The E.T. House

I had promised myself that if I ever made a trip to the West Coast I would visit the E.T. House - that is, the house they used when they filmed the movie E.T.

I was delighted to find that the house, according to my GPS, was only a 30 miles drive from my motel where I was staying to attend the LA Film Festival.

So as promised - me and Lincoln, Lincoln's girlfriend, and Michael all drove out there Saturday morning before heading off to check out a couple films at the festival.

I brought home a pinecone that was sitting in the driveway (figured it was fair game). You can see the pinecone in the lower right corner of the 2nd photo (thank you Michael for grabbing it for me).




Here's a couple shots of the house from the movie to compare what it looked like back then.



It was SOOOO FREAKY being there in that neighborhood and seeing that house. With the dramatic mountain behind it just as I remembered it.

E.T. is one of my 2 top favorite films of all times, and by 2 top favorites I mean tied for first place. It was one of two films that quite literally changed my life after seeing them. Standing there in front of the actual house gave me a feeling that's very hard to put into words. At one point I was on my knees in front of the driveway rubbing my hands around on the asphalt of the street in front of the house.

As we were driving through the neighborhood and driving up to the actual house, I was shocked at how different things looked. The entire neighborhood was literally brand new when the film was made, so add 25 years of vegetation, trees, and the houses themselves getting run down.

In-person, everything seemed so much smaller than it appeared in the film.

You can get pretty stunning aerial photos of the house with this link to Microsoft Live Search. Use the control in the upper left corner of the screen and you can actually rotate around the house. Very neat.

After this, we rolled by the apartment complex used in the movie "Karate Kid" and took some photos. That movie doesn't mean anything to me, so I'll skip posting the photos from that place here. We went there because of Michael and Lincoln.