Steven Spielberg Tells TCM Festival Audience How ‘E.T.’ Was the Divorce Movie That Turned Him Into a Dad
variety.comChris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticThe general public may not think of “E.T. the Extraterrestrial” as a divorce movie, per se … although Dee Wallace’s reading of the line “He hates Mexico” has always been one of its most resonant.
But in speaking about the film for its 40th anniversary at the TCM Classic Film Festival Thursday night, Steven Spielberg explored how the split in his own family growing up informed his original story.
And, beyond that, the director explained how making the film was the actual trigger that made him suddenly flip a switch from eschewing the prospect of ever being a father to putting parenthood on his vision board.“What happened was, I had been working on an actual literal script about my parents’ separation and divorce” in the late 1970s, Spielberg told host Ben Mankiewicz.
That very un-fantastical film idea would have reflected his and his sisters’ experience with their parents splitting — despite the fact that this idea was percolating during the making of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” in 1976. “I was shooting the (climactic) scene and I suddenly thought, ‘Wait a second.
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