The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
91
She was the girl on the poster in my room growing up; everybody had
that. She represented the impossible. I lived my life and got turned down by
various girls and continued on.
In 2003 in Los Angeles, I basically had hit my bottom. I’d hit my wall and
was like, “This is a roadless industry. How do you create a road for yourself
to be a director in a roadless industry?” And for me, I’d worked my way up
as an intern, I’d worked my way up being a production assistant, worked my
way up to being an executive producer’s assistant, and then worked my way
up to being unemployed. All the while, shooting my own short films and
building up my director’s reel and couldn’t get that break.
I ended up taking a job at the graveyard shift at a postproduction company,
which was just a really crushing, demoralizing job. I was handing out
editing supplies to editors who were cutting and editing trailers. I met some
very nice people there, but it just wasn’t what I moved out there to do; it wasn’t
my dream. And it left my days free, which left me time to audition for a game
show that a friend of mine told me about. That game show was a pilot game
show, and there was not much winnings to be had, but I won the grand prize
of eleven hundred dollars. That in itself is just jaw-dropping, right? But what’s
really cool is that the winning answer was “Drew Barrymore.”
And you used that money to make a film about getting a date with Barrymore.
But let’s not ruin the ending of your documentary. Back to
E.T., has the film aged well?
Herzlinger: E.T. absolutely has aged perfectly. This is one of those movies
that will stand the test of time just purely thematically. There is nothing that
dates that movie other than the products and the Star Wars toys, but I hate
to tell you this Star Wars is gonna be around for the rest of our lives. You
know, if you look at Raiders of the Lost Ark, for example, this is a movie that
takes place in the ’30s that came out in the ’80s that is timeless, even though
it takes place in a certain time. E.T. is that way.
Why did its twentieth anniversary release fail to capture fans from a
younger audience?
Herzlinger: I think it’s hard to get anybody to go see a movie in the theater
if they already own it. It worked for Star Wars when it was released in ’97