Interview - Author James Kahn Talks About The Time He Met Steven Spielberg
CivilWar1863 5 points 5 months ago
Yes, he used real doctors and nurses so the dialogue sounded real. I was one of them, James Kahn. But we weren't from USC, we were mostly from the ER at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, except the guy zapping ET with the paddles here was Spielberg's doctor from Cedars-Sinai. We just ad libbed the whole resuscitation scene, to give it verisimilitude. If you want to see my video story about the whole event, check it out on my youtube channel - here's the story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDpKsBO8Rvw&t=142s
https://www.thebeardedtrio.com/2015/08/interview-author-james-kahn-talks-about.html
You were lucky enough to work on the set of E.T. How did that come about and can you recall the first conversation you had with Kathleen Kennedy and Melissa Matheson about resuscitation an alien?
I was working in an ER in LA when Kathleen Kennedy called the front desk and asked if anyone there could help her figure out how to resuscitate an alien. The desk clerk knew I was a writer, so she steered the call my way. Kennedy and Melissa Matheson, the screenwriter of ET, came down to the ER and two of us showed them how to run a resuscitation- I played the role of the victim (I didn’t yet know this was ET’s role). They liked what they saw, so they invited several of us down to the set where ET was filming. We all suited up in Hazmat suits and shouted out all that ad lib dialogue while we were pounding on ET’s chest
I’m guessing this led to your first encounter with Steven Spielberg. How did that go? What was the director like in person?
Yes, I met him on the set while he was directing the film. He was a very nice guy, very low key, down to earth, excited about directing. I gave him a copy of my first sci-fi novel, World Enough and Time. By coincidence (or destiny) he told me he had a copy of it at his bedside – a friend had recently loaned it to him. I asked if he’d like to make a movie out of it. He said he was a little busy – but he passed the book on to producer Frank Marshall, who liked it enough to assign me the novelization of Poltergeist.
Any stories on Spielberg you would like to share that haven't been told before?
Just what a great director he was. I got to watch him work that week of ET’s resuscitation. Directing Henry Thomas, he got down right at kids’ level and talked to him like another kid describing the upcoming scene. And directing the actual death aftermath. It was so moving stage hands were crying share