Edgar Zamora was designing the 20th anniversary E.T. the Special Edition premiere party at the Shrine Auditorium. He asked if I could make a costume E.T. finger that would light up. He explained it was crazy idea, but they would be worn by servers so guests might easily find them in the planned mood lighting of the event. He added...
"I'll need 30, no wait...I'll need more E.T. fingers...maybe 50 or more".
My heart skipped a beat because I really didn't know how I was going to make them. He asked for a quick prototype. I made the version above from a thin key chain flashlight capped with a small clear plastic dome. I sculpted the finger around the flashlight with Crayola Model Magic. I left a seam at the tip so the light could be twisted on and off. The final versions would obviously need to be more durable and a bit lighter in weight, but Edgar liked it.
A short time later, I was working on a revision, thinking about molding and casting them in foam or even using Halloween costume alien hands I could cut the fingers off and modify. Edgar called and nixed the project.
This stuff happens.
I remember that they had rubbery E.T. fingers... this would have been back in 1984. Why do I recall this? Because in visiting a friend, and seeing that his younger brother had an E.T. finger, I foolishly stuck my own finger inside. The gooey-ness that I encountered left me wondering what I had stumbled upon.
ReplyDeleteTouching mysterious gooey-ness is always a most horrific tale.
ReplyDeleteYea, I remember those ET fingers. I actually tried to find as well for this project, found one on Ebay and another 2 on some old toy collectors website...I knew time spent looking for 50 old ones would of been useless.
What's scary is that you have that idea on file and you know you'll be finding a future occasion to pull it out. But when?
ReplyDeleteI don't know about "gooey" fingers but I definately had and actual light-up E.T.
ReplyDeletefinger. It had a lightbulb/battery/on button encapsulated underneath the "skin", after the last knuckle. All you had to do was touch something and your real finger would depress the button lighting up the finger tip. Unfortunately, I was so little when the movie came out I could never get it to work properly. Great blog by the way.