Okay I watched the scene last night several times.
First of all, the people in this thread who keep saying "Don't be so PC, don't be so fanatical about smoking, that's the way it was back then, etc" need to quiet down. The importance of analyzing the smoking is because it gives clues to how the scene took shape, was edited and perhaps indicates that as scripted and/or shot the scene was very different at one point.
So it starts off with a shot of the exterior of the house, cut to the interior kitchen. Kids are around the table playing Dungeons and Dragons. One kid is on the phone trying to request a song, Elliot is begging to get a turn to play. There is indeed A LOT of smoke present in the air, one lit cigarette is seen sitting in an ash tray on the table. We don't see any of the kids smoke. Elliot gets sent outside to wait for the pizza guy. It's important to note that the mom is not shown at any time during this scene.
Cut to exterior, Elliot receives pizza from delivery guy. Cut back inside. The kids are still around the table, there is smoke in the air, but much less of it. No cigarettes are visible. The mom is now present, she is in a bath robe. It's at this point that one of the friends points a finger like he is going to touch the mom's ass while she bends over to put food in the dishwasher. At no time does she, or anyone else, smoke.
MY THEORY:
The Dungeons and Dragons scene was originally much longer. The kids are home alone. They are being rebellious and smoking. At some point the mom returns home (from work I would guess) and catches them smoking. She probably chastises them in a way similar to how she will later handle a kid that says "douche bag", telling them, "who do you guys think you are? No smoking in my house!" Something like that. She goes up stairs and changes in to the bath robe.
I know I'm speculating, but there is enough present in the final cut to infer that the scene was originally longer (probably too long and slow) and it was trimmed to get to the story of Elliot and ET faster. Furthermore, any actual smoking by the kids was cut. Probably due to second thoughts by Spielberg or advice of his editors that his attempt to show bad boy kids smoking while mom is out of the house made the characters seem less sympathetic.
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fugazzi49
10 years ago
I'm the O.P. of this thread, and since I'm going to watch E.T. tonight - something I seem to do every Autumn - I thought I'd check this old comment/question and am amazed by all the responses. ebright99 here has a very interesting idea here that is very plausable and could explain a lot. The people who say it was for atmosphere also have a point. I would like to thank ebright99 for bringing the thread back on track as it was veering off with all the "don't be so PC" type comments.
I never was trying to make any point like that or give any opinion about smoking by or near teens. The point was that (despite a few people's personal experiences otherwise), it was culturally inaccurate for the time (1982) and place (comfortable middle class suburb, in this case Tujunga, though Spielbeg Suburbia is really any-and-every-where) for kids to be smoking openly like this at home. And these boys look and act fourteen (think of the school bus scene) even if the actors were fifteen. There had to be a reason within the film or its screenplay.
The idea here that this could be a few bits left of an otherwise long scene of exposition of the characters is a real possibility.
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