What I Learned From Reading E.T.

 This post was originally written for, and posted at, the Women in Film Seattle site.  Cool organization, check them out. Anyway, in case you missed it at their site, here it is.


A friend of mine recently read a spec script of mine and was very complimentary. Which was, of course, nice. But his compliments are also the specific kinds of comments I like to hear because they tell me that I have hit the target at which I was aiming.

When people like my screenplays, the things they say most often is, “I really feel like I just watched a movie.” Or they say, “I could really picture it!” And one of my very favorites, “I couldn’t put it down”. These kinds of comments have been fairly consistent over the years. Why? How can I get these comments consistently? It’s because I spent many years reading, starting as a teenager, reading scripts and learning from them. I stole the techniques of the writers whose work sucked me into the story and made me see a movie in my head vividly.

It is astonishing to me how many aspiring screenwriters almost never read screenplays. Part of the reason for this is that with the advent of screenwriting software that formats scripts for you, folks no longer feel that they need to look at screenplays to learn that aspect, which was one of the main reasons that people ever looked at screenplays to begin with. Most people I speak to haven’t bothered to read scripts to learn much else, but there is so much to learn.

When E.T.The Extraterrestrial came out I was 17. That movie blew me away and I, already a huge Spielberg fan, became obsessed with the film and screenplay. At this time Spielberg’s most famous films were Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. The man was a juggernaut. I even had a picture on my wall of Steven Spielberg with E.T. that I pulled out of an issue of Rolling Stone magazine. I wanted to know what this guy knew, so I tracked down the scripts to his films and studied them.

Movie geek that I was this picture of E.T. and Steven Spielberg was on my wall as a teenager.

I really got into reading screenwriter Melissa Mathison’s script for E.T. I’m not sure how many times I read that screenplay. Multiple times. It was while reading this brilliant script that I learned one of my biggest screenwriting lessons – make every single thing matter. It was a revelation.

It struck me as I was reading a section of the script where the boy, Elliot, is hiding in a closet with his alien buddy E.T. as they eavesdrop on Elliot’s mother reading a bedtime story to his kid sister.  

E.T. heals Elliot's cut finger

 This scene is interrupted when Elliot cuts his finger, “Ouch!”  This is where E.T. learns the meaning of the word ouch and that is associated with pain. E.T.’s finger lights up and he touches it to the boy’s finger and heals the cut, after which the pair goes back to eavesdropping on the bedtime story.

Elliot and E.T. watch as Elliot's sister is read a story.

It is a tender scene of friendship between boy and alien, but it is so much more than that. I learned something reading the script, seeing the words on the page that I had not noticed consciously while watching the film.

The story being read to Gertie, the little girl, as played by Drew Barrymore, is Peter Pan’s. So what? Think about this: writer Melissa Mathison could have chosen any story to be read to the little girl. It could have been about Snow White or the Three Little Pigs or Rumpelstiltskin or Stone Soup, but it was Peter Pan, the part where the fairy Tinkerbelle is dying. And this is what the mother is reading when Elliot and E.T. go back to listening in.

“She thinks she can get well again if children believe in fairies, “ reads the mother. “Do you believe in fairies,” she continues, “Say quick that you believe.” Gertie says emphatically that she does believe. “If you believe,” the mother reads, “clap your hands.” The girl claps earnestly. “And Tink is saved,” says the mother.

Mom reads Peter Pan to Gertie

Here’s what’s amazing: later in the film E.T. dies and is brought back to life.  Mathison works this fairy-tale imagery of miraculous resurrection into our minds; she primes us to believe what’s coming later. She did it seamlessly and skillfully. She did not stop the story to have this tender scene – she continued to tell, and add, to her story by choosing a story for the mother to read that mattered, not an arbitrary or generic one.

Not to be forgotten is the fact that the fairy Tinkerbelle is often depicted as nothing more than a glowing light, with the light dimmed to indicate when she is dying, and made to glow brightly again when she is coming back to life.  E.T’s light, too, goes out when he is dying and comes back up when he comes back to life.

The amazing screenwriter of E.T. Melissa Mathison

I often compliment a film I like by saying that it had no fat. What I mean is that the storytellers used every line, shot, scene, and character to stay on track with the story in some way. Nothing is wasted.

If I ever have to pleasure of meeting Melissa Mathison, I will remove my hat out of sheer respect for the craft of her screenplay.

Today, I use this lesson I learned from reading the screenplay for E.T. in every story I construct. This lesson changed the direction of my writing profoundly. I have no doubt that if you read great scripts, you will learn great lessons. And when you do, steal them and use them liberally. 
  

P.S. And in case you missed this, I was on the 20/20 Awards podcast discussing one of my very favorite films Norma Rae: And also another film I love Groundhog Day: