Now the kids on this film were Henry Thomas, who played Elliott, and Robert MacNaughton, who played Michael. I finally had the brothers I had made up in my imagination. They were the best. They teased me just like an annoying little sister, and I had never been happier.
Then there were the “D&D boys,” which was the name of their gang in the movie, which came from the game Dungeons & Dragons. They were Sean Frye, C. Thomas Howell, and K. C. Martel. They were super cool and I was in awe of them.
There were also the kids in E.T. costumes, a young girl and a young boy, each about thirteen. They did not have legs, and they walked on their hands instead. The tone was that they were like capable superhero circus performers, and so there was no somber attitude. They were part of the gang, and they too were super cool. Matt, the boy, went around with his body on a skateboard and was a total badass, whereas the girl was very sweet and girly, and seemed not one bit different from any of us.
Someone who was different in life, but not in our schoolhouse group, was Pat Bilon, the world’s smallest man. He was thirty-four inches tall. And I loved him. I felt like he was a friend just made for me, even though I was fully aware that he was his own person with a full life who went to his own home every night.
We were all like misfits from the Island of Misfit Toys. Or maybe I pictured us more like the Wizard of Oz gang, the ones who played the munchkins and apparently wrecked the Culver hotel, which was a block away, while shooting! (A visual that always makes me smile!) I like to think of us as them! We would get in crazy food fights in the commissary, one of them started by Steven and me! We would play games, make bets, and just hang. One day, on Halloween, we all got dressed up over our costumes. I was a gypsy, and Robert MacNaughton was Nixon, and Henry was a clown. But we all were hearing rumors that Steven, the biggest kid of all, the most playful, the most unpatronizing leader, was about to show us all up. We waited. It was quiet in the schoolhouse. We were all doing our schoolwork, and in walks this old lady, and for a second until our eyes adjusted, we wondered who she was. Well, it was Steven, in full drag, and we all jumped up and attacked him! And we escorted him to set, like a moving wave of groupies in Steven’s ocean.
To say that we loved him is the understatement of the world. We didn’t love him because it was our job. We loved him because he was like Peter Pan. He believed in us. And for the first time in our lives we realized our own potential through him. I have never had an experience like it.
When the filming was coming to a close, I was so upset. We were shooting the end of the film in the rainforest where E.T. is going home. Steven shot most of the film in sequence, something no one has the luxury of doing anymore because of schedules and budgets, which is a complete shame because often now you shoot the end of a film at the beginning or go so out of sequence that you can’t find which way is up because you are guessing how you will feel about things after a journey that hasn’t yet taken place. Not to mention you work with people in tight chunks rather than the sprawling nature of the months or years the story calls for.
On this movie we got to know each other, bond, become a family, fall in love with E.T. and each other, and so when it was ending it was truly high stakes for all of us. Steven never let us fake anything. Tears or joy or sarcasm. He made us be real! And that incredible film that he made was all there on the day. Very little special effects, considering. We were not acting to tennis balls standing in for an E.T. that would be placed in later by CGI. He was very much there in the room. He was present. I myself knew that he wasn’t “real,” but it didn’t matter. He was alive in the electric sense of the word. I saw the cords coming out of him. I saw kids taking his head off to breathe while in the E.T. suit, but it still didn’t shake my belief in him.
In fact, the fact that he wasn’t real meant he could keep secrets. And I could tell him anything. I often sat with him alone while the crew had gone out for lunch. I would wrap a handkerchief around his neck and eat with him. I cared for him. I didn’t need him to have feelings in order to actually care about his feelings.
So when we were in those woods, saying good-bye, I was a mess. I couldn’t stop crying. It was working for the scene because E.T. was going home, and then I got rumblings that they needed another day to shoot. All of a sudden the idea that this would not all be ending as soon as I thought cheered me up so much, Steven came over and told me that I needed to be upset! Not happy! And I followed instruction, secretly relieved for this not to be going away in hours but days.
When you end a film, especially just as an actor, that’s it. You are sent home, back to normal life, as if it was all a dream. A Boy’s Life was over, and I thought that I would never hear or see anything about it again. Much to my relief, I had become so close with Steven that he accepted my wish, conveyed by my mother, to have him be like a godfather to me. He stepped up to the plate. He took me in, a girl who needed a father, and it meant the world to me. And he was such a good father figure too. Consistent. Caring. Strict. Wholesome. Nurturing.
And most of all it was relaxed and easy. It became normal to spend weekends at his house, and it was the safest place and time I knew. I thank God for his care and guidance because it truly made the biggest difference in my life. And he single-handedly changed my life. And that is the truth, and I was about to find out what that meant.
After months of silence on the film, we heard that the name was going to be changed to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. OK, great. Then we heard that people were really loving it. It was as if there was some kind of buzz in the air. Again, this was 1982, so you really had to search for your information, but one day on the TV, it showed that people were lined up around the block to see the film, and the ones coming out of the film were crying and full of joy and emotions. It was becoming a phenomenon. Days went by, and then the news wasn’t hard to come by at all. E.T. was breaking records. Our little experience was becoming a worldwide freak-out!
And so, to ride the wave, the studio sent us all on a world tour! I remember my mom rushing me out of school to go to the federal building to get a passport so that we could travel! My picture was taken in my school uniform, and I had the biggest smile on my face ever. All of a sudden, I was a girl with a stamped passport to my life’s wildest adventures. I was in Germany. Norway. Paris. England. I met Princess Diana, and got to present her an E.T. doll. And I looked as any seven-year-old meeting a real-life princess would look. I was trying to keep my jaw off the floor and my eyes in my head. I loved her. And Steven made sure I bowed properly as I handed her this token stuffed animal.
The last stop on the tour was Japan! That was the world that seemed the most exotic and far away from where I lived. However, Steven had been versing me on sushi all summer, so I was excited to eat the food. Steven loved to freak people out with food, hence the food fights, or he had a game called “see-food”: He would put food in his mouth and then open it and say “See food!” and we all howled! He would dangle clams and then slurp them, and we would all yell “Gross!!!!!” and he loved it.
But here in Tokyo, Steven was bragging to me he would eat anything at the sushi bar. While we were eating at the Okura hotel, the sushi chefs overheard him and said, “We hear you will eat anything?” as they laughed, and Steven proudly said yes and took the challenge. All of us kids egged him on, so he waited as the chefs said they had something special just for him! After a minute or two, they brought out a giant five-inch-long centipede-looking creature with several legs, and it crawled across the sushi bar. All the chefs laughed and said, “It’s called the dancing shrimp, and you eat it alive!” We all screamed, and for the first time Steven looked like the tables had truly been turned on him! But he ate it, and I got so freaked out I ran out of the restaurant. He had to chase after me, still chewing on the live creature, struggling to get it down his throat.
Each country had a world premiere, and each seemed crazier than the next. Something had crossed over and my not-so-simple life w
ould be even less simple now. Nothing would be simple. But my love and relationship with Steven has always stayed the same. I have always tried to be my best in his eyes. Even when I went through hell, and I was too embarrassed to face him, he didn’t judge. He always encouraged me to be my wisest and strongest.
We have had many jokes and profound conversations over the years. I trust him with life advice as I still to this day go to him for it. When he holds my daughters in his arms, I don’t think there is a prouder moment for me. Because this one man believed in my silly stories, he made me feel like I could do anything. He single-handedly opened all the doors in my life with that one decision of putting me in that film.
It was my duty to not screw up the opportunity he gave me, and although I struggled here and there, my respect for him, and that experience, always kept me humble and focused. I have always been motivated to live the best life I can. The school of E.T. was magical. Thank you again, Steven. Always and forever.
Wild child, 1994
BRONCO
My car didn’t have a name, per se; it was just a metaphor for my life. “Wild.” “Bull in china shop.” “Reckless.” I was around seventeen and still living in West Hollywood. Going on auditions again while trying to revive my career, but not in any spotlight. It was just me and my Bronco.
The amazing thing about the late ’80s into the early ’90s was there was no Internet. No digital cameras. If you wanted to share a picture, you would have to go and develop it and then actually go and present it in person. And no one cared. It is the only period of my life where everyone was in their own bubble and widespread voyeurism had not yet come about and the sharing just wasn’t there. I picked out my two-tone car with a navy blue bottom and a tan hardtop because it looked like a big box and I liked cars that were high up—short woman’s complex—and it made me feel like a badass. I fitted it with a CB radio and an illegal megaphone that came out the front, below the grille, and you could shout crazy things and give people a real jump. I loved it.
Again, I was not in my oversensitive phase where I was worried about where my life was headed. I could be an ’80s child-star footnote or something else, for now I didn’t know which way it was all going, and for that moment in time only I didn’t care. I just loved hanging out with my two best friends, Justine and Mel. Justine and I were roommates, and we had a little house up in the hills. We would go out, party, paint, smoke cigarettes, and take Polaroids. That’s what we did. It was Los Angeles, and we had a lot of friends, and all of them were at the beginning of their exciting lives too. Some of the coolest filmmakers and the biggest movie stars would come hang at our house, but they hadn’t become those things yet. We were all in the incubation process and in the last carefree times of our lives. We were human Polaroids slowly developing into what other people would see, but for now we were just scrappy kids in no rush to grow up. I would tool around LA in my big Bronco, just going along with the wind in my hair. I don’t even remember what I did during the day. Some days the highlight would be staying in the cabin while going through the car wash and watching the soap and bubbles fall down the windshield. It was all a total blur. Nighttime is when everything would come alive as if I was just waiting for the sky to change color and the days didn’t really matter. I slept late and I wasn’t expected anywhere and didn’t really have anything to do. My responsibilities were to make sure the car was filled up with gas and to have a good mixtape in the car stereo.
And so we would drive around, playing pranks on people in the hills. Mel would get on the megaphone and say, “Pull over, pull over. This is the deer patrol and you are endangering them with your driving. Pull over,” and the scared driver would comply, and then we would drive by laughing.
What idiots we were. Sometimes I admit I simply would pick up my handheld mic and tell someone that they were just driving like an asshole and to have a nice day. I was merciless on that thing. It gave a driver a voice that we are clearly not meant to have behind the wheel. I bypassed the rules and drove around town like a total jerk, but I was having so much fun. Sometimes we would just catcall boys. Hey, if they can, then we thought we should be able to as well.
One night, on New Year’s Eve, we were at a music show on the Sunset Strip—some hipster band, although that term was not yet in full use, but it was a fun riot and I left feeling invincible as one does after a good rock show. I went to get my Bronco out of the parking lot down the street, only to realize it was closed. And I mean closed. Big, giant twenty-foot-high gate with no signs of life. We had more fun parties to go to, and I was not taking this lying down.
Justine and Mel watched as I defied the laws of gravity and climbed the gate and hurled myself over it. I found my car and opened my baby, got in the driver’s seat, and jammed it in reverse.
Now, I could have just jumped in a cab. They are all over Sunset Boulevard. But it would have never crossed my mind because my Bronco was my security blanket in the world. I felt safe in this metal box. It was a part of me. Life wasn’t fun without my Bronco.
And so I drove it slowly up to the gate. I saw Justine and Mel standing, waiting, on the other side with the headlights in their eyes. I knew in my mind we could get out of here. That giant gate was in no way going to hinder me taking my car and continuing our evening. I stared at the gate, engine running. I contemplated how I would do this. I deduced that the first step would be to go back as far as I could and then jam into drive. In my vision, I would just hit the gate with one quick slam, like ripping off a Band-Aid, and the force would just pop it open. It would be quick and precise, and that would be that. Bam. Literally.
And so I did. I rolled back slowly with a glint in my eye as I looked out the windshield and zeroed in on my target. I grabbed the steering wheel gearshift and put it into drive. I took a deep breath and jammed on the gas. I knew I would have to slam on the brakes really quick too because once I broke through the gate I would be on Sunset Boulevard in the blink of an eye. So I drove with two feet. As I sailed through the parking lot I got closer and closer, and I asked myself if I should just slam on the brake and call it quits. “No way” was my answer, and into the gate I drove. Justine and Mel looked like they were eating a lemon as they scrunched their faces, awaiting impact. My Bronco went right into the gate with a gnarly metal-tearing crash, and instead of popping it open like a button, my hood forced the bottom of the gate up and it went flat like it was lying down all of a sudden.
OK, now the gate was officially horizontal rather than vertical and I quickly contemplated my next move. A crowd started to gather around to see what that crazy noise was. I quickly jammed it into reverse to get out from under it. I was back at my starting point.
At this moment I should have called it quits, but something took over, and I knew this gate was no challenge for my Bronco and me. I took leave of my senses and went for a second run. When I rammed the gate again, this time the tiny crowd cheered like kids at a party in an ’80s movie. The part where someone does something nuts but everyone encourages it. No movement on the gate, however. It was angled ten degrees farther up, looking like someone lying in traction.
I reversed again. The crowd started getting bigger. I mean, it was a bunch of drunken people cruising Sunset Boulevard on New Year’s Eve. You couldn’t ask for a greater audience to cheer on a crazy girl driving her Bronco through a gate because she had to get to the next party. Another hit! This time the gate looked like it was just falling backward. Of course I couldn’t see what my car looked like in front. I just saw the gate was about to go down in this boxing ring. One more giant punch and this thing was hitting the floor with no signs of rejoining the fight. I was irrational and totally without good judgment, let alone any judgment at all.
By this time the crowd was chanting. My girlfriends were just looking at me like they knew I had this in me but this was too far. They were not as crazy as me. I reversed back and took my last big breath. I got the car going by getting the
gas pedal down while I still had my foot on the brake so that when I released it, I would be going full speed. I raced forward and took out this motherfucking gate once and for all.
It officially went up over my hood and lay in my rearview mirror on the ground, lifeless and mangled. The crowd went wild. I looked out the windshield to people high-fiving and cheering. Rearview mirror: lifeless gate. Windshield: party. It was a polarity like no other. The cheering eventually died down and people dispersed, going back to their own New Year’s world. But no one documented it. I never heard anything about it. It was just a crazy moment that got to be a crazy moment. My girlfriends got in the car and off we went. I didn’t know how to feel. The only thing I did feel was pride for my car. I knew we were unstoppable.
The next morning, in the light of day, I surveyed my beloved Bronco. I wasn’t a day person to begin with, but this day was particularly bright, and God was showing me what I had done. The damage was really bad. The whole front of the car looked like it had gone through a paper shredder. I felt stupid and embarrassed. Is this who I was? Child-star footnote, here we come. Yikes. I took the car to the dealership, driving into the lot with my head down and my tail between my legs. I didn’t have parents to shame me, so I was doing that to myself. And that really was the crux of the problem. I was still a kid with no guidance. I only had myself.
And that’s why I always feel so guilty when I am wrong. Because I am the only person to catch it and make a case for being better. I was at such odds inside myself because I knew there was a part of me that wanted to ram cars and feel invincible. But I also knew there was a part of me that understands there is, at best, a time and place for that. Being an actor, I could fantasize myself into any lifestyle or any person. And at this moment I was in full agreement that I needed a more productive channel than just me and my Bronco. I sat at the dealership, on a hot day in the San Fernando Valley, thinking, I need a new car, and I need a new life.
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