Honoring the little alien that could

It’s time to bring out your handkerchiefs: The little alien who just wanted to phone home is back. On Thursday at the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is presenting a 25th-anniversary screening featuring an onstage cast-and-crew reunion of Steven Spielberg’s beloved fantasy “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.”

The film revolves around a creature with a glowing heart, an abundance of humanity and a sweet tooth who is befriended by a young boy named Elliott (Henry Thomas) after E.T.’s spaceship takes off without him. The cast includes Dee Wallace as Elliott’s mother, Robert MacNaughton as Elliott’s older brother, Michael; and 6-year-old Drew Barrymore as his sister, Gertie.

Besides being a worldwide critical and commercial smash, “E.T.” was nominated for nine Oscars. It lost best picture to “Gandhi” but received four Academy Awards that honored visual effects and sound/sound-effects editing as well as John Williams’ transcendent score.

Producer Kathleen Kennedy, Wallace and sound winner Gene S. Cantamessa, all of whom will be appearing at the event, recently reminisced about “E.T.”

Kathleen Kennedy

“You have to understand it was the first movie I ever produced. It’s like a joke: ‘What’s the first movie you ever produced?’ ‘E.T.’ I didn’t have a clue about anything to do with the business or how things worked or what to expect. I was just nervous every day trying to get the day’s work done and making sure that I was thinking ahead enough for what I needed the next day. As to having any perspective on the future or what it meant to have a successful movie -- I had no idea.

“One of the things I vividly remember is that Lew Wasserman [the chairman of Universal] used to call me every day [after the film was released]. He was ecstatic and would run through the box office numbers of all the different territories with me. I remember one time he said, ‘Kathy, isn’t this just amazing?’ And I said, ‘Yeah. I guess. It sounds wonderful.’ And he said, ‘No, no. This is one of the biggest films ever.’ It wasn’t until he said that that I understood the magnitude of what we were involved in. Obviously, he had the perspective of a long, long career of watching movies and analyzing the numbers, and he realized this was going to take its place in history.

“I think everybody has a special place for ‘E.T.,’ whether it is something they remember as a kid or they remember as an adult and they now show the movie to their own kids. I remember being very excited with our two girls [Kennedy is married to producer Frank Marshall] when they were old enough to sit down and watch the movie. We got a really beautiful print and Steven brought his younger kids over with us because our kids are pretty much the same age, and we were all watching the movie together. Steven, Frank and I were all looking at each other and saying, ‘Wow.’ We never, never dreamed we would be sitting in the year 2000 with our kids watching ‘E.T.’ It was pretty incredible.”

Gene S. Cantamessa

(He received the Oscar for best sound with Robert Knudson, Robert Glass and Don Digirolamo.)

“The one thing about Steven I would say is that he is as good as a technician as well as a director. As far as a sound person is concerned, that is the best kind to work for. The thing I enjoyed about Steven is that he is sound-conscious.

“For the voice of E.T., he would get actors and put them in one of the trailers and try their voices. It was up to Steven to pick out the voices he liked and combine them and see if that worked for E.T. We would record it, but probably he recorded a lot more voices after the picture was over.

“We had numerous E.T.s -- some of them were small people inside a suit for the wide shot and mechanical ones for the close-ups. The hands for E.T. [belonged to] a mime that Steven knew in San Francisco. When E.T. was at the table where you would see his hands move, she was under there doing the motions.”

Dee Wallace

“I have seen ‘E.T.’ several times this year, and it still moves me; I still laugh and I still cry. I truly believe it was channeled from the script to the movie itself and the people who were in it -- everything was from a much higher order than ours.

“Steven saw me in ‘The Howling,’ and he auditioned me for ‘Used Cars.’ Fortunately, I did not get it. Then they just called me and offered me ‘E.T.’ I knew that the script was really special. I actually said to my agent, ‘I don’t think this is going to do really anything for me, because I’m not the star, but I want to be involved in this film because I think it’s going to have a huge effect on the world.’ I got the purpose of ‘E.T.’ before a lot of people.

“It was supposed to be Steven’s little movie, and you know, sometimes the little things that are truly from the heart and the highest truth are the things that touch people the most throughout history. I just think it is our ‘Wizard of Oz.’ It transcends generations, age and religion because it is the truth. The truth is if we can all just reach into our heart center and be the authentic person that we are, we can always transport ourselves back to the home of our own truthfulness. I think the whole story is a metaphor.”

susan.king@latimes.com

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‘E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial’

Where: Samuel Goldwyn Theatre, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday

Price: $3 to $5

Contact: (310) 247-3600 or go to www.oscars.org