'How do you explain school to higher intelligence?'
"Hang on,
Michael. Didn’t we do E.T. two months back?" Well, um, yes. But today we’re
celebrating the film’s 30th birthday. Kind of. "Oh, this is going well." In the
UK, the film wasn’t actually released until December 1982. Imagine that today.
Having to wait six months for a Spielberg blockbuster. It would be illegally
streaming half an hour after the first US screening. And even back then, it played a
huge part in boosting the bootleg video market.
Eleven years
old and very much a child of the Star Wars generation, I was a supernova of
excitement for any and all sci-fi films. My mum was taking my sister and I to
see it at the Empire Leicester Square on the first Saturday of release – this
would be my first trip to a West End cinema. But calamity loomed. A boy in my
year had got hold of a dodgy Betamax copy and brought it in to school on the Friday.
And, for some unknown reason, one of the teachers decided it would be perfectly
ok to hold a special assembly that afternoon and screen it for the whole
school!? Not quite sure of either the educational value or moral lesson there.
Yes, it was
certainly a welcome change from the ‘Way We Used To Live’ low budget dramas we were usually
shown. But this wasn’t how I wanted to experience ‘E.T’ for the first time. Or
any time. Poorly recorded and projected. Daylight streaming through the ill-fitting
hall curtains. Russell trying to impress the row of girls in front with his remarkably
poor "phoooone hoooome" impressions. So for two hours I sat with my eyes closed
and my hands over my ears to avoid spoliers. And it just about worked. None of
the magic of the London screening the next day was tarnished and it remains
much loved. Happy birthday, E.T. !
Spotify linky:
For E.T’s 20th anniversary in 2002 ("Yes, we can do the maths, Michael"), the film was released back in to theatres (with some digital fiddling from Speilberg), and my sister and I went to the see it at Piccadilly Circus (the closest screening to Leicester Square).
ReplyDeleteIt was almost as diabolical as that first bootleg screening. Spielberg had paid a fortune to have the film beautifully remastered, but the Trocadero projectionist misaligned the print so that a third of it was beamed off the screen and only half the speakers seemed to be working. And then the fire alarm went off. But we were told not to worry as it was only caused by building work next door. And then it went off again. And again.
My sister and I finally went to get our money back and haven’t returned since.