And she said, ‘I’ve retired from writing, I don’t write anymore.
I’m not interested in writing anymore.
It’s too hard.’
Steven Spielberg (left) with Harrison Ford and screenwriter Melissa Mathison on the set of ‘E.T.’.
She turned me down."
“‘She doesn’t want to write my next movie.’
And [Harrison] said, ‘Let me talk to her.’
The idea forE.T.first came to Spielberg while he was makingClose Encounters of the Third Kind(1977).
I suddenly thought: Wait a second, what if that creature never went back to the ship?
What if the creature was part of a foreign-exchange program?
Dreyfuss goes, he stays.
Matheson and Spielberg began collaborating on the script while he was in post-production onRaiders of the Lost Ark.
“And then she’d come back with those pages and we’d do another five days.”
“I had given her the narrative, but all the little moments like E.T.
’s ability to teleport things, E.T.
’s ability with telekinesis, and also the idea that E.T.
“That was never in the story I presented to Melissa.
There were so many details of character that Melissa brought into my world from her world.”
Matheson’s first draft was so perfect that it essentially became the final shooting script.
“She turns in a first-draft screenplay,” Spielberg remembered.
Do you want to be a producer?
Will you produceE.T.?'
You have to read this.'
That’s all because of Melissa.”
It was a creative choice designed to help his child actors.
What we just shot happened yesterday.
I wanted them to actually live a life, a life of the story.
Because they knew soon they’d be going home.”
The TCM Classic Film Festival is underway now in Hollywood through Sunday, April 24.
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