like, you really get the idea that their house is being invaded when like, when it's the third act and the spacemen come in and then we get these like silhouetted street shots of people coming over. And I live near a firehouse, so you're probably gonna cut this out.

Eli Price (59:59.103)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:00:16.75)
It only takes like two seconds for them to pass. Yeah, you figure when you want to podcast, you always live near a firehouse or something. Or you have like the notorious bad upstairs neighbor. Anyways, yeah, and I think about this because like I have difficulty even with a lot of modern movies that even if they have scenes with extras or have a lot of stuff going on, is the place even...

Eli Price (01:00:25.238)
Yeah, of course.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:00:45.774)
populated or does it exist at all? I'm just not so sure. Like it's really hard. And I've seen some movies that really do take the time to populate and fulfill, but then like, it just doesn't. I don't know. So I don't know what you think that might be, but I definitely see it as something in his films that feel full. Whereas like the only one to me that comes to mind that doesn't do this, but it does it with dinosaurs.

Eli Price (01:00:46.89)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:00:51.732)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:01:07.543)
Hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:01:15.082)
Is Jurassic Park? And so like, there's not a lot of people, but I get the idea that this is a very big island and I don't want to be here because there's a lot of things I want to kill me. But yeah, what do you think about?

Eli Price (01:01:15.871)
Sure. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:01:21.15)
Yeah. Right.

Eli Price (01:01:27.238)
Yeah, you know, I think part of it is just, um, he, he is like very aware of space and what needs to fill that space. Um, and like, just like he's, he, he seems to always be very concerned with like geography. Um, and the only movie I've watched so far of his that like, I felt like he really like just like missed the ball on like.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:01:38.111)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:01:55.882)
giving the audience a good sense of like, who was aware at what time, um, was 1941, which I just think was like terribly edited and terribly like, um, not like, it's not like, doesn't have bad shots, but just the way it's put together, you never know like where you are, who's supposed to be aware. Um, which is crazy because he's always usually so good at that. And I think that applies here too. He, and then on top of that, he's like,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:02:14.164)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:02:25.194)
He just like, he's the kind of director that's like, okay, we're going to do this establishing shot of the neighborhood, which is, which happens pretty early on. You get a big wide establishing shot of this suburban neighborhood. Um, houses all pressed up against each other. You know, they all look similar. Um, so you get that, I mean, just from that wide shot of the houses, you get that feel of, okay, I know exactly where I am. Um, but then he also is the kind of guy that's like,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:02:51.244)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:02:55.326)
Okay. And he's pulling from his own experience. Okay. Like when I was a kid in my neighborhood, you know, I would have been like playing catch over here with a friend, or I would have been like riding a bicycle across, like down the street with some friends, or I would have been like getting up to mischief and like sneaking around with some friends and you kind of see all of that stuff happening in those establishing shots. And so he just like, especially for a film like this, that's so personal. Um,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:03:17.036)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:03:24.33)
He's just like pulling from his own experience and like injecting all of that into like every frame. And so like, of course, you know, it's collaboration. So a lot of that comes from production design, location scouting, all that kind of stuff, which he's, you know, involved with, but it's just that awareness of, okay, this is the feeling I want to portray, knowing what that feeling is. And then...

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:03:30.794)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:03:53.302)
just having an eye for how do I efficiently like get, yeah, get that point across. And so whether it's like a wide establishing shot or just the way, I mean, like you got that opening, you know, dining room scene with all the boys and it's like chaos and the mom's doing chores.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:04:00.598)
Get there. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:04:17.127)
lot of business. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:04:20.102)
And you know, the little brothers like wanting to play and they're like, no. And it's just like, you get so much. It's, it's super efficient. Um, you know, exactly the environment you're in. Um, and so, yeah, I think it's. Man, he's just like, and that's character building too. So, you know, you're getting your setting and your character and he just does it so efficiently where like, you, you do that early on.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:04:24.77)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:04:28.546)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:04:49.246)
right as you're getting into the movie, and then like you're set, you don't have to like worry. I mean, it's all through the movie, but like you don't have to worry about it anymore. You know where you are, right.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:04:59.134)
If you have really good foundation as you're going from pre-production to post or pre-production to production to post, like it is like the work has been done. It's sort of the modern talk about like special effects nowadays where it's like, if you

Eli Price (01:05:03.806)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:05:08.149)
Right.

Eli Price (01:05:11.986)
Everything in post. It's like there's so much that it the problem with doing so much in post is just that you know Yeah, yeah, right

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:05:15.071)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:05:22.718)
Now you're fixing two entire production cycles in post instead of like, if you spent the time and pre-production, um, really laboring over where your, your business and your blocking is going to be and where you're going to place special effects and how are people going to interact with them? And then you've done testing when you go into pre production, not only is that phase going to be very simple because.

Eli Price (01:05:32.471)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:05:40.134)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:05:48.426)
You can tell what times people can be creative and what times you as the director need to be rigid. But then when you go into post-production, now you're just, it's a puzzle. I had, everything's already been made to fit, but you just got to put it together and it still takes a lot of time. And sometimes you got to roll it up at that tablecloth and set it to the side. Cause you got to do other stuff, but then you can lay it back out. It's just as easy to put back together. Um, and you can tell when you're watching a movie where someone.

Eli Price (01:05:53.248)
Yep.

Eli Price (01:05:58.909)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:06:02.726)
Yeah. Right.

Eli Price (01:06:14.559)
Yep.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:06:16.618)
has that happened? I mean, the most modern notorious one of that is, I think, God forbid anyone actually watch it, but Doolittle was like one of those films where like the director had no comprehension. So, so has been alleged from behind the scenes talks and everything, had no comprehension of special effects and how you implemented them. And so he just made this movie saying, we'll just do it later.

Eli Price (01:06:25.675)
Mm.

Eli Price (01:06:39.316)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:06:43.914)
And then you get to the end and all the special effects very pointedly do not look like they're in the world and change sizes and never seem to like stay in the same place, um, because, because there was no direction. So yeah. Uh, man Spielberg, he even, yeah. Like you watch scenes from Jaws that are some of the busiest things you ever seen in your life and they're loud, but you, you know, what's going on. Perfectly. It's like, it's, you could.

Eli Price (01:06:51.647)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:06:59.465)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Eli Price (01:07:08.226)
Mm-hmm.

Oh yeah. Oh man, the editing in Jaws is just like phenomenal. Yeah. And you know, we just finished not too long ago that our Christopher Nolan series, and you know, he's notorious for, like one of the things that kept coming up in that series was Nolan was like, okay, we can spend all of this money.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:07:12.886)
You could fall asleep to them in a good way. It's amazing. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:07:38.546)
in post-production trying to like add everything in or we can just shift that money and time to pre-production and have everything kind of feel more real and less like, you know, kind of smushed together or added on. And that's like his whole like entire, like aside from being the, you know, the celluloid guy like he's just like been such a proponent for, okay.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:07:47.02)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:07:56.108)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:08:08.338)
All the stuff you do in post-production, you can actually just put the work in and the money in pre-production. And it looks just as, like he's proven, it looks just as good if you just put the work in pre-production.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:08:14.714)
Yeah

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:08:22.214)
Even in even in 82 or whatever, when Blade Runner came out could show that if you just spend time doing it, it looks great seeing that movie in theaters. That is a wild experience. It'll people who have seen it on the big screen or versus like I shouldn't say people me. I saw it on the small screen the first time. OK, movie. So I was going to be in theaters like, are you all go see it?

Eli Price (01:08:34.163)
I bet.

Eli Price (01:08:43.671)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:08:48.486)
Unbelievable. You're flying through the city and it's miniatures. How did, how? So yeah, you, you spend that extra time and it becomes magical as opposed to like, and I like 20, 49. I think it's great, but, uh, but I also know like, it's just, it's different. It's not, not all the same, although that is also a lot of it's beefed up with CG. I know a lot of it's still miniature, but, but.

Eli Price (01:08:52.262)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:09:05.779)
Yeah, sure.

Eli Price (01:09:12.308)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:09:15.298)
The rawness, the realness of all of that is, to me, it's much more interesting.

Eli Price (01:09:16.63)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:09:21.074)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And all of that, um, but before I move on to the crew, I was going to say to another thing, like he, he's really good at creating like realistic atmospheres. Um, and one of the things he did was he cast a lot of like actual doctors and scientists from USC, um, medical school to just come on and do that, that ending final act, like medical sequence.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:09:40.171)
Yes, yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:09:48.47)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:09:48.798)
And so not only are you getting like real medical speech, but it's one of the, like, it's breaking, like a typical rule that's followed, which is like, try to stay away from overlapping dialogue. But like the reality is like, Oh, there's a lot of situations in life where there's a lot of overlapping dialogue. And so he, he does inject that into some of his mood, like there's the scene in the, um, in the schoolhouse and jaws, like overlapping dialogue, like

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:10:07.445)
Yes, yeah.

Eli Price (01:10:18.558)
um that there's that scene here the metal and so it kind of creates a real to life kind of feeling and atmosphere um and that too but you know we got to talk about the crew the crew um is it's an interesting crew it's there's some like returning collaborations but not a ton there's a lot of new um collaborations for et um uh kathleen kennedy of course produces it's actually her first

after co-founding Amblin with him. First work as a producer, we talked about Melissa Matheson, which she did. She was the writer, of course, and associate producer, working with the kids on set. Alan Daviau was the DP cinematographer, and I just think he did some really good work, which we'll talk about in just a minute. Yeah. So first time working with him,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:11:13.319)
Excellent looking movie.

Eli Price (01:11:18.21)
Carol Littleton did the editing. This is like after, let's see, when did Michael Kahn, I think Michael Kahn came on for Close Encounters as his editor. This is the only movie other than the Fablemans that Michael Kahn didn't edit of Steven Spielberg's. I think he had just another project at that time. And yeah, so I think, you know.

I don't think this is like standout editing, but it's like really, really good.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:11:53.646)
If you don't notice it, that's a good thing. And yeah, it works here.

Eli Price (01:11:55.054)
Right. Exactly. Hmm. Um, the, the real, like the people that really like. Did put the work in where some of the technical guys production designer, James D Bissell, um, special effects, Dell Martin.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:12:08.662)
Yeah, looks great.

Eli Price (01:12:13.342)
Yeah, special effects, Del Mountain, visual effects, Dennis Murin, sound effects, Charles L. Campbell. And then of course, you have the ET design by Carlo Rambaldi and a lady named Beverly Hoffman actually like focused in on the eyes of ET, which were very important. So yeah, all those like technical guys were just like doing top notch work for ET. And as we'll see later, we're awarded for that.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:12:29.486)
Hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:12:44.54)
And then of course, John Williams, who is a returning collaborator.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:12:50.206)
and is basically another character in the movie. Like, man. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:12:51.73)
Yeah, exactly. And we'll talk about that too. Yeah. But yeah, so let's talk about the production so we can talk about the input of all this, this amazing crew, um, to this film, uh, yeah. So production begins, uh, September, 1981. Um, you know, you, there's other dates that I've seen too, of when it started. You, you get all kinds of stuff when you research this.

this sort of stuff. It doesn't really matter. They started filming the movie. It had a false title called A Boy's Life. Really secretive at first. This script could only be accessed by actors behind closed doors. Really just trying to keep it on the DL, I guess. Yeah, really good location. We've touched a little bit about this, how that location and establishing wide shots

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:13:27.121)
Hehehe

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:13:36.195)
interesting.

Eli Price (01:13:51.166)
really lay the foundation for like where you are, what kind of place, what kind of people you can expect to see. And it's mostly like in a residential area of the San Fernando Valley, north of LA. You've got like the streets lined with homes, you kind of get that idea of suburban boredom and routine and mundanity. And you know, Spielberg's pulling all of that from his childhood. You know, he...

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:13:56.534)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:14:14.166)
Yes.

Eli Price (01:14:19.69)
lived in the suburbs of New Jersey and then the suburbs of Arizona, um, and then California eventually too. So just really like drenched in that from his childhood. Um, yeah. So yeah, Elliot's house too. Another thing that's like just great location scouting gets, um, in Tajunga, I guess, or Tahunga. I don't really know how to pronounce it to be honest.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:14:27.65)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:14:31.725)
Really bored.

Eli Price (01:14:49.598)
Um, and it's wedged between like his street and the base of, um, the San Gabriel mountains, which kind of like, it's like this closed in little spot for this house, like a being trapped there, you know, um, which is, you know, just. Yeah. Just great location. Another great location forest. Um, you got like the coastal redwoods. Um, yeah. And that really does like our.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:15:01.006)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:15:04.462)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:15:13.31)
Yes. Oh my gosh. Beautiful. Just beautiful.

Eli Price (01:15:19.55)
I had written down in my notes because I read it's in somewhere in my research. I read like it gives this fairy tale atmosphere. I was like, it really does. Like those, because I've actually been, um, to, I've seen like the North California redwoods and it really does. You feel like you're like in a fairy tale because they're just like, so they're so huge for one thing, but they're also just, they look very different than normal trees.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:15:27.287)
Uh huh.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:15:42.486)
Massive.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:15:48.823)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:15:48.902)
Um, they have this like soft stringy bark and, um, it's just like, it's so, I mean, I'm, I've grown up in Georgia and lived in Louisiana, so, I mean, you get a lot of like pines and Oaks and, um, and being somewhere, being like somewhere different with like a very different sort of vegetation does kind of give that like. Very. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:15:52.983)
Mm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:16:02.68)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:16:14.066)
It feels alien. Um, when I was, uh, staying in Washington for a bit, Washington state, uh, apart from being on the other coast, like it. It is surreal being in an environment that is just not your own, the birds sound different, the, the creature, the types of like squirrels will just straight be different. And like, yeah, all the fully, everything's different. So I, I get that. And yeah, like this movie.

Eli Price (01:16:21.302)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:16:30.271)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:16:34.898)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:16:43.83)
The way it utilizes that forest for a lot of, um, scale is obviously a very important point in the film because like almost the entire film, the camera, I feel so bad for the cameraman who had to just hunch over and hold this camera at his knees the whole time for so many shots, because there's always this pursuit of, from the child's perspective, from the child's perspective, from, from a youthful perspective. Um, and.

Eli Price (01:16:48.799)
Right.

Eli Price (01:16:58.31)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:17:08.022)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:17:10.214)
The almost the only times it's elevated are establishing shots. And usually those establishing shots are to assert how small Elliott or E.T. are. And yeah, these scenes where they go into the forest, wherever they are, like it's it is like going to either another planet or just like in the way that the film is about growing up or experiencing things like you'll never you'll still never be big enough. Like you're still going to be very small in this very big world.

Eli Price (01:17:19.06)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:17:35.018)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:17:38.426)
And yeah, so these locations absolutely fill the vibe. Locations are so helpful in storytelling. It's just great.

Eli Price (01:17:40.75)
Mm-hmm.

Yes. Yeah. And I was going to say too, you, you really have a juxtaposition because the, the house is in this like San Fernando Valley location. That's like way more like arid and dry and yeah, like no trees. And then like, it's seemingly like, just like over the hill of his backyard, there's this redwood forest and you're like, where does this come from? And it gives that like very fairy tale.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:17:57.226)
Yeah, no trees, all cut down for the development.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:18:06.157)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:18:12.234)
feeling like you're kind of like going through, you know, the wardrobe into somewhere like fantastical when yeah, it is a cool like feeling that you get whenever they end up in the forest. Yeah, yeah, that's really, really cool. I think there is like, so the clearing for the spaceship landing was in a studio, kind of a built set.

And then of course, like the interiors and the backyard are in the studio, just kind of like built sets. So there is some like some studio work. They used a layered international studios in California. And then the only other thing like, as far as like the location and the production there that I thought was kind of cool was Spielberg. I think originally they were trying to figure out where they were gonna be at the end of the film.

And, um, you know, there's this medical sequence. And so like you're, you know, they're thinking through like, so do we go to a hospital? Um, and his, one of his friends, Matthew Robbins, uh, suggests that they don't leave the house for that scene that they, you know, they like all the science and all the doctors and whatnot show up there. And, uh, Spielberg ran with that idea. He was inspired by, he had seen like some construction or something going on at the.

the LA airport with these like partitions and plastic corridors and kind of was inspired by that look for the production. And yeah, it's really great production work for that. That last part with like, yeah, the way they have like the house like covered and, you know, the plastic little like tunnel going up to the house. You kind of have like barricades on the edges of the frames with like

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:19:48.565)
Mm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:19:56.52)
Yes, yeah.

Eli Price (01:20:10.566)
neighbors kind of trying to figure out what's going on, which is just kind of a kind of a fun, like it's those like, it's one of those like little threads that's like, what do these neighbors think you never, it's a question you can't have answered, but it's just kind of funny to think about. What do they think was going on?

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:20:13.198)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:20:23.274)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:20:29.47)
Yeah, it's like the middle of the night and this their entire neighborhood. They can't get to work. It's wild. Oh, my gosh.

Eli Price (01:20:33.754)
Yeah. So I thought that was good. Um, let's, uh, yeah. And we can talk about to, um, just continue on with the production design, I think would be a good route to take. Um, and, and this is all like super interesting stuff. Spielberg of course wants simple effects for the film. He doesn't want anything too complex. Um, the

They designed the spaceship or UFO, whatever you want to call it. Ralph McCrory does the illustrations for it. Um, you know, build a little model for it, of course. Um, and it's, it's like this mix between like a Jules Verne novel contraption and kind of like Christmas tree looking lights and it kind of looks like a toy. Um, so it's made to like feel familiar. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:21:23.298)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:21:31.49)
soft. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:21:33.63)
Um, and Spielberg even said he thought it like looked a little bit like E.T. kind of stumpy. Um, which yeah, I was like, Oh, that's true. Um, the, the bike flight scene, which is, which is iconic of course, was, um, done with a simple trick that I was like, Oh, just genius, like not too complicated. They scouted for a location, spent a couple of evenings filming the night sky.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:21:40.571)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:22:02.194)
Um, and then they basically just shot, uh, tiny models of like the bikes with like little puppets mounted on top of them. Um, and they shot it against that footage that they had already shot of the night sky. Um, yeah. Yeah. So like the, the iconic shot of like them passing in front of the moon is just like, I don't know if they, it didn't specify if they were doing like some front or back projection.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:22:16.426)
I never would have even guessed that. That's amazing. Wow.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:22:24.011)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:22:31.858)
um and shooting against that projection or what uh so i wasn't clear on exactly how they used it but they were shooting against the footage they already had which you typically is done with like projection of some sort um and then yeah they just use these little tiny little models that went pine yeah and it looks so and i guess like they had a little puppet that they were able to like

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:22:53.678)
How smart. That's great.

Eli Price (01:22:59.894)
have some motion with the little puppets too. But, and then of course they're doing something similar when you actually like see them on the bikes too. They're like, they're shooting that against the projection of the footage they've already got of the landscape and whatnot.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:23:02.445)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:23:10.954)
Mm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:23:18.146)
Well, just to compare to like even a similar scene, obviously way more high octane, but like in Star Wars Episode VI, when they're racing on Endor, or the moon of Endor, which is, it's like not only the best scene in the movie, cause it's the most like, well, it's the most amazing scene in the movie, it's great. That movie's fine, but like that scene,

Eli Price (01:23:24.513)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:23:31.499)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:23:38.091)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:23:46.374)
feels so good to watch and it's like it's a butt-clunter. It's crazy. Like you really feel like these characters are at threat of just hitting one of millions of trees that are covering this thing. And yeah, it's just like rear projection and then just clever filmmaking and doing these special effects shots that are like wide shots. I think the last time I watched it was the despecialized. So they were the despecialized edition. So they were like

Eli Price (01:23:50.378)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:23:58.667)
Yes

Eli Price (01:24:02.77)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:24:08.277)
Right.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:24:14.622)
as close to the original, you know, work print or prints at the time. So like it, it's gnarly what you can do without having to do like. More like digital work, like just doing some trickery and doing good editing and performances. Cause even in that part of that movie, you're looking at their faces and the reactions. So the special effects are supplementary to your vision.

Eli Price (01:24:19.692)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:24:43.194)
It it just it feels good. And yeah, these bike sequences in this film are such strong highlights in the movie, and they're to find out that they're like. A thousand times simpler than I would have expected a thousand times. I remember stepping out of the theater and being like, I just want to know how they did that. Like, I know it's out there like it's 40 years old, but like, come on. Like, what did they do? It's like, oh, it's a string and a puppet. OK, all right.

Eli Price (01:24:48.659)
Yes.

Eli Price (01:24:56.533)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:25:01.334)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:25:06.518)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:25:09.77)
Yeah. I mean, it's really incredible. Like, and like, to like another thing he does, like, uh, he came up with this technique for close encounters for the night sky, which I think he probably, I didn't read this, but I would imagine he's employing similar technique here because the night skies are very like vivid and like the stars are very bright. Um, and

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:25:31.487)
Mm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:25:36.255)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:25:38.414)
in Close Encounters, what they did was they shot on a larger film stock. The night sky, kind of like stars, lights poked through, black paper sort of stuff, on a larger film stock. And then they filmed the scenes of the ship or whatever, people looking out at the sky,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:25:54.955)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:26:08.538)
Um, that they were putting the night sky on, like they just filmed it over that larger stock. Um, and there was some other stuff, like technical stuff that I don't fully understand. Like I read it and I was like, I don't fully understand what they're doing here, but I understand in general, like they're basically like taking the larger film stock so that they don't lose a lot of like resolution. And then like, they're basically like matching up negatives somehow so that you

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:26:22.926)
Hehehe

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:26:31.451)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:26:37.93)
you get this really bright and vivid stars and moon and night sky, whereas before they were coming up with that technique, you end up with kind of dull looking stars in the sky at night. So similar technique of how you make the stars, but how you do the film techniques to put it together is like,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:26:44.438)
That's really cool.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:26:54.11)
Yes. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:27:06.654)
and innovation he kind of, his team kind of came up with for in close encounters. And man, the night skies here like look incredible. So I would imagine he's doing something similar for sure. Um, yeah. And then of course, like the, the bike in front of the moon becomes the Amblin entertainment logo, of course. I don't know what it was before then. It would be, I need to go look that up and see what it might've looked like before then. Yeah. Um,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:27:11.906)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:27:35.826)
Of course, we've got to talk about the ET design. You've got the design of it, the animation, the sound, the voice, all of that, a lot of great stuff. I said we were going to come back to Rick Baker. And so we'll go back to Rick Baker, because at some point, Baker had become resentful of how his work was, quote unquote, confiscated.

Um, when the, that night skies project was scrapped, um, and Baker had always suspected that Rumbaldi was, uh, inspired in some way by his work. And even I looked up pictures of this in 2014, he posted, uh, pictures of his unfinished aliens from night skies on Twitter. Um, I don't know what he had to gain in 2014 by doing that. Um, but, uh, there's, there's like.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:28:25.891)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:28:32.014)
Hehehehe

Eli Price (01:28:33.982)
a tiny bit of likeness to ET, but I'm like, I mean, it's like, it's aliens. It's like, they all, they're all going to look similar in some way. Cause you know, we all kind of make aliens looks similar. Like there's a basic kind of template for alien, you know,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:28:40.126)
Yeah, they all kind of have the same thing. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:28:47.926)
See ya.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:28:53.488)
We've seen so many aliens at this point. There's probably a chart that puts them together.

Eli Price (01:28:57.126)
Yeah. So, um, I don't know. I was reading that. I was just like rolling my eyes. It's like, what this guy like really has some beef. Yeah. Um, but yeah. So Spielberg, Carl Rombardi, of course, was big and designing ET. He wanted, uh, this was interesting. He wanted to reproduce the faces and eyes of, um, a combo of, uh, Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway and the poet Carl Sandberg.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:29:06.074)
That's not so odd.

Eli Price (01:29:26.762)
Um, which was like, oh, okay. It's interesting. Yeah. Um, you know, he, what he was going for was like these wizened and sad eyes and face, which I think is definitely there. Um, and he, you know, he didn't want ET to be like, comely, like, or not comely, he didn't want him to be like pleasant necessarily to look at. Um, which is true. He's not like.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:29:30.271)
interesting.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:29:38.669)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:29:55.978)
He's kind of like a little ugly.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:29:59.45)
Oh, yeah, he's ugly in the way that it's like cute. Call something ugly like.

Eli Price (01:30:05.19)
Yeah, sure. Like a kind of like the kind of a pug factor going on. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:30:09.65)
Yeah. And so in that way, it's like there's a gentleness to it. Like, oh, you don't know you're ugly, like that kind of thing. But in not as nasty or bullying kind of way that sounds. Yeah. And that's so interesting, because something I kept thinking to, like with the film being this like coming of age, kind of growing, feeling movie is like ET does become sort of like a personification of the mentor that Elliot wants, but also wants power over because

Eli Price (01:30:18.321)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:30:38.526)
Elliot wants, obviously I think it's implied that he wants his father back. Like who wouldn't, right? That's the theory. Like of all broken families is if you could have the ideal function of the family, would you want it? Yes, you would. Um, and so that would require though, a sense of power that he doesn't have. He can't bring it back. Can't bring it back from Mexico. And so, um, so in that way, like he.

Eli Price (01:30:44.736)
Right.

Eli Price (01:31:03.477)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:31:08.11)
his ET came to me, ET came to me, this thing that like, it's been gifted to me, it's for me. But then ET, even though like, he's not explicitly mentoring him, he is like personifying this like way in which ET's independence is something that Elliot needs to put up with. But as the two are still bonded and respectful of each other, they kind of learn to grow with that. It's like a, it's just, um,

Eli Price (01:31:13.462)
Right.

Eli Price (01:31:31.223)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:31:35.966)
It works. It comes across as a mentor icon, in my opinion. And like, I just, I find that touching just as someone who particularly enjoys and yearns for mentorship, knowing that there's someone safe that is trustworthy, who's older or wiser really to be able to give insight into certain things. And in the case in, and I think it's interesting that because the movie is so much about feeling the,

Eli Price (01:31:40.715)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:32:06.37)
The imagery at play is that it's like ET's heart is what's connecting with Elliot. And it doesn't necessarily, yeah, exactly.

Eli Price (01:32:11.998)
And it's sort of a beacon, like the way they design it and the way it plays. Yeah. The heart is like acts as a beacon, which is a plays into that for sure.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:32:22.11)
Right, and sometimes you don't necessarily have to agree with each other, but when you can understand one another to the point of like a closeness and intimacy like that, there's something so much more important than agreeing with one another in that way. Cause yeah, the two of them, they get along, but they're also like kind of, they're doing things in ways that like kind of make them fluctuate because Elliot ultimately doesn't really want him to leave, but he does also want to help him leave.

Eli Price (01:32:29.644)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:32:36.065)
Right.

Eli Price (01:32:45.259)
Right.

Eli Price (01:32:49.051)
Oh yeah.

Yeah. And it, and you know, there's even this like transition from him talking about ET and the third person to starting to use like the first person plural. He starts using the we and saying we, which is actually like a dread, like the, I think Michael was like, why do you keep saying we at some point? Um, and, um, it's because of that connection is becoming like stronger and stronger, um, as the film goes on. Um, yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:33:04.992)
Yes.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:33:12.534)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:33:21.798)
And it's funny because like when you watch the making of behind the scenes, um, what everyone talks about is how they all started to feel connected to this character of ET. Um, and they like all were like, they felt like, even though like he wasn't actually like talking like Spielberg does a lot of like the

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:33:37.464)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:33:48.75)
On set like talking for ET when they're having to act against him, you know, um, And so they're you know, they're acting against this puppet, but like He feels like He's part of the crew. He feels like he's part of the family to them um, which is really interesting like I think a lot of it has to do with like the way he's designed. Um, you know, he's

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:33:53.835)
Hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:34:09.229)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:34:18.622)
He's being like...

He's being controlled by like 12 different people at any given time. Like they have all these like little controls and levers that they're operating to move him around. Um, there's like a lady, uh, that's a mime artist that's like doing his hands whenever he has to do like hand gestures. Um, there's, you know, they, they even have like little per little people. Um, actors do.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:34:26.797)
Yes.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:34:43.406)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:34:50.942)
the, wear an ET costume at points. Um, there's a 12 year old kid that had no legs that walked on his hands. Um, that like does all the scenes where like, et's like walking and falling over. Um, and so like, yeah, you, you have this like. Ensemble of like a dozen people that are like bringing ET to life, but it's done to an effect of where like.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:35:01.41)
Wow. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:35:19.238)
Everyone on set like feels like he's their friend for real um, and it's amazing because like Spielberg even talks about um at one point that he had like When he was dealing with all this stuff when he was a kid, he had like an imaginary friend that was an alien um, so like it it's stemming back to this and it's almost like he's like

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:35:24.323)
Oh, how cute.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:35:41.528)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:35:45.494)
bringing to life this imaginary friend that like feel a void for him. And everyone on set, like it's kind of feeling that because, you know, he's moving around, like he's interacting with us. He's, you know, we're, we're talking to, to him, even if we know, like, logically and in our mind, like this isn't a real thing. Like when you're, when you're putting yourself into that, you know, creative effort.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:35:50.722)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:36:14.046)
like even something that's not real can start to feel meaningful and, um, and impactful. And so, yeah, I think it's that connection that you start to, that you really feel with Elliot and even like the, even with like Gertie and Mark, uh, Michael, um, to ET is not just like really good acting. It's also kind of like just the result of like.

really great effort to bring this ET character to life, through the technical aspects of what they're doing.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:36:47.778)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:36:55.722)
Yeah, the thing that I think is interesting with all of this together is the way that they act and talk amongst each other and then also the way they act and talk with ET because it very much seems like the like plateau of I'll call it like nastiness is up until the frog dissection scene where it like it seems to be like at its peak.

Eli Price (01:37:07.447)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:37:24.918)
that, okay, E.T. and Elliot are connected. Like they are now fully involved with each other in a way that is inseparable. And then after that, the film starts to like grow in gentleness in the way all of the characters express and talk with one another in which like all of the kids are kind of working to figure out how to figure out what E.T. needs. They're all in on it. Like don't tell mom, let's get him.

Eli Price (01:37:27.456)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:37:42.731)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:37:53.834)
his tools, let's trust him, let's trust Elliot. And then Elliot even isn't as harsh about having quote unquote, absolute power, which is very funny, which I'm sure every 10 year old would just wish to have. And so even that like, starts to kind of lighten up, he still has it because even during the hospital stuff, like he's still harsh, but now he's up against people who can actually have influence against them, which is adults. So

Eli Price (01:38:01.578)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:38:18.614)
Yep.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:38:21.186)
But there's still gentleness even from the adults too, cause he's like, I love his interaction with him. And like, I think it can be debated whether or not his like background stories, true or not, because of our history as a race, but also history in filmmaking, which is never trust a G-man, they're always lying. But you figure like he's talking about like having the same interest and passion to find.

Eli Price (01:38:26.015)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:38:34.146)
Sure.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:38:48.93)
these creatures, are they real and what happened? And having that futurist alien positivity wherein like their introduction to our reality is a positivity and we can find out, we have hope, that kind of thing. And like, he then just says to Elliot, like you did literally the best you could and I'm so happy that he met you. Like, oh my gosh, like there's, I.

Eli Price (01:38:57.888)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:39:16.89)
It's the exact opposite of how other movies talk and communicate to children, let alone humans talk to children. Wherein you don't have keys isn't the character that like he's not in the movie to be the character to be jealous of Elliot, but another movie would have a character be jealous of Elliot. And it's just nice to see children as people respected as people who are just first time people and like.

Eli Price (01:39:21.758)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:39:33.461)
Right.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:39:46.922)
I just I think that the way the film and the way ET as this character and the catalyst for change for the film goes and changes like the weariness, the horror movie nature of the first 20 minutes into this gentle, weird drama to me is just fascinating. And then to hear that in real life.

Eli Price (01:40:02.764)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:40:13.31)
Everybody's like, we love ET. Like, I'm sure it makes total sense.

Eli Price (01:40:14.962)
Yeah, yeah, I really did. It's and it's gin, it's so genuine. Like when you hear them talk about it, like just so genuine, it's like really sweet. Yeah. Um, yeah. Uh, I guess the last thing about ET is like the, the voice, um, the one like weird thing before I speak on the voice, like.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:40:27.126)
That was so cute.

Eli Price (01:40:40.578)
So Spielberg thought of ET as like a plant-like being, a plant-like creature of some sort, which is weird. I would have never thought that just watching the movie, but like when you hear that and you go back and like look at him, you're like, okay, yeah, he kind of looks like Stumpy, like a little bit like a root. You know, some of his like movements, like his neck popping out kind of feels like, you know, a plant sort of.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:41:01.115)
Mm-hmm, like a gourd.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:41:08.366)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:41:09.706)
But I just like never would have thought that before like hearing that. Uh, so, right. Right.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:41:15.894)
Yeah, I never would have thought plant like as a species. I definitely like my first thought in terms of his correlation to plants is just that he's at the very least in his race, at least by setting would presume he's like an herbologist or something. I don't know if that's a thing. Botanist. Yeah. So like it makes sense that like the correlation between him and nature or him in the world, so to speak, is definitely there. But it's interesting to wonder if like, yeah, what if the

Eli Price (01:41:30.366)
Yeah, farmer botanist, something like that.

Eli Price (01:41:39.147)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:41:44.802)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:41:45.79)
I guess the creature is a plant now too, whatever, sure.

Eli Price (01:41:47.41)
Yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah. He's, he's a plant interested in cultivating other plants. It's, it's almost like they're just kind of like going around world. It's just that world building, that efficient world building. You learn so fast. Like you get a shot of the inside of their, their ship. It has all these different weird plants growing in it. And then you get them kind of like trying to up, like uproot, like little trees to take back with them. And so like, you really quickly learn like, okay, these are

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:41:53.198)
Cool.

Eli Price (01:42:15.69)
These are not menacing creatures. They're just interested in plants and like maybe even like preserving plants from different planets or something. Um, yeah. Um, so that's really cool. And then like two, like one of the, one of the like great images you get early on that shows you that ET is not like to be scared of is, um, you get like he's walking up and he's like,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:42:20.904)
Like Pikmin.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:42:25.752)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:42:43.606)
picking a plant out of the ground and there's a rabbit just like staring at them and like not really the rabbits like not nervous. Um, and so that's just like a really efficient way of showing you like, Hey, look, even like the rabbit isn't scared of ET there's nothing to be scared of with ET like, cause rabbits are like notoriously like jittery and jumpy. So the rabbit's not running away then. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:42:49.001)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:42:59.71)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:43:06.849)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:43:13.686)
I got it too. Looks like it might have been nothing.

Eli Price (01:43:18.386)
Yeah, I'll have to edit my pause there out. Oh well. Yeah, I don't know why I did that because we're not like losing our upload. Strange. Yeah. Oh well. I'm gonna jump back in.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:43:27.006)
Yeah, my internet's looking good too.

Eli Price (01:43:34.738)
Yeah, the voice of ET is fun. Deborah Winger did some vocals for the film's first cut, an actress, but it ended up being, the final work is the result of Ben Burt, a sound effects editor that worked on Star Wars. So of course, like he's done some really good sound work. And,

Ben Burtt finds this lady named Pat Welsh, who was a very heavy smoker, like two packs a day kind of smoker. Um, she had done some radio acting in the, in the past. Um, and yeah, he, he ends up mixing her voice, um, with, uh, like animal breathing noises, and then for like all the sounds that ET makes, it's like a mix of raccoons and otters and horses.

He mentioned a burp from his former film teacher and he mentioned recording his wife sleeping with a cold breathing And he talks about how the 18 different sound sources ended up making et's like quote-unquote voice, which is really fun great sound Just like really great sound effects work for ET

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:44:40.414)
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:44:51.203)
That's cool.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:44:57.4)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:44:58.518)
Um, to, to great effect. Um, and I just love that. It's like two, two packs a day. You got to smoke two packs a day to really sound like ET. Um, uh, but yeah, you had mentioned earlier, like the, the camera work for. Like when they're filming adults and how it's always like, um, I think I read that it's always like four to five feet from the ground.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:45:21.815)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:45:27.714)
to give that perspective of both like the kids and the aliens, um, of the adults. Uh, and, uh, it was so luckily it wasn't the DP like crouched down with the camera. They had it like mounted on a dolly that was, that was positioned that way. Uh, yeah, just. Yeah, I just love that. It's just so such a simple, like it's not that complicated. Just like.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:45:32.717)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:45:42.862)
Thank goodness.

Eli Price (01:45:57.11)
hey, whenever we have any adult that's not the mom, then we're gonna either be shooting their waist and feet or they're gonna be silhouettes. It's like, okay, easy enough, you know? And you, it's smart too because there's a mystery there of like, you don't know if these adults are gonna be good or bad, like.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:46:06.494)
Mm-hmm. Smart.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:46:26.698)
Yes. Just like a child.

Eli Price (01:46:27.138)
Um, yeah. And so, yeah, just like a child, like, I don't know if I can trust these, these people. Um, and so like, even before the adult show at the home, he's already set you up to not know if you can trust them or not. Um, and probably like distrust, um, leaning towards distrust because you, you just don't know what they're doing, what they're after. Um,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:46:35.128)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:46:43.117)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:46:52.778)
Yeah. Even the first time I watched it, I was like, is Key... I was like, please don't do this, but is Key's his dad? That's literally what I felt. So they do such a good job of handling how these people are utilized. It's that the adults are not important to the children, but they are important to Steven Spielberg in a different way. So it makes it work. It's really good.

Eli Price (01:47:00.894)
Yeah, I thought that too, yeah.

Eli Price (01:47:23.262)
Yeah. And the other thing you had kind of touched on that I thought was interesting as far as the cinematography was, um, that still Spielberg basically told, uh, Daviao, the DP, Hey, I want you to have realistic lighting, but also like a sense of mystery around ET for those first 25 minutes or so of the movie. Yeah. So it's like, it's like, okay. So you want.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:47:45.126)
gonna turn those lights down.

Eli Price (01:47:51.134)
things that are generally like opposed to each other got it and so he but yeah so I love this quote from Daviao he says quote for that scene in the bedroom where Elliot entices ET out of the closet I had to make ET as near a silhouette as possible and still show his eyes unquote and

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:47:55.847)
Hehehehe

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:48:14.366)
I was what? Yeah, I was almost flabbergasted, like thinking like, gosh, how did how many lights are in this room to make sure that Elliot is still maybe partially visible, but like he is still obscured and then also obscured in a way that makes logical sense to like a kid's room's lighting. It's crazy. Absolutely wild. Man alive.

Eli Price (01:48:19.083)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:48:27.209)
Uh-huh.

Eli Price (01:48:35.842)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. And, um, man, even like, this is jumping back to like the production design a little bit, but like that closet is like this almost like magical place to like, what, what house has a closet like that? Like a connecting closet between kids rooms. Was that a thing back then? Like, I don't know.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:48:54.82)
It's great.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:49:02.642)
I don't know. It must be like an old style shared closet instead of having like individual ones. But what a weird, weird choice.

Eli Price (01:49:06.358)
Yeah.

Yeah, it was strange, but like it kind of had this like magical feeling to like, it's like a tunnel from one room. Yeah. Um, I was listening to a podcast where they were talking about, um, ET and they were talking about how, like when you're a kid, like your house is kind of a magical place, there's all these like places to hide and these places to like explore, um, and a house feels way bigger when you're a kid. Um,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:49:17.551)
Secret tunnel room. Yeah, it's cool

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:49:33.453)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:49:36.962)
Huge. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:49:37.786)
Yeah, and I was like, oh, that's a really cool insight. And you can see that all through the film, with the way that they do the house. But yes, working with the kids on set was a big part of making this film work. Melissa Matheson, of course, works a lot with the kids. And one of the things she did to help Spielberg, she did this cool thing for him where she transferred.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:49:47.256)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:50:07.21)
the whole script onto these like pocket sized cards. And so like each card had like that day of shooting on it. And like, basically just like, instead of having like an annotated full script, he just like could pull out and reference these cards with like, this is what we're doing today. These are the shots and the actors involved. And so like what that ended up doing was when Spielberg was on set working with his kids, he kind of had this freedom to like, he's not like,

locked into this annotated, like full script. He's like, just, I have this card. I have a general idea. So now I can let the kids kind of be kids and like improv. So that's how you end up with scenes like Elliot, like going through everything on his desk and teaching. ET everything like that's just like him. That's just like Spielberg's like, Hey, you're going to show them your room and teach them about like what you're showing him. And he just does it. That's he's just talking like a kid.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:50:45.919)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:50:53.722)
Yeah. Great stuff.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:51:04.738)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:51:05.726)
And you get lines like, I don't like his feet from true Perrymore, which apparently wasn't in the script. She just like, that was her real opinion. Um, uh, which, you know, I, you know, I don't blame her for this. He's got some ugly feet. Uh, um, and man, he just like, you know, you, you talked about earlier, like how does he like nail that final scene? Uh, Henry Thomas. Um, and it's just like.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:51:10.328)
Love it.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:51:14.471)
It's great.

Eli Price (01:51:35.198)
You watch these behind the scenes and you see some of the ways that Spielberg directs these kids. And you're like, man, he is just like locked in tuned into like how to direct a kid. Um, he, he lets them know what's coming. Like he doesn't like hide stuff from them. He's like, here's what we're doing. This is the situation. And like, and he's basically like giving them pointers on like, Hey, here's how you can pretend to.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:51:47.831)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:52:03.842)
to be in this situation for me, and this is how I need you to do it." And he's basically teaching them, like, hey, this is how I need you to use your imagination. And then he just lets them run with that. It's really great. And one of my favorite things from the behind the scenes is they were filming during Halloween on Halloween day. And

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:52:15.554)
That's cool.

Eli Price (01:52:32.126)
Spielberg shows up like dressed like an old lady kind of like how ET gets dressed up as at one point and he's like he's just like directing dressed in this old lady costume all day and like All of them like remembered it like drew Barrymore and Henry Thomas. They are all like, oh we loved when Spielberg like Directed us just as an old lady all day. It's just like really sweet. It's like

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:52:37.23)
Hehehe

Cool.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:52:58.466)
That's great.

Eli Price (01:53:00.094)
Oh, that's exactly what a kid needs. It's like the director to be just like a kid with them, you know? Mm-hmm. Um, and then the, the really, the probably the smartest thing he did for directing the kids was he shot it mostly, um, as much as he could in chronological order. So basically you're setting the kids up to be able to like follow the emotional journey of the movie, like they can remember.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:53:06.655)
be safe. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:53:27.99)
This is where we left off emotionally. We're picking that back up where we left off and moving forward. And the last thing they shoot is saying goodbye to ET. And the reason that scene, one of the, not the, but one of the reasons that scene is so impactful is because they, they know they're actually like saying goodbye to ET, like we're actually saying goodbye to him and we're not going to work with this little puppet anymore. We're not going to be doing.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:53:49.762)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:53:56.914)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:53:57.494)
like, and, um, and man, like, so you're getting like the emotion that's there in the characters, but you're also like getting the real emotion of these people that are like, you know, you, you hear actors and, and crews talk about how emotional it is to like finish production of a movie. And so like to be lining that up with this scene where you're saying goodbye to the

to the production of the movie and this family that you spent time with. But you're also like, the characters are saying goodbye to the alien character. It's just so perfect. Super smart. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:54:36.984)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:54:42.15)
Yeah, um, the score great phenomenal score. Um, probably the main thing to talk about with the score is just that last sequence, um, when they were recording it, Spielberg was like, Hey, I'm going to take the film off the screen. Cause you know, they usually have the film going on the screen to try to kind of match the cadence and the rhythm of the film while they're recording. Um, so he's like, I'm taking it off the screen.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:54:47.738)
Yes. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:55:09.714)
Um, and I want y'all to just play it how it feels. And so they did that and basically Spielberg like re edited the, that final, like all of that last sequence to like match the best recording of the score, um, which is really cool and really insightful and unheard of, like for how to go about doing that. Um,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:55:27.022)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:55:36.274)
It's super smart considering there's not a lot of dialogue at the end. And so what's communicated to you is visuals and music, and you're going to be really influenced by that music. Plus that music's going to carry into the credits. So that, that is, that's good insight. That's good.

Eli Price (01:55:39.19)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:55:48.37)
Yeah. Incredible. Yeah. So they wrap up production, 61 days, five days ahead of schedule, despite all those logistics with using a puppet and having child actors. So really impressive. It premieres for Universal Executives for the first screening and the audience is left in tears. And then they show it in May.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:56:04.759)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:56:16.75)
At Cannes Film Festival and it gets like a 15 minute standing ovation Yeah, just really cool. And then finally in June 11th of 1982 It releases in over 1100 theaters tops the box office six weeks in a row beating Superman 2's record of three weeks Six in a row and then I don't know

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:56:21.954)
Wow, cool.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:56:38.69)
Six weeks in a row. That's when's the last time that even happened? Holy cow. Yeah, that could be it actually. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:56:45.434)
Uh, maybe top gun Maverick. Uh, I don't know. Um, but yeah, and then it stayed, uh, like at the top of the charts for like 24 weeks. I think it had 16 weeks total. Um, by the end of November at number one. Um, which is just wild. I think it stayed in theaters for like a whole year. Um, in the U S.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:57:09.626)
I think the, oh yeah, there's, I think the, there's only one theater. There's one, I do know that like West Side Story, that the original was in a theater for like four years. I can't remember which one. And it like still sold fine, but, but yeah, I feel like the last time a movie killed it, Top Box Office over and over was literally like,

Eli Price (01:57:20.311)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (01:57:23.754)
Wow. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:57:35.734)
maybe what's the movie, The Wretched during 2020, but that's because it was like the only movie screening. So it was like top movie for the 30th week in a row. And it's like, yeah, it made what $600,000. But it's like, I guess it's a record. But obviously the E2 was much, much more impressive. That's crazy.

Eli Price (01:57:41.147)
Yeah, there wasn't anything else.

Eli Price (01:57:49.275)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:57:52.703)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:57:56.286)
Yeah. Just really impressive. It ends up with a worldwide box office of over 700 million. And you had mentioned Star Wars overtaking Jaws. Well, Spielberg took back the mantle. He beat Star Wars with ET and with of course the nod to Yoda, which Lucas enjoyed. I think it's hilarious

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:58:06.326)
Wow, that's.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:58:21.079)
Yeah!

Eli Price (01:58:25.534)
acts like he recognizes Yoda. A funny, a fun touch. Um, but yeah, it stays. Um, it's, it keeps that, that box office record for 11 years. And none other than Steven Spielberg himself beats himself, uh, with Jurassic park 11 years later. So. Yeah. Um, and what's most incredible about that is I think we kind of mentioned earlier, but like kids movies did not do this.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:58:28.65)
Yeah, that was really good.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:58:44.014)
Wild. Just wild.

Eli Price (01:58:55.57)
at the time. Like, it just, I mean, I guess you could argue Star Wars was a kid, kids movie or a kid friendly movie. Right.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:58:57.441)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:59:05.394)
But it's adults in the lead roles. And I think that would make it riskier for like a studio to produce because yeah, like even just thinking about like popular stories where kids are the leads, they're either adult stories with kids being the leads as they go through adult experiences, which is basically trauma movies or like horror movies. Like I'm thinking of the,

Eli Price (01:59:11.268)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (01:59:34.23)
mini series where the best directed section is the kids half. And then like some good scenes happen in the second half with the adults, but mostly because it's in Curry. And yeah, there's not a lot. And then you get the like, you know, the modern kids leads ones, like the stranger things type stuff where it's like, they're cursing up a storm and they're like, it's not really for children. Where you have this, which is respectful to children.

Eli Price (01:59:43.456)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:59:56.946)
Yeah. Sure.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:00:03.09)
uh, aware of children, looks at children in a mature way, and then is also very childlike. Yeah. And Spielberg knows how to also draw out the inner child of everybody who's watching his movies too. And, and, and it's so kind to them in that way. Uh, so it's, it's like all of those things, I think because they're in his hands, they work. Whereas like, if it was someone else doing this movie,

Eli Price (02:00:09.474)
but also just like very childlike, you know?

Eli Price (02:00:19.361)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:00:31.998)
I mean, just even taking this movie seriously is a risk, because that means you have to get everything else right. Otherwise you just kind of look like a joke. So yeah, that's wild. It's just wild.

Eli Price (02:00:35.851)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:00:40.415)
Oh yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, it had, I mean, it got almost unanimous, like critical success. Like I was hard pressed to find any like blasting of ET in my research. Like it's just not out there, which is. Yeah. I mean, I mean, they're definitely out there, but like, it's hard to find. Yeah. Um, I love this. He got a telegram from Francois Truffaut. Um.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:00:59.572)
There's got to be a geo site out there somewhere from the 90s or something. ET hate watch.

Eli Price (02:01:13.406)
who was in Close Encounters and he sent him a telegram that said, you belong here more than me, which was a line from Close Encounters. And just kind of Truffaut, just showing respect to how great of a director he was. And Truffaut loved, of course he made the 400 blows. He loves those movies from the kid's perspective. And so that was probably like, I'm sure Spielberg treasured that telegram.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:01:23.584)
Hmph.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:01:30.573)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:01:43.063)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:01:43.91)
Um, he was, uh, invited by Reagan to screen it at the white house. Um, and then, uh, probably the, the biggest, the biggest thing this movie did was up the Reese's pieces sells to up 60% after this movie. I mean, incredible, incredible work by ET. Um, did you notice that, uh, keys like. It's supposed to be like this really smart dude, but just like totally

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:02:00.654)
crazy.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:02:04.799)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:02:12.118)
He just eats one.

Eli Price (02:02:12.554)
He just picks them up in the middle of the woods and eats some Reese's Pieces. It's like, dude, what are you doing?

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:02:17.214)
Yeah, might as well be rabbit droppings, man. Like, what are you doing? I thought that too. I was like, I know, I know, but what are you doing? It's crazy.

Eli Price (02:02:24.55)
Yeah. Oh man. Yeah. But yeah, Oscars. Um, it's, it's a little bit frustrating for Spielberg. He keeps getting these nominations or non nominations for these big awards, but not getting them. Um, you know, he gets nominated for best picture, best director, screenplay. All three of those go to Gandhi, um, which I've never seen. So I don't really know if it deserved it or not.

But that's what got it. Have you seen Gandhi? Yeah, hey We yeah, we know what has lasted

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:02:56.77)
I have not, but we know what's still talked about. Hey, you want to know who's still alive, Gandhi? ET. So ET wins.

Eli Price (02:03:05.018)
E.T. Yeah, he's probably still alive somewhere out there in the great expanse of the universe. But it also gets nominations for cinematography and editing. Doesn't win those, but it wins for sound, for visual effects, for sound effects editing, and for the score. Great. Yeah. Yeah, great. So kind of like sweeps the technical awards.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:03:26.338)
Good, those ones matter. That's a big deal.

Eli Price (02:03:33.938)
I did note that it won the Writers Guild Award for best drama written for the screen. So the writers knew what was up. They did the right thing and gave it to ET. It sold over 15 million VHS copies when he finally released it on VHS. And then, which he actually like, he should have released it sooner. He spent a little too long.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:03:41.774)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:03:52.366)
smart.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:04:01.674)
Yeah. It's not like a thing. Like a lot of directors were very particular about home video for a long time. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:04:05.246)
Yep. They were. Yeah, they thought about a sequel. He was just like, no, we're not going to do a sequel to ET. Smart. Again, not a sequel guy. The only other...

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:04:18.53)
My wife said with that, said that the Universal Ride is sort of the soft sequel because a lot of iconography that was sort of thrown around or leftovers that could have been there was like then thrown into the animatronics and the quote unquote story, which is really the experience of, of the ride. Um, I intended to check out like some details about it cause I was curious, but, um, but I guess listener, you could.

Eli Price (02:04:26.966)
That makes sense. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:04:33.5)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:04:46.229)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:04:47.49)
check that out independently if you want. Sounds cool. There's like different types of aliens. Like they have different looks and that's kind of neat.

Eli Price (02:04:49.377)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:04:52.618)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean I've been to Universal. I honestly don't remember if I've done the ET right or not. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:05:02.486)
I don't know if it's still there. I can't remember, but it sounds cool. I'm sure there's a digital ride where someone took a camera, like a 360 camera or something.

Eli Price (02:05:11.762)
Oh yeah. Yeah. The only other thing as far as all that goes is the 20th anniversary you released in 2002. He did a lot of like digitally retouching, which I've. Yeah, he did. He really did. There's like he basically like does some CGI work for ET and like so like replaces some of the puppet work with like CGI ET digital work.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:05:25.747)
He'd glucose it

Eli Price (02:05:41.374)
And it's just like, it doesn't, it, it feels weird. Like I didn't watch that version. It's not really available anymore because there was like public outcry about it. Um, one of the things they, they did was they, um, they replaced the police guns with walkie talkies. And I was like, it's just kind of like, okay, like, uh, like police, police have guns, like this, not a, that's not a strange thing, like

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:05:51.938)
Mmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:05:59.923)
I do actually think I heard about that. Yeah. Why? Ha ha ha.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:06:12.29)
So odd.

Eli Price (02:06:13.363)
And then they like modeled ET running after like a gorilla And so like instead of the just seeing like the light of his glowing heart at the beginning of the movie You actually like see ET like running through the grass and it's just like really weird So I'm glad that version is not available anymore So probably for the best He did he Lucas did

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:06:29.45)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:06:39.516)
What was he doing?

Eli Price (02:06:40.81)
They were buddies, so I mean, you know, yeah, they're about the same time too. Not a little after the, the Lucas thing of the original trilogy, but Hey, um, let's hit some key points. One of the things, um, I loved about researching this movie, um, uh, we're going to use this quote to talk about it. Steven Spielberg said, quote, it opened me up to more personal stories. Unquote. Um,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:06:43.877)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:06:48.62)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:06:52.302)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:07:09.862)
And he still says, well, I haven't seen any interviews since he's made the fablements, so I don't know if he would change this to the fablements now, but, uh, for a long time, he said this was still his most personal story. Um, and you know, he talks about how it gave him courage to like express himself more freely when it was successful. Um, and then Matheson talked about how Spielberg was like while they were making it and writing it so worried about.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:07:16.098)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:07:38.91)
Like that ET was too soft of a film. He was worried about like, are the men in the audience even going to like it? Um, and he finally just like stopped worrying about that and like, just like expressed himself. Um, and like, man, like, okay. Held the top grossing film spot for 11 years. So like, yeah. Um, so I loved that about this movie. Um, yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:07:51.51)
Good. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:08:06.542)
I wonder, I'm wondering like during, cause you know, the thing is that like the movie you do in pre-production isn't the same the one as the one you do in production and it isn't the same as the one in both. So like you can't really see the finished film. And so I wonder if there was even just worry of like, if the movie was paced well, like is it gonna have excitement? Is it gonna have threat? Like what's gonna be there?

Eli Price (02:08:18.764)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:08:22.572)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:08:27.784)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:08:35.476)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:08:35.99)
And like, it is a weird movie the way it sort of has like, okay, this alien shows up and then like nothing happens, but little things happen. And I think that when you're attuned to them, and people clearly have been because I think also, a lot of the direction helps you do that it really focuses you in with like quick lines of dialogue from the television or a song or maybe somebody talking in another room or just like these all these things that kind of help.

Eli Price (02:08:45.747)
Right.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:09:05.794)
build up this thing you need to focus on so that all these details, actually all these scenes of nothing happening of, of Elliot, just telling him what's about these toys. Like, uh, cause if you've ever had a child tell you about their toys, it's. It's like adorable, but it's also brutal. It's like, it is like, I know you love this, but I do not love this.

Eli Price (02:09:17.312)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:09:28.811)
Meh.

Eli Price (02:09:32.022)
Yeah, yes.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:09:33.798)
And so like all of these things, like really, I think. I think what Spielberg does so well is he draws out that childlike joy and excitement and wonder. And in doing so, the men he might have been worried out of worried about. He through his own film drew out that in it in them, because obviously 717 million at that time, that was not just the women and the children like that was the men as well. So.

Eli Price (02:09:42.644)
Yes.

Eli Price (02:09:52.094)
Yes. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:09:57.03)
Oh man. No, it's everybody. Yeah. And they talk a lot, a lot about how it's not just a kid's movie. Um, Oh, I love this quote from Spielberg. He said, it's cliche now to say this movie is for the child and all of us. Uh, and he says, no, this movie is for the people we are and the people we have been and want to be again, uh, it's I think for everybody.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:10:15.307)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:10:21.174)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:10:24.458)
And I was like, man, that's a very insightful quote. It's not just like, oh, it brings out the child in you. It's like, it's no, it's like reconnecting with those childlike aspects of who you are and who you were and trying to like get back to the like the beneficial and good parts of those like parts of your past. And you know, that's something that like having kids can do with you or like.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:10:28.397)
Yes!

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:10:45.88)
Yes.

Eli Price (02:10:53.074)
interacting with kids can do with you or even just like taking in art like this that taps into that. Whether it's like watching a movie like ET or reading a book like The Little Prince, you know, it taps into that childlike aspect of who we are and like, like trying to get back to that piece of us. And so, yeah. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:11:07.406)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:11:18.838)
Which is even, which happens with Michael when like his first introduction in terms of how he treats stuffed animals is threatening to rip off the arm of Gertie's bunny. But then like when ET is like dying, like where does he go to like rest? He goes into the closet where it's nothing but stuffed animals. And also where ET was and yeah, he's reconnecting to like a safer place. It's sweet.

Eli Price (02:11:25.452)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (02:11:35.144)
Yes.

Yeah, and it's right. It's.

And it's, yeah, it's gentle and like sweet and like, um, just something like you don't expect from like a 14, 15 year old boy, um, in general, like, but like when, when it comes down to it, like he, that's what he needs in that, that moment, um, just re yeah. Yeah. I love that. Um, another thing about Spielberg I think is

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:11:54.614)
From him. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (02:12:12.81)
because you, you wonder like, how did he like tap into this? And I think, I think it's very much just because like Spielberg as a storyteller, um, is someone who's past, it always feels present to him. Um, so like, he's just like injecting those experiences into the film as if like he's experiencing them now, even though like they're just experiences from his past, but it's just the way he carries his past.

is almost like, not that he's still experiencing it, but he can so easily tap back into those experiences.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:12:49.962)
I think he understands memory better than most people. Just because like, yeah, cause memory, if you talk to like a psychologist or even psychiatrists, just someone in the field of like the body and the mind in a more emotional way, metaphysical way, you'll find that like when they talk about like memories, they're like, your body doesn't know that memory you're bringing up isn't happening right now.

Eli Price (02:12:52.682)
That's a good point, yeah. That's a good way of putting it.

Eli Price (02:13:05.346)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:13:16.426)
And so like if you're talking to someone and you're asking them in a safe environment and they're consenting to describe a traumatic event, they might start saying words you've never heard them say before because they're livid. And it's like, they're not actually filled with mouse and hatred to kill, but their body is like, I am now in the presence of my abuser again. And I now know better that I can stand up for myself or perhaps can have a way out. And so I'm ready to get that.

Eli Price (02:13:28.243)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:13:46.142)
mother effer out of my life or something, and they don't hate them. And it may actually still not necessarily be a symbol of maturity that they still have that resentment, but like that's part of, I think, the biblical guidance of disciplining the body is when your body is doing these defense mechanisms that like, oh, we're back there again.

Eli Price (02:13:47.744)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:14:06.082)
Sure.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:14:11.274)
Like you can learn how to process that in a way that is simultaneously raw and authentic so that the person next to you knows how, like what is in your heart. Cause you can't do what ET does where he literally can make other people feel what he feels. Um, but you're able to still bring the person to where you were. Uh, and that's often why I think like, why we can become so overcome by.

Eli Price (02:14:20.189)
Mm.

Eli Price (02:14:24.595)
right.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:14:37.098)
traumatic events when we're around symbols or around smells or around noises that are similar. It's why I think mirrors are uniquely, uh, affected, evocative to people who struggle with mental health is because you're face to face with yourself and who has lived your life, you. And so sometimes that's really bothersome. Um, and so there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of ways in which he uses

Eli Price (02:14:56.543)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:15:04.27)
feeling and memory in his films. And I would say mysticism in a way that's not like, stones and rocks in Mumbo Jumbo, but like the magic of the world to just really communicate simple, complex, oxymoron, simply complex things that are everyday human experiences. I don't know, it's just consistently impressive.

Eli Price (02:15:06.793)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Eli Price (02:15:14.067)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:15:26.09)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:15:33.226)
Yeah. And, and they're injected with like the, the other juxtaposition, which is that you see kind of like through his filmography, which is this, like, walking this fine line between like wonder and terror that like, um, where you can feel both of those things at the same time. And both of those feelings be like absolutely like real, like I'm kind of scared, but I'm also like awestruck and like one and one of like

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:15:33.782)
the way he does it.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:15:49.227)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:16:00.854)
Yeah, aww, yeah.

Eli Price (02:16:01.822)
I'm drawn into it and like pushed away from it at the same time. Um, and you know, you kind of get that with the bike flying, like Elliot's like, not too high, not too high, but like at the same time you can see on his face. He's like, he's scared, but he's like, yeah, I'm flying. This is incredible. Um, and it's just like, that feeling is just universal. Like, and we have that feeling just like all the time in our life, like the feeling of like,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:16:13.61)
Mm-hmm.

freaking flying.

Eli Price (02:16:31.454)
I'm scared to press into this aspect of my life, but I'm also drawn to it. I don't like, I mean, it can be something as simple as starting a new relationship or resolving something in a relationship. It's scary, but at the same time, you're like, how incredible would it be though, like to reconcile this really, you know, it's just like tapping in.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:16:38.786)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:16:56.822)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:16:59.598)
He just taps into that so well. And it's that juxtaposition of fear and wonder that he just like, is so in tune with. Let's talk about, let's do this. Let's, we're talking about some good themes. Let's keep going with that. What was, well, let's each kind of like talk about like a standout theme.

of the movie and then we'll wrap up talking about some like intriguing sequences or interesting sequences or like our favorite sequences and images of the movie. But yeah, what was a theme that we haven't talked about that really stands out to you?

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:17:45.63)
Okay, so we talked about, let's go through, let me mentally kind of go through this. So we've talked, because we've talked about a lot. We've talked about feeling, I think is one of the biggest things here. And when you started to touch on awe, it almost felt like you were getting to the last of the feelings. Because like awe is such a fascinating experience in terms of being that line between fear and yet attraction too. It's like beauty you want to get close to, but.

Eli Price (02:17:49.589)
Yeah, we have.

Eli Price (02:17:55.97)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:18:13.686)
beauty so powerful that it will consume you. But yeah, so fear, we talked a bit about some of the more like growing up stuff, maturity. We already talked about the mentorship, which this watch was really the thing that I kept noticing a lot in terms of the way he looks up to ET is like everything that is possible, but also something to be kind of controlled.

Eli Price (02:18:32.287)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:18:44.518)
And I think on.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:18:45.715)
And then we did talk about the transition between the violence to gentleness too. I don't know, what do you think? Honestly, I feel like this is the single most comprehensive discussion on ET that has ever happened in its 40 years of existence.

Eli Price (02:18:49.394)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:18:57.899)
Yeah, I mean, so one of the things like you're talking about, like the empathy, like we kind of touched on this, but just to like make it more explicit is Elliot has this journey in his empathy and connection with ET where he progresses from seeing ET like as a possession at first like something. Yeah, he's, he's mine. Like I'm keeping him.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:19:19.469)
Mm-hmm. He's mine. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:19:24.818)
Like I'm teaching him, uh, he progresses from that to like, in the end, he has this like deep connection and love for him to the degree of like, he's willing to let him go and understand that that's what's best for ET is for him to go back to his home planet. Um, and that's like a very deep, mature sort of love. Um, and empathy is very, is, is hard for kids. Like,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:19:37.975)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:19:44.558)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:19:53.482)
You know, I have a kid and you know, it's, it's hard to teach empathy because they're, they're so wrapped up in their own little world and you know, that's not a bad thing, that's just, you know, that's just how kids are as part of development, but empathy is very hard for kids. It's hard to like explain, like you have to think about how other people feel, which is something that Michael says to Elliot early on in the, in the movie. And by the end of the movie, Elliot.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:20:08.948)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:20:22.176)
Yes.

Eli Price (02:20:23.354)
has sort of learned that and he's learned it through those mentorships of E.T. and Michael and even Keys like being kind of like a pseudo older brother because a lot of times in films older brothers kind of teach you that you have to grow up eventually and that's kind of what Keys teaches Elliot but yeah it's really incredible.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:20:33.794)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:20:44.594)
Yes.

Eli Price (02:20:51.134)
really, really credible and really like, like you've said, respectful to children. It doesn't like treat them as less them because kids have complex emotions. Um, and, and Spielberg understands that and doesn't like, doesn't feel the need to create like a flashy fast movie. He spends time and his patient, like, I just think about that last, just that last moment.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:21:03.224)
Yes.

Eli Price (02:21:19.698)
It's like so slow, ET leaving. Um, and like you would never see that in a movie, a kid, like a movie made for kids today, um, you would never see that, that sequence take so long. Um, but he spends time in that moment of grief. Um, uh, he's, he's injecting like real and complex emotions into this movie for kids, cause kids can understand those things, um, and connect with them.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:21:23.902)
Yes, it takes forever.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:21:29.166)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:21:46.59)
Yeah, I mean, it's so similar to, um, it, the movie's paced during its melancholy times it's paced like, uh, this is a weird comparison, but it's paced like a ghost story where like these moments of sadness are dreadful because they're so long and you're aware of how long they are. Uh, and the ending it's like, the longer this goodbye takes, the more the good bye is going to hurt.

Eli Price (02:21:58.506)
Sure.

Eli Price (02:22:04.47)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:22:14.966)
but that's the irony of the goodbye, which is that like, I don't want it to end because I know it's the end. And it's, I think feeling those out, that's really helpful. It's the opposite of running away. And I think like growing in that endurance is helpful and doing it through a film where it's paced so that a director can decide when is the time, it's time now, helps an audience to feel the emotion for the time it needs to, and then call it a day.

Eli Price (02:22:19.222)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:22:43.179)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:22:44.19)
Um, and then of course, to talk about it, uh, and for parents and kids, I'm sure there was plenty for people who engaged it in a way that would be this. You can engage it for entertainment. That's fine. But if they wanted to engage it for more, I'm sure there was plenty of good conversation or opened up conversation about what it, what hard experiences felt like for kids or for parents in their past to share with their kids because they've

had this film almost kind of showcase it in a viable, gentle way. Yeah, it's neat. It's neat how he does it.

Eli Price (02:23:16.638)
Yes. Yeah, it really is. Yeah, the other thing that there's a few points I had written in my notes that are kind of all intertwined and they all have to do with themes of kind of like tolerance because I think this is something that like Spielberg knows like and most of us kind of know intuitively that like tolerance of different of things like different or things that are going to change are like

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:23:27.383)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:23:45.022)
something that we can learn, especially like when it comes to other people, is something we can definitely learn from kids. Kids are very willing to like.

Eli Price (02:23:55.522)
except people that are different than them. It's weird because sometimes change and difference can like scare children, but like there's, yeah, for sure.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:24:06.35)
I think it's on a smaller scale. I think when there's small groups, I get what you're getting at. Where like, cause like when I was in school, that's when like, I felt like people started to not, to learn what it's like to not like each other. But when I was in like playing in my yard or playing on my street with kids on my street, yeah, we all just liked each other. There wasn't any reason not to. And then you...

Eli Price (02:24:11.614)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (02:24:21.649)
Yeah, yeah.

Eli Price (02:24:25.888)
With like a few kids. Yeah Right

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:24:32.534)
find out about the magical world that is the next street over. And there's more kids to play with. And so now you have a baseball game. And yeah, there seems to be just something more about, if you could just run faster, that was the coolest thing ever. So it didn't matter. You didn't really care. So I get what you're getting at. There's a tolerance about that.

Eli Price (02:24:35.362)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:24:46.966)
the

Eli Price (02:24:50.59)
Yeah. Well, yeah. And it's, it's tapping into the aspect of that where like, one of the things I wrote my notes early on in the movie is like, there's this understanding that the kids have that the adults are going to think this thing that's different is dangerous. And they, they already into, yeah, they already intuitively know that this thing is not dangerous, but if we introduce it to the adults,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:25:09.642)
Yeah, we gotta keep him away.

Eli Price (02:25:18.006)
they are going to treat it as something dangerous. And I just thought that was like, so, that feels so true. Like it makes me check myself, like as an adult human, like what things am I like treating with like, or like treating as dangerous that maybe is just different that I need to kind of like just explore like they do with ED.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:25:21.73)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:25:47.158)
They just kind of explore who he is and kind of accept him into their home. Yeah, I love that. And I love that there's not really any true villains in this movie. In the end, you kind of find that there's not.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:25:48.066)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:25:53.846)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:25:59.519)
No.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:26:04.042)
It's more of a man versus self kind of plot. We're in like the necessary change of the self as kind of the villain. We're in the way that like, Elliot has to just go through this thing that kind of sucks and then get through it. So.

Eli Price (02:26:20.207)
Yeah. It's just pro it's a movie just about processing emotion and where you are in life, really like a bird's eye view. And it really like, if you think about it can apply in so many, probably speak to you in different ways at different points of your life, like a kid that's maybe lonely wishing he had a friend, um, that he could really connect with a kid that has lost a parent, like needing that.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:26:26.314)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:26:35.63)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:26:45.098)
mentorship in their life that is missing. Um, or even like, like someone who is like losing an older loved one, like you kind of get that feeling at the end when ET is dying, cause he, he looks like old and gray, like, and it's almost like you're losing a grandparent, which, which can be a, a hard experience. So like, I can just see how like.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:26:48.385)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:27:03.834)
Yes, yeah.

Eli Price (02:27:11.506)
It's such a universal thing that he's tapping into that like it can even apply in different ways at different like parts of your life. Um, but yeah, intriguing or fun or interesting sequences or images. Um, I wrote in my notes drunk ET LOL, because this is, I know this is what you wanted to talk about Melvin. So now is your time to shine on.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:27:17.422)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:27:33.522)
Yeah, this is what I tell you.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:27:39.506)
So I, okay, so, um, going into the movie blind, I didn't really know anything about it. I knew it was sort of like people saying like, it's a coming of age movie. It's very respectful to kids. Just a great filmmaking that all that stuff. Um, but I didn't like know what the movie was, like what it was going to talk about. And so like, I was just delighted that the film talked about like feelings and that it was, um, had this like joy of life itself and like.

Children, I think, exemplify that because everything's new to them and apples taste good and then at some point they don't want them anymore. Kraft Mac and cheese is now the best. And then at some point when you're like 29, you realize you don't want that anymore. But then you hit 35 and you'll want it again. So I'm looking forward to that. But there was so much about that to me that I really liked. I like gentleness and kindness, especially with the, I think, aroma of fear.

Eli Price (02:28:13.25)
Sure.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:28:36.566)
Because there is that constantly with the G men always being present. You're always wondering about like what on the outside is going to come in and affect this idyllic like experience. Um, and so when I was thinking of like things to talk about, like, and you had asked even about it, I was like, we have, we have to talk about the frog dissection scene, um, just because, um, there's something it's, it's a scene that when it happens, it's so weird.

Eli Price (02:28:55.819)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:29:04.921)
Yes.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:29:05.822)
And so outside of the rest of the film that I often find, I have a suspicion that many people probably like, if they have a negative critique of the film, it's this scene, just because it's also like, it's like a short film. It's like a, there's very little dialogue of any importance. There's very little scene of importance other than essentially like, I think for most people, ET learning that he can maybe build like a communicator.

Eli Price (02:29:14.646)
Probably, yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:29:33.698)
But for the themes of like how these characters connect heart to heart and how they become one and how they become so intertwined that they experience and understand and talk and like you have ET who's thinking help me, help me or, and then Elliot on the other side saying, save him, save him. And so he's like a call and response. And then it's expressed through, instead of killing and then dissecting these frogs,

Eli Price (02:29:40.235)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:29:54.146)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:30:03.542)
He, he, it motivates a revolt in which all of these children release hundreds of frogs from this school. There's this great shot of just windows and hands dropping frogs out. Um, there's a romantic kiss as, uh, Elliot and this, uh, girl that's interested in him, uh, kiss before he steps out and he whisked away and.

Eli Price (02:30:11.825)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:30:15.784)
Yes.

Eli Price (02:30:25.9)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:30:27.538)
And that's continued to be more connection with ET cause he's watching like a TV program where that happens on screen. Um, and. I just, that scene, when I saw it in theaters, I was moved to tears so much. I had difficulty watching like the next couple of scenes. Um, and I don't, I was so overcome by it just because I found it to like showcase so much of what it, what like for myself personally, like I think people will.

Eli Price (02:30:33.021)
Right.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:30:56.15)
personally collected many scenes in this film, most notably the end, because I think the concept of letting go and like loss is something that everyone will experience. And that's much more natural, I think. For myself, I'm someone who's really, as an empath and someone who yearns for someone to really understand and not necessarily always agree, but to understand or hear or to move, I should say move with me.

Eli Price (02:30:57.89)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:31:05.536)
Yes.

Eli Price (02:31:20.428)
Mm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:31:24.714)
Um, there's something about like that sequence of these two distant people, like doing these things that like are just in sync and then doing it in such a weird creative, um, simultaneously grotesque and also like beautiful way to me just felt so wonderful. Um, cause it is such a bizarre scene of like word, wordy frogs or slimy and gross.

Eli Price (02:31:46.298)
Yeah, it is.

It's almost like a dream sequence of sorts. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:31:53.586)
Yeah, it's so dreamy. Um, and like the music plays it up and it just, it just becomes another world for a minute. And I, for me, I think like when you, when you are so, uh, heard or seen or loved, it is like you've been taken somewhere and there's, there's nowhere else in the world anymore. And so to me, this, this felt like that. Um, and so it killed me. I died. Then I came back.

to watch the rest of the movie. And it is like the scene that whenever I think about this movie, I think about this one every time. And I have to like take a minute because I want to watch it again in my head. So I love this scene. It's amazing. It's like Spielberg's best scene ever. And I haven't even seen half of his movies yet. But I just I freaking love this scene. It's great stuff.

Eli Price (02:32:25.766)
I love that. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:32:33.107)
Yeah, that's cool.

Eli Price (02:32:37.704)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:32:40.939)
Hahaha.

Yeah.

Yeah, I love that. That's such a unique, um, like thing to connect with, but I, I really love that. And like, um, your, yeah, your perspective on that, like, I want to go back and watch it again now too. Um, yeah. Yeah. The, the other scene I was thinking about too, that's like similar. And it, and it goes back to like that idea, cause that, if you're going to put that into a category of, of what, of like,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:32:50.315)
Hahaha!

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:33:03.255)
It's so good. Man.

Eli Price (02:33:16.802)
or fear or like awe and wonder. That's the scene of awe and wonder of that connection that he's building with ET. But there's another like scene that kind of fills out of place too and it's like when the astronauts are like crashing into the house. It's like, first of all, like why are these dudes in astronaut suits? That doesn't make any sense. And second of all, like what now this is a horror movie? Like what's happening? And it's because like, I think it's, I think there's.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:33:25.524)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:33:35.614)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:33:42.786)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:33:44.586)
those both feel like a dream sequence where it's like, you're kind of like put into the dream, like over imaginative perspective of a child where he's like experiencing this love and empathy and connection and all in wonder to like the nth degree in this like incredible dream sequence. And then he's also feeling this like fear of invasion and the terror and of that in this like fantastical-ish.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:33:57.003)
Yes.

Eli Price (02:34:14.434)
kind of dreamy. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't make any sense until you think about, oh, this is like how a child would like experience this, like in their mind.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:34:16.11)
Yeah, they're like breaking in through the window. Why?

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:34:26.73)
Yeah, and a hazmat suit kinda looks like a spacesuit, so sure, make it a spacesuit, why not?

Eli Price (02:34:29.79)
Yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah. And so, yeah, I love that. I hadn't thought about that until you were explaining all of that. But yeah, that's, those two scenes like feel out of place with the rest of the movie. But like, when you think about like what they're doing, like thematically and like with like, that dream, like juxtaposition of a dream of like all and wonder and love and a dream of like fear and terror. It's like,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:34:59.914)
Yeah, there are scenes that feel like they would be in Close Encounters, because Close Encounters is kind of like a... For me, that film is, I think, too disconnected. It's so non-descript. I kept, like, when I saw it, I kept thinking, like, I know what you're doing, Spielberg, but he's still like... I think it's like a husband who, like, goes to the ship. I'm like...

Eli Price (02:34:59.914)
Yeah, perfect.

Eli Price (02:35:05.343)
Yeah, sure.

Eli Price (02:35:11.371)
Hmm.

Eli Price (02:35:25.246)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:35:25.95)
you're still have responsibilities to your wife and children. And so I could not get past that. And so I feel like those things apply better here because it's a child growing up. So a lot of these things make more sense to me as being fantastical. Plus, like the fact that ET gets drunk and Elliot gets drunk, too, is just like these are all fun things of like you have all these things in the future you want to do now as a kid. And now you're doing it incidentally. And so and look what it made you do. You have.

Eli Price (02:35:31.146)
Yeah, I get that.

Eli Price (02:35:44.935)
It's great. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:35:53.706)
And the mom is oblivious. He's loading the, unloading the groceries. She smacks the fridge into ET and Gertie's like, I think you just killed him. Love it.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:35:55.266)
Let the frogs out. Yeah. And she has no idea. Great scene. I loved all that. It's so good. But like all of that, like I think works better here. And like in Close Encounters, it's like, I just, I could, I could never get on all of that dreamy kind of artsy stuff. So.

Eli Price (02:36:17.458)
Yeah, I get that. Yeah. I really enjoy it in close encounters, but yeah, I can totally understand that perspective too, for sure. It makes sense. Yeah, I mean, the only other thing I want to point out is like he does all of this like little clue you in imagery with like the flowers dying and coming back to life. Great stuff. And then you get the final sequence we've hit on it. You've got a chase scene.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:36:26.2)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:36:40.007)
Yes, really good stuff.

Eli Price (02:36:47.314)
Spielberg displaying his like sense of geography great action shooting And then man, so I asked my wife this earlier because she watched it with me. We had both had both been Had been forever for both of us since we had seen it. So she wanted to watch it with me So I asked her earlier while we were driving around town. I was like, do you remember what the last four lines of ET were?

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:36:52.568)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:37:12.542)
She was like, no, I don't remember. And she could remember the last line, but I'm going to ask you to, do you remember the last four, what are the last four lines of ET? It's a quiz pop quiz.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:37:22.422)
or does I have no idea I know how I felt okay

Eli Price (02:37:26.522)
Right. Here's the last four lines. You ready? Come, stay, ouch, I'll be right here.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:37:39.414)
What the?

Eli Price (02:37:39.922)
Yeah, this is the last four lines. And so I'm like saying those four lines to my wife and I like her. I'm like looking over at her because we're at a stop stoplight and she's like, her face is like starting to like well up with tears and then like I started, I started to get emotional. I'm like, why are you doing like, why are you getting so emotional? She's like, you're making me sad and like what those lines. And, um, I was like, it just like it.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:37:49.774)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:37:57.758)
Ha ha

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:38:04.11)
Hehehehe

Eli Price (02:38:08.582)
It hit me like how like efficiently emotionally impactful that last moment is like you have these four like super simple lines, but just me like regurgitating those like to my wife, like just trying to do some trivia in the car. Um, like brought back all of those emotions like that come stay. Ouch. I'll be right here. Just like, man, so like, so good. Um,

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:38:19.348)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:38:27.488)
Yeah, it's great.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:38:38.066)
In the, in the last year, I've been thinking a lot about like communication and the way that like we connect with others through language. Um, I think a very early, like communicative philosophy that people understand is that like language is not. Like your own personal, like perfect filter, like how you talk is almost like the last step of influence you have.

Eli Price (02:38:42.252)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:39:06.834)
in the development of a thought, because there's also like, I've talked so that's outside of me, I've thought, which is me thinking the sentence from beginning to end. And then there's like, before that, I had it though. So like, I could start reading this sentence in my head, and I can finish it. And I don't have to keep reading it, because like, my brain thought of it in like a split second. And it's that split second where like, the thought is developed, presides and germinates and whatever.

Eli Price (02:39:27.49)
Mm-hmm.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:39:34.574)
And like what's kind of awesome with this film as it sort of shows feeling and communication through it. And it makes it very pointed because Michael even talking to the scientists is like, it's not that he like can communicate with them. He feels what he wants and like he feels, he feels what ET needs and stuff. And so like, in that way, like they have this perfect connection. And then by the end of the film, now they're disconnected. So now they are relying on, on language too.

Eli Price (02:39:48.098)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:39:59.634)
Right. But it's almost a truer connection at the end though. Right.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:40:05.41)
Cause they both understand almost now they understand each other without having to be connected, which is quite interesting. And so the idea of like, come stay, ouch, I'll always be with you. It's almost like you, I could stay, it's going to hurt. You can come with me. It's going to hurt. But like, if we separate, we're always going to be together. I think the implication probably being like Elliot probably couldn't live with ET, but, um, cause we don't know. We haven't seen that movie, but. Um.

Eli Price (02:40:09.522)
Right.

Eli Price (02:40:21.598)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:40:25.132)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:40:35.166)
Yeah, it's, um, it's good stuff. Uh, I, I like seeing how similar themes are communicated in different ways. I said that I've thought about it for the last year or last year. I watched scanners, very similar themes at play. There's another movie I can't remember from last year that had a similar idea, but, um, yeah, it's, uh, it's just beautiful how art kind of helps us learn to think more complicated that like, yeah, you can be driving and, and

five words can just break you down. That like our other words that like are, would have no meaning to someone who hasn't seen the movie, you know? Just really cool.

Eli Price (02:41:12.81)
Yes. Yeah. And that leads perfectly into my final thought. Because you're talking about how art can break down our walls as the viewer and the audience. But also it can do that for the creator too. Spielberg, this is my final thought, something that I just love as a takeaway from just like kind of the results of this film, which is that Spielberg

in making this, like in working with these kids every day. He talks about how, like he started to feel like a father to them on set and it like opened him up to the idea of having a big family. And he like, he credits ET for like the family he has now, like working with those kids on set. Like he's like, I could...

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:41:59.438)
That's sweet. That's so cool.

Eli Price (02:42:10.638)
I actually think I want to be a father now and, you know, goes on to get married, has a big family. And it's just so cool. Like art can change us as the audience, but art can change the creator too. And the act of creating, it's just very interesting to me how when you're creating something, whether it be art or a podcast or a business, you know.

you're thinking you're changing things, but it always happens that those things are like that act of creating is also changing you too. Um, and I just love that. And, you know, it's, I just think it's so such a sweet, like takeaway that like. ET didn't just like change. P like those, these huge amounts of people that went and saw this movie, but like it changed Spielberg too. Um, and I just think that's a beautiful thing about.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:42:49.11)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:43:09.238)
filmmaking that I wanted to share as a final thought. Yeah, that's ET. It's a good movie. Yeah. What do you have it rated? Do you have it as a? Okay, yeah. Cool.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:43:19.266)
Good movie. Perfect movie, actually. I think this movie's great. I think I have it as a 10. I really do love this movie. It's just, it's so, it's well-made, it's powerful, it looks really good, it utilizes the creativity and the like.

Eli Price (02:43:33.152)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:43:44.482)
the methods of filmmaking at the time to do a lot of its effects and special stuff to like the utmost effect. Um, and yeah, it's just a, it's impressive stuff. It holds up, absolutely holds up. Um, I think I remember like part of why I wasn't allowed to watch it as a kid is because of the penis breath joke or whatever line, because like I think my parents just thought it was a little too vulgar. And so I do wonder if that, if yeah. And I wonder if like that was like,

Eli Price (02:43:46.474)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:44:05.269)
Yeah.

Yeah, and there's an S word or two in there too.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:44:14.226)
maybe like just maybe if that's affected anything, like in terms of the age that people usually watch stuff. But then I was also like a kid at school and my friends were talking about Jason Voorhees, so I don't know anything. Um, but like, yeah, I think it's, I just think it's great. I love this movie. Um, there is a part of me that simultaneously wishes like ET as a creature looked a little more marketable. Um, but he was

Eli Price (02:44:24.151)
Ha ha.

Eli Price (02:44:28.586)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:44:40.382)
Hey, he was the number one selling Christmas toy in 1982. So.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:44:44.314)
Yeah, I know. And like when you see the plush version, it's super cute. So like, I get it. It's possible. But he but when you were describing that, like his intent was to be like. Unpleasant. Yeah. Like, yeah. So like, I get it. But it's anyways, I have no I that's not even a real criticism. It's just like it's part of.

Eli Price (02:44:48.187)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:44:58.402)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:45:07.682)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:45:10.694)
It's like if you notice something about yourself you didn't like, but you didn't like, you didn't hate yourself for it. Like that's the thing. So, um, yeah, I, uh, I love this movie. I think it's so good. I'm kind of waiting to get like a good collector's edition of it. I know it's like ET is such a successful, important movie that like every time a new format will come out, it's one of the first ones to come out. So I'm kind of waiting to see like, I don't know.

Eli Price (02:45:25.023)
Mm.

Eli Price (02:45:38.751)
What's next? Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:45:39.594)
whatever anniversary happens, if there's something new that comes along. But yeah, I love it. What about you?

Eli Price (02:45:42.674)
Yeah. I mean, I love it. I want to reassess it. And I think I have it as like a four star or eight out of 10 movie, which is a great rating for me. And I have it. I'm just not like, I want to like get a little further into my Spielberg filmography. But it's like Jaws is like a

masterpiece to me. So like, I don't see any I don't I don't know how like how like any Spielberg movie more than Jaws. But he is like right there like it's in that top tier for me of the ones I've seen I have I have plenty of blind spots that I'm working through in this series. But yeah, it's it could if I sat down and like really like thought about it, I could see it moving to like a nine, four and a half star.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:46:14.438)
It's great. Josh is great.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:46:30.934)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:46:41.79)
movie for me. But yeah, regardless of that, I think it's a top tier Spielberg and it's one of his most beloved films for a reason. So yeah, that's all we have for E.T. We're going to wrap up the episode. I am really looking forward to next week on the show doing an Alien

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:46:55.248)
Oh yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:47:10.838)
Mm-hmm.

Eli Price (02:47:12.278)
And exciting so be looking forward to that and then of course, we'll be picking up with Temple of doom Indiana Jones in the Temple of doom after that. So yeah some great episodes coming up be looking forward to those Melvin Anything else you want to plug I will definitely Link in the in the shown that you know the episode description to the cinematic doctrine But yeah, anything else you want to plug?

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:47:41.194)
Yeah. Cinematic doctrines, the podcast name, uh, got all those different shows. I talked about earlier movie discussions where we just kind of cover a film from, uh, just in terms of topics and themes and discuss it, uh, party pleasers, where we describe a movie from beginning to end goof about it the whole time, get to cover more unorthodox types of films and then decide if it's a party pleaser, party pooper, and then let's talks, which are much more essay formatted discussion, all formats. I did forget to mention. I.

Our podcast isn't a Christian movie podcast, but is a movie podcast hosted by a Christian or hosted by Christians. And I say that because I think that putting us into the category of Christian movie podcast really limits the scope of expectation of what we discuss. When I talked about, I realized I was introducing the podcast and describing that, I said it came out of a personal necessity.

Eli Price (02:48:15.298)
Sure. Yeah.

Eli Price (02:48:26.719)
Yes.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:48:40.51)
movie podcast, hosted by Christians that I enjoyed. So I was like, fine, I'll just make it. But I digress. So that's the end of that pitch for cinematic doctrine. I'm also on Instagram. Oh, go ahead.

Eli Price (02:48:50.71)
Well, and I'll say, I'll say too, uh, on, on that, like when you, like, when you listen to you and whoever you have on with you, like discuss movies, like, it's really like very much similar to how we've discussed this movie. Um, it's not like, Oh, let's like make this movie. Let's figure out how Christian this movie is. Yeah. It's. Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:49:07.404)
Yeah.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:49:12.61)
Let's make it a devotional. I, cause I do not like the format of the like using film to do a devotional. I think that the Bible's good for devotionals. I don't think the Godfather is good for devotionals. I do think there's a lot of interesting things to talk about, about humanity and God through the Godfather. Yeah. All that stuff's great, but I do like to.

Eli Price (02:49:20.267)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:49:31.986)
Yeah, there's religious, I mean, you've got sacred heart, ET, even. Uh, so it's, it's there, but yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to point that out that like, in, in case people are like, Oh, I don't like, cause you know, but it's, it's just like what we did here. It's.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:49:49.95)
Yeah. If, if someone honestly wants a good episode that covers like Christian perspectives on like a type of film, uh, two Halloween's ago, we did an episode on a movie called hang man's curse. It's a two-parter episode. It is a Christian horror movie based off of a Frank Paredi book. Frank Paredi is considered like the Stephen King of Christian literature. Um, apparently a very good author. Um, but this movie is very bizarre. Um, and so anyways, that's a good example for that.

Uh, yeah, you can check me out on Instagram too. Uh, the Instagram has a combination of reels that are clips from episodes and then, uh, cinematography, uh, enthusiast posts. So there's there. And then I'm also on threads. You can connect on that. Um, and then, you know, if you like what we do, Patreon, support on Patreon. Love it. I am on letterbox. Let me see. I'm trying to remember what my username is. Cause yeah, like I always have it as something else.

Eli Price (02:50:36.318)
Yeah. And your own letterbox too.

Eli Price (02:50:41.726)
It's hard to remember what your username is, but yeah, I'll link it. I'll link it in the episode description so people can just go click it. So I know I follow you.

Melvin (Cinematic Doctrine) (02:50:49.822)
It's Melvin Benson or paraturtle, but whatever, one or the other.

Eli Price (02:50:52.414)
Yeah. Yeah, I'll link it so it's easy to just click it. But yeah. Yeah. Great. Great discussion on ET had a lot of fun looking forward to our alien invasions draft. But yeah, that's all we have on ET for this week. Yeah. For now, I've been Eli Price for Melvin Benson. You've been listening to the Establishing Shot. We'll see you next time.