In a new interview with Ain’t It Cool News, Steven Spielberg recounts the time he was invited to show E.T. at the White House, which prompted Ronald Reagan to joke to the crowd afterwards, “There are a number of people in this room who know that everything on that screen is absolutely true.” Still, if Reagan had gotten his way, he’d have made that joke a lot sooner. Says Spielberg: “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.’” Instead, Reagan proposed that Spielberg save the more extensive list of credits only for industry screenings, then snip them from the mass release. “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.’” [Aint It Cool News]
