Spielberg Tells NYT ET Was 'Moist, Never Slimy'
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- Steven Spielberg told the New York Times that ET was 'a little moist but never slimy,' distinguishing the character from slimy Xenomorphs and adding that ET was 'only dry when he got sick' — a clip that has since gone mildly viral.
- Rachel Abrams of the New York Times posed the now-viral question 'Was ET slimy or dry?' to Spielberg during his current promotional cycle for the film Disclosure Day.
- Spielberg's Disclosure Day press tour has leaned on substance over stunts, including a guest spot during the final week of Stephen Colbert's late-night show and long oral histories of his career across major publications.
- Abrams framed the texture question as a decades-old conundrum, but the article argues the answer is plainly visible on screen — ET's skin is clearly 'pleather or pleather-adjacent' — making the exchange a self-evident ask dressed up as a revelation.
- The piece suggests this style of light-touch A-lister questioning could become a replicable format, with the article imagining the NYT dragging in Martin Scorsese or Paul Thomas Anderson for similarly self-evident prompts.
Why it matters: The viral Spielberg moment spotlights a media trend: legacy outlets asking A-listers deliberately absurd or self-evident questions to chase clicks. For directors of Spielberg's stature, such exchanges risk replacing substantive cultural conversation with low-effort content — even as publications run serious career oral histories in the same press cycle.
