As Spielberg confirms whether ET was ‘thin or dry’, we enter a new age of celebrity interview | Video

For for the most part, Steven Spielberg has avoided most of the ugliness of modern adventure travel. He didn’t need to commit himself to anything spicy chicken wingsor call any references when presented by a a sausage covered in a cloche. Unlike many other celebrities, he didn’t choose to promote Reveal Day by answering softball questions at the same time. Lionel Richie’s claymation on YouTube. For this he should be commended.

In fact, Spielberg has used this marketing strategy for some of the most relevant aspects of his development. A maestro tour, if you will, where he’ll set Revelation Day against a career that never existed. Publications are over a long oral history covering his entire career. He was a stranger at the time final week of success of the Stephen Colbert interview. He was interviewed by the New York Times about the actual appearance of the ET skin.

That last one actually happened. The interview video is viral, with interviewer Rachel Abrams directly asking Spielberg “Was ET thin or dry?” before saying that this is a decades-old problem that has plagued everyone he knows. Fortunately, Spielberg answered the question with great enthusiasm, if a little bewildered. “ET was a little wet but not skinny,” he replied, shaking his head. He then explained that, while “ET was dry when he got sick”, it would be wrong to call him weak. Xenomorphs are rare, he said. “ET never had water strokes.”

Now, why Abrams asked this question is another story. The interpretation of good faith is that Spielberg has been seventy years ago in the public eye, and has been asked so many times that he has had the habit of becoming a jukebox object of anecdote, shaking an unexpected hit. This is something that only bothers the famous but can be debilitating. It is also available many times for one to hear Ringo Starr’s biography “Me I thought that he was you three” story.

Looked at this way, there’s real value in extracting new information from A-list celebrities. The fact that ET is now officially wet maybe adds something to the cultural conversation that wasn’t there before? If so, this question deserves praise. However, if Abrams just deliberately asked a dumb question to the director of Schindler’s List because he knew it would click, then that’s another story.

We also have to question why this story started. Abrams’s justification that it was in the public interest, since it has been a long-standing discussion within his development team, sounds false, because perhaps everyone in his team is open-minded and can see for themselves that ET is not a minority. It’s right there! All in this movie! We know what ET’s skin is like because ET is a visible character throughout the film. As everyone knows, ET skin is smooth or round, like the skin of a Mediterranean grandmother. There is certainly no mud there. If there had been, then the film would have included a shot of Drew Barrymore skipping down ET’s street, or a climactic hug between ET and Elliott would have ended with Elliott looking down at his mud-covered clothes and writing, “This was new today.”

But nothing happened so that we can know that ET is not a minority and this was a stupid question to ask. However, the new media interface doesn’t like anything but a flexible interface, so maybe this is something we’ll see in the future. For all we know, the New York Times is working on a series called Famous Auteurs Answer Self-Proclaimed Questions as we speak, and this time next week they will drag Martin Scorsese to ask him if Jake LaMotta had 12 ears, or Paul Thomas Anderson to ask if Daniel Day-Lewis is a mouse in disguise. For the avoidance of doubt, I expect this to happen.