ET at 40: How a little alien with a big, glowing heart became everybody’s best friend and a pop culture phenomenon1669893633

ET at 40: How a little alien with a big, glowing heart became everybody’s best friend and a pop culture phenomenon

In 1980, in a tent somewhere in the Tunisian desert, Steven Spielberg sat painfully alone. The director, just 34 and with hits like Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind already under his belt, was in North Africa shooting Raiders of the Lost Ark, the blockbuster adventure that would launch the Indiana Jones franchise.