What Ronald Reagan Disliked About 'E.T.'

“I’ll never forget my conversation with the President. He pulled me aside, he said… and I can’t do Reagan. I wish I could do that breathy, wonderful voice of his… And Nancy Reagan was standing right next to him and the President said to me, ‘I only have one criticism about your movie,’ and I said ‘What’s that?’ He said, ‘How long were the end credits?’ I said, ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe three, three and a half minutes?’ He said, ‘In my day, when I was an actor, our end credits were maybe 15 seconds long.’ He said, ‘Why don’t you let everybody get a credit… three and a half, four minutes, that’s fine, but only show that inside the industry, but throughout the rest of the country reduce your credits to 15 seconds at the end?’ Nancy Reagan turned to him and said, ‘Oh, Ronny, they can’t do that. You know that.’ And he went, ‘Oh, yes, yes. I suppose.’ (laughs) That was the extent of my conversation about that . That was his only criticism, he felt the end credits were too long!”
 — Here’s an interview with Steven Spielberg in which the director recalls the reception at the White House at a screening of E.T. There is also a kind of endearing moment at the end of the interview when Spielberg asks when the whole thing is going live and the interviewer is all, “Oh whenever I can get it up” and Spielberg goes, “I can’t wait! I can’t wait!” [Via]