Steven Spielberg wanted E.T. to have the hots for Elliott's mom

Today in subplots that would’ve improved a perfect film, Dee Wallace revealed that Steven Spielberg wanted E.T. to put the moves on Elliott’s mom, Mary (Wallace), in the 1982 children’s sci-fi adventure film E.T. In the film, Elliott (C. Thomas Howell) plays E.T.’s 12-year-old, Reese’s Pieces-rich best friend, who helps the spaceman contact his lost family and return home after flying through the skies on his bicycle. But in Wallace’s recollection, E.T.’s beloved peanut-butter-based candies were nothing more than foreplay toward E.T.’s carnal desires. Wallace tells the Still Here Hollywood podcast of a “whole B story in E.T. about E.T. having a love affair with Mary, a love crush on Mary.” The steamy affair was to culminate in a “scene where he came in to put Reese’s Pieces down on my bedside table as I’m asleep.” Presumably arguing on behalf of the horny brown space alien, “Spielberg wanted the sheet a little lower than I was comfortable with,” the actor says. Wallace wanted to protect E.T.’s purity and argued against what we can assume was full-frontal nudity, stating that “this was a family film.” Ultimately, Wallace enlisted the help of the other two women on set, writer Melissa Mathison and producer Kathleen Kennedy, and found a compromise. “[We] pulled the sheet up almost to my shoulder blades, which I was okay with,” Wallace said. Sadly, the scene, along with a generation’s sexual awakening, died on the vine, but having heard Wallace’s story, it’ll be right here [points to brain].