E.T.: the Extra-Toyriffic
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial was so massively popular that it spawned an incredibly diverse line of merchandise. Included in that merchandise was what some regard as the worst video game of all time. So bad, in fact that thousands of copies were crushed and buried in an Arizona landfill.
It's incredibly difficult to express just how massively popular E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial was during its initial run, so I'm going to steal someone else's words to do that for me.
Richard F. Dickson, writing on his blog The Daily Rich:
E.T. wasn’t the kind of blockbuster like we see today, ones that make over $100 million in their opening weekend, blitz their way to $200 or $300 million in a week or two, and then plummet down the charts when the next big thing comes along. E.T. opened in June of 1982, and ranked no worse than #2 in weekend box office totals all the way into October. It didn’t drop out of the Top Ten until February of the following year, and was managing to creep back into it as late as May 1983. I mentioned the frenzy over Jurassic Park in 1993, but while that was a sort of redemption, E.T. was a coronation. People didn’t just think this was a great fun movie, they loved the thing. There was genuine anger in some circles when it lost the Best Picture Oscar to Gandhi; I remember our local movie critic titling his Oscar commentary, “Hollywood Snobs Turn Oscar Into Peace Prize.” This adorably ugly little alien tapped into the feelings of everyone from kids to adults; we even managed to drag my grandmother to see it. It was that most sought-after of Hollywood commodities: the four-quadrant film, one that appeals to everybody. And in 1982, it sure seemed like everybody went to see it.
Not only did they go see it, they bought the t-shirts, lunchboxes, toys, trading cards, and hot mitts.
Source: ebay auction.
Consciously or not, Spielberg was taking a page from George Lucas' Star Wars playbook by creating a character with nearly limitless merchandising potential.
Here are some rather creepy talking toys from the '80s:
Some rad Buster Brown E.T. shoes:
Best of all, though, is this commercial for the ill-fated E.T. video game for the Atari 2600, which was rushed through development in just 5 weeks (rather than the months typically required) to make the Christmas season production schedule. The game was a massive flop and thousands (if not millions) of copies were reportedly destroyed in a mass burial of unsold Atari cartridges in 1983.
E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial plays tonight (Thursday 9/26 at 9:30 pm) and Sunday 9/29 at 1 pm at the Plaza Theatre as part of our Fall Focus on Directors. Members get in free!
Close Encounters: Spielberg Makes Contact
In which Hollywood's Boy Wonder follows up the biggest movie of all time with a more intimate kind of blockbuster, and takes his first step towards more personal filmmaking.
And this is only the second kind ...
In early 1976, while still riding high off of the enormous critical and financial success of Jaws, a young Steven Spielberg, anticipating the impressive haul his epochal film was sure to receive, invited a camera crew to film himself and two friends (one of whom was future Maniac and former Corleone family button-man-turned-fink Joe Spinell) watching and reacting to that year’s Academy Awards nomination announcements. He wanted to be seen live on national television being nominated for his first Best Director Oscar.
Here’s how that worked out:
We can talk about what an obscenely stacked group of Best Director nominees that was at a later date, but what's more important for our purposes is that while Jaws ended up with four nominations (including Best Picture, which was the only category in which it didn’t win) its boy genius director was "overlooked" in favor of a more respected, more artistically relevant veteran. Hardly a lamentable fate, especially for a 27-year-old who was in the process of changing the movie landscape as we knew it by virtue of his unparalleled success and could now write his own ticket, and yet Spielberg’s “snub” was the beginning of a narrative that would largely define his career for nearly two decades - the director perhaps more commercially beloved than any in history and yet consistently overlooked by the more serious artistic establishment.
He would, in fact, be nominated for his very next film, and while there’s nothing to indicate that Close Encounters of the Third Kind was a stab at seriousness from a director spurned, the movie nonetheless represents a bold early step in his career towards more personal blockbuster film-making. Using the clout he had gained from directing what was up to that point the most successful film of all time, Spielberg sought to finally tackle a concept which he had been developing in various forms since childhood.
The intensely personal nature of the film is evident everywhere from Spielberg's solo writing credit (the only one he would take in his career) to the multiple revised versions he would later release in an ever-evolving attempt to get the final cut to match his original vision (these reissues, the first instance of a director releasing his own preferred cut of a film after the official release, were indicative of the growing power that the filmmakers of Spielberg’s generation were beginning to achieve), and yet no more so than in the fabric of the story itself. While he had dealt with broken families before, this would mark the first time he married that emotional core to a high science fiction concept. It’s the first chapter in a loose trilogy that would continue through E.T. and War of the Worlds, in which interplanetary visitors are catalysts for both the destruction and ultimate healing of suburban families. Here, the director creates an elaborate rationale for a father’s abandonment of his family, a paternal absence that he would continue to struggle with throughout the rest of his career.
While more of a modest success when compared to the runaway commercial dominance of some of his other work, it is arguably the most transcendent moment in Spielberg's filmography, and along with Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, it is one of the few science fiction films bold enough to portray an extraterrestrial encounter as one that carries the promise of elevating and enriching humanity rather than threatening its very existence. During the same year in which Star Wars imprinted itself upon the imaginations of children the world over by filling in the corners of a galaxy far, far away, Steven Spielberg, for so many decades labeled to both his credit and detriment as a child who never grew up, appealed to the unsatisfied longing of adult suburban malaise by suggesting a sense of pure wonder at the glorious mysteries of our own universe.
- cs
Christopher Sailor is the Programmer of Education with the Atlanta Film Festival. He also waxes cinematic at chrissailor.com.
In "Jaws," the Nightmare Is What You Don't See
Christina Humphrey revisits the making of Jaws, a film production so troubled that the story became more about what you don't see than what you do.
Roy Scheider as Martin Brody.
The production of Jaws was an absolute nightmare. So much so that 26 year old Steven Spielberg slept with celery in his pillowcase because the smell was so comforting.
When production officially started in May 1974, they were without a finished script, working shark, or complete cast. Once they had Bruce, the mechanical antagonist, he rarely worked. In fact, he sank to the bottom of Nantucket Sound the first time he was submerged. The weather at Martha’s Vineyard was unpredictable. Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss were in an ongoing feud. One of their ships sank as Spielberg yelled over a megaphone to get the actors off board. With water up to his knees and his Nagra held above his head, sound engineer John Carter notoriously yelled, “F--k the actors. Save the sound department!” Robert Shaw was so drunk the first time Spielberg tried to shoot Quint’s monologue about the USS Indianapolis, Shaw had to be carried off the boat.
Slated for only 55 days, the shooting lasted for a grueling 159. The original $3.5 million dollar budget steadily creeped to $9 million. Calls from Universal came in threatening to shut it down completely.
So the director, who had insisted on shooting in the Atlantic rather than a stage tank, started improvising his balls off. Spielberg participated in rewrites of the script every night in a log cabin with Carl Gottlieb and the cast. He described it as “the most collaborate efforts I’ve ever been involved with where actors were contributing to a screenplay.”
When Bruce failed, Spielberg asked, “What would Hitchcock do in a situation like this?” The answer was to put the monster in the audience’s mind, rather than on the screen:
And just like that, the terror was what you couldn’t see, only sense and hear. In fact, Bruce didn’t make a full appearance until 81 minutes into the 124 minute film. The audience’s imagination was more powerful than a faulty, mechanical shark.
Spielberg’s instincts, even for improvisation, proved to be powerful too, and the result was something completely new to American screens, but also character dynamics that are very true to Spielberg’s idiom. I could spend all day dissecting and comparing this scene:
to other Spielberg films involving themes of the family, fathers, etc. but I can’t because I’ve got a gazillion short films to watch. However, on principal, I never miss a chance to see a dolly zoom on a big screen and will be in the back row Thursday night at the Plaza Theatre.
Christina Humphrey is the Short Film Programmer for the Atlanta Film Festival.
Jaws plays on Thursday and Sunday at the Plaza Theatre.
How To Survive A Shark Attack
Because we're showing Jaws at the Plaza on Thursday (and again on Sunday), it's officially Shark Week here at the Atlanta Film Festival. In honor of that, we've collected some of the best (and worst) video advice we could find on the internet about surviving an attack by a shark.
Because we're showing Jaws at the Plaza on Thursday (and again on Sunday), it's officially Shark Week here at the Atlanta Film Festival. In the unlikely event that you're attacked by a shark at one of those screenings, we thought it best to collect some of the best (and worst) advice we could find on the internet about the subject.
Starting things off is this 1964 U.S. Air Force training video entitled "Shark Defense," in which our airmen are encouraged to remember that a shark's "front end is practically all mouth." Also recommended: tearing up paper to scatter about one's life raft, and screaming loudly into the water. Hmmm.... maybe not.
More practical advice comes to us in the form of Howcast's "How to Survive a Shark Attack," which reassures you that it's perfectly okay to swim out and rescue someone being attacked by a shark. "Sharks are less likely to attack a rescuer and more likely to continue attacking the original victim."
The ultimate guide to surviving a Jaws-like scenario, however, is this video documentary of the dearly-departed Jaws ride at Universal Studios Orlando. The ride was decommissioned in 2012 to make way for rides featuring Harry Potter. (Sorry, we have no clue how to defend against prepubescent teenagers.) Key factors to survival in this scenario include hiding behind a perky tour guide with a large shotgun, and taking recreational tours near incredibly dangerous beaches. That way the shark is more likely to accidentally kill himself before he has a chance to eat you.
Finally, we'd like to make you aware of a new shark threat, that of the "Sharknado." The sharknado involves sharks that are sucked into the vortex of a waterspout and then deposited on (occasionally flooded) land, where they devour everything in sight. To survive a sharknado, pack the following: firearms, chainsaws, and idiot boyfriends you may feed to the sharks while you make your escape.
Ready for even more amazing shark action? Catch Jaws on the big screen Thursday night and Sunday afternoon at the Plaza, part of our Fall Focus on Directors.
Duel on Sunset Boulevard
American filmmakers have been equally as infatuated with the car as the rest of the country. It’s been a key player in hundreds of films, no more so than Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950)...Two decades after Sunset Boulevard, 25-year-old Steven Spielberg and writer Richard Matheson would similarly use the nation’s love affair with the open road in constructing Duel, an ABC TV movie of the week into a taut thriller.
Large Truck. Tiny Car. Let's Rumble.
By the 1950s, the automobile was well entrenched in American life on screen and off. Off-screen, it had helped build Detroit into a model city. The car established General Motors as the largest corporation in the United States. America’s transportation of choice spawned the drive-in theater, drive through restaurants and fueled suburbia’s domination. It even briefly brought us drive-in beer.
Drive-in beer! Yes, it was real.
American filmmakers have been equally as infatuated with the car as the rest of the country. It’s been a key player in hundreds of films, no more so than Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950). It’s Joe Gillis playing cat and mouse with the repo men trying to reclaim his car that leads him to land fortuitously at the doorstep of Norma Desmond. Later in Boulevard, Norma Desmond mistakes Paramount’s incessant calls as a sign that Cecil B. Demille, having read her Salome script, is eager to cast her in a new project. In reality, the studio wants to rent her rare luxury 1929 Isotta Fraschini Tipo 8A for a film. It’s in this same vehicle that Desmond ferries a broke and broken Gillis around as a trophy, as a kept man. In Wilder’s hands, cars were lenses through which Gillis’s emasculation and desperation, as well as Desmond’s vain, delusional desire to hold on to her youth and reclaim the spotlight, are filtered.
“We don't need two cars, we have a car. Not one of those cheap new things made of chromium and spit, an Isotta-Fraschini. Have you ever heard of Isotta-Fraschini? All handmade. Cost me $28,000.” - Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard
Two decades after Sunset Boulevard, 25-year-old Steven Spielberg and writer Richard Matheson would similarly use the nation’s love affair with the open road in constructing Duel, an ABC TV movie of the week into a taut thriller. Together, Spielberg and Matheson would use genre to engineer a psychological horror film that was as much a treatise on manhood, as it was pure Sunday night entertainment for the masses.
By the 1970s, the U.S. psyche and the car were intricately bound together. The image of cars lined up at the nation’s gas pumps during the 1973 oil crisis became so iconic that politicians, doomsayers, and the press continue to evoke it four decades later. Most recently after Superstorm Sandy hit the Northeast in 2012. Growing from 25 million registered vehicles in 1950 to 111 million by 1970, America’s economy wasn’t built on the car, it was the car.
“Nobody's kid brother, this one stands on its own four tires.” - Advertising tagline for the 1960 Plymouth Valiant
At the center of Duel is Los Angeles salesman, David Mann (Dennis Weaver). At first glance with his salt and pepper hair, yellow tinted sunglasses, and mustache, no one would question that Mann is, well – a man. His swagger is evident as he blows off a gas station attendant’s suggestion that he needs a new radiator hose. The attendant is just looking for an upsell and Mann won’t fall for it. He enters the station, drops a dime into the payphone, and confidently props a foot up on a table. He’s a lone cowboy riding the highways.
His steed? A red Plymouth Valiant* that he drives proudly (he chides a bus driver to not sit on the hood because he’ll dent it).
However, there are cracks in Mann’s facade. When the gas attendant tells Mann “he’s the boss” after he declines to get the radiator hose, Mann sarcastically responds with “Not in my house, I'm not.” When he calls to apologize to his wife, Mann impotently defends his choice to not confront a neighbor aggressively hitting on his wife at a party the night before. Mann isn’t the definition of manhood he desperately wants to project.
Mann’s 90-minute battle with a tanker truck and its unseen driver will starkly reveal those chinks in his armor. The societal institutions in which he has placed his faith will fail him. As much confidence as he has in his Valiant, Mann will be forced to rely on more than his car’s speed and his nemesis’ perceived weaknesses. Mann is a lone cowboy riding the highways - and like all great movie cowboys, his flaws are magnified when the highways test him.
Duel is a masterclass in building tension and creating suspense though visuals, sound design and minimal dialogue. From a director, who was already the youngest director signed to a long-term deal with a major studio, it’s also a harbinger of things to come. This film is the prototype for Spielberg’s own Jaws in that it establishes Spielberg's interest in using genre to explore and comment on fathers, manhood and family. Most of all, it’s just a damn good movie featuring one of cinema’s most mysterious, haunting and enduring villains ever created.
*Ironically, the car was chosen not for its make and model. Spielberg only cared that the car be red so it would contrast against the desert and be easily visible in the film’s wide shots.
Duel screens September 5, 9:30pm and September 8, 1:00pm at The Plaza as part of the Fall Focus on Directors presented by The Plaza and the Atlanta Film Festival
Charles Judson is the Artistic Director of the Atlanta Film Festival.
