Steven Spielberg on Which of His Movies He Considers ‘Pretty Perfect’

Steven Spielberg’s filmography includes some of the greatest motion pictures of all time: We’re talking classics like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan, and Bridge of Spies, just to name a few. Though the bulk of his outputs have been critically acclaimed, the Oscar-winning director says there’s one movie of his he considers to be “pretty perfect.” It’s his 1982 blockbuster E.T.

Spielberg dropped the gem during a recent interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, saying he rarely watches his work after they’re released.

“I don’t look back that often, but every once in a while I’ll see a movie with my kids,” he told the host. “I want to accompany my kids when they see E.T. for the first time. I don’t want them to see E.T. without dad sitting there. Especially the scary parts at the beginning.”

He continued: “Sometimes I see things that I had intended to do that I didn’t do, and sometimes I see things that would have been a better idea that I’m now seeing all these years later, but for the most part E.T. is a pretty perfect movie. It’s one of the few movies I’ve made that I can look back at again and again. There’s about five or six films that I can watch again, but I usually don’t do that.”

E.T. is a science fiction film about an extraterrestrial who befriends a young boy named Elliott played by Henry Thomas. Dee Wallace, Peter Coyote, Robert MacNaughton, and Drew Barrymore co-starred in the film, which generated about $800 million at the box office. It also secured a number of accolades, including multiple Academy Awards and the Golden Globe for Best Picture-Drama.

Spielberg is now on a promotional tour for this latest film, The Fabelmans—a semi-autobiographical flick about his unconventional upbringing and early passion for movie-making. The Fabelmans is up for seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Director, Best Actress (Michelle Williams), Best Supporting Actor (Judd Hirsch), and Best Picture.

The director told Colbert he had wanted to make The Fabelmans for years, but was admittedly hesitant to share such a deeply personal story.

“I thought by telling a story about how I discovered my mom was having an affair of the heart with her and my father’s best friend — and my father’s business partner — was something that never had to be publicly expressed,” he said. “I had a lot of second thoughts about that. But to his credit, Tony Kushner, continued to say that is the McGuffin of this movie. That is the center-ring in this circus of your life, that is the center-ring.”

You can check out portions of the interview above and below.