It
has been a long and tiring day for Brother Skunk, from his early rise and the
successless trail of M&Ms to its eventual end, here, in the hotel bedroom
of ache1.
Skunk:
waste more than anything, and not just the money, I
ache1:
Well look at it this way
tipping
her head at an angle.
Skunk
(laughing): Oh haw haw haw.
ache1:
No look, look, if I had ah, what would’ve happened if I had been able to
follow the trail, if they hadn’t found them? You know, what would we
have done with all those M&Ms? We’d probably just have left them anyway,
and that’s, that would have been, they’d still’ve been wasted.
Skunk:
Welll
ache1:
And at least this way, well, you’re here, and... those kids got
their candies.
Skunk:
And the dog, don’t forget Scamp the dog. He got his fair share too.
Laughter.
Skunk:
So...
ache1
flicks a tiny mis-shapen M&M from the packet in her lap across the room. It
hits the carpet and bounces clear over Brother Skunk who is lying flat upon his
back, his boots obtuse one to the other.
ache1:
Anyway, they’re really supposed to be Reese’s Pieces. The M&Ms are
Skunk
(sitting up): Reese’s Pieces? What the hell are Reese’s Pieces?
It says they’re M&Ms in your book.
ache1:
Yeah but that’s the book. In the book it’s M&Ms, but in the
actual movie it’s, they used Reese’s Pieces.
Skunk:
So what are Reese’s Pieces?
ache1:
I haven’t seen ‘em over here yet, but they look kind of like M&Ms, only
they’ve got peanut butter inside, not just a peanut.
Skunk:
Oh Jesus, I’m not, you’re not selling me on
laughing.
Skunk:
When I was a kid my mum bought us some peanut butter. God knows why, but she
came home one day, or or ehm, I got home from school and she’d bought us a jar
of peanut butter but ehm, we couldn’t get it open.
Laughter.
ache1:
Serious?
Skunk:
Yeah. I took it in next door, but not... Mum tried it, and I tried it, but we
just could not get the lid off the thing, and in the end she just said to give
it to the neighbours. I still haven’t tasted peanut butter.
He
retrieves the stray M&M, pops it into his mouth.
Skunk:
Does this get hoovered every day? Yeah, she just said, you know, rather than
ask the neighbours to actually get the lid off for us, she just said “Oh
give it to the neighbours”.
ache1
(laughing): The pride of women, eh? The pride of a mother.
and
Skunk wonders if he understands what she means here, knowing what he knows.
This takes a little time.
Skunk:
So why the discrepancy, I mean, between E.T. and the, between the film and the
book?* Why didn’t they just use
ache1
(clapping her hands together prior to flipping an M&M into the air and then
catching it in her mouth): Here’s my theory, and I haven’t, this isn’t from
anywhere, this is just... me, but I think they must’ve had M&Ms pencilled
in for the script, right? And the book’ll have been written from the script and
ready to go or whatever, but then right at the last minute as they’re about to
start shooting, and with the book at, the book’s simultaneously at the
printer’s, and old Reese himself, or his close representative calls up Mr
Spielberg and says
adopting
what she imagines to be the grave and solemn voice of movie money
ache1:
“Okay, we’ll see their x thousand dollars and raise you half again.
Whadaya say, Steve?” and obviously
Skunk:
So they switched them?
ache1:
I imagine so. That’s my angle anyway. And I think the reason M&Ms
are still in the book, either it, the book was already ready to go and it would
have been too expensive to change, or it was some gesture to M&Ms for ah,
you know, “They’re in the film, but you’re in the book”.
Skunk:
And everybody’s happy.
ache1
(clicking her fingers and pointing at him): You got it!
and
ache1:
I’m not sure about M&Ms
crunching
another down into her throat
ache1:
but I remember reading somewhere that Reese’s sales went up by something like
ah, sixty-five percent on the back of that.
Skunk:
Sixty-five percent? No way.
ache1
(nodding): Mmhm, yep. It would be pretty interesting to see the same, the ah,
you know, M&Ms’ figures for that period, the effects of a movie
novelisation on the confectionery-buying habits of its readers or something.
Skunk:
Mm, product placement, that whole, you know I bet there’s some exec at M&Ms
tonight wondering what the hell happened here today, this’ll
probably be their sales up by sixty-five percent.
Laughter.
ache1:
And someplace not too far away, there’s a woman wondering how come her kids
are, her kids and her dog are refusing their evening meal, and then
spending the rest of their night heaving up M&Ms coated in an ah, an
invisible film of dog piss and insecticide or whatever.
Laughter.
She
swings her feet up onto the bed, lies back tired and quiet. She squeezes
individual M&Ms up into the air from between her thumb and forefinger,
trying and failing to catch each in her mouth as they are compelled instead
into descriptions of random arcs about the room. And she thinks of telling Skunk
that she can have deleted name deliver an entire carton of Reese’s Pieces to the
hotel anytime she wants, enough even to lay a trail from here to
Sunk:
What about the beer then? Is that the same? Is it Coors in the book?
ache1
edges up the bed, scraping the two pillows into a supporting prop.
ache1
(shaking her head): Nope, it’s, well in the book it’s not mentioned, but it’s,
in the book it’s bottled beer, but in the movie it’s cans, cans of
Coors. Maybe they didn’t think, because it’s kids that’ll be reading the book
the product... they’re not going to be drinking beer, do you know what I mean?
They’ll be out buying M&Ms, but they won’t be buying alcohol, so...
She
flicks another of the M&Ms in his direction, which he catches and flicks
right back.
Skunk
(smiling): But you did, right?
*Originally
the script included the use of M&Ms, but Mars would not allow their product
to be used because several executives thought E.T. was “too ugly” and would
frighten children. The Hershey Food Corporation agreed to allow the use of a
new candy product called Reese’s Pieces. As a result of the movie, sales of
Reese’s Pieces increased by 65 percent.
-E.T.
The Extra-Terrestrial: From Concept to Classic
-Linda
Sunshine (editor)
-Newmarket
Press, 2002
