Speaker 1: Originals.
Speaker 2: This is an iHeart original. It's late summer nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 2: Eleven year old Matt de Merit is at his house
Speaker 2: in Torrance, California. When the phone rings, his mother picks
Speaker 2: it up. Matt can hear just one side of the conversation.
Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, that's my son. Who jaws Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 2: Jaws Steven Spielberg, the same director who has spent the
Speaker 2: past six years on top of Hollywood and who currently
Speaker 2: has the highest grossing movie of the summer in Raiders
Speaker 2: of the Lost Arc.
Speaker 1: In the distance, I could hear my mom and I
Speaker 1: keep having this very interesting conversation with someone who is
Speaker 1: interested in hiring me. That's Matt, and basically told my
Speaker 1: mom that they're doing a movie and it involves someone
Speaker 1: being in a costume. Didn't want to give away too
Speaker 1: much for someone being in a costume to walk around.
Speaker 2: To put this call in perspective, Matt wasn't a child
Speaker 2: actor or a performer of any kind at eleven. He
Speaker 2: also wasn't a cinematographer or effects artist. He was just
Speaker 2: a suburban kid enjoying his summer before he had to
Speaker 2: go back to school, and school wasn't going so well
Speaker 2: for Matt, which we'll get too shortly. But Matt had
Speaker 2: something no other kid had, something that made him shy
Speaker 2: at times, but something Steven Spielberg needed in order to
Speaker 2: embark on his most ambitious movie yet, a movie that
Speaker 2: for many years held the title highest grossing film of
Speaker 2: all time, and from a certain point of view, a
Speaker 2: movie that would feature Matt as the star.
Speaker 3: The movie.
Speaker 2: Movie went by many different names during its development, Watch
Speaker 2: the Skies, Night Skies, a Boy's Life, Et and Me,
Speaker 2: and finally Et the Extra Terrestrial, And for Matt Demerit,
Speaker 2: it would prove a bitter sweet experience, one that would
Speaker 2: help him through one of the most formative events in
Speaker 2: his life. For now, all he knew was that he
Speaker 2: needed to have a conversation with his parents and go
Speaker 2: meet Steven Spielberg, And well there was one other thing.
Speaker 3: Mom, Who's Stephen Spielberg?
Speaker 2: For iHeartRadio? This is very Special episodes an iHeart original podcast,
Speaker 2: I'm your host Danish Schwortz and this is Et and Me.
Speaker 2: Et is one of those movies that I have such
Speaker 2: a distinct memory of my dad taking us to see
Speaker 2: the re release in theaters when we were kids. So
Speaker 2: it was very, very exciting for me just to listen
Speaker 2: to this episode because, to be honest, I knew absolutely
Speaker 2: nothing about how it was made.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 4: One of our best episodes last season was the Titanic
Speaker 4: episode about how the cast and crew got poisoned on set,
Speaker 4: and it's similar. This is a good lane for us
Speaker 4: where we have some beloved film and we're getting a
Speaker 4: lot of the behind the scenes from the people who
Speaker 4: actually made it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Also this speak surprises like the creature for the Black
Speaker 5: Lagoon shows up. I love this one for I was
Speaker 5: all the Hollywood history.
Speaker 3: Should we dive back in hell y.
Speaker 2: In a lot of ways, Matt de Merritt's childhood looked
Speaker 2: a lot like everyone else's, maybe like yours. He grew
Speaker 2: up in the suburbs of Torrance, a coastal city in
Speaker 2: southern California with beautiful views and a laid back atmosphere.
Speaker 2: The local newspaper is named the Daily Breeze, if that
Speaker 2: tells you anything. Matt had some artistic inclinations, which he
Speaker 2: might have inherited from his father, an illustrator for the
Speaker 2: Post Office.
Speaker 1: I would draw a lot as a kid. I love
Speaker 1: to look at my dad's drawings and ask him to
Speaker 1: draw me monsters and stuff. I was so fascinated when
Speaker 1: he could draw creatures for me, so I tried to
Speaker 1: emulate him. That was kind of kid I was. I
Speaker 1: drew a lot, and I skateboarded a lot, and I
Speaker 1: like to hang out with my friends and go to
Speaker 1: the park and do stuff like that. That's Matt.
Speaker 2: And while there was plenty of normal kid stuff to do,
Speaker 2: Matt did it a little differently. That's because Matt was
Speaker 2: born without legs.
Speaker 1: Well, apparently, my mother took an anti nausea medication which
Speaker 1: she was pregnant with me called ben Deckton, and that
Speaker 1: was a popular drug at the time for that condition,
Speaker 1: and it turned out that there were a lot of
Speaker 1: birth defects that seemed to be correlated with the drug,
Speaker 1: and so all the parents filed a class action lawsuit
Speaker 1: against the maker the drug, Meryl Dow. Meryl Dao had
Speaker 1: a lot of lawyers and basically were able to counter
Speaker 1: all the evidence that they had that it might have
Speaker 1: caused birth effects. So nothing really ever came for it
Speaker 1: could either have been that or could have been a
Speaker 1: natural birth effect. You know, sometimes it happens where you
Speaker 1: can't really attreat to anything specific.
Speaker 2: For a variety of reasons, prosthetic legs were a poor
Speaker 2: solution for Matt, who learned to locomot around in a wheelchair.
Speaker 2: In addition to walking on his hands. He even learned
Speaker 2: to use a skateboard.
Speaker 1: I loved skateboard parks when I was a kid. I
Speaker 1: couldn't do tricks, you know, quite at the Tony Hawk level,
Speaker 1: but I could go on those bowls, and I could
Speaker 1: do like hand plants and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Matt says that because he didn't lose his legs exactly,
Speaker 2: he never really missed them.
Speaker 1: I just always perceived my condition as normal. That's all
Speaker 1: I was used to. It wasn't struggling with the loss
Speaker 1: of limbs. I just always got around own naturally, you know.
Speaker 1: I learned to walk on my hands, just like anyone
Speaker 1: learns to walk on their legs. Reaching for stuff or
Speaker 1: asking for help wasn't of a problem. I could either
Speaker 1: climb up and get the thing that I needed, or
Speaker 1: I always aid the support system for people who could
Speaker 1: get stuff that was out of my reach.
Speaker 2: But there were other challenging things about Matt's life. His
Speaker 2: father had been diagnosed with a serious issue bipolar disorder.
Speaker 2: The condition used to be referred to as manic depression.
Speaker 2: According to the National Institute of Mental Health, the diagnosis
Speaker 2: is characterized by clear changes in mood, energy, and activity levels.
Speaker 2: Depending on the particular diagnosis, people can experience moods that
Speaker 2: range from euphoric or energized to extremely despondent.
Speaker 1: My dad was in denial that he had bipolar, and
Speaker 1: so he wouldn't take this medication, and he'd be very withdrawn,
Speaker 1: which is one of the symptoms of being depressed. So
Speaker 1: the times he wouldn't communicate at all.
Speaker 2: But there was something that did help strengthen the bond
Speaker 2: between Matt and his dad. Creature features monster movies, men
Speaker 2: in rubber suits. It was a fantasy escape from a
Speaker 2: reality that could often prove challenging, and a way to
Speaker 2: get closer to his father, who sometimes seemed far away.
Speaker 1: My dad and I used to watch monster movies on Saturdays.
Speaker 1: There was a kind of a marathon that happened every
Speaker 1: Saturday on Channel five called Monster Rally, and so the
Speaker 1: first horror film I saw was a Creature from the
Speaker 1: Black Lagoon.
Speaker 2: While all this was happening, Steven Spielberg was grappling with
Speaker 2: something of a creature feature of his own, one that
Speaker 2: would require Math's unique abilities, though no one quite knew
Speaker 2: that yet. By this point in the nineteen eight eighties,
Speaker 2: the director was enjoying that rare blend of critical, commercial
Speaker 2: and financial success that proved elusive for a lot of filmmakers.
Speaker 2: His adaptation of Peter Benchley's beach read Jaws in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy five was a phenomenon. In nineteen seventy seven, he
Speaker 2: led Jaws co star Richard Dreyfuss to a fateful meeting
Speaker 2: with aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Raiders
Speaker 2: of the Lost Arc meanwhile, was waiting in the wings.
Speaker 2: It would spawn four sequels and make Indiana Jones one
Speaker 2: of the great movie heroes. Spielberg's only misfire had been
Speaker 2: nineteen forty one, a big World War II comedy that
Speaker 2: audiences didn't find very funny in Hollywood terms. Spielberg had
Speaker 2: a blank check, the ability to make practically anything he wanted,
Speaker 2: and what Spielberg was looking to do was tell a
Speaker 2: story about a skiddish, harmless alien who comes to Earth
Speaker 2: and befriends a boy still coming to terms with his parents' separation.
Speaker 2: It would be a family movie, something with themes that
Speaker 2: resonated deeply with Spielberg, who was himself a product of divorce.
Speaker 2: His parents, Arthur and Leah, had gone their separate ways
Speaker 2: when Spielberg was nineteen after several years of acrimony. His
Speaker 2: mother had grown close with his father's best friend. Though
Speaker 2: Arthur told his children he was responsible for the separation,
Speaker 2: it strained Spielberg's relationship with his dad for years, and
Speaker 2: there's no question it informed his filmmaking. But e T
Speaker 2: would be his most personal work to date, a close
Speaker 2: look at a child dealing with the anger of a
Speaker 2: fractured household, not yet able to process the convoluted adult world,
Speaker 2: something plenty of kids, including Matt, could understand.
Speaker 6: It was the story of his youth, It was his childhood,
Speaker 6: It was his parents' divorce.
Speaker 2: That's Simon brew Simon is the founder of the Den
Speaker 2: of Geek website and a pop culture historian. Jason and
Speaker 2: I actually used to work with him at Mental Floss,
Speaker 2: and he hosts a podcast, Film Stories, that goes deep
Speaker 2: into the making of great films. You should listen after
Speaker 2: you finished this episode, of course.
Speaker 6: And the idea wasn't that this would be his biggest film.
Speaker 6: Although you can't ever design how an audience will react,
Speaker 6: the whole idea was, this is something smaller, This is
Speaker 6: me going right back to my roots. I'm just gonna
Speaker 6: almost do one for me.
Speaker 2: A couple of years prior, Spielberg had envisioned a movie
Speaker 2: with a spaceship full of sinister aliens descending on a farmhouse.
Speaker 2: Just one of the aliens in that script, called Watch
Speaker 2: the Skies and later Night Skies was friendly. But after
Speaker 2: developing the film and even having its alien creatures designed,
Speaker 2: Spielberg realized that wasn't the movie he wanted to make. Instead,
Speaker 2: he commissioned a script for his alien buddy story from
Speaker 2: Melissa Matheson, whom he had met filming Raiders of the
Speaker 2: Lost Arc. Matheson was the future wife of that movie's star,
Speaker 2: Harrison Ford, but more importantly, she was a screenwriter who
Speaker 2: was extremely adept at getting to the beating heart of
Speaker 2: Spielberg's story, the bond between an alien stranded on Earth
Speaker 2: and Elliott, a boy mourning the absence of his father
Speaker 2: after his parents separate. That left just one major piece
Speaker 2: of the puzzle, how to create E T. While the
Speaker 2: technology was rapidly finding itself in summer blockbusters, artists couldn't
Speaker 2: just turn to computer animation. The alien would have to
Speaker 2: be the scene with the actors. Early on, someone broached
Speaker 2: the idea of sticking a monkey in a costume. That
Speaker 2: was quickly discarded. Then someone suggested putting a person in
Speaker 2: a suit, but Spielberg vetoed that as well. The entire
Speaker 2: point of ET's physique was that it was something other
Speaker 2: than human. He didn't want anyone to think it was
Speaker 2: merely someone encased in rubber. Instead, Spielberg approached his close
Speaker 2: encounter's colleague, a special effects artist named Carlo Rambaldi. A
Speaker 2: prop expert, Carlo had helped reimagine King Kong for the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six remake, but despite that movie's giant ape,
Speaker 2: Et would prove to be the bigger problem. Carlow was
Speaker 2: given just a few months to conjure up Et as
Speaker 2: an animatronic puppet. He'd be animated by servos and wires
Speaker 2: by a team of puppeteers. They would control everything from
Speaker 2: his eyes to his mouth to his elongated neck, which
Speaker 2: went up and down like a carjack.
Speaker 6: It was in the end production illustrator Ed Verrow, who
Speaker 6: got kind of the eureka moment of what he was
Speaker 6: the one who twigged what Spielberg was actually afterwards that
Speaker 6: he wanted. It was described as a combination of the
Speaker 6: innocence of youth and the wisdom of age, and that
Speaker 6: was in the design and the sketches that were being
Speaker 6: done for the creature. There was also the idea that
Speaker 6: they wanted ET to be quote a creature that only
Speaker 6: a mother could love, which I really really love as well.
Speaker 2: Rambaldi was a master and ET quickly evolved into a
Speaker 2: highly convincing presence with big, bulbous eyes that took inspiration
Speaker 2: from Albert Einstein. The various ets Rambaldi built could express themselves, blink,
Speaker 2: move their mouth, health furrow a brow.
Speaker 6: And what Rambaldi told Spielberg is you're gonna need nine
Speaker 6: months to do this. Spielberg gave him six, and they
Speaker 6: just worked around the clock to put this creature together.
Speaker 6: And I mean they really made it. I think they
Speaker 6: made in the end three different ets with different electronics
Speaker 6: and different capabilities within them. And what Spielberg was wanting
Speaker 6: really that he wanted a creature that was slow and
Speaker 6: sure footed, and as Spielberg said, he's much more conditioned
Speaker 6: to a heavier atmosphere, a heavier gravity. And they got really,
Speaker 6: really forensic on what this creature and what this character was.
Speaker 6: It's supposed to be an alien walking on a planet
Speaker 6: which it wasn't familiar with.
Speaker 2: But even Rembaldi didn't have a perfect solution for Et
Speaker 2: walking or performing big physical movements like falling down. To
Speaker 2: try and control his feet via remote robotics would make
Speaker 2: him look like a jerky ma net or a clumsy
Speaker 2: battery operated toy. It would also cost another million dollars
Speaker 2: for what was supposed to be Spielberg's tiny movie, So
Speaker 2: Spielberg listened as his producer, Kathleen Kennedy suggested having a
Speaker 2: human performer inside of a costume, provided it was someone
Speaker 2: close to ET's stature that eliminated most adults. Rambaldi quickly
Speaker 2: created a simple mock up suit that the four year
Speaker 2: old daughter of Spielberg's lawyer climbed into for a screen test.
Speaker 2: She hated every minute of it, throwing a tantrum, but
Speaker 2: the idea itself was sound. The kid in a suit
Speaker 2: looked convincing. Now all they had to do was find
Speaker 2: the right kid. Someone had the idea to call UCLA
Speaker 2: Medical Center. UCLA had a program devoted to the treatment
Speaker 2: of individuals with uniek physical attributes. One of the physicians
Speaker 2: at UCLA recommended Matt, who had undergone physical therapy there.
Speaker 2: What made Matt unique was how he got around. Walking
Speaker 2: on his hands gave Matt a very specific skill, giving
Speaker 2: him a profile similar to Et. By using his hands
Speaker 2: as ET's feet, he could step in when Et needed
Speaker 2: more agility than the puppeteers could provide. Matt could tackle
Speaker 2: stunt that might prove too daunting for a little person
Speaker 2: inside the suit.
Speaker 1: So Universal Studios reached out to UCLA Medical Center to
Speaker 1: see if there was anyone with dwarfism or was in
Speaker 1: a small stature that could fit in the costume. And
Speaker 1: the only one they had on hand who was short
Speaker 1: was me, and I think they kind of pitched it
Speaker 1: to them. They said that I could walk on my
Speaker 1: hands just like my hands were legs, and they said,
Speaker 1: that's intriguing be able to come down for an audition,
Speaker 1: so that the doctor gave him my number.
Speaker 2: Matt's doctor acted as his talent agent very la That's
Speaker 2: how a producer wound up phoning Matt's mom and how
Speaker 2: Matt wound up going to audition for Steven Spielberg, a
Speaker 2: guy he barely knew. In fact, Matt's father needed to
Speaker 2: take him to see Raiders that summer to give Matt
Speaker 2: a better idea of just what he was getting himself into.
Speaker 2: Oddly enough, Matt was already a fan of Carlo Rambaldi.
Speaker 2: Carlo had done the mechanical effects for the alien head
Speaker 2: in the movie Alien the R Rated Gorefest, which Matt
Speaker 2: had seen in nineteen seventy nine as a nine year old.
Speaker 2: He was a monster kid, remember, So for Matt, going
Speaker 2: to Rambaldi's effects house was like going to Willywanka's chocolate factory.
Speaker 2: He was in creature Heaven.
Speaker 1: Got in a studio in Oh. It smelled so interesting too.
Speaker 1: It was like a workshop, you know. It was like
Speaker 1: Geppetto's workshop. Smelled like wood and sawdust and plaster. And
Speaker 1: that was very intriguing that I was going into this
Speaker 1: very creative environment, you know, where there are all these
Speaker 1: creatures that Carlo had designed for other movies.
Speaker 2: At the shop, Matt met Spielberg, who did something that
Speaker 2: immediately endeared him to his would be Et. Spielberg didn't
Speaker 2: loom over him like a gargoyle, hands on knees. He
Speaker 2: bent down so he could look Matt eye to eye,
Speaker 2: the same way ET's telescoping neck allowed him to come
Speaker 2: face to face with new friends. Spielberg understood how looking
Speaker 2: up at the world can be intimidating. He wanted Matt
Speaker 2: to feel comfortable.
Speaker 1: That was something interesting about him. Not everybody did that.
Speaker 1: I remember Carlo doing that, and it's not that it's
Speaker 1: rude that other people don't do that. They just it's
Speaker 1: something that some people think about immediately and some people
Speaker 1: don't really take into consideration until maybe later. He did
Speaker 1: it immediately, and I thought that that was pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Spielberg asked Matt about getting around on a skateboard. Matt
Speaker 2: offered that it wasn't his only way of travel. In
Speaker 2: the shop, Matt was stuffed into another makeshift et suit
Speaker 2: and then showed them a couple different ways he got around.
Speaker 1: Then I demonstrated to him the walk that I did
Speaker 1: eventually use in the movie, where my hands are the
Speaker 1: feet and I lift my torso up so it's not
Speaker 1: touched any ground at all, and my hands ambled back
Speaker 1: and forth, just like legs, wood or feet, And he
Speaker 1: said that's the one that he thinks is going to work.
Speaker 1: And they captured me doing that walk on camera, played
Speaker 1: a back and looked really good to them.
Speaker 2: The hands for feet method proved surprisingly effective. It gave
Speaker 2: et the kind of distinctive not of this earth Gate
Speaker 2: Spielberg wanted one people weren't used to seeing, and practically
Speaker 2: no one but Matt could do it. But it would
Speaker 2: be a little while before Matt heard anything definitive. Then
Speaker 2: came another phone call. Matt was offered the job. Matt
Speaker 2: and his parents had a talk. Sure it was cool,
Speaker 2: but it would also interrupt the start of Matt's school year.
Speaker 2: The movie would shoot from September to December nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 2: They wanted to be sure it was something he really
Speaker 2: wanted to do. But for Matt, delaying school was no
Speaker 2: big deal. On top of everything else, he had the
Speaker 2: bane of any shy kid's existence. Bullies, and Matt's bullies
Speaker 2: were especially cruel.
Speaker 1: Boy, was it great to get away from school because
Speaker 1: around that time I was bullied a lot. That was
Speaker 1: like the peak time of my bullying. Some of the
Speaker 1: bullies would come up from behind my wheelchair. I'd take
Speaker 1: my wheelchair to school and they'd tip the wheelchair over.
Speaker 2: That would be enough for any kid to have to
Speaker 2: deal with, but the situation at home was also coming
Speaker 2: to a head. Matt's mother was frustrated his father wasn't
Speaker 2: willing to get the help he needed.
Speaker 1: They would get a lot of fights about that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. He wasn't abusive, or he wasn't emotionally abusive.
Speaker 1: He didn't yell, he wasn't that kind of person, but
Speaker 1: just the general atmosphere at home when he was deep
Speaker 1: in depression was something that was great to escape from
Speaker 1: during that time.
Speaker 2: So in September nineteen eighty one, Matt went off to
Speaker 2: do something he never dreamed of, play a crucial role
Speaker 2: in making the Ultimate Creature feature come to life. Like Elliott,
Speaker 2: he'd be taking on new responsibilities that would distract him
Speaker 2: from his own problems, but in order to do that,
Speaker 2: he'd have to overcome his inherent shyness while taking a
Speaker 2: direction from the most successful director in the world. You'd
Speaker 2: think a kid going off to shoot a Stephen Spielberg
Speaker 2: movie would be the talk of the playground, but Matt
Speaker 2: left to film the movie with relatively few people knowing
Speaker 2: what he was up to.
Speaker 1: I didn't have a lot of friends at the time.
Speaker 1: I think I told my best friend that I was
Speaker 1: doing it, And he also didn't know that much about
Speaker 1: movies and about Spielberg. He came from a really religious background,
Speaker 1: so his parents would he let him see any kind
Speaker 1: of movies. So I think I only told him.
Speaker 2: This was probably something Spielberg preferred. The details surrounding the
Speaker 2: character of Et were highly classified in the pre Internet,
Speaker 2: as it was easier to plug leaks to the media.
Speaker 2: Spielberg wanted his young actors left in the dark, making
Speaker 2: their first impression of the creature a genuine one. Matt,
Speaker 2: of course, had already gotten a preview, and by the
Speaker 2: time he showed up on location in Tahunga, California, a
Speaker 2: custom rubber Latex suit had been crafted just for him.
Speaker 2: It weighed thirty pounds, and yes, it made him sweat
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 1: One interesting thing is though, that the recipe for Latex
Speaker 1: was much worse back then, because latex shrank and latex
Speaker 1: doesn't have a lot of pores in it. But if
Speaker 1: he shrinks, the porson and it smaller. So long story short,
Speaker 1: the costume would get smaller and hotter every time I
Speaker 1: got into it because the latex shranks. So thankfully that
Speaker 1: didn't show on camera, I definitely felt it.
Speaker 2: Originally, Matt was hired for just one scene where Et
Speaker 2: needed to take a tumble, but it turned out Et
Speaker 2: would be doing that a lot, so Matt's responsibilities kept
Speaker 2: growing on set. He quickly became known as stunt et.
Speaker 1: Pratfalls. Yeah, Pratfall's agility, falling down, all that stuff.
Speaker 2: Matt, of course was no practiced stunt person, but this
Speaker 2: was the eighties and film producers sometimes pushed the edges
Speaker 2: of what was appropriate.
Speaker 1: That's one of the kind of dangerous aspects of filmmaking,
Speaker 1: especially back then, is this like a lot of fly
Speaker 1: by the seat of your pants kind of attitude. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like they're going to make budgets, they can't go
Speaker 1: over budget. Just fussing with something and make sure that
Speaker 1: someone's not going to get hurt. They put a lot
Speaker 1: of padding in the costume, so even when I fell
Speaker 1: flat on my face, there was like lots of styrofoam
Speaker 1: protecting my faith.
Speaker 2: One of Matt's bigger scenes as Et was when the
Speaker 2: alien falls over drunk, which we remind you is not
Speaker 2: something an eleven year old can portray with any conviction.
Speaker 2: But Matt was up for it.
Speaker 1: And I remember being so excited because I was walking
Speaker 1: very easily in the costume, and I felt like I
Speaker 1: could do everything that they're directing me too. I could
Speaker 1: hear all the directions very clearly. I saw the marks
Speaker 1: that they wanted me to hit, and whenever they want
Speaker 1: me to kind of play up the fall a little bit,
Speaker 1: they wanted me to not fall immediately, which is what
Speaker 1: I did. They want me to extend a little bit
Speaker 1: and like you had some expression to it. I remember
Speaker 1: when I did that, and I did that the kind
Speaker 1: of final fall in my face. Everybody laughed and it
Speaker 1: sounded like what it would sound like in the audience,
Speaker 1: you know, when the movie was playing. So I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: I think this is going to go over well.
Speaker 2: In contrast to his problems at school, Matt found fast
Speaker 2: friends in Henry Thomas, who played Elliott, and Robert McNaughton,
Speaker 2: who played Elliott's older brother Michael. There were no cliques,
Speaker 2: no social hierarchy, no grade school pettiness or cruelty, just
Speaker 2: three kids on the set of a movie.
Speaker 1: We completely bonded as soon as we met because we
Speaker 1: were like, well, I was going to say, we're in
Speaker 1: the same age group, but actually Rob was the same
Speaker 1: age as the older kids, but he had more like
Speaker 1: youth mentality in He also knew that it would be
Speaker 1: it would benefit all of us to kind of like
Speaker 1: bond together. So we were our own group on that set,
Speaker 1: and that was fantastic because it rescued me from that situation.
Speaker 1: It was like a just escape from being bullied in school,
Speaker 1: and also, you know who likes doing schoolwork right, And
Speaker 1: it got me away from this situation at home to
Speaker 1: where my mom and my dad were fighting a lot
Speaker 1: and going through that drama.
Speaker 2: The drama Matt's referring to is a pretty seismic event
Speaker 2: in the life of a kid. In between Matt being
Speaker 2: fitted for his suit and the start of shooting, his
Speaker 2: parents made a big decision.
Speaker 1: There was a few weeks before we started when he
Speaker 1: was living at home, and so when I went out
Speaker 1: to get fitted, and when I went to Carlo remble
Speaker 1: Bally Studio to practice in the costume and meet with
Speaker 1: the crew just and prepare before shooting. That's when my
Speaker 1: dad lived at home, but then when we were actually shooting,
Speaker 1: my dad was actually living apart from us.
Speaker 2: Matt's ET family was at least for a time, more
Speaker 2: stable than his actual family. In addition to making friends
Speaker 2: with Henry and Robert, Matt also met ET's other half.
Speaker 2: This ET was a thirty four year old adult named
Speaker 2: Pat Bailon, who was roughly two feet nine inches tall
Speaker 2: and weighed forty five pounds. Pat was born with cartilage
Speaker 2: hare hypoplasia, a bone growth disorder that can lead to dwarfes.
Speaker 2: Pat was used for ET scenes that didn't require Et
Speaker 2: tipping over, for example, the one in which Et is
Speaker 2: being stashed away in a bicycle basket and wrapped in
Speaker 2: a blanket, plus other walking scenes.
Speaker 1: I remember he was a really nice guy. He didn't
Speaker 1: have any ego about him. We kind of filmed the
Speaker 1: Eten sequencer. That's the way the story's been told anyway.
Speaker 1: So I came on about two weeks into filming, two
Speaker 1: or three weeks into filming, and Pat number made me
Speaker 1: feel like I was in the outside looking in.
Speaker 2: Pat's background was fascinating. He had only recently broken into films,
Speaker 2: working on a Chevy Chase movie titled Under the Rainbow,
Speaker 2: a fictitious retelling of the filming of the Wizard of
Speaker 2: Oz and the rumors surrounding its little people performers getting
Speaker 2: wild after filming. Before acting, Pat had been a bouncer
Speaker 2: at a bar in Ohio. It was a publicity stunt
Speaker 2: for the business.
Speaker 3: But it worked.
Speaker 2: He later became a dispatcher for a sheriff's office. By
Speaker 2: the time ET rolled around, Pat was having some back problems.
Speaker 2: He might start a scene then realize he needed to
Speaker 2: rest or. The action might be too dangerous for Pat,
Speaker 2: whose condition didn't allow for him to fall down much.
Speaker 2: That's where Matt came in.
Speaker 1: I did a lot of the same scenes that Pat did,
Speaker 1: and Pat was tired. They'd bring me in and I
Speaker 1: do like a just the same thing, but it'd be
Speaker 1: a different actor in the costume.
Speaker 2: Despite Matt doing most of the stunts, it was Pat
Speaker 2: who probably came closest to having an ET related emergency
Speaker 2: room visit. Pat was in the costume and sporting a
Speaker 2: battery pack when the power source caught fire, setting the
Speaker 2: adorable alien ablaze for a brief moment before a crew
Speaker 2: member stepped in.
Speaker 1: It on another way could have gone really bad, but
Speaker 1: they were just lucky and they got him out of
Speaker 1: the costume in time or whatever. However they've resolved that situation.
Speaker 1: But it's like, yeah, you can't foresee all these things because,
Speaker 1: like you said, it's nothing like this has ever been
Speaker 1: done before.
Speaker 2: At one point there was a third Et, a woman
Speaker 2: named Tamara de Troux, who stepped in for pat when needed.
Speaker 2: Et also had a different set of hands for many scenes.
Speaker 2: They belonged to Caprice Roth, a mime hired by the
Speaker 2: production who wound up becoming the connective tissue of ET's performance.
Speaker 2: She managed to make a cohesive team out of the
Speaker 2: many puppeteers controlling his facial movements, synchronizing them with her gestures.
Speaker 2: Of course, anyone controlling a puppet will give in to
Speaker 2: the temptation of satisfying onset boredom, and with up to
Speaker 2: fifteen puppeteers, there were plenty of opportunities. There are scenes
Speaker 2: you'll never see of Et picking his nose, puffing on
Speaker 2: a cigar, or pinching at the rear end of a
Speaker 2: passing production crew member. Mostly though, people believed in Et
Speaker 2: deeply and wholeheartedly, and they believed in Matt, who was
Speaker 2: coming through in a big way, despite acting in a vacuum.
Speaker 2: Owing to the secrecy surrounding et, Matt didn't get a
Speaker 2: script or see dailies of the footage. He was just
Speaker 2: living in the moment. But Matt's best memory on set
Speaker 2: didn't come from a scene. It came when his father
Speaker 2: paid him a visit. His parents didn't normally come to filming,
Speaker 2: having their own jobs and trusting a Steven Spielberg set
Speaker 2: would be a safe place for their child. The production
Speaker 2: sent a car to pick Matt up every morning and
Speaker 2: drive him back at night, so Matt's dad showing up
Speaker 2: was a big deal.
Speaker 1: On one of the days that he was on a
Speaker 1: manic high, he decided to come down to the set
Speaker 1: and surprise me, which is great because my mom hadn't
Speaker 1: been there, my dad hadn't been there. For him to
Speaker 1: share a day on the set with me was awesome.
Speaker 1: I remember him putting me on his shoulders and walking
Speaker 1: me around the set, and he was introducing himself as
Speaker 1: my dad. He's met Spielberg and Carlo and a lot
Speaker 1: of the cast and crew. You know, he was with me.
Speaker 1: He was happy, he experienced it, and I came away
Speaker 1: with one great memory of him being there with me
Speaker 1: on the set.
Speaker 2: As with most movies, there was a few month gap
Speaker 2: between ET wrapping filming and its release. After returning to school,
Speaker 2: but before the film had come out, Matt noticed something
Speaker 2: a little strange. He wasn't being bullied as often. It
Speaker 2: wasn't because the kids knew he had played ET. They
Speaker 2: didn't know anything about ET. It was because Matt had
Speaker 2: a secret, one that gave him a sense of confidence
Speaker 2: and self worth.
Speaker 1: They didn't know why it was gone, but there was
Speaker 1: like an intangible security and confidence that I got from it.
Speaker 1: Because as soon as I got back to school, the
Speaker 1: bullying did not resume. It stopped completely. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: because the movie came out.
Speaker 2: It was just, you know, Matt had never intended for
Speaker 2: his work to be some big secret, but in order
Speaker 2: for audiences to believe in ET, Steven Spielberg was reluctant
Speaker 2: to admit the alien was the work of Hollywood. ET's
Speaker 2: success hinged in part on Matt and everyone else involved
Speaker 2: with the creature being invisible. In the weeks leading up
Speaker 2: to the premiere of ET, the movie gained more and
Speaker 2: more momentum. Test screenings weren't just successful audiences were enraptured, laughing, crying,
Speaker 2: and falling for an alien who didn't meet what you
Speaker 2: would consider conventional standards of attractiveness. The reception ET received
Speaker 2: even took Spielberg by surprise. The film made its entire
Speaker 2: ten million dollar budget back in a single weekend. It
Speaker 2: was the number one film in America for six weeks
Speaker 2: and kept returning to that position throughout the rest of
Speaker 2: the year. It just kept playing and playing. By the
Speaker 2: next year, it had outgrossed Star Wars to become the
Speaker 2: most successful film in history. It was a modern Wizard
Speaker 2: of Oz, the rare family film that didn't pander to
Speaker 2: kids or bore adults, the movie that became must see viewing.
Speaker 2: Here's Simon Brew again.
Speaker 6: Everyone at my school saw ET at the cinema, pretty
Speaker 6: much everyone. I mean it was Star Wars, ET and
Speaker 6: Superman three. Those were the three things that were most
Speaker 6: important in your life to what.
Speaker 2: Why did people respond to Et? For children, it was
Speaker 2: that the movie understood them and took their problems seriously.
Speaker 2: For adults, it was the ability to see through younger
Speaker 2: eyes and recall the excitement and fears of an unknown world.
Speaker 2: The next time you watch the film, try to notice
Speaker 2: how Spielberg shot it. The camera is often just a
Speaker 2: few feet off the ground, as though the audience is
Speaker 2: experiencing it from the perspective of a kid or a
Speaker 2: short alien. For Simon and millions of other kids, E
Speaker 2: was a controlled Catharsis. With his team of crafts people, actors,
Speaker 2: and Melissa Matheson, Spielberg had somehow made people believe in
Speaker 2: Et and in ET's bond with Elliott, which made their
Speaker 2: separation at the climax all the more wrenching.
Speaker 6: He just went in to see it, and I mean
Speaker 6: all I remember as that seven year old was just
Speaker 6: being traumatized, just being absolutely inconsolable on the way out.
Speaker 6: And I still get that as well, and every time
Speaker 6: I watch it, I still get it. But it was
Speaker 6: a thing. I mean, all we were told going in
Speaker 6: is you're gonna see it and you're gonna come out crying.
Speaker 6: And we still all just went in. Our parents still
Speaker 6: took us the sadists.
Speaker 2: Matt went to see the movie, of course with his parents,
Speaker 2: and kept looking for scenes in which he appeared under
Speaker 2: pounds of rubber as Et. There was the scene with
Speaker 2: et inebriated, and the one where a polaroid flash causes
Speaker 2: him to topple over.
Speaker 1: The other scene. So it was all the kitchen scenes.
Speaker 1: Anytime Et is in a bathroom, that's me. So the
Speaker 1: scene where she where de Wallace comes home the mother
Speaker 1: and she's putting everything in the refrigerator. She's completely distracted
Speaker 1: and she doesn't see me walking around her, and then
Speaker 1: she opens the refrigerator door and it has been in
Speaker 1: the face and I fall over.
Speaker 4: That was me.
Speaker 2: In the midst of all this, the media always kept
Speaker 2: going back to a central question, how how had Et
Speaker 2: been cobbled together to make for one of the few
Speaker 2: truly convincing creatures in movie history. Time and time again,
Speaker 2: Spielberg would dodge the question. Et was mysterious. Even the
Speaker 2: first trailer for the movie avoided showing what he looked like.
Speaker 2: He told the press at the can Film Festival where
Speaker 2: premiered that Et was made out of love and that
Speaker 2: it took twelve hearts to make ET's heartbeat. Asked what
Speaker 2: materials were used, he said that you will not hear
Speaker 2: the answer to that question from my lips. It seemed
Speaker 2: like Spielberg and Universal wanted Et to remain an illusion.
Speaker 2: They had never expressly told Matt not to discuss his
Speaker 2: work in the movie, but Spielberg's reluctance to explain the
Speaker 2: techniques used was something of a hint. Plus, think about it,
Speaker 2: what if a kid in your school said he was
Speaker 2: in the biggest movie of all time. You couldn't see him,
Speaker 2: but he was there. It's kind of like the kid
Speaker 2: who kept insisting his uncle worked for Nintendo. It just
Speaker 2: smelt like baloney.
Speaker 1: I mean, I might have started telling them, and then
Speaker 1: I think maybe I initially did, and then they'd say
Speaker 1: they'd seen a TV segment or read and starlog magazine
Speaker 1: or somethinghow it was a robot, or how maybe it
Speaker 1: was just this one actor or whatever, and they disbelieved me.
Speaker 1: And I think after that I didn't like try and
Speaker 1: convince them. I just figured eventually they'd figured out.
Speaker 2: Almost everyone involved with ET experienced the shadow of it.
Speaker 2: Henry Thomas remembers getting mobbed after the movie came out.
Speaker 2: Even Pat Bylon got plenty of press attention, but Matt
Speaker 2: was different. He was famous in plain sight, an anonymous celebrity,
Speaker 2: but notoriety wasn't really the point. It was about an
Speaker 2: experience that had come along at a good time. The
Speaker 2: highs of ET were in sharp contrast to Matt's home life.
Speaker 2: His parents had separated, his father's bipolar disorder going untreated
Speaker 2: and slowly getting worse. Then later, in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 2: Matt heard the news no child should ever have to
Speaker 2: endure tragically, his father died by suicide.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, I've just lucky happenstance as something came along
Speaker 1: at that time that would bring all this residual stuff
Speaker 1: that would help me absorb the impact of my father diing.
Speaker 2: There's a curious thread that weaves through ET. From the beginning,
Speaker 2: Spielberg had envisioned it as a way into his feelings
Speaker 2: about his own family. The divorce of his mother and
Speaker 2: father in the film Elliot mirrors that same struggle, and
Speaker 2: in Matt's world, the film had come at a time
Speaker 2: his family suffered an incredible loss.
Speaker 1: I was crazy, I made who knows, you know. If
Speaker 1: I didn't have the cushion of ET to counterbalance up
Speaker 1: the bitterness of that experience, I don't know what would
Speaker 1: happen to What kind of person did I be today?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: Like making all those new friends and having them as
Speaker 1: my support system after my dad died was huge like
Speaker 1: Robert found out. Robert McNaughton, the guy who played the Michael,
Speaker 1: the older brother in ET. He was really supportive after that,
Speaker 1: like he'd heard about my father. Like we gotten together
Speaker 1: a couple of times after ET came out and really
Speaker 1: had a good time. But after you heard my father
Speaker 1: killed himself, he'd make an effort to come by my
Speaker 1: house and we go and do stuff on the weekends,
Speaker 1: like go watch movies, or go play tag and water
Speaker 1: balloons and all that stuff, and just do the stuff
Speaker 1: would distract me the horror of that time. That was
Speaker 1: really great. So ET came along a great time.
Speaker 2: ET never really lost that power for Matt or for anyone.
Speaker 2: It was really, at least in theaters periodically through the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties. Spielberg refused to allow it to be available
Speaker 2: on VHS until six years later in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 2: There was a magic to it that he largely kept preserved.
Speaker 2: There would never be a sequel, or even much talk
Speaker 2: of one. Henry Thomas, who portrayed Elliott, appeared with ET
Speaker 2: in a twenty nineteen commercial for Comcast that Spielberg approved of,
Speaker 2: but not much else. And while it might seem easy
Speaker 2: to conjure up Et as a CGI creation or even
Speaker 2: another Latex costume. It's not Comcast used a hybrid option.
Speaker 1: There's a reason for that because Latex you just can't
Speaker 1: do a one to one copy of the original puppet.
Speaker 1: There's something's going to be off the paint, the wrinkles,
Speaker 1: the eyes. I don't know. Well, in the movie itself,
Speaker 1: you can kind of see what ET almost has like
Speaker 1: a lazy eye because they just couldn't get the one
Speaker 1: of the eye to quite be symmetrical with the other one.
Speaker 1: You know, they did a photo session with Michael Jackson.
Speaker 1: You see there was something my ET's I that was degenerating.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so I mean, going back to what we
Speaker 1: were saying about the sequel, even if you got everything right,
Speaker 1: but you just can't nail ET. You couldn't get that
Speaker 1: ET look good match it from the first movie.
Speaker 2: Matt wasn't completely done with the film business, though Et
Speaker 2: would be a tough act to follow. A few years later,
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty five, he appeared in The Fourth Wise Man,
Speaker 2: a biblical tale, playing a leoper. He also appeared in
Speaker 2: Cyborg two, a sequel to a nineteen eighty nine Jean
Speaker 2: Claude van Damn film that couldn't even manage to re
Speaker 2: enlist Jean Claude van dam.
Speaker 1: I had a speaking part in that. I'm not in
Speaker 1: costume while I'm not in like a latex costume, so
Speaker 1: that was like a futuristic dystopian picture. Angelina Jolie's in it,
Speaker 1: Jack Plants, Elias cotaeis of a lot of great stars,
Speaker 1: and that Billy Drago from The Untouchables and so yeah.
Speaker 1: So I had a speaking part in that one. That
Speaker 1: was probably my most memorable experience after ET was actually
Speaker 1: doing a legit speaking scene, dialogue scene with those actors.
Speaker 1: I played a character named manhole Man. He was like
Speaker 1: a doorman to the overworld.
Speaker 2: But for all of his immediate success, Matt didn't fall
Speaker 2: in love with.
Speaker 1: Acting and never felt natural to me. And then the
Speaker 1: number of roles that come to handicapped people, especially someone
Speaker 1: who's doesn't have any legs, few and far between.
Speaker 2: Matt went on to teach English and then got into
Speaker 2: writing and podcasting. He makes convention appearances away for fans
Speaker 2: of ET to put a human face to the character.
Speaker 2: Matt de Merit the creature Kid. I didn't know it
Speaker 2: at the time. But he became part of a legacy
Speaker 2: people who breathed life into fantastic creations. Once not long ago,
Speaker 2: Matt found himself at a convention and sitting alongside Rico Browning,
Speaker 2: the man who played the Creature from the Black Lagoon,
Speaker 2: a nineteen fifty four classic Matt grew up watching with
Speaker 2: his dad.
Speaker 1: It was very flattered because he gave me his autograph
Speaker 1: and told me how much he loved ET. And we
Speaker 1: struck up a conversation, and I realized as I was
Speaker 1: talking to him that Hey, you know, this is the
Speaker 1: company I'm in. You know, I'm part of this company.
Speaker 1: I was a man in a very famous creature suit.
Speaker 2: This is ET for Matt a time in his life
Speaker 2: that was a mixture of happiness and loss. The movie
Speaker 2: is something audiences have treasured, but it was the making
Speaker 2: of ET that allowed Matt to believe in himself.
Speaker 1: There's a great word sweet, you know, and I think
Speaker 1: life is just bittersweet. It's not always bitter, it's not
Speaker 1: always sweet, you know, it's sometimes it just it converges
Speaker 1: into an experience like that, you know, where these two
Speaker 1: concurrent things happen, both positive, one positive, one incredibly negative.
Speaker 1: It gave me the confidence to discourse with people and
Speaker 1: interact with people, you know, because I did at this hook.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just my disability, wasn't just the subject of
Speaker 1: the conversation, but this glorious movie that people cried during
Speaker 1: and laughed at, you know. So it's really hard for
Speaker 1: me to get my mind around that. So there's always
Speaker 1: going to be a bit of a detachment from that,
Speaker 1: like pinching myself. Is it's still real, you know, like
Speaker 1: when I do convention with with Robert and Henry today.
Speaker 1: So I can't believe forty years later was still talking,
Speaker 1: you know, and we're still having the same laughs that
Speaker 1: we had back then, and we're still celebrating this movie
Speaker 1: forty years later.
Speaker 4: Okay, we usually cast these stories at the end. It's
Speaker 4: kind of hard to make this one a movie. And
Speaker 4: there's also been very against making any ET sequels in
Speaker 4: all these years. But does anyone want to pitch an
Speaker 4: ET sequel? On the fly?
Speaker 1: Here?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: God, an ET sequel? Okay, Elliott goes to his planet, right,
Speaker 2: that's the classic sequel reversal.
Speaker 5: Oh, that's good, like that, that's brilliant.
Speaker 3: Write that. You have to write that.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm sure, I'll write that everyone will be clamoring
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 4: I was thinking about Avengeful Et later in life coming
Speaker 4: back less of a heartwarming story than what we're done.
Speaker 5: Oh oh, Evengefully he comes back to destroy the earth.
Speaker 2: Or Et comes back as Elliott is getting a divorce
Speaker 2: as an adult and he has to work through that.
Speaker 3: Ah. Yes, mid life crisis Elliott. Brilliant. These are all
Speaker 3: good for a very special character.
Speaker 4: So in the cold open, that was my youngest daughter Juliette,
Speaker 4: who we roped into doing a little voice acting. She
Speaker 4: gave us multiple takes. Total pro if nepotism is not
Speaker 4: allowed for these official rankings, but we're cool with looking
Speaker 4: the other way. For to some medical ethics, I would
Speaker 4: pick the doctor who got his former patient his start
Speaker 4: in Hollywood.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, good points.
Speaker 2: I'm going to actually say the casting director who's like,
Speaker 2: we should call a hospital, that's the move.
Speaker 3: I'm going with the crew who went and put the
Speaker 3: fire out.
Speaker 5: I thought that was brilliant because you got to have
Speaker 5: those people with fast acting, clear headed, no panic.
Speaker 4: Also loved Simon brew Another shout out to Simon to
Speaker 4: coming on and giving us some Hollywood history. I love
Speaker 4: Simon old friend, great voice, good podcast. Go check out
Speaker 4: film stories after this.
Speaker 5: As Dana said, totally, this was a hard one to cast,
Speaker 5: by the way, because you have the main actor like Matt,
Speaker 5: He's got to play himself, right. I mean this is automatically,
Speaker 5: this is the Jackie Robinson story to play yourself.
Speaker 3: Brother.
Speaker 5: But other than that, I could cast Steven Spielberg as
Speaker 5: Jesse Eisenberg.
Speaker 3: I thought that one worked.
Speaker 5: I can see that Melissa Matheson screenwriter Emma Stone, but
Speaker 5: as a brunette. And then Carlo Rimbaldi Adrian Brody. He
Speaker 5: feels like the outsider's outsider in Hollywood. I think he
Speaker 5: can bring that right creature feature energy. And then finally
Speaker 5: as Pat the little person. I thought the actor Danny Woodburn,
Speaker 5: who played Seinfeld's comic friend on Seinfeld, is like kind
Speaker 5: of like a brilliant little person actor. I thought he
Speaker 5: could give you that Hollywood veteran vibe that sounds great.
Speaker 3: Love it.
Speaker 4: I would see that version of this. I don't know
Speaker 4: if it's officially an et squel, but let's talk, but
Speaker 4: I do want to see Dana's.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent both of them.
Speaker 2: Actually I am my alien. It's sort of like an
Speaker 2: alien three situation.
Speaker 4: Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
Speaker 4: The show's hosted by Danish Schwartz, Sarah Burnette and Jason English.
Speaker 4: Today's episode was written by Jake Rossen. Our producer is
Speaker 4: Josh Fisher. Our story editor is Marisa Brown. Ed and
Speaker 4: sound design by Jonathan Washington and Josh Fisher. Mixing and
Speaker 4: mastering by Beheid Fraser. Special thanks to our voice actors
Speaker 4: Jessica Krinchitch and Juliette English. Original music by Alice McCoy.
Speaker 4: Research in fact checking by Jake Rosson and Austin Thompson.
Speaker 4: Show logo by Lucy Quintinia. Our executive producer is Jason English.
Speaker 4: If you want to email the show, you can reach
Speaker 4: us at Very Special Episodes at gmail dot com. Very
Speaker 4: Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts.