OUR RESPONSE: THE JOKE THAT TURNED OUT TO BE ON US : E.T. : Somewhere Out There

Dear E.T.,

I tried to call you but you dialed home so fast in the movie I didn’t catch your Area Code. You must have a really superior form of communications up there. I wish we did. Talk about a cosmic misunderstanding!

Anybody who would deliberately knock E.T. and all he stands for would give Santa Claus a hot foot or chase the Easter Bunny with a broom. The whole point of our story was that the world had bestowed an unprecedented and phenomenal amount of love on you and is about to do so again. You’re a reigning symbol of love and hope on a planet short of both. You know from Elliott how people feel about you.

Where our bicycle tire went flat, you might say, was in the idea of symbolizing your movie success by dolling you up in the dark shades, the flashy ring, the chains and the pendants, including those accursed items identified with a social malady that is ruining lives. They were decorative and non-functional and they were intended to be wildly out of place on you, like the rest of the trappings, but the joke turned out to be on nobody but us.

The last thing in the world any of us thought was that anybody would take it seriously, or imagine that you or your friends would have anything but contempt for that stuff. You got into enough trouble with an innocent sip of beer.

It ought to make you feel better to know how many people were indignant on your behalf. They know the good things you stand for. Don’t be sad, and hurry back.