“We tried to get the key people to come—Steven Spielberg, Sylvester Stallone, Kirk Kerkorian, who on three separate occasions owned MGM Studios—like that. There was always an informal dinner afterward. Everyone was relaxed and had fun. I seem to recall that after seeing E.T., the president said something about how can we be one hundred percent sure that there are not other forms of life out there? A few people looked startled, and a few laughed politely, but I remember thinking how open-minded it was of him to acknowledge that possibility and not buy into the arrogance that we were the only living creatures ever.”
My view was that the president’s comment was almost certainly intended to draw laughter, but his serious delivery also made me think he was giving a gift to the children in the audience. Similar to the way a parent might confirm the existence of Santa Claus, Reagan was lending extra weight to the magic of the film for all those who wanted its magic to be real. He was also giving a wink to the filmmakers, indicating that their aim to inspire audiences was also his aim.
E.T., of course, did succeed—wildly. And not just in ticket sales but also in leaving a sizeable cultural footprint. It introduced to science fiction the idea that alien visitors need not be evil conquerors but might instead be cosmic companions.III This seemingly new concept was a refreshing twist for many filmgoers who were drawn to the subject matter of space and extraterrestrials but burned out by the pervasive darkness of such films.
Spielberg’s intention, however, was never to revolutionize science fiction. It was to capture the essence of childhood. He was inspired to make E.T. by experiences he had in his own childhood after his parents’ divorce, when he was beset by feelings of loneliness and would cope by retreating into his imagination. The choice of an alien companion at the film’s center—as opposed to, say, a golden retriever or an orca whale, as in other children’s films with similar narrative arcs—was a function of the space-crazy era in which the film was released.
“I wanted E.T. to become a kind of conscience and companion to kids growing up in the eighties,” Spielberg said once. “In the fifties, I had Jiminy Cricket and Winnie-the-Pooh as imaginary sidekicks and preceptors. They were creatures who outlived their original contexts, and I hope the same thing happens with E.T.”IV
Spielberg used a variety of techniques to pull the audience back into childhood, including shooting most scenes from a low vantage point. He also took the time to develop the ancillary characters in Elliott’s family. They span different ages and filter the story’s central theme—Elliott’s attachment to E.T.—through their own complex points of view. This multigenerational approach gives older audience members a way to relate to the story without relying exclusively on their memories of being Elliott’s age.
Watching Elliott, we witness his first-time struggle with feelings of loss and abandonment. E.T.’s role in Elliott’s life grows from being like a pet, to like a friend, to like a stand-in parent or mentor. When E.T. appears to have died and his telekinetic connection with Elliott seems severed, Elliott says, “I must be dead, because I don’t know how to feel.”
Meanwhile, Elliott’s teenage brother, Mike, allows us to see the events unfold from a slightly older perspective. Mike has a scene in which he’s talking with one of the scientists who set up shop at the family’s home. He explains Elliott’s connection with E.T. this way:
SCIENTIST:
You said it has the ability to manipulate its own environment?
MICHAEL:
He’s smart. He communicates through Elliott.
SCIENTIST:
Elliott thinks its thoughts?
MICHAEL:
No. Elliott feels his feelings.
After this exchange, Mike withdraws into a closet full of stuffed animals, toys, and comics that he’s clearly outgrown. With tears in his eyes, he pulls his knees up to his chest and falls asleep on the floor, having retreated one more time into the comfort of childhood.
In the film’s emotional final scene, even adult characters such as Elliott’s mother and the government agents become teary-eyed at the relationship between Elliott and E.T. They watch as the two stand outside the spaceship and labor through an anguished good-bye. E.T. points a glowing finger at Elliott’s forehead and says, “I will be right here.” The audience senses that Elliott is saying good-bye to part of his childhood as much as to a friend. We see even the cold and anonymous government agents won over by E.T.’s magic.
As the highest officeholder in the United States government, President Reagan had to have identified with the government agents portrayed as antagonists throughout the film. His infamous comment about everything on the screen being true showed how aware he was that, in the minds of many Americans, he was the ultimate authority on whether the government was hiding anything about its knowledge of space.
He viewed the movie, however, not just from the perspective of a sitting president but also as a veteran of the movie business. In a conversation after the screening, President Reagan told Spielberg that E.T. had left him feeling nostalgic, not about childhood but about a simpler time in filmmaking.
“I only have one criticism of your movie,” he said. “How long were the end credits?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Spielberg replied. “Maybe three, three and a half minutes.”
Reagan was unimpressed. “In my day, when I was an actor, our end credits were maybe fifteen seconds long. Three and a half minutes, that’s fine—but only show that inside the industry. Throughout the rest of the country, reduce your credits to fifteen seconds at the end.”
His point was that people in the filmmaking business would be interested in seeing their names and those of their colleagues, but the rest of the country would not.
Nancy intervened before Spielberg had the chance to respond. “Oh, Ronnie,” she said. “They can’t do that. You know that.”
“Oh, yes, yes,” the president sighed. “I suppose.”V
It’s a humorous conversation in hindsight, but it also showed the way Reagan’s mind worked when viewing films. He watched them as a student of the craft. He came from a less technically advanced time in moviemaking, when crews didn’t consist of the visual effects artists and hordes of specialized technicians needed to make E.T. Spielberg, on the other hand, was of a new generation in Hollywood. He understood that big effects were the draw for audiences, even if the smaller human moments were still what kept them in their seats.
As the director intended, the science-fiction elements of the film connected it to kids growing up in the eighties. He further appealed to them with references to other popular sci-fi space adventures throughout. In an early interaction between Elliott and E.T., Elliott shows off a series of Star Wars action figures. Later on, E.T. is trick-or-treating, disguised by a white sheet, and tries to chase after a child in a Yoda costume, saying “Home . . . home . . . home.” Near the film’s end, Elliott explains to a neighborhood boy that E.T. needs to get to a spaceship. “Well, can’t he just beam up?” the boy asks, in reference to existing sci-fi clichés. Elliott’s impatient reply: “This is reality, Greg.”
A sense of reality, it seems, is what audiences were craving from the science-fiction genre.
The flight of the space shuttle one week after the screening of E.T. was a moment of unity for the country. It continued to inspire Americans in the coming years, and the administration kept searching for methods of involving the American people, including children, in the program.
The Shuttle Student Involvement Program was one such method. It gave students the opportunity to propose experiments to be performed by astronauts in space. Reagan also had far bigger ideas. He was determined to see a civilian launched into space before the end of his second term. He believed that was a way to truly give the American people a stake in the Shuttle Program.
In 1984 he proposed the Teachers in Space Project. “I am directing NASA to begin the search in all of our elementary and secondary schools,” the president said, “and to choose as the first citizen
passenger in the history of our space program one of America’s finest: a teacher. I can’t think of a better lesson for our children and our country.”
After more than eleven thousand applied, a high school social studies teacher from Concord, New Hampshire, named Christa McAuliffe was selected. What followed would be one of the greatest tragedies of the Reagan presidency. On January 28, 1986, just seventy-three seconds after it had launched, the Challenger exploded, killing Christa and the six other astronauts on board.
It was the worst disaster in NASA’s history and a heavy blow to the US space program. Yet with Christa on board, the deepest wound was to the American people. The shuttle that had been a source of inspiration since it first thundered overhead at Edwards Air Force Base in 1982 had become a source of heartbreak. The millions who had watched Christa’s training unfold suddenly felt no desire to follow in her footsteps. Reagan understood the challenge before him. This was a human tragedy more than a scientific disaster, and he needed to respond in kind.
He wanted, first of all, to speak to the millions of schoolchildren who had watched the disaster happen live. For many, it remains one of their earliest and most vivid memories. The gifted speechwriter Peggy Noonan went to work and drafted what would become defining words.
“I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle’s takeoff,” the president said in his now-famous speech the evening of the disaster. “I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It’s all part of the process of exploration and discovery.”
He also wanted to remind people that the Shuttle Program would remain a public endeavor, one for all to share in and experience. “We don’t hide our space program,” he said. “We don’t keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That’s the way freedom is, and we wouldn’t change it for a minute. We’ll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews, and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue.”
* * *
I. Janet Maslin, “Nation’s First Film-Goer Gets a Front-Row Seat,” New York Times online, April 21, 1983, www.nytimes.com/1983/04/21/us/nation-s-first-film-goer-gets-a-front-row-seat.html.
II. Alejandro Rojas, “Spielberg Confirms Reagan’s Extraterrestrial Comment,” OpenMinds, last modified June 6, 2011, www.openminds.tv/spielberg-confirms-reagan-705/10057.
III. “New Releases: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” Christian Science Monitor online, March 22, 2002, www.csmonitor.com/2002/0322/p14s01-almo.html.
IV. Gary Arnold, “ ‘E.T.: Steven Spielberg’s Joyful Excursion, Back to Childhood, Forward to the Unknown,” Washington Post online, June 6, 1982, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/22/AR2005062201424.html.
V. Rojas, “Spielberg Confirms Reagan’s Extraterrestrial Comment.”
7
RETURN OF THE JEDI
Starring:
Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Frank Oz
Directed by:
Richard Marquand
WARGAMES
Starring:
Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, Dabney Coleman
Directed by:
John Badham
Viewed by the Reagans:
June 2–4, 1983
The Films That Stirred the President’s Imagination
The year 1983 saw some of the tensest moments in the Cold War since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The president, long a fervent anti-Communist, bluntly and repeatedly made plain his view of the Soviet Union and its dangerous ambitions. He spoke often of his deep and abiding concern for the well-being of the American people and our way of life, his fear that Soviet expansionism was like a cancer that could eventually rob millions of their freedoms, and his belief that if he could just get his Soviet counterpart in a room and talk to him man-to-man, he could convince him that the United States had no hostile intentions, and there was no need for the nuclear brinksmanship that had characterized the relationship for so long.
On March 8, 1983, Reagan dubbed the Soviet Union “an evil empire.”I That speech, which seemed to wipe away decades of US policy seeking a long-term peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union, changed the course of the Cold War more than any other, and probably more than any speech ever delivered since Abraham Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg and Franklin Delano Roosevelt responded to Pearl Harbor. It outraged many of the president’s political opponents, who called it dangerous warmongering. It also outraged the Soviets, who feared such an obvious departure from the policies and views of Reagan’s immediate predecessors. A new Soviet president, the stern-faced former KGB chief Yuri Andropov, who replaced the late, long-serving Leonid Brezhnev in 1982, did not ease concerns about a blistering standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union. He may have been disappointed, but Ronald Reagan was undeterred.
Two weeks later, in a historic address from the White House, the president announced his support for research and development of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a missile defense system that Reagan hoped would render nuclear weapons obsolete.II The total elimination of nuclear weapons and their potential to destroy the world was something to which Ronald Reagan was devoted. It bothered him that some people viewed him as anything less than committed to achieving that goal.
Critics such as Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts attacked the vision as “reckless Star Wars schemes.” Reporters soon dubbed the missile shield Reagan’s “Star Wars” plan. The idea was to associate the plan with wacky science fiction. Of course, it also connected it to one of the most beloved film franchises of all time. It just so happened that the third and latest outing in the Star Wars universe, Return of the Jedi, was being shown in the presidential lodge at Camp David the first weekend of June.
The president had grown quite comfortable with the routine and rhythms of Camp David as well as with the personnel who spent so much time with him. In warmer months such as this, he and Mrs. Reagan often enjoyed going to the swimming pool behind Aspen. This was where one of the great Camp David traditions during the Reagan era—essentially a “rite of passage” for new Secret Service agents joining the Presidential Protective Division—took place.
Whenever a new agent joined the detail, he was told to bring a bathing suit to Camp David and to be ready to stand post.
When the president went poolside, the new agent would put on his bathing suit and get ready to go. At that point, before the new agent left the Secret Service cabin, a senior agent would stop him and hand him a pair of goggles, a snorkel, and fins.
Too nervous to ask any questions, the new agent would put them on and waddle out to the pool, in full view of the president.
The first time this happened, as an agent headed toward Ronald Reagan dressed like a deep-sea diver, the chief executive was startled. But he was too polite to say anything. So he greeted the agent, asked his name, where he was from, and so on.
Later, Reagan asked the senior agent in charge, “What’s with the new guy?”
Once he was informed that this was a prank for every new agent, the president was amused (and relieved) and looked forward to a new one waddling along.
The first few times the prank happened, the president had been by himself at the pool. Mrs. Reagan was in Aspen Lodge, probably on the phone or reading. But eventually the prank took place in front of the First Lady. After observing an agent waddle by in goggles and large flopping flippers, she whispered to the president, “Honey, what was that?” Without looking up from his papers, he replied, “New guy.”
Jedi was intended to close out the Star Wars trilogy. (This was many years before producer-director-writer George Lucas filmed three prequels.) It reunited the main cast—Harrison Ford’s Han Solo, Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia, and Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker—and was a guaranteed blockbuster even before its release. The film earned $500 million worldwide.
&
nbsp; Its main competition that summer was expected to be the soon-to-open Superman III, a lackluster “threequel” to the two more popular Superman films, starring Christopher Reeve in the title role.
Coincidentally, Reeve had been invited to attend a White House reception the following weekend honoring the Special Olympics, which was also being used as a vehicle to promote Superman III.III The visit caused some White House aides concern. Reeve, a supporter of the Special Olympics, was one of the most vocal anti-Reagan celebrities in Hollywood and that was a high standard to meet. In a 1982 interview in Playgirl, a magazine neither of the Reagans read, Reeve declared, “I don’t think Reagan knows what he’s doing. I don’t think he has a clue. He’s provoking the Russians in a terrifying way. It seems to come from some sort of misplaced pioneer spirit.”IV Reeve said that he was an advocate for a unilateral nuclear freeze. That was a popular position of many on the left. They wanted the United States to end its nuclear missile deployment and development regardless of the Soviets’ escalating buildup.V He also labeled Reagan, as did many in Hollywood, as insensitive to the poor—or, as he told the interviewer, the president was “raping poor people in this country.”VI
Reeve did appear with Reagan at a Special Olympics event the following weekend. The president seemed to have charmed him—as he did with many opponents. Reeve, in fact, called Reagan—whose name he pronounced “Reegan”—“a wonderful person.”
The president himself later reflected on the visit in his diary: “He’s done some acrimonious interviews about me being a cold fish with a heart only for the rich. I’m just optimistic enough to think he might have changed his mind.” Tellingly, the Reagans had watched Superman II at Camp David with their son, Ron, in 1981. But they skipped the viewing of Superman III.
Movie Nights with the Reagans Page 9
