Speaker 1: One of the strangest things about the Man who Fell
Speaker 1: to Earth is that he's never really left us. Walter
Speaker 1: Tevis first imagined Thomas Jerome Newton in his nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: three novel as an alien who comes to Earth to
Speaker 1: save his dying world and instead becomes trapped in ours.
Speaker 1: The character is one of science fiction's most enduring portraits
Speaker 1: of alienation. Nicholas Rogue turned that story into the Haunting
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six film with David Bowie, a movie that
Speaker 1: is now this year celebrating its fiftieth anniversary and still
Speaker 1: feels like it has arrived from somewhere else. Then the
Speaker 1: idea resurfaced in a nineteen eighty seven television pilot, returned
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen through David Bowie's stage work Lazarus, and
Speaker 1: came back again in the twenty twenty two Showtime series
Speaker 1: with Bill Nye as the older Newton. In this episode,
Speaker 1: a sound, light and Frequency will be breaking down each
Speaker 1: version like we did for War of the World's a
Speaker 1: few episodes back, going through them in chronology, because maybe
Speaker 1: every generation gets the Thomas Jerome Newton they deserve.
Speaker 2: Who knows.
Speaker 1: What we do know is that David Bowie, the person
Speaker 1: before he became David Bowie the Rock God, was also
Speaker 1: an experiencer of the UFO phenomenon. We'll be talking about
Speaker 1: that also in this episode. So this is not just
Speaker 1: a fan conversation about a cult classic. It's a question
Speaker 1: about why this one image keeps repeating, the brilliant but
Speaker 1: broken visitor who cannot go home. Are there any of
Speaker 1: them actually walking around our planet for real?
Speaker 2: Brent? How do you account for the staying power of
Speaker 2: this concept. It's a great question. I would attribute it
Speaker 2: to the fact that there's a duality to the story.
Speaker 2: On one hand, there's the fantasy of I've met an alien.
Speaker 2: I've discovered that there's a lone alien walking on Earth,
Speaker 2: and I alone have a relationship with them, and they
Speaker 2: have answers and more insights to them. And especially in
Speaker 2: the case of this franchise, for the most part, the
Speaker 2: character of Newton is benevolent or at least neutral, and
Speaker 2: so it does not pose a threat. I think that
Speaker 2: idea of the lone alien is also something that creates
Speaker 2: a little bit of fear. What if they come down
Speaker 2: and they are hostile? What if I was the one
Speaker 2: that discovered someone who might hurt me and other people
Speaker 2: and I'd have to blow the whistle on them. So
Speaker 2: I think that contained version of a singular alien invasion,
Speaker 2: if you will, holds a lot of interest because it's
Speaker 2: a story that is also manageable. It's easy to tell
Speaker 2: it's much much more of a human story because we're
Speaker 2: not into a war of the world scenario. And I
Speaker 2: think that as soon as it becomes two aliens or
Speaker 2: three aliens, then you're tipping over into alien invasion and
Speaker 2: you're into a different genre. Amen, brother to all of that.
Speaker 1: I love doing Soundlite and Frequency for so many reasons.
Speaker 1: Even if I've seen something before, I have to see
Speaker 1: it again. And what I find over and over while
Speaker 1: doing this show with you, Brent, is that I always
Speaker 1: see it with very different eyes because the times when
Speaker 1: you see it originally you're experiencing the movie, life goes
Speaker 1: on and in many cases many years go on. So
Speaker 1: by the time you see it again, the same person
Speaker 1: who saw it the first time, and the way you
Speaker 1: look at it has changed. Society has changed, the whole
Speaker 1: world has usually changed. Before you see some of these
Speaker 1: and that applies frankly to something you might have seen
Speaker 1: three or four years ago. For example, we are going
Speaker 1: to be later talking about the TV series version that
Speaker 1: Showtime did, which I saw when it came out in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, but in rewatching that in the last
Speaker 1: few days, I went, wait a minute, is that.
Speaker 2: How that worked? WHOA?
Speaker 1: I can only imagine how anybody who if they listened
Speaker 1: to this episode says, I want to go back and
Speaker 1: watch The Man Who Fell to Earth from nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: Most of our audience probably it wasn't even alive when
Speaker 1: it was out the first time, and they'll be in
Speaker 1: for a treat, of course, But obviously we were there
Speaker 1: for the original, So you know, what was your first
Speaker 1: take when you first saw it.
Speaker 2: My reaction the first time I saw it was quite
Speaker 2: different than other times that I saw it, and certainly
Speaker 2: when I saw it recently to get ready for this show.
Speaker 2: My first encounter her with The Man Who Fell to
Speaker 2: Earth was I was on a date in high school
Speaker 2: and it was late and I was with a girl
Speaker 2: and she didn't want to go home, and I didn't
Speaker 2: want to take her home, but what can we do?
Speaker 2: And it was like, let's go see a movie. Oh
Speaker 2: that story, forget the movie. Yeah, continue yeah. So at
Speaker 2: any rate, we got to the theater and it was
Speaker 2: one of those like Triplex's where there was three movies,
Speaker 2: and it was like, Okay, what's the next movie playing
Speaker 2: The Man Who Fell to Earth? Now I was a
Speaker 2: David Bowie fan at the time, so I thought, I
Speaker 2: don't care what the movie is, David Bowie's in it,
Speaker 2: let's just go see it. We had no idea what
Speaker 2: the movie was. We walked in to see it and
Speaker 2: it was, if I remember correctly, a midnight showing of
Speaker 2: the film, because this was after it came out. So
Speaker 2: we walk in, we sit down, the movie starts, and
Speaker 2: the thing about the movie the original is, I think
Speaker 2: I'll be kind and say it's an art film. It
Speaker 2: was made by Nicholas Rogue, who's made a lot of
Speaker 2: very of unique movies, and the story is told in
Speaker 2: non linear fashion, very disjointed, and it's fairly slow paced.
Speaker 2: And at that point the night, we were a little tired,
Speaker 2: and about halfway through we both nodded off. By the
Speaker 2: time the movie ended, we crawled out of our seats
Speaker 2: and went back and went home. And I had just
Speaker 2: an impression of it. That's not a movie that I
Speaker 2: was into at all, and it wasn't really until I
Speaker 2: went back and watched it in college with some friends
Speaker 2: and we were suddenly taken by it and how interesting
Speaker 2: it was, how unique it was. And then again fast
Speaker 2: forward to getting ready for the show, looking back on
Speaker 2: it and now having lost David Bowie and having a
Speaker 2: sense of nostalgia about that. The movie is very endearing
Speaker 2: to me. It's challenging because it doesn't meet the conventions
Speaker 2: of today's cinema in terms of how the story is told.
Speaker 2: But there's a real interesting, heartfelt somberness to it that
Speaker 2: I thought was quite fascinating.
Speaker 1: I agree with all of that, although it's interesting. My
Speaker 1: experience slightly different. I think in a previous episode, I
Speaker 1: was talking about when I was just a young guy
Speaker 1: doing a radio news gig at the local hippie FM
Speaker 1: station and I was covering the Travis Walton things. So
Speaker 1: I'd already been talking about in just a few months
Speaker 1: before this came out about a guy that was beamed up.
Speaker 1: So now this was a movie about a guy that
Speaker 1: fell down, right, So I was like, that'll be very interesting,
Speaker 1: And I had the same thing with you. It was
Speaker 1: a new movie, so it wasn't one of those midnight
Speaker 1: flicks that you got to see on college campus. It
Speaker 1: was one that you had to go pay at the
Speaker 1: theater to watch, and I was eager to see it.
Speaker 1: I really had good expectations. As I watched it, a
Speaker 1: couple of things hit me. I didn't really know David
Speaker 1: Bowie very well. I've come to appreciate his music for
Speaker 1: sure over the years, but at the time I was
Speaker 1: more of a Beatles guy at Stones and things. I
Speaker 1: just wasn't doing Bowie that much, so I didn't really
Speaker 1: know him very well as a rock star. But he
Speaker 1: really captivated me in his performance. But I was like you,
Speaker 1: I was like, what is really going on here?
Speaker 2: What? And listen?
Speaker 1: None of that has cleared up one hundred percent upon
Speaker 1: a rewatch, except for the fact that now you can
Speaker 1: watch videos and talk to people and read reviews. So
Speaker 1: things that I was a little confused about can I
Speaker 1: can be unconfused on. And by the way, I should say, Brent,
Speaker 1: we have to say there are spoilers here, folks. Okay,
Speaker 1: come on, this is a nineteen seventy six film. If
Speaker 1: you're going to wag your finger at is for spoiling
Speaker 1: the film. Then stop now go watch it or don't
Speaker 1: watch it or whatever. But yeah, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about how it ends in this thing, and we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about how the other versions of the Man Who.
Speaker 2: Fell to Earth in but Brent.
Speaker 1: One of the things that really struck me in the
Speaker 1: rewatch was the callbacks of certain things, because I guess
Speaker 1: I've watched more films obviously since I had then and
Speaker 1: three things really stuck out to me. These medical scenes
Speaker 1: at the end where they's semi medically tore uring amisterom Newton.
Speaker 1: They reminded me of the Ludovico technique and clockwork Oiners.
Speaker 1: It had absiliarity to it another great seventies film. Also,
Speaker 1: the place where they keep him at the very end,
Speaker 1: where he's just locked up and he's alone and you
Speaker 1: really feel the isolation and everything felt like the grunge
Speaker 1: version of the French bedroom in two thousand and one
Speaker 1: A Space Odyssey. I just felt his isolation and loneliness there.
Speaker 1: And then when he finally gets out and flees into
Speaker 1: the white hallway, that reminded me of THHX eleven thirty eight,
Speaker 1: which I believe is that George Lucas student film that
Speaker 1: he got to later film. I'm not saying that these
Speaker 1: were borrowed in it anyway. I'm just saying my film
Speaker 1: ability to see things differently was there. So I had
Speaker 1: a great time watching it again, and I have to say,
Speaker 1: as I watched it, I felt like I was seeing
Speaker 1: it for the first time because I'd forgotten so much
Speaker 1: of it, and I was a joy to do it.
Speaker 2: I'd forgotten the first half that I didn't sleep through,
Speaker 2: and I certainly didn't the whole second half was new
Speaker 2: to me the next time I saw it. But looking
Speaker 2: at it with new eyes through the lens of sound,
Speaker 2: light and frequency, I'm excited to dive deep into it
Speaker 2: and take a look at how all of this relates
Speaker 2: to youufology.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just to say this isn't a fan thing. I
Speaker 1: don't know that we're reviewing it per se because we're
Speaker 1: talking about the other things and all that. But I
Speaker 1: did in my research look up something. I thought it
Speaker 1: would be fun to just read this out loud right now.
Speaker 1: I found Roger Ebert's review The Man Who Fell to Earth,
Speaker 1: which he wrote at the time. He wrote it requires
Speaker 1: an almost courageous leap of the imagination to take Nicholas
Speaker 1: Rogues The Man Who Fell to Earth. Seriously, here's a
Speaker 1: film so preposterous imposturing, so filled with gaps of logic
Speaker 1: and continuity, that if it weren't so solemn, there'd be
Speaker 1: the temptation to laugh out loud. And yet at the
Speaker 1: same time, this is a film filled with interesting ideas.
Speaker 1: It's like a bunch of tentative sketches for a more
Speaker 1: assured film.
Speaker 2: That was never made. So I always loved Roger Ebert.
Speaker 1: I didn't agree with him on everything, and I think
Speaker 1: what's interesting is he's probably not wrong in his sort
Speaker 1: of dismissive way to talk about it, and yet at
Speaker 1: the same time, what I found is the ideas are
Speaker 1: so much more interesting. I don't think Roger Ebert, I
Speaker 1: don't know what his opinions of UFOs and the paranormal
Speaker 1: and the phenomenon or any of that stuff was, but
Speaker 1: I did think to myself, maybe, just maybe he wasn't
Speaker 1: seeing it on that elevated level, possibly right, because he's
Speaker 1: just a film reviewer. Anyway, Folks, spoilers ahead will be
Speaker 1: back in just a.
Speaker 2: Couple of minutes. I'm Brent Friedman years ago, a family
Speaker 2: friend who became a cabinet member, and the regulars disclosed
Speaker 2: to me that aliens are real. They're here, and he'd
Speaker 2: seen them. I'm Bryce's Abel.
Speaker 1: Later, when we were producing Dark Skies, an NBCTV series
Speaker 1: about an alien invasion, we were approached by men who
Speaker 1: said they were from the Office of Naval Intelligence and
Speaker 1: they wanted to give us inside information in exchange for
Speaker 1: access to our show.
Speaker 2: We didn't take that deal, but we have never stopped
Speaker 2: thinking about it.
Speaker 1: That's why we do this podcast. We're working out ideas
Speaker 1: in real time about how Hollywood is portrayed aliens and why.
Speaker 2: Every episode is different because there are so many questions.
Speaker 1: We're looking for answers. It's an active investigation. Let's do
Speaker 1: this together, all right. Then we're back and we're talking
Speaker 1: about The Man Who Fell to Earth, which is something
Speaker 1: that's really stood the test of time. It goes back
Speaker 1: to nineteen sixty three when an author named Walter Tevis
Speaker 1: wrote the original book. And I didn't read the book
Speaker 1: in full, and I brand, I know you, we didn't know.
Speaker 1: That's not where we started our The Man Who Fell
Speaker 1: to Earth work, although I did buy it as a
Speaker 1: kindle and read it some pages of it.
Speaker 2: I thought it was great.
Speaker 1: And by the way, the man who wrote it, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you know this, but the man who
Speaker 1: wrote it also wrote The Hustler, The Color of Money,
Speaker 1: and The Queen's Gambit, which was a big Netflix thing
Speaker 1: a back.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Yes, he's the author who wrote a bunch of stuff
Speaker 1: you know about, but you don't know anything about.
Speaker 2: Ann fascinating. Okay, So there you go.
Speaker 1: It's your take on the book, though you know it
Speaker 1: got any facts and figures to throw out here.
Speaker 2: The book follows the same basic plot, and I found
Speaker 2: that the book seemed very intent on presenting basically an
Speaker 2: allegory for corporate corruption, right. And it seemed to be
Speaker 2: because when it was written nineteen sixty three, it was
Speaker 2: also looking at the emergence of kind of the traps
Speaker 2: of consumerism and the loss of idealism. Right. It came
Speaker 2: out and I think right around the time that John F.
Speaker 2: Kennedy was being assassinated. Right, it really was representative of
Speaker 2: its day in terms of the messages it wanted to convey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you just really nailed something there. When
Speaker 1: the book first came out, Kennedy was still in office,
Speaker 1: So it represents in some respects an Alien has come
Speaker 1: to Earth and you start to read it, and then
Speaker 1: it becomes the post assassination book, where it's all about
Speaker 1: the irony and the cynicism and all of that. I
Speaker 1: do think one thing is probably clear the novel, and
Speaker 1: this is true of most adaptations. The novel is a
Speaker 1: little clearer than the film about what Newton's mission is,
Speaker 1: because obviously he had to write a book about it,
Speaker 1: so you get a little more sense of that. But
Speaker 1: I don't know that is necessarily a knock on the
Speaker 1: film itself, because if the film was as specific as
Speaker 1: the book about what Newton is doing there and all
Speaker 1: the details, it would lose some of its mystery.
Speaker 2: I think that's probably why they leaned into the nonlinear storytelling,
Speaker 2: was they wanted to keep it more mysterious, more elliptical,
Speaker 2: and be unsure about what exactly Newton's agenda is, who
Speaker 2: he is, what's going on, And they were able to
Speaker 2: sustain that for a period of time in the movie.
Speaker 2: And that wasn't really the case as I understood it
Speaker 2: in the book.
Speaker 1: Let's also be authentic here about it wasn't such a
Speaker 1: big hit that they grabbed it off the bookshelves and
Speaker 1: turned it into a movie. It comes out in sixty three.
Speaker 1: I don't start adapting it, I believe, until seventy five,
Speaker 1: and maybe as early as a little earlier. But so
Speaker 1: it took a while to find its way into film them.
Speaker 1: But that's a good place for us to start, because,
Speaker 1: let's face it, nobody who's listening to us has read
Speaker 1: the book either. So let's move on. Many of us
Speaker 1: have seen this film. Let's talk film, all right.
Speaker 2: So the film came out in nineteen seventy six. As
Speaker 2: we mentioned earlier, it was directed by Nicholas Rogue. We
Speaker 2: know it was based on this book by Tevis and
Speaker 2: the plot is still basically the same. And let me
Speaker 2: just recap it a little bit. It's about a humanoid
Speaker 2: alien who goes by the name of Thomas Jerome Newton,
Speaker 2: who arrives in the American Southwest. His homeworld is suffering
Speaker 2: from a catastrophic drought, and his intention is to amass
Speaker 2: enough wealth on Earth to build a spacecraft capable of
Speaker 2: transporting water back to his homeworld of Anthea. You know
Speaker 2: the log.
Speaker 1: Line, that's pretty fair. It does make you wonder, though,
Speaker 1: how large a spacecraft was this guy really supposed to
Speaker 1: build to transfer water to save the planet.
Speaker 2: Yes, that was my big practical question, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 2: I guess this is going to entail lots of trips
Speaker 2: back and forth.
Speaker 1: And yet they're building one spacecraft and they say time
Speaker 1: is of the essence.
Speaker 2: I don't know that's even true.
Speaker 1: And also, if you run to steal enough water from
Speaker 1: the Earth to save an entire planet, that probably would
Speaker 1: be something that was not a neutral act. You would
Speaker 1: literally be transporting a whole lot of water.
Speaker 2: However you did it.
Speaker 1: Just a couple of quick points of order, if you will,
Speaker 1: on what that story is about. There's some key elements
Speaker 1: in this thing. When he shows up, he engages a
Speaker 1: patent attorney named Oliver Farnsworth who's played by the great
Speaker 1: Buck Henry. Yes, right, And he also brings in a
Speaker 1: guy named This has always been one of my favorite things.
Speaker 1: The name of the character is doctor Nathan Bryce. Yes,
Speaker 1: but Bowie keeps calling him Bryce. Everyone in the film
Speaker 1: calls him Bryce, and so I remember the first time
Speaker 1: seeing it going, that's pretty cool. And this guy is
Speaker 1: he's a brilliant but compromised former professor kind of guy.
Speaker 1: All right, So that's who Bowie's got to help him
Speaker 1: with his plan to make money and build a ship
Speaker 1: and save his world. But along the way he gets
Speaker 1: derailed by two things, sex and alcohol. I think that's
Speaker 1: the which, by the way, has derailed many a human
Speaker 1: being as well.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, that's one of the great
Speaker 2: ironies here is that he comes here with certainly a
Speaker 2: higher intelligence, and he uses that intelligence as he intends
Speaker 2: to create some revolutionary technology that he then patents, and
Speaker 2: he's able to to some degree execute his vision, execute
Speaker 2: his plan. But the problem is he's fallen to Earth,
Speaker 2: where there are distractions and temptations. And again, think about
Speaker 2: the story from Tevis's point of view, which is he's
Speaker 2: trying to show what life is becoming, right where even
Speaker 2: the most noble of intentions are getting slowed down and
Speaker 2: embroiled in what modern society is becoming. And so the
Speaker 2: idea that an alien comes down with all of this
Speaker 2: supreme intelligence, but he doesn't have. He's very human in
Speaker 2: that he doesn't have the emotional intelligence to rise above
Speaker 2: all of these things that pull him down and ultimately
Speaker 2: thwart his mission. And people keep feeding him alcohol and
Speaker 2: he becomes addicted. He becomes an alcoholic. He can hold
Speaker 2: his liquor pretty good.
Speaker 1: It seems, but he's constantly drinking and that's not good
Speaker 1: for him. And then he hooks up with a character
Speaker 1: named Mary Lou who's assault of the Earth. I think
Speaker 1: she's a hotel worker from Oklahoma or something, and she's
Speaker 1: played by the Great Candy Clark, who comes out of
Speaker 1: American graffiti.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she's just a.
Speaker 1: Sweet person, a little high strung, but she loves this guy.
Speaker 1: Even when she learns he's an alien, she loves him,
Speaker 1: which God bless her, because he's a creepy looking alien
Speaker 1: when he actually takes off the stuff at one point,
Speaker 1: because he's so tired of masquerading as a human, and
Speaker 1: he allows her to see him as he is, and
Speaker 1: she does not like what she sees, and yet she
Speaker 1: still loves him. Yes, that's love for you. One thing
Speaker 1: I just thought was just an image for you.
Speaker 2: Though.
Speaker 1: When they made this movie Rogue, the director did not
Speaker 1: have David Bowie in mind. The first person he wanted
Speaker 1: to cast was Michael Crichton.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: I don't know if everyone remembers Michael Crichton, but he
Speaker 1: was the author of the Androma to Strain and Jurassic Park, Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean and many other books. Yeah, a very successful writer,
Speaker 1: not considered an actor, But then neither was David Bowie
Speaker 1: that much at the time he was cast. But Rogue
Speaker 1: thought that what would be so good about Crichton is
Speaker 1: that he's so tall, and that he would just stand
Speaker 1: out six eight. He was gigantic guy, and so it
Speaker 1: was actually quite a twist, And I wonder if how
Speaker 1: I would have responded to a gigantic Newton as opposed
Speaker 1: to Bowie, who comes across as extremely slight. You could
Speaker 1: blow him away in a hard wind, right. He literally
Speaker 1: from the moment he steps foot into the earth, he's
Speaker 1: not well, it's not his favorite environment, it's not the
Speaker 1: right place for him to be, but he's carrying on
Speaker 1: because he's on this mission. Final interesting thought just to
Speaker 1: set the world here, because with a lot of movies
Speaker 1: you have to figure like, what's the time frame, how
Speaker 1: how do our characters aging or whatever? This movie says,
Speaker 1: damn right they are, And what happens is David Bowie
Speaker 1: as the jerome character in this movie is always David
Speaker 1: Bowie is the jerome character. He's not aged up or anything.
Speaker 1: He is he looks he's quite as a ghost, it
Speaker 1: seems like, but he's he's got shocking red.
Speaker 2: Hair, which we've seen before.
Speaker 1: But he's the same guy all through the movie, but
Speaker 1: particularly toward the end, everybody else is aging, yes, dramatically,
Speaker 1: And so I knew that, and I've always accepted that
Speaker 1: because I thought that's interesting he's put this costume on
Speaker 1: based disguise disguise, And a couple of nights ago, I'm
Speaker 1: watching the extras on the movie and I watch a
Speaker 1: piece with the writer Paul Meyerberg, who, by the way,
Speaker 1: here's just a little tidbit for those of you who
Speaker 1: are writers and are saying I'm never goddamn gonna make
Speaker 1: it in this business. Paul Meyerberg wrote thirty nine scripts
Speaker 1: before they produced his very first script, The Manu Feld Earth. Wow,
Speaker 1: that is perseverance. Think about that anyway back to time.
Speaker 1: So a lot of time went into his success. But
Speaker 1: what Meyerberg says in his interview I did not catch
Speaker 1: the first time. He said this film has a lot
Speaker 1: to do with time. And he went into this explanation
Speaker 1: Brent where he started saying, there's past, present, future, the
Speaker 1: futures affecting the past, but also the president in the
Speaker 1: past is affecting the future, and what he described was
Speaker 1: like dark series that we talked about a while ago. Now,
Speaker 1: I never saw that in the film the first time
Speaker 1: I saw it, and if it's in there, it's subtle.
Speaker 1: And he described a scene that I had not seen,
Speaker 1: which he said, while they're driving around. They shot most
Speaker 1: of this in New Mexico, including one scene in Roswell
Speaker 1: which I found interesting. But they're driving around New Mexico
Speaker 1: and Bowie's in the car and he looks outside the
Speaker 1: car and he sees a pioneer family. Did you see
Speaker 1: this in the film?
Speaker 2: I missed it. Now I missed that too.
Speaker 1: Maybe it got cut out and it's in the director's cut.
Speaker 2: I don't know what.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll get notes on it. But what Meyerberg
Speaker 1: says is he sees this pioneer family, which is like
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty years in the past, but he's
Speaker 1: riencing them as if it's just a time dilation kind
Speaker 1: of thing. And he said, what was interesting is the
Speaker 1: way he wrote it is the family actually sees Bowie
Speaker 1: driving around in his car as one of those weird
Speaker 1: little toe Wow.
Speaker 2: No, I don't forgot that. I don't think that's in
Speaker 2: the final film, because I think I would have there's
Speaker 2: a lot of strange things in the movie, but that
Speaker 2: probably would have struck me as the strangest. Yeah, that
Speaker 2: one surprised me. So let me give a little more
Speaker 2: cultural context here. I mentioned before that I was a
Speaker 2: big fan of David Bowie. So in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 2: when the movie came out, David Bowie was already a
Speaker 2: rock star, and not just any rock star. He had
Speaker 2: a persona called Ziggy Stardust, and in I think around
Speaker 2: seventy two, he released an album called The Rise and
Speaker 2: Fall of Ziggy Stardusts and the Spiders from Mars, That's
Speaker 2: what it was. And from seventy two to seventy three
Speaker 2: he toured around the world and Ziggy Stardus was this
Speaker 2: androgynous alien rock star and that was his person that
Speaker 2: he completely glombed onto. He dressed like an alien rock
Speaker 2: star and this character took off. It made his album
Speaker 2: a huge success. And then when he came back from touring,
Speaker 2: he released another album, still embracing the Ziggy Stardust persona,
Speaker 2: called Aladdinsane. And then he got bored, as most creatives do,
Speaker 2: with doing the same thing over and over again, and
Speaker 2: he decided he wanted to shed that persona and become
Speaker 2: someone else, and for the rest of his career he
Speaker 2: was never a Ziggy startist. Again. I say all of
Speaker 2: this because brilliant casting. You take David Bowie, who is
Speaker 2: at that point in seventy six known as an alien
Speaker 2: rock star, that's his whole brand, and you put him
Speaker 2: in a movie where you're asking people to believe he's
Speaker 2: an alien.
Speaker 1: Great casting, because according to Rogan himself in his interview,
Speaker 1: he did have his head on Crichton. But as soon
Speaker 1: as somebody said Bowie, and I think it was the
Speaker 1: writer that suggested Bowie, they couldn't get it out of
Speaker 1: their head. They just said, he's the perfect guy. We
Speaker 1: got to go get him. And apparently Bowie, who I'm
Speaker 1: sure had his own issues with drugs or alcohol and
Speaker 1: or was very well behaved on set, he showed up
Speaker 1: and said.
Speaker 2: What do you need me to do? I'll do it.
Speaker 1: But you're right, think about some of the songs like
Speaker 1: Space Oddity and so it's a great converging of his
Speaker 1: persona with a character. He tried to give up his
Speaker 1: persona of Ziggy Stardust I think he was tired of
Speaker 1: it in seventy three, which is three years before the
Speaker 1: movie came out, and the movie kick started it again.
Speaker 1: I wanted to just I don't know why, but I
Speaker 1: have to say this, because the character's name is doctor
Speaker 1: Nathan Bryce. The first guy they wanted to play that
Speaker 1: was James Coburn, which is so interesting because if you
Speaker 1: know anything about Rip Torn, he kind of has that
Speaker 1: attitude whereas whimsical, a little tiny bit of whimsical in
Speaker 1: it that he's portrayed over the years. James Coburn is
Speaker 1: a straight ahead guy.
Speaker 2: With a little menace in it.
Speaker 1: It would have been an entirely different interpretation of that
Speaker 1: as well. But the point I wanted to make as
Speaker 1: well that I thought was very prescient about this film
Speaker 1: because it's happening right now. In every scene that you
Speaker 1: see Bowie, when he's Newton and he's coming back and
Speaker 1: he's filling in his time, he's watching TV. He starts
Speaker 1: with a single TV and it's three TVs. Then it's
Speaker 1: a wall of TVs. And what he's really doing, he
Speaker 1: is recreated with his wall of TVs what we all
Speaker 1: have in our pockets now, our cell phones. I just
Speaker 1: think the movie was very prescient about that, the idea
Speaker 1: that you need constant distraction. He'd be going for one
Speaker 1: thing to the next thing watching this. And I wrote
Speaker 1: this one down because when he said it, I was like,
Speaker 1: holy shit, that's a really interesting comment. He's looking at
Speaker 1: a wall of TV screens and he's just there looking
Speaker 1: blank about it. But then he startles awake and he goes,
Speaker 1: get out of my mind. All of you leave my
Speaker 1: mind alone, which where all of you people who feel
Speaker 1: like your kids are watching too much TV or you're
Speaker 1: watching too much TV. I think we've all felt that,
Speaker 1: where it just it's not a thing that you do
Speaker 1: without consequence.
Speaker 2: TV gets in your mind. Yeah, I feel like it is.
Speaker 2: That scene was a great example of Rogue sending a
Speaker 2: cautionary message at that time again remember in the seventies
Speaker 2: of what media would become, and very prophetic in that regard.
Speaker 2: I think something else related to ufology that I find interesting.
Speaker 2: It was in the book and it's I don't remember
Speaker 2: if the exact words were used in the movie, but
Speaker 2: this idea that Newton comes to Earth as an alien
Speaker 2: with uncanny scientific knowledge, and how many times have we
Speaker 2: seen that in stories where aliens come down and they
Speaker 2: seem to always know more about the universe than humans do,
Speaker 2: Like that is a standard, like you're not a self
Speaker 2: respecting alien unless you can lord it over humans that
Speaker 2: you know what's really going on. Now. The other thing
Speaker 2: is that it also we've seen this play out in
Speaker 2: Disclosure Day, this idea that even if it's not the
Speaker 2: alien coming down with knowledge, it's the idea that uncanny
Speaker 2: scientific knowledge is passed down through downloads and through hybrids
Speaker 2: getting special messages and whatnot. But the big idea here
Speaker 2: is that non human intelligence, whether it's in some sort
Speaker 2: of light being form or it's David Bowie falling to Earth,
Speaker 2: always knows more than humans. And it reinforces this idea
Speaker 2: that we are somehow trapped here in a world, in
Speaker 2: a material world, and full of distractions and things that
Speaker 2: are somehow keeping us from reaching these heights that non
Speaker 2: human intelligence or off world entities have that can look
Speaker 2: down on Earth and understand how it all works. And again,
Speaker 2: I think this goes back to the fantasy I was
Speaker 2: mentioning before. Imagine if you met one of those people, right,
Speaker 2: you could ask them all sorts of questions. I know
Speaker 2: that for you and I we look back on our
Speaker 2: meetings with JC and say, oh, we wish we had
Speaker 2: asked them more questions. I am getting lots of people saying,
Speaker 2: why didn't you ask that Nordic on Orches Islands? What's
Speaker 2: really going on? Because I was scared for my life
Speaker 2: is the answer. But in retrospect to the Monday Morning
Speaker 2: quarterback of me says, I would love to meet an
Speaker 2: alien because they have all of the secrets, it seems.
Speaker 1: And they do have all of the secrets. It seems
Speaker 1: that it's interesting what this film does about this. To
Speaker 1: hark back to TV, he says early on in his
Speaker 1: character as Newton that the way that they found out
Speaker 1: about the Earth and that they saw the Earth had
Speaker 1: all this water was from TV. Yes, that they had
Speaker 1: intercepted our TV signals, and which is something that goes
Speaker 1: back to Carl Sagan talking about that. I remember in
Speaker 1: his movie Contact, the first thing that ever is received
Speaker 1: by anybody outside of the Earth is an image of
Speaker 1: Hitler speaking at the nineteen thirty Site Olympics, because it
Speaker 1: was televised. So what they're saying in this film is
Speaker 1: that our television, whether we're seeking contact or not, we're
Speaker 1: putting out stuff that can be interpreted as contact, and
Speaker 1: that means I love Lucy is contact folks, if that's
Speaker 1: the case. Yes, also I find this very interesting because
Speaker 1: it is true. And then we need to move on.
Speaker 1: But the film does merge that Bowie persona Ziggy Stardust,
Speaker 1: into this Newton persona, which is very interesting. But here
Speaker 1: is Bowie who is an incredible musician, and guess what,
Speaker 1: he doesn't do the soundtrack. No, they just couldn't get
Speaker 1: him to do it. It was all he could get
Speaker 1: his brain around was to actually do the acting. He
Speaker 1: didn't do it, and so guess who did? The soundtrack
Speaker 1: is done by John Phillips of the mom is in
Speaker 1: the Papas I didn't realize, which kind of blew my mind.
Speaker 1: Now here's one other final tidbit and then we can
Speaker 1: move on to the next iteration. At the very end
Speaker 1: of the film, when Newton is talking to doctor Nathan
Speaker 1: Brice has gone to what looks like Tower Records and
Speaker 1: listened to a record album that Newton has composed and
Speaker 1: put out there, and Newton asks him in the final
Speaker 1: scene did you like it? And he goes not really much,
Speaker 1: and Newton says it wasn't for you.
Speaker 2: It was for my wife.
Speaker 1: Somedays you'll hear it on the radio, because again, radio
Speaker 1: signals are less out. Okay, Now you might say, okay,
Speaker 1: I know why they put that in the film. So
Speaker 1: when you watch that, folks, I want you to know
Speaker 1: it's in the book. They didn't put that in the film. Interesting,
Speaker 1: it was Bowie's character did not demand that he write
Speaker 1: a film. In fact, if anything, it actually looks almost
Speaker 1: a little wrong in the film because it's but it
Speaker 1: came from the book.
Speaker 2: And here's here's a nice little piece of trivia. Bryce.
Speaker 2: Do you remember what the musical artist's name was that
Speaker 2: put that album out?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: No, basically the pseudonym of Newton, Yes, the Visitor.
Speaker 1: The Visitor, yes, yeah, and oh and also on the
Speaker 1: image of that. The reason I was stretching for that
Speaker 1: is that I believe on the image of the album
Speaker 1: it's the Visitor and it says a music phenomenon, Yeah,
Speaker 1: something like that. The phrase the phenomenon is in there, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: So you wouldn't have picked up on that in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six. Now only watching it today. Okay, look, we
Speaker 1: can still continue to reference this thing. But let's march forward.
Speaker 1: Because this thing is a it's a critical success. I
Speaker 1: can't really remember if it made money. I don't know
Speaker 1: how much money it made. Maybe that doesn't even count.
Speaker 1: It was critically interesting to people, and certainly people who
Speaker 1: cared about UFO and Aliens at the time were very
Speaker 1: interested in it. So we got the book in the sixties,
Speaker 1: we got the movie in the seventies, and in the
Speaker 1: eighties it comes. I was going to say roaring back,
Speaker 1: but that would be the wrong word to use. They
Speaker 1: released it as a movie of the Week on ABC,
Speaker 1: and it's god awful. And I know this to be
Speaker 1: the case because I watched it recently to prepare for this.
Speaker 1: I didn't even want to talk about it. It was
Speaker 1: so bad. It's a nineteen eighty seven TV pilot. They
Speaker 1: were thinking, oh great, we got this great title, The
Speaker 1: Man Who Fell to Earth. It'll be a wonderful TV series.
Speaker 1: So they shoot a two hour pilot. It doesn't get
Speaker 1: picked up the series, but they release it as a.
Speaker 2: Movie of the week.
Speaker 1: And listen, I actually saw some of the credits on
Speaker 1: this thing, and I actually have met some of those people,
Speaker 1: so I'm not trying to pick a fight with anybody,
Speaker 1: but I think they would probably say it was of
Speaker 1: its time. And I can't even imagine the producers and
Speaker 1: the writers that thing actually thought this was the right
Speaker 1: way to treat that material. It had to be an
Speaker 1: executive someplace who said this is how we're going to
Speaker 1: do it, and this is what you need to do.
Speaker 1: All I can say, Britt, have you even seen a
Speaker 1: frame of this one?
Speaker 2: Just out of curiosity? No frames? But I did do
Speaker 2: a little reading on it, and the thing that struck
Speaker 2: me about just what I read in terms of encapsulations
Speaker 2: is that I guess, in trying to make it episodic,
Speaker 2: they had essentially made it feel Newton's or the Newton
Speaker 2: characters had a day job to try and start this
Speaker 2: company and make some money and build a spacecraft, and
Speaker 2: so it really flattened out all of the idea of, oh,
Speaker 2: he has to overcome distractions and temptations of modern society,
Speaker 2: and it was more just, oh no, this is just
Speaker 2: a it's going to take a while to accomplish all
Speaker 2: he needs to do, so we're going to slice it
Speaker 2: up into our long episodes, and in doing that they
Speaker 2: completely missed the point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, And that's really astute observation because if you
Speaker 1: break it down, if you break it down to the
Speaker 1: big building blocks, guy comes from a dying planet, crash
Speaker 1: lands on Earth, decides to use his scientific knowledge to
Speaker 1: make money to build the craft. Those all match, and
Speaker 1: yet they aren't even close to the same film. And
Speaker 1: in fact, there's a guy named Lewis Smith, who I
Speaker 1: don't think most people know as an actor, who plays
Speaker 1: the Newton character, who they've renamed John Dorry. I guess
Speaker 1: they renamed all the characters.
Speaker 2: And yes, it's clear who they are.
Speaker 1: Brent Lewis Smith in this nineteen eighty seventh film looks
Speaker 1: like Jerry Seinfeld from his show, and so the whole
Speaker 1: time I'm watching this thing, I'm going it's just hard
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: At the time, Jerry Seinfeld was nothing, so they didn't
Speaker 1: know they were doing that. But he looks like Jerry Seinfeld.
Speaker 1: So you're watching this thing and it's this really bad
Speaker 1: movie where Jerry Seinfeld is playing the David Bowie role,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't track. So all I could say is
Speaker 1: they did certain things. As you point out, he has
Speaker 1: a son on Earth and they really cures together. It's
Speaker 1: so clear that whoever decided to make that version of it,
Speaker 1: just said, this will be a vehicle if you will, Right.
Speaker 1: The nineteen seventy sixth film is about alienation, is spiritual collapse,
Speaker 1: which is interesting, right, that's powerful. The eighty seven version
Speaker 1: is about an alien trying to get home while becoming
Speaker 1: the lead of a possible TV series, and that's it.
Speaker 2: That's all. It is.
Speaker 1: The strangeness that goes with the nineteen seventy sixth film
Speaker 1: gets domesticated, if you will, in this pilot episode, and
Speaker 1: it really feels wrong because of what you just pointed out.
Speaker 1: It wants to be repeatable, but the Nicholas Rogue film
Speaker 1: is not repeatable. No so in fact, which is going
Speaker 1: to take us in a moment to the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two thing where they didn't repeat it. They continued the story,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. But before we get there, yes, unless
Speaker 1: you want to say something more about this no stupid
Speaker 1: ABC pilot, then we're going to forget that.
Speaker 2: Life moved on already. Let's move on to.
Speaker 1: Something of importance, which is the twenty fifteen to twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen stage play in New York off Broadway. David Bowie
Speaker 1: has Michael C. Hall, who is Dexter playing the Newton character.
Speaker 1: And so what is so powerful about this thing that
Speaker 1: impacted me just watching a few scenes from Michael C.
Speaker 2: Hall and all that was that.
Speaker 1: Bowie put this thing together as he was dying of
Speaker 1: liver cancer. Yes, and this thing only plays for a
Speaker 1: little over a month and a half to two months,
Speaker 1: and Bowie dies, I believe, while it's in its final days.
Speaker 1: And he dies two days either before or after his
Speaker 1: final album, the twenty eighth.
Speaker 2: Album comes out, yes, I think before actually wow. And
Speaker 2: so the interesting things is that that play actually started
Speaker 2: with a song called Lazareth, and that was meant to
Speaker 2: be because he knew he was dying his self, penned
Speaker 2: swan song and his farewell to his fans, and it
Speaker 2: was meant to I think I read an interview where
Speaker 2: he intended that to be something that would help his
Speaker 2: fans accept the fact that he was passing on, and
Speaker 2: this idea of Lazareth of Bethany as being resurrected from
Speaker 2: the dead by Jesus. I think Bowie was using the
Speaker 2: song more as a metaphor. He was using it as
Speaker 2: a I will live on through my music and the
Speaker 2: legacy that I have left behind is what will never
Speaker 2: be gone, that will be eternal. I will always be
Speaker 2: here for you. That was the underlying message for him.
Speaker 2: A couple fun facts that I did not realize Bowie
Speaker 2: I ever got to perform Lazaruth live. He was too ill.
Speaker 1: Originally he wasn't even writing. He wasn't going to make
Speaker 1: it about Newton. It was going to be something about
Speaker 1: somebody finds Bob Dylan songs that didn't exist.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was something about finding some lost songs by
Speaker 2: Bob Dylan that he was actually going to write David
Speaker 2: Bowie and wow, there's an alternate history world. Yes, talk
Speaker 2: about shifting timelines. It makes me feel a little sad
Speaker 2: and certainly nostalgic to think that this is how he
Speaker 2: went out. At the same time, imagine being able to
Speaker 2: put out an album right as you're passing and put
Speaker 2: on a play and be able to say goodbye to
Speaker 2: the world in such a creative way. I think that's
Speaker 2: pretty profound.
Speaker 1: Okay, there's the artistic part of that, and I'm not
Speaker 1: going to comment on that at this point other than
Speaker 1: that people who saw it liked it. Right, It's kind
Speaker 1: of it's a musical Michael Sehall playing David Bowie playing
Speaker 1: Tom He's Newton. Okay, so you got that, But it's
Speaker 1: just fraught with meaning because of it. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: add a lot of meaning, I don't think to the
Speaker 1: whole falling to Earth, other than it appears the Bowie
Speaker 1: characters on our planet anyway an immortal almost, and so
Speaker 1: he can't die. And yet in the play it seems
Speaker 1: like he wants to die, that he's trying to die,
Speaker 1: but he's condemned not to die something.
Speaker 2: Look, I think there's something else to bring up here.
Speaker 2: You touched on it earlier, but this seems like a
Speaker 2: good inflection point before we move on to the more
Speaker 2: recent incarnation of the story. And if you think about
Speaker 2: the message of this, David Bowie did a lot of
Speaker 2: things in his career. He was around for a long time,
Speaker 2: a ton of accomplishments. As I mentioned, he has ziggy
Speaker 2: starred us. He retired that after a couple of years.
Speaker 2: But he created other personas throughout his whole life. And
Speaker 2: yet when he was dying, what character did he choose
Speaker 2: to go out as right? The Newton character? And so,
Speaker 2: as you mentioned earlier, I wonder if it had anything
Speaker 2: to do with him being an experiencer himself.
Speaker 1: What do you think I'm going to let you tell
Speaker 1: that story of his experiencing because I don't feel I
Speaker 1: have all the facts there. But I do know that
Speaker 1: he saw many a UFO in his day. Yes, but
Speaker 1: at a time in his life. If I'm not mistaken
Speaker 1: before he was actually David Bowie Rock got correct.
Speaker 2: So this will go quick, but I think it's really
Speaker 2: important and it's a nice wrap up on Bowie. As
Speaker 2: Newton so in nineteen sixty eight, so this is pre
Speaker 2: rock Star Bowie. He gave an interview or he gave
Speaker 2: an interview later about this time where he had seen
Speaker 2: significant UFO activity from an observatory up to seven times
Speaker 2: a night over the course of a year. And here's
Speaker 2: the quote that he gave in the interview, which I
Speaker 2: find fascinating. I used to work for two guys who
Speaker 2: put out a UFO magazine in England about six years ago,
Speaker 2: and I made sightings six seven times a night for
Speaker 2: about a year when I was in the observatory. We
Speaker 2: had regular cruises that came over. We knew the six
Speaker 2: point fifteen was coming in and would meet up with
Speaker 2: another one and they would be stationary for about half
Speaker 2: an hour, and then after verifying what they'd been doing
Speaker 2: that day, they'd shoot off and he that's the end
Speaker 2: of the quote, the fact that this all was just
Speaker 2: so routine for him. Of course, this guy became an
Speaker 2: alien rock star. Of course he identified with Newton. He
Speaker 2: had seen over the course of a year. Not a
Speaker 2: lot of us are not even going to see one
Speaker 2: UFO in our lifetime, and he was watching them seemingly
Speaker 2: every night that he went to work. It's fascinating.
Speaker 1: So Bowie was definitely, I guess he was aware of
Speaker 1: the situation, was a air of the phenomenon. He took
Speaker 1: it as part of his life. And again, as you
Speaker 1: are correct, at the end of his life, he's calling
Speaker 1: back to the man who fell to Earth, which I
Speaker 1: think gives it a heaviness and a meaning that it
Speaker 1: already had, but it amplifies it in a wonderful way.
Speaker 1: And as you said, it's the last time it's Bowie's
Speaker 1: let Well, actually that isn't even Bowie's performance as Newton.
Speaker 1: Bowie's performances Newton happens in the movie period.
Speaker 2: Then this other guy, Lewis.
Speaker 1: Gets to play him in the forgettable TV pilot. Then
Speaker 1: Michael C. Hall gets to play him on Broadway. Okay,
Speaker 1: But now we're moving into the most recent part of
Speaker 1: this thing, which is in twenty twenty two, Showtime did
Speaker 1: a ten part series The Man Who Fell to Earth,
Speaker 1: and I remember watching it originally and thinking, oh, this
Speaker 1: will be an interesting remake. They'll have taken that flawed
Speaker 1: but brilliant film and stretched it into ten episodes, and
Speaker 1: how interesting that'll be. But that's not what they did.
Speaker 1: It's forty five years later, and the person who is
Speaker 1: actually the film is about the Man Who Fell to
Speaker 1: Earth in the ten part Showtime series and I'm boy,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to back me up on this. It's
Speaker 1: chuettl Ajiah.
Speaker 2: For is that I'm more confident on the last name
Speaker 2: than the first name.
Speaker 1: Okay, I hope that's right. And if I butchered his name,
Speaker 1: my apologies because he does a very nice job. But
Speaker 1: he is not playing the David Bowie character. He's playing
Speaker 1: a character named Faraday, an alien that has literally followed
Speaker 1: up Bowie's mission. The Newton mission that Bowie did in
Speaker 1: the film has been lost. Obviously, he didn't get his
Speaker 1: ship off, he didn't steal a bunch of water. He
Speaker 1: didn't get back to his planet in time to save
Speaker 1: his wife and two kids. That didn't happen. And now
Speaker 1: it's forty five years later and the Earth is in
Speaker 1: great trouble, and of course his planet is obviously in
Speaker 1: great trouble. And this is the part that I thought
Speaker 1: was really wonderful because I'm a big Bill kni fan,
Speaker 1: and I first tipped to Bill Nye as this incredible
Speaker 1: actor in Love actually the Christmas movie. He's the drunken
Speaker 1: rock star who sings Christmas Is All Around You, and
Speaker 1: he's just so freaking funny in this role, and he's
Speaker 1: so wonderful, So I know I loved him for all
Speaker 1: these roles, but this is a serious role. He is
Speaker 1: playing the Bowie role that it's forty five years later,
Speaker 1: and he has aged a little bit, because Bill Nye
Speaker 1: has aged a little bit, and he's great because he's
Speaker 1: been on the run. Remember at the end of the film,
Speaker 1: he takes off, and I guess he's been on the
Speaker 1: run from the CIA for a long time. And the premise,
Speaker 1: of course, is that the mission has failed. His planet,
Speaker 1: which we haven't mentioned, is called Anthea. So Anthea is
Speaker 1: still dying, and this other alien gets sent who becomes Faraday,
Speaker 1: which is the igia for character. Now, what's interesting is
Speaker 1: that they introduced some stuff that must be in the
Speaker 1: book but was not really touched upon at all in
Speaker 1: the film, which is back on Anthea. There are drones
Speaker 1: and adepts, two classes. It's class warfare there. The Adepts
Speaker 1: make all the decision and the drones do all the work.
Speaker 2: Whiches.
Speaker 1: You could argue, we're getting with that ourselves right now.
Speaker 1: And so what the Faraday character is a drone and
Speaker 1: he was a drone that worked for Newton, Yes, and
Speaker 1: so he comes to town. It's a complicated plot, and
Speaker 1: I don't know how much of it we need to
Speaker 1: get into, but I just want to say a couple
Speaker 1: of things about the quality of it. The writing is
Speaker 1: very strong, the performances are very strong. I do think
Speaker 1: people could benefit and have a great time watching the
Speaker 1: film with Bowie. But I'd also say don't write off
Speaker 1: the ideas watching this ten part series because it's strong.
Speaker 1: Alex Kurtzman is one of the executive producers. He does
Speaker 1: a great job, and they try to make sense of
Speaker 1: the whole thing. It's so many of these things. Brent
Speaker 1: Is it perfect. Not to everybody. It ain't perfect. How
Speaker 1: many things are the Godfather's close to perfect. But I
Speaker 1: don't know about it anything else. But it was important
Speaker 1: and it captivated me, and I enjoyed it. And I
Speaker 1: don't know how whether you've seen all of it or
Speaker 1: some of it, I'm curious what your thoughts are.
Speaker 2: I watched some of it and then I read about it.
Speaker 2: My big takeaways were, let me get the things that
Speaker 2: bothered me out of the way first. But this idea
Speaker 2: that forty five years has passed and whatever drought stricken
Speaker 2: problems Anthea had couldn't have gotten any better because David
Speaker 2: Bowie or Thomas Newton failed. Right now, the character is coming.
Speaker 2: Why did they wait forty five years? And then I thought, oh,
Speaker 2: maybe time is different on Anthea, right because it raises
Speaker 2: some practical issues. But I also found it interesting that
Speaker 2: when he comes down to Earth again that the story
Speaker 2: doesn't focus as much on all of the let's say,
Speaker 2: all the distractions for his mission. He comes down not
Speaker 2: trying to pull things over on humans so much. He
Speaker 2: just comes down and gets about his work. I found
Speaker 2: as big a Bowie fan as I was. I found
Speaker 2: a Geophoor's performance captivating. He brought humanity to the part
Speaker 2: of Faraday that I could relate to. I felt much
Speaker 2: more engaged with his problem than I did with Newton's.
Speaker 2: With Newton's I was going to detach, but I felt
Speaker 2: sad for him. It felt tragic.
Speaker 1: G four actually becomes, if you think about it, the
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs of his time, which is fascinating because it's
Speaker 1: a reverberation off the film version of The Man Who
Speaker 1: Felt Earth. Because Bowie becomes Elon Musk. That's right, true,
Speaker 1: Bowie or Bezos. Because Bowie's company is going to send
Speaker 1: this craft off and they're not hiding it. It's a
Speaker 1: public thing, it's a big deal. And he gets kidnapped
Speaker 1: by the government right at the time when he's going
Speaker 1: to be the sole occupant of this craft going. And
Speaker 1: by the way, it was never explained there again how
Speaker 1: that craft was full of water or whether he's playing
Speaker 1: to steal the water after it. They never got a
Speaker 1: chance to do it. But the point is they're trying
Speaker 1: to reverb off and they did successfully off some of
Speaker 1: the things.
Speaker 2: The writers made a very interesting choice and that I
Speaker 2: don't remember when, but there's like a flash forward early
Speaker 2: on that shows he succeeds. He's giving a speech about
Speaker 2: this revolutionary technology that he's created, and then we kind
Speaker 2: of go back and rewind and tell the whole story.
Speaker 2: And I thought, wow, that's interesting because it's such a
Speaker 2: stakes and complicated mission. I was surprised that they told us, oh,
Speaker 2: here's where it's going, right right up front. So it
Speaker 2: took away a lot of the mystery, I think is
Speaker 2: what I really remember enjoying about the original film, and
Speaker 2: so it stripped all that away and it made it
Speaker 2: a little bit more conventional storytelling. I think the last
Speaker 2: point I want to make about this, which again I
Speaker 2: just find this ironic, is in nineteen seventy six, I
Speaker 2: think the character of Thomas Dwton as it was portrayed
Speaker 2: by David Bowie felt very authentic to the cultural zeitgeist
Speaker 2: and how people might relate to aliens. Right. They were
Speaker 2: probably seen by the higher ups and the government as
Speaker 2: a threat. We need to abduct them, or we need
Speaker 2: to capture them and experiment on them. But humans were
Speaker 2: probably not. They were they didn't believe it was possible.
Speaker 2: Why because they hadn't been saturated with too many movies
Speaker 2: about an alien who comes to Earth. I think in
Speaker 2: those forty five intervening years, the audience has had movies
Speaker 2: like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien Nation, The
Speaker 2: X Files, Dark Skies, Men and Black. The list goes on.
Speaker 2: So if you're trying to tell a modern day story
Speaker 2: about the man who fell to Earth, he's falling to
Speaker 2: a very different Earth, an Earth that has been conditioned
Speaker 2: to accept that there could be aliens. A lot of
Speaker 2: people in the world right now believe that, and a
Speaker 2: lot of people believe they walk amongst us, and as
Speaker 2: you said, they're kind of hiding in plain sight, building
Speaker 2: spacecraft sending them up. All of these things are completely
Speaker 2: acceptable today, and in nineteen seventy six, all of that
Speaker 2: would have been felt like science fiction, and that movie,
Speaker 2: in a weird way, did not. The original movie did
Speaker 2: not feel like science fiction.
Speaker 1: Very good point, and it is interesting because the people
Speaker 1: that are after Newton in the film are kind of
Speaker 1: cardboard in their own way. They're kind of ineffective, and honestly,
Speaker 1: there are parallels to Disclosure Day Spielberg's things in this
Speaker 1: ten part metelling, because there is a race on and
Speaker 1: their plan is to tell the whole world about something
Speaker 1: and the people that are trying to stop them are
Speaker 1: private contractors largely and government, but it's a much more
Speaker 1: credible threat. And I just want to tip my hat
Speaker 1: to an unexpected actress. Kate mulgrew plays this character, Drew Finch,
Speaker 1: who's in charge of stopping this, and she's very credible.
Speaker 1: She's tough as nails. I've rarely seen anybody portrayed that
Speaker 1: aggressively competent in maintaining the secret. I thought that was
Speaker 1: really good. I also want to just throw this out there.
Speaker 1: Bill Nye is every time he's on screen, he's magic
Speaker 1: because not only is he magic, but the fact that
Speaker 1: he's Thomas Newton is so incredible to sort of because
Speaker 1: he does embody the spirit of Bowie and his performances,
Speaker 1: and in that final episode, the tenth episode, his performance
Speaker 1: is just beyond great. He's angry and he's pissed. The
Speaker 1: Bowie version at the end of his film is resigned. Yes,
Speaker 1: the Bill Nye version at the end of this thing
Speaker 1: is just pissed. He has lost his family, he's lost everything,
Speaker 1: and these people are doing it again and he ain't happy,
Speaker 1: and he just spits the venom out and it's great.
Speaker 1: I just thought, hey, listen, So we could probably talk
Speaker 1: films and all that for a long time. But the
Speaker 1: premise we were kind of going forward was to say, look,
Speaker 1: here's this idea that begins in sixty three and it
Speaker 1: becomes a book, a film, a pilot, a stage play,
Speaker 1: and a series that's really a sequel, and this character
Speaker 1: has had this extended life. What does it mean with
Speaker 1: War of the Worlds. Really could say that War of
Speaker 1: the World's really was this malleable thing that you just
Speaker 1: basically it's like an alien invasion and they're invading. For
Speaker 1: every invasion in More of the Worlds whenever it's been
Speaker 1: made tells you about the times we live in. Do
Speaker 1: you think that's the same with the Thomas Newton character.
Speaker 2: I think War of the Worlds goes back to something
Speaker 2: more primal, that we are not the apex predators on
Speaker 2: this planet. If aliens invade, they will be in charge,
Speaker 2: they will take over, and again that goes back to
Speaker 2: the fear fantasy. And I think with the Thomas Newton story,
Speaker 2: the stranded on Earth alien, I feel like the underlying
Speaker 2: premise there that makes it so compelling is they walk
Speaker 2: among us, and it goes back to something. John Harrington
Speaker 2: said to me he'd seen aliens there here. I still
Speaker 2: don't know exactly what that means, but I think we
Speaker 2: can use our imagination. They're here, Okay, what are they doing?
Speaker 2: Are they my neighbors? Are they the people in charge?
Speaker 2: Are they just here You're on a solo mission trying
Speaker 2: to engineer something to take off the off world, in
Speaker 2: which case they kind of just fit in. They're contributing
Speaker 2: to the economy and hopefully they're paying taxes. But if
Speaker 2: they're here with a more nefarious agenda, and I think
Speaker 2: even the if I remember correctly the most recent version
Speaker 2: of The Man Who Fell to Earth, part of the
Speaker 2: idea was that Newton in the original film had been
Speaker 2: a victim in some ways of Western culture, and that
Speaker 2: the new character of Faraday was going to embrace the
Speaker 2: idea of what if we turn humans into drones? What
Speaker 2: if we actually bring the adepts down and they will
Speaker 2: be in charge, and we'll make the humans our drones,
Speaker 2: and so we can all be adepts. And so that's
Speaker 2: a little more subversive, But I think it's interesting to
Speaker 2: see that's the evolution of the story. It went from
Speaker 2: an innocent a stranger in a strange land, being torn
Speaker 2: up and turned around and disillusioned by Western culture, to
Speaker 2: someone that comes down with a plan. They know how
Speaker 2: to get things done, and they have a completely different
Speaker 2: view of mankind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right on. I found myself thinking one thing,
Speaker 1: because we got obsessed for a short period of time
Speaker 1: about War of the World's and let's face it, how
Speaker 1: does that end. Obviously, technologically, superior marauding invaders are defeated
Speaker 1: by what Amiba's disease that gets inside them, human disease
Speaker 1: that we can slough off as a cold would kill them.
Speaker 1: And I thought, what's the parallel for this particular sequence
Speaker 1: with the man who fell to Earth? And I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting if an advanced alien came here alone. Okay,
Speaker 1: War of the World's is the invasion, but if one
Speaker 1: of them came alone. And by the way, David Grush
Speaker 1: has certainly said there's bodies and biologics, and there's been
Speaker 1: ample whistleblowers who imply that there's more one. But let's
Speaker 1: say that this one happened. Somebody comes alone, and he
Speaker 1: tries to operate within capitalism and corporate power and the
Speaker 1: interest of the intelligence agencies and also addiction to drugs
Speaker 1: or alcohol, and media saturation. If an individual alien came
Speaker 1: and had to do that, would it be cute like
Speaker 1: et seeing something on TV that's funny, or would it
Speaker 1: not be cute. What happens in this version of events
Speaker 1: all through all of them is I guess the only
Speaker 1: way I would say it's grimly plausible. Okay, you could
Speaker 1: see that this alien isn't defeated by guns, ray guns
Speaker 1: or regular guns or anything. That's not what defeats him.
Speaker 1: He's defeated by Earth the way that Earth culture riblization
Speaker 1: takes him down. And that's metaphorically very rich. And that's
Speaker 1: one of the explanations for why is a drama. It's successful.
Speaker 1: But I think it's also probably true. The thing is,
Speaker 1: if you come in groups, you can survive potentially, but
Speaker 1: if you come as one, you don't have the upper hand.
Speaker 1: It may be that you have superior technology and all
Speaker 1: this stuff, which is certainly possible, But if you're just one,
Speaker 1: one individual creature from another planet, you got to walk
Speaker 1: among us.
Speaker 2: Yes, And the.
Speaker 1: Lesson of all of these versions is walking among humans
Speaker 1: is no picnic.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, I feel like a lot
Speaker 2: of us wake up every day and feel like Thomas Newton.
Speaker 2: Even though we're humans, we feel like aliens in our
Speaker 2: own world.
Speaker 1: But listen, the takeaway for me that I love most
Speaker 1: is what you just said a few minutes ago, because
Speaker 1: it's very sound, light and frequency, which is forty five
Speaker 1: years have gone on. But what's the difference in the world,
Speaker 1: And the difference is the world the very thing we
Speaker 1: talk about on sound, light and frequency. There's been this
Speaker 1: possible slow drip disclosure that makes use of the media
Speaker 1: right going back to the Robertson panel of fifty three,
Speaker 1: but certainly picking up steam through our own experience in
Speaker 1: the late nineties into some of the things we're learning now. Clearly,
Speaker 1: people in the time where the Bowie movie was made,
Speaker 1: we loved a good alien invasion, but we didn't believe
Speaker 1: they were here. Now now we believe they could be
Speaker 1: here now. Yeah, and that's the difference, and that's why
Speaker 1: these films and TV series and plays and books all matter. Anyway,
Speaker 1: well done, I endorse what you just said. That was great,
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 2: I think that brings us to the end of the
Speaker 2: road here. It's been fun to go back and relive
Speaker 2: one of my bad dates probably my worst date in
Speaker 2: high school. I feel like now I can put that
Speaker 2: behind me and all that trauma is gone. Let's move on.
Speaker 1: So we got some great stuff coming up in the
Speaker 1: rest of the season here and very excited about all
Speaker 1: of that. So folks keep on watching and watch the
Speaker 1: Skies too, See you later. Sound Light and Frequency is
Speaker 1: an iHeart podcast produced by Stellar Productions. It's executive produced
Speaker 1: by Nick Johnson and for Stellar Jackie's Abel. Our show's
Speaker 1: music was written by Anna Stumpf and Hamilton Lighthouser, and
Speaker 1: your hosts and executive producers are Bryce Abel, That's Me
Speaker 1: and Brent Friedman. Watch the Skies t