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About E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) was born from the director's childhood loneliness after his parents' divorce, channeling that emotional isolation into a story about a boy who befriends a stranded alien that became the highest-grossing film of all time for over a decade. The iconic bicycle flying scene was achieved with a combination of practical puppetry on moving rigs and cutting-edge motion-control photography, and Spielberg deliberately shot the film from a child's perspective, keeping adult faces off-screen for most of the movie. Young Drew Barrymore was so convinced E.T. was real during filming that Spielberg maintained the illusion between takes to preserve her genuine reactions. The film's emotional power was amplified by John Williams's score, which Spielberg called the best film music ever composed, and E.T.'s simple phrase "E.T. phone home" entered the language as one of cinema's most recognizable lines.