The sign on the stage door said A BOY'S LIFE, which was not the name of the movie, it was a wprking name to avoid plagiarism and leaks of the story.
Duke read it twice anyway, standing in a parking lot in Culver City on the morning of September 8, 1981.
Someone had lettered it in black paint on a sheet of plywood, with a steady hand and no decoration.
A fake title was the cheapest kind of security a studio could buy.
A man in a gray uniform stepped out of a booth with a clipboard.
"Name?"
"Connor Hauser," Duke said.
The guard ran a finger down the page, found it, and looked up with a small flash of panic. "Mr. Hauser. I'm sorry, sir, I didn't notice-"
"Don't apologize for doing your job," Duke said. "That's why you're here for."
The guard stood a little straighter as Duke walked on ahead.
By 1981, a movie about a visitor from space was almost an invitation to be copied.
Star Wars had set off a flood of cheap imitations. And Paramount had to stepped up their internal security lately.
The Paramount Melrose Lot was now more difficult for outside productions to rent, and for people not related to Paramount to walk around.
Rival producers read the trade papers for hints, and a single gossip item could spoil a surprise months before an audience saw it.
So Spielberg had asked for a closed set, a fake title, and scripts that were numbered and signed out.
Most directors dreaded visits from a higher up on set.
They arrived with opinions and stayed too long. Duke had learned that during Raiders, and his rule was simple, come late, leave early, try not to interrupt.
Today he had worn a plain brown jacket, aviator glasses and left his tie in the car.
Inside, the soundstage was the size of an airplane hangar, with a ceiling lost among cables and lamps on iron stands.
In the middle of it, somebody had built a house.
Not the outside of a house, just the inside. A staircase, a kitchen, a bedroom under a slanted ceiling, with the walls pulled back so cameras could reach in.
On a set, walls were built to 'lift out' or 'Wild out', like a dollhouse that opens on its hinges to make sure some angles can be reached.
Cables snaked across the floor, taped down in careful lines. A grip rolled a cart of sandbags past him, and a young woman with a clipboard nearly walked into Duke before she recognized him.
"Good morning, sorry, good morning," she said, turning red, and retreated toward the coffee table.
The crew walked around, focused on their own thing, while somebody's radio played softly.
Physical by Olivia Newton-John played on softly, Duke nodded to it as he looked for the producer.
On a card table by the wall sat a box of doughnuts and a hand-lettered sign, PLEASE DON'T DISCUSS THE PICTURE OUTSIDE THIS STAGE.
Nearby, a lighting technician was telling anyone who would listen that his cousin in New Jersey had seen an alien during a visit to Maine, nobody believed him.
Duke smiled and kept walking.
A short man in a canvas vest pressed a sheet of paper into his hand as he passed. It was the call sheet, a one-page schedule telling everyone where to be and when.
The man was the production manager.
Spielberg came out of the kitchen set in a ball cap and a windbreaker, holding a paper cup in both hands like a boy with hot chocolate.
"You're early," he said. "I figured you'd show up at lunch."
"I was supposed to arrive an hour ago..." Duke said. "I'm a guest. Tell me where to stand."
"Anywhere that isn't in front of the camera."
They had known each other for years, and it showed in how easily Spielberg dropped the director's voice he had developed to work on set.
He took Duke by the elbow and steered him across the floor.
"Come look at something."
The camera was almost on the height of Duke's hip.
The film camera was a steel box the size of a small refrigerator, and on most sets it sat at chest height, where a grown man could look through it without bending.
Here the crew had lowered it on a special mount until the lens was about as high as a ten-year-old's eyes.
"Go on," Spielberg said.
Duke crouched and looked through the viewfinder.
The kitchen had changed. The counter loomed over him, the refrigerator towered like a building, and a doorway stood as tall as a church.
"That's what the world looks like when you're 10," Spielberg said in a small whisper.
He had worried for a year that moving the film to Paramount would change it, but so far the production looked the same.
"You're shooting in order," Duke said. He had seen the schedule.
Spielberg grinned. "I know. The accountants hate me."
Most movies were shot out of sequence.
If the end of the story happened in the same house as the middle, the crew filmed both in the same week to save money.
It was efficient, but it was hard on actors, who often played the last scene before they had played the first.
An example of this was his first movie, 'Love Story' that was shoot out of order, mostly cause they had no money and they needed to shoot in expensive places.
Surprisingly Harvard that historically which in his past life, never allowed for shooting in their building, had actually ask him to speak at events. And invited him to shoot on Campus.
'Money is truly the Colt of Status. One equalizes the world, while the other equalizes Classes.'
Spielberg had asked to do it the expensive way, from the first scene to the last, so the children could feel the story the way their characters did.
Duke had approved the extra cost months ago without a meeting. It was an easy decision, to be honest he wasnt a good director at guiding actors.
Spielberg on the other other hand, was great at guiding child actors.
The picture itself was small by studio standards, about the price of one big action sequence in a summer blockbuster.
Paramount had said yes two years earlier, after Duke read the finished script in one sitting, in a hotel room, and called Spielberg at midnight.
Across the stage, a woman with a stopwatch on a lanyard and a firm jaw was watching them from beside a small trailer marked SCHOOL.
She was the studio teacher, a job California required whenever children worked on a film.
By law, young actors could spend only so many hours on the set, and part of every day had to go to lessons.
"That's Mrs. Dunn," Spielberg said.
Every hour on a stage like this was expensive.
A crew of nearly a hundred people was paid whether or not the camera was rolling, and one morning lost to a fogged lens could cost more than the avergae house.
"Quiet on the set!" a voice called.
The first scene of the day took place in the kitchen. Four boys sat around a table with maps, a handful of oddly shaped dice.
They were playing Dungeons & Dragons.
Duke almost laughed.
The game was everywhere this year. Luckily, he had Mattel buy it in 1979.
Half the teenagers in America were now rolling dices in basements.
After the scene was done, at noon they ate lunch on a small table.
"One of the producers keep asking when the big effects start," Spielberg said, pushing a green bean around his plate.
"What do you tell them?"
"I don't respond. Usually, I just call Kurtz and he changes things."
He laughed, and then the laugh faded, and he looked out at a side for a moment.
Kurtz was the unofficial Head Producer of Paramount now.
Across the lot, two grips were arguing over whose turn it was at a cabinet in the commissary.
Duke could hear the familiar thump of a ship firing at rocks. It was an Atari machine. He decided not to mention it.
"By the way," Duke added ignoring the argument, "the game team for this picture is ready to start. The only problem is that the game matter is... undecided."
"We still want to have the game done by next year's christmas."
Spielberg stared at him. "You're the only man i know who talks about next years Christmas in September."
"Somebody has to," Duke said.
After lunch, Spielberg led him toward the far end of the stage, where a black curtain had been hung from the rafters.
"Do you want to meet him?"
He did not need to say who.
Behind the curtain, a handful of technicians stood around a worktable covered in cables, tiny motors, and cups of tea.
On the table sat a face.
It was wrinkled, brown, a long neck and a broad forehead, and two enormous eyes that looked curious.
A man with gray hair and paint on his hands stepped forward.
Carlo Rambaldi was the Italian craftsman who had built the creature, and he shook Duke's hand with some paint in his hand.
"Please," Duke said with a pretended smile. "Don't let me interrupt."
Rambaldi smiled and spoke to a technician crouched under the table.
The creature's head tilted. The eyelids lowered, then rose, and the long neck lifted slightly, as if it were listening to something far away.
Duke felt his breath catch.
There were no computers in the movie business that could draw a character like this.
In 1981 every creature on a screen had to exist in the room.
Somebody had to build it, power it, and make it move with their hands, and a single expression might need three people pulling three different wires.
(If youre interested in this, look up Child's Play Chucky's Animatronics)
Rambaldi's workshop had built several versions, one for the face, one for walking, and one for the hands, and each was a different kind.
A technician mentioned that during a test the week before, one ear had come loose and slid across the table, and Rambaldi had laughed so hard he had to sit down.
The ear had since been reattached, and the technician made a point of showing it to Duke.
He held up a glass eye from the table, painted with tiny veins.
Duke picked up a discarded head from a side. "I'm taking this with me. This is the discarded pile, right?" He pointed to a bunch of robot parts on a side.
Everyone did a small laugh, and the tension drained from the room. They joked around.
Aparently, one of the kids hugged the creature animatronic when she saw it for the first time.
The kid regularly brought the robot lunch, talked to him between takes, and even asked the wardrobe department for a scarf to wrap around his neck so he wouldn't get cold.
A production assistant came running across the stage, waving a slip of paper.
In 1981 nobody carried a phone in a pocket.
A message meant somebody had to find a telephone, write down what they heard, and sprint across a crowded stage to deliver it.
"For Mr. Hauser," he panted. "From Maude Spector."
Duke unfolded the slip.
'Auditions begin Monday. Room is booked.'
"What's Monday?" Spielberg asked, streching his neck to see from behind his shoulder.
"Gladiator. We start reading for the cast."
"Who's coming in?"
"Everyone," Duke said.
"Even Harrison?"
"Even Harrison."
Spielberg shook his head, grinning. "Now I want to see that."
"You can come if you want." Spielberg's expression went to difficulty and Dduke catched the hint.
"Go finish your day," he said.
"Come back when there's more of it," Spielberg said. "When it's done, I want to see the whole thing on the big screen."
____
Thoughs for a ET game?
Kind of crazy I cant think of one. Its difficult. The OG game is HORRIBLE