WEBVTT - Case NOT Closed 0:00:00.090 --> 0:00:03.790 Well, here we are, Brent. It's episode 36, the last 0:00:03.890 --> 0:00:08.010 episode of our first season of Sound, Light, and Frequency. 0:00:08.510 --> 0:00:10.379 I have known this day was coming since the day 0:00:10.440 --> 0:00:13.120 we started, and now that it's here, I'm not even 0:00:13.180 --> 0:00:14.100 sure I'm ready for it. 0:00:15.100 --> 0:00:18.079 I am definitely not ready for it. A lot has 0:00:18.180 --> 0:00:22.300 transpired in the last couple weeks, and it's been a marathon. 0:00:22.300 --> 0:00:25.980 36 episodes, when we first talked about it, it said, oh, 0:00:26.020 --> 0:00:28.910 that'll be fun. About halfway through the season, I think 0:00:28.950 --> 0:00:30.450 we kind of looked at each other and went, wait, 0:00:30.570 --> 0:00:33.130 we're at 18. We have 18 more of these to go. 0:00:33.850 --> 0:00:37.180 And then here we are at 36. And on one hand, 0:00:37.220 --> 0:00:40.100 like you said, it feels like we're crossing the finish line. 0:00:40.140 --> 0:00:42.460 On the other hand, I feel like, but I don't 0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:43.120 want it to end yet. 0:00:43.620 --> 0:00:47.419 Yeah. And halfway through at 18, if I'm not mistaken, 0:00:47.470 --> 0:00:49.370 that was when Disclosure Day came out. 0:00:49.530 --> 0:00:49.830 Yes. 0:00:50.090 --> 0:00:52.430 And we had to scramble to do that. I started 0:00:52.490 --> 0:00:55.000 to think about this last night as I was kind of, 0:00:55.170 --> 0:00:57.240 I tried to think through the next day as I'm 0:00:57.260 --> 0:01:00.140 falling asleep. So as I was falling asleep, I thought 0:01:00.180 --> 0:01:01.920 of something and I got up and wrote it down. 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:06.640 And it was this. When we first started this endeavor, 0:01:06.700 --> 0:01:09.440 if you will, I thought the mission statement was to 0:01:09.500 --> 0:01:13.220 take the audience on a 36-hour journey. That's what was 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:16.290 in my head. Okay, we're going to start with this 0:01:16.390 --> 0:01:20.429 party crasher and then we'll do this and we'll do that. 0:01:20.490 --> 0:01:23.250 And then we'll try to lay. Okay. That's what I thought. 0:01:23.670 --> 0:01:26.590 But what ended up happening for me, Brent, is that 0:01:26.610 --> 0:01:29.070 you and I went on a year long journey of 0:01:29.170 --> 0:01:33.170 our own. It wasn't the audience journey that happened, although 0:01:33.209 --> 0:01:36.620 that did happen, I'm sure. And some people have said that, 0:01:37.020 --> 0:01:39.940 but it was the journey that you and I were 0:01:40.020 --> 0:01:45.260 on because I ended up thinking radically differently about the 0:01:45.319 --> 0:01:49.830 relationship between Hollywood and UFOs and secrecy, even though that 0:01:49.870 --> 0:01:52.210 was the concept of the show. I got a little 0:01:52.250 --> 0:01:54.990 more militant about some of it, a little less militant 0:01:55.030 --> 0:01:57.920 about other things. And honestly, as I look at the 0:01:57.940 --> 0:01:59.730 whole thing, I just go, I'm not the same person 0:01:59.780 --> 0:02:00.500 I was when we. 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:04.360 Started this a year ago. No, totally agreed. We have 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:06.580 been on a journey and it's been a bit of 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:09.920 a roller coaster ride at times. And not only am 0:02:10.000 --> 0:02:12.660 I not the same person I was, but I can 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:16.639 genuinely say I'm a better person because if for nothing else, 0:02:17.570 --> 0:02:20.490 Watching all of those movies and TV shows, some of 0:02:20.550 --> 0:02:24.200 them for the first time, it opened my mind even further. 0:02:24.500 --> 0:02:26.820 It put new ideas out on the table for me. 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:30.540 And what I thought I knew going in and had 0:02:30.620 --> 0:02:33.820 some certainty about, some of my beliefs have been shaken 0:02:33.880 --> 0:02:36.760 a bit and asked me to recalibrate, which I think 0:02:37.500 --> 0:02:39.410 is really what you're supposed to do. When you get 0:02:39.450 --> 0:02:43.150 into a position where all of your beliefs become calcified 0:02:43.690 --> 0:02:46.390 and they form your identity, then you're missing out on 0:02:46.430 --> 0:02:49.489 the opportunity to discover new things. And my one hope 0:02:49.730 --> 0:02:52.269 for the journey that we took our audience on is 0:02:52.310 --> 0:02:56.750 that we've opened their minds, that they've discovered new things. Absolutely. 0:02:57.290 --> 0:02:58.690 As we have been able to do. 0:02:59.190 --> 0:03:02.000 What was so interesting to me, just looking back on it, 0:03:02.090 --> 0:03:06.490 is that every week we had a layout of the season. Okay, 0:03:06.510 --> 0:03:08.670 it could go like this. And by the way, nothing 0:03:08.750 --> 0:03:11.070 stayed from that. If you look back at what we 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:13.620 said we were going to do, it's Pretty different. But 0:03:13.760 --> 0:03:16.850 with every episode, we'd have an idea in mind. And 0:03:16.889 --> 0:03:20.709 then we would repair to our respective corners and start 0:03:20.730 --> 0:03:23.869 to do our own sort of independent research and read 0:03:23.930 --> 0:03:27.389 books and watch movies and TV shows around, usually gathered 0:03:27.450 --> 0:03:28.669 around a theme or whatever. 0:03:29.250 --> 0:03:32.510 I've pretty much ended every episode going, I forgot to 0:03:32.810 --> 0:03:35.150 talk about that thing or what about that other idea? 0:03:35.730 --> 0:03:38.390 But that's, I think, a great indication of that this 0:03:38.470 --> 0:03:43.860 is a rich vein to explore. And we've, in some cases, 0:03:43.920 --> 0:03:46.720 gone really deep and other places we've stayed on the surface. 0:03:47.260 --> 0:03:50.300 But I think we've taken a pretty good overview of 0:03:50.780 --> 0:03:55.310 Hollywood and the relationship between the government around UFOs. That 0:03:55.350 --> 0:03:58.410 was our kind of goal to go and investigate that 0:03:58.890 --> 0:04:02.870 with that being the unholy alliance between these two entities. 0:04:03.650 --> 0:04:06.290 And I feel like we've done a good job of 0:04:06.340 --> 0:04:09.860 that from beginning to end. Some of the episodes, like 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:13.160 you said, we never even considered. Certain things arose. If 0:04:13.340 --> 0:04:16.200 you're looking back on it, the President's Day episode, because 0:04:16.220 --> 0:04:20.169 Trump and Obama got in a UFO spat. And we 0:04:20.210 --> 0:04:22.650 felt we had to cover that. Then Disclosure Day came 0:04:22.690 --> 0:04:26.010 out and we conformed the whole season to around that. 0:04:26.110 --> 0:04:28.750 And then we had the formula in Harrington. And we 0:04:28.790 --> 0:04:31.460 could never have anticipated where the journey would take us. 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:34.690 A few years back, I was pitching some reality show, 0:04:34.710 --> 0:04:36.870 or I think I was, I can't even quite remember. 0:04:37.130 --> 0:04:39.830 But somebody said, the two words that the executives all 0:04:39.870 --> 0:04:44.130 like are active investigation. So I remember that. And so 0:04:44.190 --> 0:04:48.570 we actually started to use that at first, almost marketing, 0:04:48.670 --> 0:04:50.990 not quite, but a little bit of marketing. But then 0:04:51.029 --> 0:04:55.909 it really turned into an active investigation. It really did 0:04:56.050 --> 0:05:00.870 become those two words that, It was certainly active because 0:05:01.029 --> 0:05:03.589 every single week we had to come out with something 0:05:03.630 --> 0:05:07.040 new for 36 weeks. Just to put this in context 0:05:07.070 --> 0:05:10.240 for folks, I've produced a lot of television series. And 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:13.800 back in the day on Broadcast Network, a season was 0:05:13.800 --> 0:05:18.539 22 episodes. And that nearly killed you by the time 0:05:18.580 --> 0:05:21.900 you were done. And what happened with these 36, they 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:26.270 weren't as complex production-wise as a television series. But each 0:05:26.410 --> 0:05:29.380 one felt like a little documentary. And I do agree 0:05:29.420 --> 0:05:32.310 with you if being more knowledgeable is being a better person, 0:05:32.330 --> 0:05:34.470 then I'm a better person because I certainly know a 0:05:34.510 --> 0:05:37.470 lot more. And interestingly enough, some of the things I 0:05:37.529 --> 0:05:41.350 thought would be more important became less important. One of 0:05:41.390 --> 0:05:43.510 the things I did, and I've got a collection of 0:05:43.550 --> 0:05:45.780 books back there, and there's been books that have been 0:05:45.820 --> 0:05:49.780 written talking about the whole concept of UFOs and how 0:05:49.839 --> 0:05:52.659 Hollywood has treated aliens and all that. And I thought 0:05:52.800 --> 0:05:55.790 I'd be relying more in that world. And even though 0:05:55.890 --> 0:05:58.770 there wasn't an episode that we did where we didn't 0:05:58.830 --> 0:06:01.510 talk about a film or a television series as a 0:06:01.589 --> 0:06:05.250 portal or whatever, they literally did take us into other 0:06:05.290 --> 0:06:08.270 places that kind of blew my mind from time to time. 0:06:08.650 --> 0:06:11.790 And when I say active investigation, what was so interesting 0:06:11.970 --> 0:06:16.830 is it's an argument against AI. If you use AI, 0:06:16.910 --> 0:06:19.410 you find out what AI thinks. You can say, what 0:06:19.430 --> 0:06:22.530 do you think about X? And then the AI will 0:06:22.570 --> 0:06:26.909 give you a bunch of stuff, right? But It's not 0:06:26.970 --> 0:06:30.230 going to make the connections that I started seeing happening, 0:06:30.310 --> 0:06:34.870 where I would be watching a television show while I 0:06:34.950 --> 0:06:39.090 was reading a book and making notes and talking to 0:06:39.150 --> 0:06:43.969 you and interviewing somebody, and then something would come together. 0:06:44.270 --> 0:06:46.570 And the best example I could use would be the 0:06:46.630 --> 0:06:49.640 My Favorite Martian thing, where I was just thinking, okay, 0:06:49.660 --> 0:06:51.839 I'm just going to watch an episode of My Favorite 0:06:51.880 --> 0:06:55.039 Martian because we're doing a show about comedy. 0:06:55.740 --> 0:06:55.980 Yes. 0:06:56.380 --> 0:07:00.260 Right. And then I realized that the pilot is the 0:07:00.300 --> 0:07:03.300 most ufological thing I've seen in a long time. And 0:07:03.339 --> 0:07:07.610 that it was based on an X-15 flight that the 0:07:07.690 --> 0:07:13.310 pilot actually saw an anomalous phenomena. So AI would not 0:07:13.350 --> 0:07:14.210 have done that for me. 0:07:14.990 --> 0:07:19.179 No, I had a number of those interesting discoveries along 0:07:19.220 --> 0:07:22.580 the way as well. And I remember my example would 0:07:22.620 --> 0:07:27.400 be when we were researching the X-Files episode. And unbeknownst 0:07:27.420 --> 0:07:30.410 to both of us, we discovered that Richard Doty worked 0:07:30.630 --> 0:07:37.090 as an advisor, a consultant on the X-Files. In our 0:07:37.210 --> 0:07:40.810 active investigation, we're looking for any ways that Hollywood and 0:07:40.830 --> 0:07:43.680 the government happened to work together on the UFO narrative. 0:07:44.580 --> 0:07:46.980 That was not on my bingo card. No. 0:07:47.540 --> 0:07:49.800 And I so want to do more on that topic 0:07:50.260 --> 0:07:53.770 in a second season. I guess the thing that really 0:07:53.950 --> 0:07:57.250 impacted me most is I started my career as a journalist, 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:00.140 all right? I was a TV reporter and anchorman and 0:08:00.180 --> 0:08:02.240 that kind of thing. And then I pivoted and went 0:08:02.300 --> 0:08:07.240 into the entertainment part of everything and started writing television 0:08:07.440 --> 0:08:09.970 episodes and movies and so forth. And that's, of course, 0:08:09.990 --> 0:08:13.869 how we met. But when you're writing fiction, you actually 0:08:13.910 --> 0:08:17.470 get to decide how the mystery ends, which is interesting. 0:08:17.570 --> 0:08:20.110 You are playing God there. They're your characters. You can 0:08:20.150 --> 0:08:22.450 make them do whatever you want. Whatever you think the 0:08:22.490 --> 0:08:26.520 mystery is, how it's going to resolve, fine. But this 0:08:26.660 --> 0:08:29.480 one really lit me up back to the old days 0:08:29.860 --> 0:08:33.360 of reporting because a lot of times I would start 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:37.240 out thinking I knew what the answer was and then 0:08:37.520 --> 0:08:42.110 realizing I didn't know the answer when I set out 0:08:42.610 --> 0:08:45.309 to do it in the same way. And I found 0:08:45.350 --> 0:08:48.830 that to be just fascinating. And going back to the 0:08:48.929 --> 0:08:52.330 active investigation part of this whole thing, What was really 0:08:52.450 --> 0:08:55.189 interesting is I think at the beginning, you and I 0:08:55.250 --> 0:08:57.550 knew at the very least, we have a spine here. 0:08:57.610 --> 0:09:01.069 The spine is what happened to us on Dark Skies, right? 0:09:01.470 --> 0:09:03.850 And at the beginning, I had written the foreword for 0:09:03.870 --> 0:09:06.390 a book called Silver Screen Saucers a few years back, 0:09:06.429 --> 0:09:08.570 written by Robbie Graham. And so it was a great 0:09:08.610 --> 0:09:12.380 book about UFOs and the late Robbie Graham. And it 0:09:12.410 --> 0:09:15.600 was about UFOs and Hollywood and all that. And he 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:17.660 had done a lot of research, and it turned up 0:09:17.700 --> 0:09:21.089 things about the 50s and 60s and He'd found a 0:09:21.130 --> 0:09:24.980 lot of things, but they were of the historical record, 0:09:25.020 --> 0:09:27.940 a lot of them. And then what happened to us 0:09:28.420 --> 0:09:33.320 is while we're busy trying to tell our story, we 0:09:33.420 --> 0:09:36.160 always went with the field of dreams theory. If we 0:09:36.260 --> 0:09:39.830 build it, they will come. If we build the show 0:09:39.890 --> 0:09:43.910 called Sound, Light, and Frequency about the relationship between Hollywood 0:09:43.990 --> 0:09:44.590 UFOs and. 0:09:44.570 --> 0:09:46.809 Secrecy, this was the working theory. 0:09:47.250 --> 0:09:51.280 If our situation was not completely unique, and there were 0:09:51.370 --> 0:09:54.170 other people out there, we would hear from them. And 0:09:54.190 --> 0:09:54.530 we did. 0:09:54.550 --> 0:09:57.290 Those are some of my favorite episodes where we got 0:09:57.330 --> 0:10:00.939 to hear about other people's experiences with brushes with the 0:10:01.000 --> 0:10:04.219 government and deals and all sorts of things. I think 0:10:04.300 --> 0:10:08.740 also looking back on it, the discovery that set the 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:11.580 whole thing in motion really was the formula once that 0:10:11.640 --> 0:10:14.910 came back into our lives. And that was part of 0:10:14.950 --> 0:10:19.360 that spine you're talking about. And Getting to a place 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:22.520 where we could share that with the audience was incredible. 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:24.710 And then I think there's been then the thing that 0:10:24.750 --> 0:10:27.309 we never could have planned for, which was the whole 0:10:27.350 --> 0:10:29.910 John Harrington story that I was at the center of. 0:10:30.450 --> 0:10:34.410 So a lot has happened. Some planned, some unplanned. There 0:10:34.429 --> 0:10:37.750 were a lot of happy coincidences along the way. And 0:10:37.820 --> 0:10:40.620 so I guess before we go to break, do you 0:10:40.660 --> 0:10:42.699 want to tease the audience with what we're going to 0:10:42.740 --> 0:10:46.579 be talking about in this episode? That's what we do here. 0:10:46.820 --> 0:10:47.680 Tease the audience. 0:10:48.020 --> 0:10:50.459 But I also think we've delivered to the audience a 0:10:50.500 --> 0:10:53.460 certain amount. I realized when you were just mentioning the 0:10:53.500 --> 0:10:56.380 formula and Harrington that these were kind of things that 0:10:56.420 --> 0:10:59.490 were monkeys on my back for years that I didn't 0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:02.200 really know. I didn't really feel that way about it. 0:11:02.630 --> 0:11:05.990 And I feel liberated right now in a very real 0:11:06.150 --> 0:11:10.210 sense because we have finally been able to do what 0:11:10.309 --> 0:11:12.690 I think we both have wanted to do over the years, 0:11:12.790 --> 0:11:17.210 which is to say, let's actually grapple with these things. Right. 0:11:17.270 --> 0:11:20.360 Your story about Harrington. Let's find out where that goes 0:11:20.600 --> 0:11:24.120 if it becomes public and people talk about it. The formula, 0:11:24.540 --> 0:11:26.880 instead of it just being something that's in your safety 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:30.420 deposit box and we don't talk about very often, let's 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:33.500 first try to figure it out on our own. And 0:11:33.540 --> 0:11:36.500 then let's find out if when we share it with people, 0:11:36.540 --> 0:11:38.640 what they think about it, all of which has happened. 0:11:38.679 --> 0:11:41.459 So the tease, if you will, is this. We want 0:11:41.500 --> 0:11:44.459 to look back at what has been talked about in 0:11:44.500 --> 0:11:48.090 those last 36 episodes, of course. And that would involve 0:11:48.370 --> 0:11:50.829 taking a look at what we learned and what we 0:11:51.190 --> 0:11:53.730 thought was true, what didn't turn out to be true 0:11:53.750 --> 0:11:56.469 or whatever, but not in a nostalgic way, but in 0:11:56.929 --> 0:12:00.620 terms of really assessing what our investigation has taught us. 0:12:01.100 --> 0:12:04.599 What did we actually learn? And there's a couple of 0:12:04.640 --> 0:12:07.420 things that we each want to float as theories about 0:12:07.480 --> 0:12:10.420 how we see things shaking down. Brent, I know you've 0:12:10.450 --> 0:12:13.140 got one of your theories. I've got one. that we 0:12:13.179 --> 0:12:17.520 started Dark Skies as the grand unified theory of conspiracy. 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:20.689 I've got a unified theory of a couple of things 0:12:20.750 --> 0:12:23.150 I want to float, but also one of the things 0:12:23.190 --> 0:12:25.830 that we want to do just because it seems fun 0:12:26.350 --> 0:12:29.610 is that we have challenged ourselves to each take a 0:12:29.630 --> 0:12:33.360 look at all the film product and all the television 0:12:33.410 --> 0:12:38.720 product about aliens and extraterrestrials and UFOs and the whole 0:12:38.820 --> 0:12:42.920 concept of all this stuff. We have each picked a 0:12:43.830 --> 0:12:48.590 potential film or television series that we feel best explains 0:12:49.309 --> 0:12:51.270 what we think is really going on. 0:12:51.370 --> 0:12:54.309 I would only add, as I'm thinking about my own choice, 0:12:55.770 --> 0:12:58.350 maybe literally, but definitely figuratively. 0:12:58.950 --> 0:13:03.080 Yeah, good. Now that's a tease, my friend. All right, everybody, 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:04.800 we'll see you on the other side of this and 0:13:04.820 --> 0:13:05.520 we'll get started. 0:13:23.760 --> 0:13:26.600 I'm Brent Friedman. Years ago, a family friend who became 0:13:26.640 --> 0:13:30.030 a cabinet member in the Reagan administration disclosed to me 0:13:30.070 --> 0:13:33.790 that aliens are real, they're here, and he'd seen them. 0:13:34.270 --> 0:13:37.490 I'm Bryce Zabel. Later, when we were producing Dark Skies, 0:13:37.870 --> 0:13:41.350 an NBC TV series about an alien invasion, we were 0:13:41.390 --> 0:13:43.579 approached by men who said they were from the Office 0:13:43.620 --> 0:13:46.620 of Naval Intelligence, and they wanted to give us inside 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:49.760 information in exchange for access to our show. 0:13:50.140 --> 0:13:53.270 We didn't take that deal. but we have never stopped 0:13:53.309 --> 0:13:54.020 thinking about it. 0:13:54.610 --> 0:13:57.910 That's why we do this podcast. We're working out ideas 0:13:57.990 --> 0:14:02.220 in real time about how Hollywood has portrayed aliens and why. 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:06.359 Every episode is different because there are so many questions. 0:14:06.740 --> 0:14:10.160 We're looking for answers. It's an active investigation. Let's do 0:14:10.200 --> 0:14:10.760 this together. 0:14:29.020 --> 0:14:37.610 All right, we're back, and we are going to take 0:14:37.630 --> 0:14:42.350 you right into an assessment of our active investigation. This 0:14:42.430 --> 0:14:45.870 whole thing began with what we were bringing to the table, right, 0:14:45.890 --> 0:14:48.400 which was our account. We were the first witnesses to 0:14:48.460 --> 0:14:51.110 take the stand, as it were. when we told our 0:14:51.170 --> 0:14:55.230 story about JC. And that whole story was even possible 0:14:55.310 --> 0:14:58.470 simply because you and I had come together over a 0:14:58.750 --> 0:15:03.320 personal story of mine regarding John Harrington, as everyone calls him, 0:15:03.380 --> 0:15:05.680 the man who cried himself to sleep. And he had 0:15:05.720 --> 0:15:07.640 disclosed to me when I was 18, I tell you 0:15:07.680 --> 0:15:11.040 the story, Dark Skies is born, we're on the air, 0:15:11.340 --> 0:15:14.980 and JC comes to our premiere party, crashes it in 0:15:15.020 --> 0:15:18.360 order to give us the all important message that sound, light, 0:15:18.380 --> 0:15:20.140 and frequency is the secrets of the universe. 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:20.240 Yeah. 0:15:20.590 --> 0:15:23.290 And here's your little party memento in the formula. 0:15:23.470 --> 0:15:23.830 Wow. 0:15:24.210 --> 0:15:24.530 Yeah. 0:15:24.910 --> 0:15:28.690 But the active investigation wasn't just about what was going 0:15:28.810 --> 0:15:34.860 on in Hollywood writ large. We actively investigated our own 0:15:34.980 --> 0:15:39.620 story and found things in our own story that surprised us. 0:15:39.980 --> 0:15:42.850 Among one of the great investigative tools for us is 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:46.450 I kept most of the dark sky stuff. And I 0:15:46.490 --> 0:15:49.310 guess you kept some stuff, too, in our respective stories. 0:15:50.040 --> 0:15:53.300 organizational methods. I had, over the years, every time I 0:15:53.380 --> 0:15:56.420 ran across something, thrown it into an area of my 0:15:56.560 --> 0:15:59.740 office because I couldn't bear to give it away or 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:02.160 get rid of it or shred it or anything. It 0:16:02.180 --> 0:16:06.080 turned out to be incredibly useful because I found production 0:16:06.140 --> 0:16:09.380 memos and things of all manner that sort of put 0:16:09.620 --> 0:16:13.000 things into a different order. In some cases, I had 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:16.940 remembered something going on in one way and thought that 0:16:17.140 --> 0:16:19.740 preceded something else and it was the other way around. 0:16:20.160 --> 0:16:23.420 So what we ended up figuring out is that we 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:26.640 had these two separate stories we both had lived. And 0:16:26.800 --> 0:16:30.620 over the course of time, they feel like a single 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:33.500 story in a way. Now, not to take anything away 0:16:33.580 --> 0:16:36.280 from your own individual story of John Harrington or my 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:40.620 own individual stories, but they did merge. And for example, 0:16:40.840 --> 0:16:43.120 what we ended up telling people over the course of 0:16:43.140 --> 0:16:47.020 the season is how this whole strangeness at Dark Skies happened. 0:16:47.260 --> 0:16:51.880 But the things that we started to think were the story, 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:54.820 the guy coming to the party, that comes toward the 0:16:54.960 --> 0:16:58.220 end of it. We discovered this whole other thing. For example, 0:16:58.980 --> 0:17:01.640 when you and I had met, all right, I had 0:17:01.700 --> 0:17:05.060 done a movie called Official Denial that was very ufological. 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:08.600 And I had been contacted myself by a guy who 0:17:08.660 --> 0:17:11.180 called in while I was at Lois and Clark. I'd 0:17:11.220 --> 0:17:14.030 forgotten all about this guy. And he asked me to 0:17:14.070 --> 0:17:16.129 give him a name. And I had a project at 0:17:16.170 --> 0:17:18.629 the time where I had a name, John Longar. And 0:17:18.650 --> 0:17:21.090 I said, your name's John Longar. So I forgot that. 0:17:21.350 --> 0:17:24.030 I had literally forgotten all that. And the very day 0:17:24.090 --> 0:17:27.230 that you and I met at Caudel Sol, the Italian restaurant, 0:17:27.490 --> 0:17:30.070 where you told me the John Harrington story and blew 0:17:30.130 --> 0:17:32.870 my mind, I had just sent a treatment to my 0:17:33.350 --> 0:17:37.410 agent called Majestic for a TV series. But then you 0:17:37.450 --> 0:17:41.100 tell me about John Harrington, and he's a Navy guy. 0:17:41.630 --> 0:17:44.550 And so suddenly we end up making the head of 0:17:44.590 --> 0:17:49.360 Majestic Navy, which may have been the trigger to get 0:17:49.420 --> 0:17:52.100 this JC guy to show up at the party because 0:17:52.140 --> 0:17:54.340 he said he was from the Office of Naval Intelligence. 0:17:54.700 --> 0:17:57.100 We created this whole concept of the cover of fiction. 0:17:57.400 --> 0:18:00.420 We had these briefing books and how we sold the thing. 0:18:00.740 --> 0:18:04.450 All of that cover of fiction stuff is what came 0:18:04.530 --> 0:18:08.310 back boomeranging on us with JC. And we never saw 0:18:08.369 --> 0:18:10.720 it quite that way at the time. Then, of course, 0:18:10.760 --> 0:18:14.080 we sold the thing and something that was the first 0:18:14.140 --> 0:18:17.900 thing that blew my mind because they were super important 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:20.530 when it happened and I'd forgotten them. And those were 0:18:20.550 --> 0:18:24.850 the postcards while we were not quite shooting dark skies 0:18:25.270 --> 0:18:27.910 where somebody sent a postcard to me at my house 0:18:27.970 --> 0:18:32.690 and it said, we are watching you. And by the way, folks, 0:18:33.050 --> 0:18:37.510 all of that precedes JC showing up at the party here. 0:18:37.890 --> 0:18:41.149 And after those anonymous postcards, we get picked up. We 0:18:41.190 --> 0:18:45.310 think we're on a fast track to success. And what happens? 0:18:45.750 --> 0:18:48.050 The men in black people try to kill our show. 0:18:49.070 --> 0:18:49.250 Yeah. 0:18:49.730 --> 0:18:52.530 And in one context, that always looked like just a 0:18:52.570 --> 0:18:57.190 Hollywood power play. But in the context of UFOs and 0:18:57.390 --> 0:19:02.129 cover-ups and that, who knows? It raised questions, right? And 0:19:02.450 --> 0:19:05.909 now we catch up to the party crasher, right? So 0:19:05.950 --> 0:19:10.060 the very things... didn't lay out quite the way that 0:19:10.119 --> 0:19:13.600 we thought. And so anyway, so there was that. And 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:17.359 I always thought that was super important because suddenly I 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:21.199 started seeing relationships between the stories. And I don't know 0:19:21.220 --> 0:19:23.500 if you felt that way, but I felt like every 0:19:23.580 --> 0:19:27.159 episode we did, I know some people would say, stop 0:19:27.220 --> 0:19:29.620 talking about dark skies. We know you did a show 0:19:29.640 --> 0:19:33.100 a lot. But the thing is, it was our revelation 0:19:34.040 --> 0:19:37.760 to ourselves about what we'd been involved in. And so 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:40.080 we use that as the metaphor to talk about the 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:40.859 larger story. 0:19:41.640 --> 0:19:45.050 Absolutely agree with everything you just said. And I will add, too, 0:19:45.109 --> 0:19:50.570 that when I started to research our first couple episodes 0:19:50.690 --> 0:19:53.760 and look back and look at the things that I 0:19:53.820 --> 0:19:57.580 have saved, there was a lot of pattern recognition. There 0:19:57.600 --> 0:20:00.659 was a lot of things that made sense years later 0:20:01.000 --> 0:20:04.980 that I was able to interpret with some objectivity. And 0:20:05.180 --> 0:20:08.800 I think the whole JC thing and trying to understand 0:20:08.840 --> 0:20:11.590 the formula why he gave it to us, why he 0:20:11.650 --> 0:20:14.950 gave us this suggestion to put it away for 10 0:20:14.950 --> 0:20:17.950 to 15 years in a safety deposit box. And ultimately, 0:20:18.670 --> 0:20:21.830 the fact that this led to a second meeting where 0:20:21.869 --> 0:20:26.090 we were offered a deal with more concrete terms, only 0:20:26.150 --> 0:20:28.350 to be then told that if we wanted to really 0:20:28.390 --> 0:20:30.170 close the deal, we had to go to a cemetery 0:20:30.230 --> 0:20:33.810 at midnight. All of that, as we've talked about before, 0:20:33.890 --> 0:20:36.210 was all just kind of the wash. It was all 0:20:36.920 --> 0:20:39.780 part of that blur of having a TV show on 0:20:39.820 --> 0:20:42.490 the air. And now going back and looking at it, 0:20:42.530 --> 0:20:46.650 you start to realize, well, there was some really interesting 0:20:46.710 --> 0:20:48.930 things that happened and they all start to make sense 0:20:48.990 --> 0:20:52.510 on a level, especially when you compare them to some 0:20:52.530 --> 0:20:55.929 of the other stories that we uncovered. And I'm talking 0:20:56.010 --> 0:21:00.429 specifically about Brett Leonard and Dan Tibbetts and even to 0:21:00.470 --> 0:21:03.790 a degree, Todd Masters. And so I think that was 0:21:04.450 --> 0:21:07.130 Part of our active investigation was we wanted to look 0:21:07.650 --> 0:21:09.369 at our own story. We wanted to look at our 0:21:09.430 --> 0:21:11.950 own lives. We wanted to look at movies and TV shows. 0:21:12.550 --> 0:21:16.010 But we also wanted to hopefully find other people that 0:21:16.050 --> 0:21:18.510 could tell their stories and look at their stories in 0:21:18.570 --> 0:21:21.970 relationship to our stories. And that's when you started to 0:21:22.050 --> 0:21:24.810 really have that pattern recognition. Totally. 0:21:25.950 --> 0:21:28.129 Just not to be defensive, but just to point out 0:21:28.170 --> 0:21:32.030 a fact, about 80% of what we ever talked about, 0:21:32.290 --> 0:21:36.250 Dark Skies, was about what happened off camera, that wasn't 0:21:36.470 --> 0:21:39.590 on the air. We spent very little time actually talking 0:21:39.650 --> 0:21:43.170 about what the series is. So for people that wanted 0:21:43.210 --> 0:21:45.429 to know about it, they have to go research that 0:21:45.530 --> 0:21:47.770 on their own. A couple of things, as I look 0:21:47.850 --> 0:21:51.090 at this season, there were three high points in the 0:21:51.170 --> 0:21:56.129 investigation that on one level kind of look like marketing bumps, 0:21:56.390 --> 0:21:59.740 but in fact, they're really investigative bumps. The first was, 0:22:00.100 --> 0:22:03.500 as we mentioned earlier, our middle section of of the 0:22:03.580 --> 0:22:07.600 season was Disclosure Day, Spielberg's film. And that kind of 0:22:07.640 --> 0:22:10.870 gave us a way to talk about the very thing 0:22:10.890 --> 0:22:13.609 that happened to us, but did it happen to other people? 0:22:13.830 --> 0:22:16.629 So we were able to look into Spielberg as a 0:22:16.810 --> 0:22:18.970 person that might have made his own deal. And we 0:22:19.010 --> 0:22:22.320 had a source, Toby Hooper, the director of Dark Skies, 0:22:22.690 --> 0:22:25.859 who actually said that's what had happened. And most recently, 0:22:26.180 --> 0:22:29.260 we turned up the fact that Spielberg's father and his 0:22:29.440 --> 0:22:34.240