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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Bryce's Able. Thirty years ago, Brent Friedman and

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Speaker 1: I were living the dream. We were shooting a big

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Speaker 1: budget NBC pilot about a nineteen sixties alien invasion. And

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Speaker 1: then one day, while I was on the set, I

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Speaker 1: got a call from a studio executive who had a

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Speaker 1: demand that made no sense. He said, our show's majestic

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Speaker 1: field agents, who were called in our script men in Black,

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Speaker 1: could no longer wear black suits because he said, the

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Speaker 1: studio's feature division was gearing up to produce a new

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Speaker 1: movie comedy called men in Black with a famous producer

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Speaker 1: and a hot director. So I pushed back. I was

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Speaker 1: telling him that the men in black had been a

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Speaker 1: part of UFO lore for decades, going back to even

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Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, and I'd already used the term in

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Speaker 1: script and on screen before in three separate TV series,

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Speaker 1: including one two hour movie. The response I got, though,

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Speaker 1: was not a debate. It was a threat. And this

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Speaker 1: is what he said, and it's a quote, get your

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Speaker 1: actors out of their black suits today, or we will

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Speaker 1: shut down your production and burn the negative. Now, what

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Speaker 1: follows in this episode is a chronological document based account

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Speaker 1: of how that one phone call mushroomed into a full

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Speaker 1: blown corporate meltdown, complete with many non negotiable demands that

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Speaker 1: went far beyond wardrobe and into the creative heart and

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Speaker 1: the very existence of our series in the days to come.

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Speaker 1: We were told that scenes must be cut, entire concepts

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Speaker 1: would be abandoned, key relationships changed, and even dialogue deleted.

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Speaker 1: In the hour ahead, Brent and I will explain why

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Speaker 1: we stayed quiet for three decades, how close we came

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Speaker 1: to losing the show and possibly our own careers, and

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Speaker 1: how we ended up forced into a costly compromise, including

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Speaker 1: an extraordinary eleven day reshoot of our already approved two

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Speaker 1: hour network pilot. It still gives us chills to think

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Speaker 1: about what happened that day back then. But today we're

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Speaker 1: going to tell the story anyway.

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Speaker 2: Don't go away.

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Speaker 3: I'm Brent Friedman. Have you ever wondered if there's a

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Speaker 3: secret connection between Hollywood and UFOs?

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Speaker 1: I'm Brice Abel and you're listening to sound, light and frequency.

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Speaker 3: For thirty years now, we have not talked publicly about

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Speaker 3: the story. You're going to hear in this episode, and

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Speaker 3: when you hear the details, you'll understand why.

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Speaker 4: But what we told.

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Speaker 1: Ourselves when we agreed to do this podcast that you're

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Speaker 1: listening to, is that we would finally and forever tell

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Speaker 1: the entire story of what happened, the good, the bad,

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Speaker 1: the anomalous.

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Speaker 4: So here we go.

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Speaker 1: It's a tough episode to do, Brent. I've been dreading

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Speaker 1: even showing up for this.

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Speaker 3: One, I know, and it's been a long time that

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Speaker 3: we've been sitting on this. I know we've probably told

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Speaker 3: the story to our inner circle family and friends, but

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Speaker 3: now that we're actually going public with it, there's part

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Speaker 3: of me that still feels, why are we poking the bear.

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Speaker 3: I'm sure people are going who's the bear? You'll find

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Speaker 3: out there's actually a couple bears in this story.

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Speaker 1: You'll have to guess about the bear. Listen, this is

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Speaker 1: our point of view. I think that's the thing that's

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Speaker 1: most important to make clear. It's our point of view.

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Speaker 1: It's what people told us, it's what happened to us,

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Speaker 1: it's what we experienced. Okay, if we speculate, we'll tell

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Speaker 1: you we're speculating. But mostly we have the receipts. We

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Speaker 1: actually have memos that were written contemporaneously. We have conversations

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Speaker 1: that multiple people were witnessed to those kind of things.

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Speaker 1: You get a couple of things out of the way

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Speaker 1: right up top. It's no secret that our show Dark

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Speaker 1: Skys was produced by Columbia Television, which at the time

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Speaker 1: was a subsidiary of Sony, and that will become important

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Speaker 1: as we go on. Our intent is to tell the

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Speaker 1: story as we manage to live it. The thing I

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Speaker 1: most want to make clear to people right now is

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Speaker 1: we ain't looking for a fight. This is thirty years

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Speaker 1: on three decades, thirty years this year. We're storytellers. This

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Speaker 1: is a true story, and since we made these contemporaneous notes,

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Speaker 1: we feel confident in telling the story about what happened.

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Speaker 1: And I guess we just have to get on with it.

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Speaker 3: And as you mentioned, Dark Skies was set up at

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Speaker 3: Columbia Pictures Television, which also has another division under Sony

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Speaker 3: called TriStar, And at TriStar there was a movie in

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Speaker 3: production while we were in production, and it was called

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Speaker 3: Men in Black.

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Speaker 1: We're going to try to tell this story chronologically because

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Speaker 1: it's kind of complex and complicated and all that. We

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Speaker 1: want to make it clean and simple, so as we

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Speaker 1: get to it, the best scene setter would be to

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Speaker 1: just state for people that haven't been watching or listening

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Speaker 1: to the podcast all along. Dark Skies was an NBC

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Speaker 1: television series. We were in production on it in November

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Speaker 1: and December of nineteen ninety five in Washington, d C.

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Speaker 1: And then in Los Angeles, and that's where I got

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Speaker 1: the phone call that we talked about earlier. So just

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Speaker 1: to be clear, at that point where all this starts,

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Speaker 1: it's just a pilot. There's no backup scripts, there's no

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Speaker 1: network order. We just got our fingers crossed. We're just like, hey,

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Speaker 1: let's hope this works out. Our pilot's dailies and the

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Speaker 1: evolving rough assembly of our film were happening in a

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Speaker 1: Sony editing room, and apparently there were multiple editing suites,

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Speaker 1: and that's where the story begins.

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Speaker 4: In a way.

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Speaker 3: We can go on record as saying that two names

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Speaker 3: we need to name were the director of Men in

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Speaker 3: black Berry, Sonenfeld, and one of the producers, Steven Spielberg.

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Speaker 3: It was an ambulance production, and I think the inciting incident,

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Speaker 3: which we've used that term before, of all of this

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Speaker 3: was that well, Dark Skies was in post production in editing.

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Speaker 3: As Bryce said on the Sony lot next to that

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Speaker 3: post production facility. Men in Black was in post production,

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Speaker 3: and it just so happened that one day Barry Sonenfeld

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Speaker 3: heard some of our editors talking about the show. He

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Speaker 3: thought it sounded interesting. He asked more about it, and

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Speaker 3: when he heard what the storyline was, he immediately demanded.

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Speaker 4: To see footage.

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Speaker 3: Being a big director, he was shown footage and that

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Speaker 3: set everything in motion.

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Speaker 1: And that's what we were told by the Columbia executives.

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Speaker 1: We weren't in the editing room ourselves. I've never talked

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Speaker 1: to Barry Son Andfeld about this, or Steven Spielberg, and

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Speaker 1: I've not talked to about this. This is what we

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Speaker 1: were being told on our end. That phone call still

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Speaker 1: chills me. As I said earlier, the executive said, and

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Speaker 1: I think it bears repeating because it really goes to

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Speaker 1: our state of mind bred at that time where he said,

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Speaker 1: I remember I was arguing Men in Black nineteen fifty

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Speaker 1: six and Gray Barker and all this stuff, and he said,

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Speaker 1: let me put this in words you can understand, which

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Speaker 1: I thought was a pretty funny run up to it.

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Speaker 1: But then he said, get your actors out of their

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Speaker 1: black suits today or we will shut down your production

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Speaker 1: and burn the negative, which that's as close to being

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Speaker 1: erased as you can. That's like nineteen eighty four. It's hey,

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Speaker 1: this never happened. Had they done that, dark skies wouldn't

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Speaker 1: have ever existed, would have just been nothing. So we

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Speaker 1: did make some early adjustments while we were in production

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Speaker 1: on the pilot to the black suits. We weren't using

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Speaker 1: black suits anymore. We put our people into a multiple

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Speaker 1: of suits green, blue, brown, and gray and whenever possible,

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Speaker 1: not too dark a gray though, but whenever possible. We

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Speaker 1: also put them in military use uniforms. That was something

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Speaker 1: that we made an initial adjustment. And given that this

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Speaker 1: was during the pilot, we thought, or we hoped, that

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Speaker 1: was the end of it, that, Okay, they had a

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Speaker 1: problem with just our black suits, maybe we can do that.

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Speaker 3: They had a problem with the visuals, but they also

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Speaker 3: had a problem with the fact that in our pilot,

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Speaker 3: based on historical references, we called our men in black.

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Speaker 3: We said those words in the pilot, and we had

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Speaker 3: to change those words. And I remember going through an

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Speaker 3: intense asking everyone on the writing staff, what are some

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Speaker 3: other names we could come up with for men in black?

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Speaker 3: And ultimately, after a long set of lists. We ended

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Speaker 3: up settling on cloakers.

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Speaker 1: We did that in February, So just imagine the timeframe

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Speaker 1: this is all going down, being shot in November December.

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Speaker 1: By February, we had moved to our new offices out

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Speaker 1: in North Hollywood, all right, and we were out there.

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Speaker 1: We had received an order from NBC for six backup scripts,

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Speaker 1: and we hadn't actually turned into The Dark Sky's pilot yet,

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Speaker 1: but we were told at that time, under no circumstances

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Speaker 1: could our guys be in black suits, nor could they

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Speaker 1: be referred to as men in black, all right, that

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Speaker 1: was the clear thing. So that's why we did call

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Speaker 1: them cloakers, and so literally we had to do fine

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Speaker 1: replace on all the work that had ever been done.

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Speaker 1: Every time there was a men in Black, it became

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Speaker 1: a cloaker. Now what's ironic about this, I think, is

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Speaker 1: that the Men in Black feature film, at least they

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Speaker 1: say it was based on Lowell Cunningham's comic book. I

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Speaker 1: believe it was a Marvel comic book, and that comic book,

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Speaker 1: by the way, says quote based on the Men in

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Speaker 1: Black conspiracy theory. I don't know what people are arguing

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Speaker 1: about if anybody's got a beef about this, it would

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Speaker 1: probably be the guys from the fifties that first coined

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Speaker 1: the phrase men in Black. So then a couple of

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Speaker 1: interesting things happened during all this.

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Speaker 3: While this is happening and we're making these concessions, I

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Speaker 3: had a meeting on a film project at TriStar. I

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Speaker 3: will not name the executive, but I had that meeting

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Speaker 3: because he was such a fan of the Dark Sky script.

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Speaker 3: He wanted to meet me and talk about other projects.

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Speaker 3: Now again, this is an executive at TriStar where Men

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Speaker 3: in Black is being made into a movie. He's read

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Speaker 3: our pilot and has no problem whatsoever. In fact, he

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Speaker 3: loved the script.

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Speaker 1: I had the same situation happen at approximately that time.

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Speaker 1: At that time, while Brent was having that TriStar meeting,

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Speaker 1: I got hired by Amblein, of all people, to write

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Speaker 1: a video game called Ghost in the Machine, is about

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Speaker 1: a piece of alien technology that changed the world. And

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Speaker 1: in April of that year, I had a meeting with

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Speaker 1: Steven Spielberg. All right, they sat me in his office

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Speaker 1: waiting for the meeting about Ghost in the Machine to happen,

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Speaker 1: and then he came in and I think I've even

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Speaker 1: said this on one of our previous episodes. He shook

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Speaker 1: my hands. He seemed like a really nice guy and

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Speaker 1: he said great to see you again, and I'd never

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Speaker 1: met him, but I thought that's pleasant, that's pleasing. And

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Speaker 1: then he slapped me on the back and goes big

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Speaker 1: fan of dark skies, and I was like, you could

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Speaker 1: talk about it, or you could just say thank you.

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Speaker 4: I went with the second option.

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Speaker 1: I said thank you, and it was a fine meeting

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Speaker 1: and the dark guys didn't come up again. So actually,

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Speaker 1: around that time, I think probably both you and I

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Speaker 1: were thinking, Okay, this was just about the suits. Just

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Speaker 1: the color of the suits, that's the problem.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I think about this time I honestly felt like, wow,

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Speaker 3: we had dodged a bullet. And looking back on it now,

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Speaker 3: I think, why was any of this happening? Because I

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Speaker 3: think the producers of Men in Black had unique leverage.

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Speaker 3: Their movie was being made at Sony and our TV

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Speaker 3: show was being made at Sony, and they didn't want

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Speaker 3: any competition for the idea of Men in Black being

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Speaker 3: out there in film or television, and so they used

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Speaker 3: their leverage, which makes perfect sense, and we had to

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Speaker 3: We had no choice. We capitulated, we changed the color

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Speaker 3: of the suits and the name men in Black, and

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Speaker 3: we were going on with our line thinking everything was fine.

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Speaker 1: I wasn't happy about it, to be quite candid, No, because,

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Speaker 1: like I said, and I'll be specific, by the time

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Speaker 1: we were being challenged about daring to have men in

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Speaker 1: black in our scripts, I had done the official Denial

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Speaker 1: movie for the Sci Fi Channel and it literally in

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Speaker 1: the script talked about men in black and there were

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Speaker 1: guys in dark suits in it. Then I went and

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Speaker 1: was working for Lois and Clark over at ABC on

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Speaker 1: the Warner Brothers lot, and I did a couple of

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Speaker 1: episodes for with Superman in it where the men in

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Speaker 1: black were after it and they're called in the script

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Speaker 1: men in Black. Nobody had any problem at Sci Fi Channel,

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Speaker 1: nobody had any problem at Warner Brothers. And then the

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Speaker 1: show that I was working on when you and I

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Speaker 1: first met was Mantis, and we did a story about

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Speaker 1: men in black.

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Speaker 4: So that's just my experience.

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Speaker 1: That's a free television series and a movie with men

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Speaker 1: and black in them. So I was a little myf

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Speaker 1: that we were being told this on this very important

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Speaker 1: creative vision of ours. Just to put things in perspective.

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Speaker 1: About a month before I had that meeting at Amblin

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Speaker 1: with Steven Spielberg and the gang on the video game,

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Speaker 1: our completed pilot had been turned into NBC, and so

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Speaker 1: we were working on these six backup scripts. But now

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Speaker 1: they saw our film and we were told that even

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Speaker 1: if it didn't go to series, they were going to

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Speaker 1: air the thing the next August. So that was all

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Speaker 1: good news. But at the same time that was happening,

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Speaker 1: we were also told that Columbia was bidding out the

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Speaker 1: colorization of all the black suits still existed in the pilots.

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Speaker 1: So in other words, we had gone to blue, black, gray, brown,

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Speaker 1: and military uniforms, but there were still some black suits

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Speaker 1: from some of the previously shot scenes, and they were

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Speaker 1: going to pay to I think it's rotoscope.

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Speaker 4: Is that what you do to it?

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Speaker 3: It was rotoscope, yes, and you're right. That was when

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Speaker 3: I remember the next bump in the road was a

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Speaker 3: lot of discussion about who's going to pay for this.

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Speaker 3: Is this going to go against the negative cost of

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Speaker 3: the show? Is this going to be absorbed by the

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Speaker 3: film studio. Again, It's weird because it was all in

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Speaker 3: the same family, but I think there was just some

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Speaker 3: debates internally about Okay, who's paying for this colorization?

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Speaker 1: I knew, and I weren't making those arguments. People were

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Speaker 1: making those arguments around us. There was a production meeting

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Speaker 1: at the Sony Columbia lot where this was brought up

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Speaker 1: and hotly debated, because even the TV people were at

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Speaker 1: this point on our side about it. They were saying

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Speaker 1: to the studio, to the feature people, look, you're the

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Speaker 1: guys that want this change. We'd be happy to put

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Speaker 1: this thing on the way it is. The network loves

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Speaker 1: it the way it is, so why should we pay

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Speaker 1: a million dollars to fix these suits? So they were

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Speaker 1: not happy. And yet, as history will note, the feature

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Speaker 1: people did not pay for our colorization. We had that

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Speaker 1: come out of our budget. But just now to pick

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Speaker 1: up the narrative thrust of this thing, we were on

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Speaker 1: a fast train to getting a network show. We'd already

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Speaker 1: turned in the pilot. Everybody liked the script. They shot it,

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Speaker 1: they were respectful of it. Toby Hooper did a hell

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Speaker 1: of a job directing it. We cut it together, and

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Speaker 1: I do remember we had so much of it. We

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Speaker 1: had to cut forty seven minutes out of our original

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Speaker 1: cut to get to the network until that's another episode

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Speaker 1: for us some other time, but we get it into

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Speaker 1: the network. Because back in those days, it was very

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Speaker 1: important for the networks to announce their fall schedules in May.

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Speaker 1: They did that at the New York upfronts okay, and

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Speaker 1: so I remember these days. It was May ninth of

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Speaker 1: that year that NBC called and said, we're putting you

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Speaker 1: on the fall schedule, and I think you and I

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Speaker 1: were like, hey, not only did we dodge a bullet,

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Speaker 1: but this is so fantastic. And they also said they

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Speaker 1: were increasing our order to eleven episodes rather than six,

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Speaker 1: which they were first talking about. So now suddenly we've

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Speaker 1: got our two hour pilot, eleven episodes were going to shoot,

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Speaker 1: We're on the fall schedule, and they're going to make

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Speaker 1: us the lead show on their Saturday night trilogy of

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Speaker 1: three shows. So we are leading the charge. We're an

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Speaker 1: important thing. And I remember personally that I was lucky

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Speaker 1: enough to get to go to New York where they

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Speaker 1: did the upfront announcements. Warren Littlefield made the announcement and

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Speaker 1: it was fantastic. So I say all this just to

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Speaker 1: paint one picture here, there's a couple of tracks going

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Speaker 1: on right now, and they're going on at the same time,

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Speaker 1: but you and I are only really aware deeply about

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Speaker 1: one of them. Track one is we're on a track

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Speaker 1: for big success. We're going to have a network show

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Speaker 1: that they're going to promote the holy crap out of

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Speaker 1: and did as We've talked about, buses with our Dark

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Speaker 1: Sky's posters on them all over La, that kind of thing.

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Speaker 1: So that's the track we thought is going on. Everything's

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Speaker 1: going well, everything's been resolved, it's all fantastic. But the

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Speaker 1: second track that we were not being privileged to was

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Speaker 1: that Sony Columbia must have been This is a supposition

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Speaker 1: when I said we would speculate. The speculation is they

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Speaker 1: were conflicted because they were continuing to get heat from

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Speaker 1: Amblin about this thing, and they don't tell us much

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Speaker 1: about that, but it would certainly come to four very

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Speaker 1: soon where we would learn about that.

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Speaker 3: The irony here is that our great achievement of being

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Speaker 3: picked up and put on the air, I think is

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Speaker 3: what set off the second act complication of our story,

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Speaker 3: which was if Amblin and the producers of Men in

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Speaker 3: Black were hedging their bets and saying, you know what,

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Speaker 3: we don't know what's going to happen with this TV series,

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Speaker 3: changed the suits and the name. Once we got on

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Speaker 3: the air and we had multiple episodes being ordered and

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Speaker 3: we were the star of Saturday Night. I think that

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Speaker 3: put panic in them against purely speculation, except that the

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Speaker 3: results speak for themselves, because that's when the hammer came down.

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Speaker 1: One final thought before we get into the Hammer coming

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Speaker 1: down section of this show, because it is so strange.

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Speaker 1: In the middle of this, I'm already doing this video

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Speaker 1: game for Amblin. I get a phone call from the

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Speaker 1: feature division at Amblin, my agent does, saying they want

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Speaker 1: me to come in for a meeting about something called

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Speaker 1: the Alien Organism Project. And I said to my agent

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Speaker 1: at the time, are they aware of how much trouble

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Speaker 1: they're causing Columbia TV and Sony over our show Dark Skies?

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Speaker 1: And he goes, I don't know if those guys are

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Speaker 1: You want me to tell him? I said, no, no, no,

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Speaker 1: I don't want you to tell them anything about that.

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Speaker 1: He said, but should I take the meeting? And he goes,

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Speaker 1: if you're suffering any harm anyway right now, you want

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Speaker 1: to suffer it? Twice go take the meeting. So I

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Speaker 1: took the meeting, and in fact I did have two

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Speaker 1: meetings on something called the Alien Organism Project at Amblin

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Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six. Is all this stuff is going on,

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Speaker 1: and the last of those meetings was June sixth.

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Speaker 4: When it went away.

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Speaker 1: Now I only bring that data up because what Brent

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Speaker 1: and I want to do for you folks right now

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Speaker 1: who are listening or watching, is it kind of gets

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Speaker 1: intense in July of nineteen ninety six. It's the week

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Speaker 1: from hell for me and you, Brent. It'd be wrong

356
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Speaker 1: to say it came out of nowhere, because we certainly

357
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Speaker 1: had heard the rumblings. And when somebody says we potentially

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Speaker 1: are going to burn your negative, these are serious threats.

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Speaker 1: These are serious things that people are saying. But let

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Speaker 1: me just paint the picture of what July first was.

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Speaker 1: July first is a Monday, so start your engines and

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Speaker 1: your clocks here. It's Monday, July first, and what happens

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Speaker 1: on that day. Something people may remember that there was

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Speaker 1: a time in the seventies when Bruce Springsteen was on

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Speaker 1: the cover of Time and Newsweek at the same time,

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Speaker 1: same week, and people have gone that was so unusual.

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Speaker 1: It happened again on July. First Time magazine and Newsweek

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Speaker 1: magazine each had articles about aliens being popular in Hollywood

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Speaker 1: all right. The Time one was called the Aliens Have Landed,

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Speaker 1: and as we've talked about before, I was lucky enough

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Speaker 1: to get quoted in that.

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Speaker 4: One talking about dark skies.

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Speaker 1: The Newsweek one had a cover article called out There,

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Speaker 1: and it was also about all these alien invasion storylines.

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Speaker 1: I guess the point of these two articles, and the

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Speaker 1: reason is an interesting starter's gun for this week is

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Speaker 1: both articles made the point that these showbiz projects share

378
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Speaker 1: common roots in the mythology of the UFO movement, which

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Speaker 1: is a fancy way of even alluding to men in Black,

380
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Speaker 1: which we possibly should at least do a little quick

381
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Speaker 1: sidebar before we get into the rest of July and

382
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Speaker 1: just explain that men in Black have been around for

383
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Speaker 1: a while. The first thing is one of the earliest

384
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Speaker 1: stories people always cite goes back to nineteen forty seven,

385
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Speaker 1: and if that sounds familiar, folks, it's because that is

386
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Speaker 1: the year where there were all these sightings across the

387
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Speaker 1: United States and the world. Kenneth Arnold cited his nine

388
00:20:51,000 --> 00:20:55,040
Speaker 1: Craft flying across Washington State that year, there were things

389
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Speaker 1: going on in Puget Sound, and a guy named Harold

390
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Speaker 1: Dahl said that he saw UFO in nineteen forty seven

391
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Speaker 1: in puge Cent which is right by where you live.

392
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Speaker 3: It's on Maury Island is where that incident happened, and

393
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Speaker 3: it is just north of me.

394
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Speaker 1: And that guy Dahl said he got a visit from

395
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Speaker 1: a man in a black suit who seemed to know

396
00:21:15,160 --> 00:21:18,840
Speaker 1: way too much and warned him to stop talking about

397
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Speaker 1: his sighting. So that kind of was the starting gun

398
00:21:21,640 --> 00:21:23,600
Speaker 1: for it. He didn't call them anything, but he did

399
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Speaker 1: say the guy was in a black suit.

400
00:21:26,520 --> 00:21:28,440
Speaker 3: He was told not to speak of the incident. The

401
00:21:28,520 --> 00:21:32,320
Speaker 3: bad things would happen. And this was all proven to

402
00:21:32,359 --> 00:21:35,160
Speaker 3: be a hoax, or the government called it a hoax.

403
00:21:35,200 --> 00:21:38,080
Speaker 3: I should be clear here, but this notion of the

404
00:21:38,119 --> 00:21:41,560
Speaker 3: man in black was now seated into a book that

405
00:21:41,720 --> 00:21:44,640
Speaker 3: was written a number of years later called They Knew

406
00:21:44,720 --> 00:21:48,720
Speaker 3: Too Much about Flying Saucers by Gray Barker, was written

407
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Speaker 3: in nineteen fifty six, I believe.

408
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Speaker 1: And Gray Barker was writing that though based on something

409
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Speaker 1: that happened just a few years after the Maury Island incident.

410
00:21:58,520 --> 00:22:02,120
Speaker 1: Where a guy named Albert Bender, who was the founder

411
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Speaker 1: of the International Flying Saucer Bureau, says that he was

412
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Speaker 1: visited by three dark clad men and he described them.

413
00:22:09,800 --> 00:22:12,720
Speaker 1: I love this description. He said they were like clergymen

414
00:22:12,800 --> 00:22:16,600
Speaker 1: in Hamburg, hats okay, and they told him to back

415
00:22:16,640 --> 00:22:19,639
Speaker 1: off his UFO research, and he did, according to his

416
00:22:19,680 --> 00:22:22,440
Speaker 1: own telling. And this has been told in different ways.

417
00:22:22,440 --> 00:22:24,880
Speaker 1: Some people say it was government officials. Some people say

418
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Speaker 1: it was stranger than that, extraterrestrials, people that weren't quite human.

419
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Speaker 1: But the point is this guy called them men in black,

420
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Speaker 1: I believe. And it's Gray Barker who really poured gasoline

421
00:22:35,840 --> 00:22:38,359
Speaker 1: on the whole Men in Black concept with that book

422
00:22:38,400 --> 00:22:41,040
Speaker 1: you're talking about from nineteen fifty six. So let's just

423
00:22:41,119 --> 00:22:44,359
Speaker 1: at least clarify this is Men in Black isn't something

424
00:22:44,400 --> 00:22:46,680
Speaker 1: that the guy that created the comic book thought up.

425
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Speaker 1: It's nothing you and I thought of, It's nothing that

426
00:22:49,960 --> 00:22:52,399
Speaker 1: the people who were making the film Men in Black

427
00:22:52,440 --> 00:22:56,200
Speaker 1: thought of. It's just something that was part of UFO mythology.

428
00:22:56,480 --> 00:22:59,400
Speaker 1: There's been entire books written about it. But in nineteen

429
00:22:59,480 --> 00:23:03,119
Speaker 1: fifty six you get that first visual depiction in pop

430
00:23:03,160 --> 00:23:07,560
Speaker 1: culture and it comes from who else, Roger Corman. Roger

431
00:23:07,640 --> 00:23:11,080
Speaker 1: Corman makes a movie called Not of This Earth, and

432
00:23:11,119 --> 00:23:14,679
Speaker 1: that's where he first puts on film the sort of

433
00:23:14,720 --> 00:23:17,720
Speaker 1: the grim uniform, if you want to call it, dark suits,

434
00:23:18,119 --> 00:23:22,439
Speaker 1: skinny black ties, white shirts, dark glasses, and that is

435
00:23:22,480 --> 00:23:26,040
Speaker 1: the look that will become the shorthand costume for the

436
00:23:26,040 --> 00:23:29,600
Speaker 1: whole Men in Black thing, which is actually what we

437
00:23:29,600 --> 00:23:32,680
Speaker 1: were riffing off of in Dark Skies, what I riffed

438
00:23:32,720 --> 00:23:36,400
Speaker 1: off in official denial. Lois and Clark Mantis and later

439
00:23:36,520 --> 00:23:40,040
Speaker 1: the producers of Men in Black the movie were riffing off.

440
00:23:40,200 --> 00:23:44,600
Speaker 3: In these early incarnations of Men in Black back in

441
00:23:44,640 --> 00:23:47,439
Speaker 3: the fifties and even into the sixties and seventies, the

442
00:23:47,480 --> 00:23:50,320
Speaker 3: Men in Black had a purpose. They were dressed, as

443
00:23:50,320 --> 00:23:53,919
Speaker 3: you said, but their purpose was to muzzle any witnesses

444
00:23:54,080 --> 00:23:59,800
Speaker 3: of strange and paranormal phenomenon, not just related to aliens

445
00:24:00,040 --> 00:24:04,440
Speaker 3: and UFOs. So that's also a commonality with the original

446
00:24:04,680 --> 00:24:07,800
Speaker 3: Marvel comic book. In the comic book that the movie

447
00:24:07,880 --> 00:24:11,800
Speaker 3: was based on, the Men in Black investigated much more

448
00:24:11,840 --> 00:24:13,120
Speaker 3: than aliens in UFOs.

449
00:24:13,480 --> 00:24:13,640
Speaker 4: Right.

450
00:24:13,680 --> 00:24:16,920
Speaker 3: The film franchise ultimately went on to focus on what's

451
00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:20,159
Speaker 3: called alien immigration and that was the aliens coming and

452
00:24:20,200 --> 00:24:25,440
Speaker 3: going to Earth. But in the original source material for it,

453
00:24:25,440 --> 00:24:30,480
Speaker 3: it was really more about these people who were muzzling everything,

454
00:24:30,640 --> 00:24:34,160
Speaker 3: not just aliens, and then certainly in the actual lore

455
00:24:34,680 --> 00:24:36,600
Speaker 3: it was much more about that. And one other thing

456
00:24:36,600 --> 00:24:39,200
Speaker 3: that I want to throw out there is that these

457
00:24:39,240 --> 00:24:42,520
Speaker 3: were not always described as humans. There was a lot

458
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:46,040
Speaker 3: of times when people said there was something supernatural about

459
00:24:46,040 --> 00:24:49,520
Speaker 3: their features, and they had glowing eyes and strange complexions,

460
00:24:49,560 --> 00:24:52,119
Speaker 3: and yes, they were still dressed in black suits. I

461
00:24:52,160 --> 00:24:55,040
Speaker 3: think it's interesting that our men in black JAC, we

462
00:24:55,160 --> 00:24:57,919
Speaker 3: got the FBI variety, we got the clean shave and

463
00:24:57,960 --> 00:25:00,000
Speaker 3: the clear cut. It would have been a much different

464
00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:03,800
Speaker 3: meeting if JC had red, glowing eyes and a supernatural

465
00:25:03,840 --> 00:25:06,439
Speaker 3: complexion and he was in your backyard. Thank goodness that

466
00:25:06,520 --> 00:25:07,080
Speaker 3: did not happen.

467
00:25:07,200 --> 00:25:09,800
Speaker 1: Well, listen, I don't know whether there were real men

468
00:25:09,840 --> 00:25:13,639
Speaker 1: in black, extraterrestrial or government running around. I think that

469
00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:16,479
Speaker 1: there were government people poking around. There might have been

470
00:25:16,520 --> 00:25:20,560
Speaker 1: extraterrustrial people poking around. But the mythology, if you will,

471
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:25,880
Speaker 1: of somebody following up UFO sidings and sort of warning

472
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:29,760
Speaker 1: people go easy here, don't talk about this. That is

473
00:25:29,880 --> 00:25:34,000
Speaker 1: fifties Men in Black, and that is really what we

474
00:25:34,080 --> 00:25:35,960
Speaker 1: based our thing on and what other people have based

475
00:25:35,960 --> 00:25:37,960
Speaker 1: it on. So I just want to make one thing clear.

476
00:25:38,160 --> 00:25:40,720
Speaker 1: We don't hate Men in Black as a franchise. I've

477
00:25:40,800 --> 00:25:43,520
Speaker 1: enjoyed the movies, and I think we should also say

478
00:25:43,880 --> 00:25:46,680
Speaker 1: what we think about Steven Spielberg. We've said it many times,

479
00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:48,640
Speaker 1: which is we think he's a genius.

480
00:25:49,080 --> 00:25:49,280
Speaker 4: Right.

481
00:25:49,720 --> 00:25:53,359
Speaker 1: We are looking forward to his disclosure day. We liked

482
00:25:53,440 --> 00:25:56,359
Speaker 1: listening to his interviews when he talks about it. We've

483
00:25:56,400 --> 00:25:59,080
Speaker 1: both worked for him, right, I've worked on Taken, you

484
00:25:59,160 --> 00:26:01,640
Speaker 1: worked on other things. I worked on this other project

485
00:26:01,680 --> 00:26:04,080
Speaker 1: with him. The guy is a great guy in a

486
00:26:04,160 --> 00:26:07,680
Speaker 1: creative way, for sure. So we're not alleging he did

487
00:26:07,840 --> 00:26:11,160
Speaker 1: or did not do anything because everything we heard about

488
00:26:11,160 --> 00:26:15,240
Speaker 1: it came from a Columbia or Sony executive telling us

489
00:26:15,600 --> 00:26:19,520
Speaker 1: that Amblen attorneys had told their attorneys, who told them

490
00:26:19,880 --> 00:26:24,040
Speaker 1: who told us. Am I getting that right? Basically, Like

491
00:26:24,080 --> 00:26:25,720
Speaker 1: I said, we're not here to pick a fight, but

492
00:26:25,760 --> 00:26:27,840
Speaker 1: we are here to tell a story, and this is

493
00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:30,359
Speaker 1: where our story takes a weird and twisted turn.

494
00:26:30,440 --> 00:26:33,080
Speaker 3: I think I also want to say too, personally that

495
00:26:33,400 --> 00:26:37,200
Speaker 3: on top of everything, Bryce just said ironically. After all

496
00:26:37,240 --> 00:26:39,879
Speaker 3: of this went down, I was years later hired to

497
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:43,040
Speaker 3: work on a Barry Sonenfeld TV show called Secret Agent Man.

498
00:26:43,440 --> 00:26:48,080
Speaker 3: And I remember having many interesting creative meetings with Barry Sonenfeld,

499
00:26:48,080 --> 00:26:51,560
Speaker 3: who never once mentioned dark skies, and yet I was

500
00:26:51,640 --> 00:26:54,080
Speaker 3: hired to work on his show, and he was a

501
00:26:54,200 --> 00:26:57,640
Speaker 3: very entertaining guy, and I have nothing bad to say

502
00:26:57,680 --> 00:26:58,960
Speaker 3: about him personally either.

503
00:26:59,080 --> 00:27:02,240
Speaker 1: And to finish that little riff here, I sat with

504
00:27:02,280 --> 00:27:05,800
Speaker 1: Spielberg at the Emmys in two thousand, sat with him

505
00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:09,600
Speaker 1: and Tom Hanks when they were nominated for Band of Brothers. Yeah,

506
00:27:09,640 --> 00:27:12,520
Speaker 1: a lot of contact. So there's no fistfight in a

507
00:27:12,600 --> 00:27:15,160
Speaker 1: dark alley on this thing. This is our attempt to say,

508
00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:18,120
Speaker 1: for thirty years we were a little traumatized by this.

509
00:27:18,200 --> 00:27:22,040
Speaker 1: I'm still traumatized, to be frank about it. But again,

510
00:27:22,280 --> 00:27:24,760
Speaker 1: the trauma is because of what went down on our end,

511
00:27:24,800 --> 00:27:28,560
Speaker 1: and I think that takes us to Tuesday July second.

512
00:27:28,800 --> 00:27:30,600
Speaker 3: Let's drop the hammer. Drop the hammer.

513
00:27:30,680 --> 00:27:33,480
Speaker 1: Okay, Tuesday July second happens to be the forty ninth

514
00:27:33,480 --> 00:27:38,760
Speaker 1: anniversary of the Roswell crash. Okay, so coincidence, also very true,

515
00:27:38,800 --> 00:27:43,080
Speaker 1: And everybody in the world is looking forward to the

516
00:27:43,119 --> 00:27:45,879
Speaker 1: Independence Day feature film that's actually going to be in

517
00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:48,399
Speaker 1: the theaters. That's why they're writing articles in Time and

518
00:27:48,480 --> 00:27:51,879
Speaker 1: Newsweek because you've got Independence Day coming out and X

519
00:27:51,920 --> 00:27:54,880
Speaker 1: Files was super popular, and we had a new series

520
00:27:54,920 --> 00:27:57,640
Speaker 1: coming out, and there's all that kind of stuff going on,

521
00:27:58,280 --> 00:28:03,320
Speaker 1: and we get told me that Columbia executives are coming

522
00:28:03,359 --> 00:28:06,080
Speaker 1: to our offices in North Hollywood because they have important

523
00:28:06,080 --> 00:28:09,160
Speaker 1: information to tell us. And I'm just kind of curious

524
00:28:09,359 --> 00:28:11,680
Speaker 1: because I don't think we've discussed this. When you first

525
00:28:11,680 --> 00:28:14,200
Speaker 1: heard that, what did you think they were coming out

526
00:28:14,200 --> 00:28:15,120
Speaker 1: to talk about?

527
00:28:15,320 --> 00:28:19,840
Speaker 3: My first reaction was, Oh, this must be great news.

528
00:28:19,840 --> 00:28:22,760
Speaker 3: They're coming out to tell us the show's been ordered

529
00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:25,600
Speaker 3: for a second season, and we're coming out to celebrate

530
00:28:25,640 --> 00:28:28,639
Speaker 3: and we'll bring some champagne. But the fact of the

531
00:28:28,720 --> 00:28:30,760
Speaker 3: matter was, I remember the tone being a little more

532
00:28:30,760 --> 00:28:34,399
Speaker 3: ominous and curt and so I don't know that I

533
00:28:34,840 --> 00:28:38,040
Speaker 3: went to, oh, no, the men in Black problem is back.

534
00:28:38,480 --> 00:28:41,600
Speaker 3: I just had a sinking feeling in my stomach that

535
00:28:41,720 --> 00:28:43,920
Speaker 3: something bad was about to happen.

536
00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:47,080
Speaker 1: Okay, so I'm going to be real careful here because

537
00:28:47,120 --> 00:28:49,840
Speaker 1: this is a super important thing that happened changed the

538
00:28:49,880 --> 00:28:52,000
Speaker 1: course of our lives a little bit, and I don't

539
00:28:52,040 --> 00:28:55,040
Speaker 1: want to overreach. I want to be specific and clear

540
00:28:55,520 --> 00:28:59,280
Speaker 1: so everyone knows this meeting happened. It was extraordinary, which

541
00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:02,320
Speaker 1: we'll explain a second. That it was so extraordinary, Brent,

542
00:29:02,680 --> 00:29:05,960
Speaker 1: that during the meeting I had a yellow legal pad

543
00:29:06,120 --> 00:29:09,560
Speaker 1: out and I was writing furiously. I wrote everything down,

544
00:29:10,000 --> 00:29:13,320
Speaker 1: and then after the meeting, immediately after the meeting, you

545
00:29:13,360 --> 00:29:17,000
Speaker 1: and I sat down at our computer and typed up

546
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:20,440
Speaker 1: my notes and made certain that both of us recalled

547
00:29:20,480 --> 00:29:23,440
Speaker 1: the quotes that we were putting down were So this

548
00:29:23,520 --> 00:29:26,560
Speaker 1: isn't something that we just came up with yesterday. This

549
00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:29,040
Speaker 1: is something that we wrote down at the time and

550
00:29:29,080 --> 00:29:32,760
Speaker 1: in fact became an important document in the days to come.

551
00:29:33,000 --> 00:29:38,840
Speaker 1: And here's the thing, these are the actual comments as written.

552
00:29:39,120 --> 00:29:42,239
Speaker 1: One of the first things this executive said was I

553
00:29:42,240 --> 00:29:44,240
Speaker 1: have just come from a meeting with a room full

554
00:29:44,280 --> 00:29:49,000
Speaker 1: of lawyers. We're trying to protect two significant assets. So

555
00:29:49,080 --> 00:29:52,440
Speaker 1: at this point, Brent, we know, well that doesn't sound

556
00:29:52,440 --> 00:29:54,800
Speaker 1: good because we know what the other asset is. It's

557
00:29:54,800 --> 00:29:57,280
Speaker 1: men in black, and we know we're the other assets.

558
00:29:57,320 --> 00:29:59,800
Speaker 1: So there's these two assets. This is what he followed

559
00:29:59,880 --> 00:30:02,880
Speaker 1: up with. He said we have a problem.

560
00:30:03,040 --> 00:30:03,240
Speaker 4: Now.

561
00:30:03,320 --> 00:30:05,840
Speaker 1: I remember looking at you when he said that and thinking,

562
00:30:06,120 --> 00:30:08,240
Speaker 1: oh no, And then he said, we have tried to

563
00:30:08,280 --> 00:30:11,680
Speaker 1: deal with it for some time, So this is consistent.

564
00:30:12,320 --> 00:30:16,280
Speaker 1: We've been off camera during most of this, right, Apparently

565
00:30:16,440 --> 00:30:18,760
Speaker 1: other things have been going on while you and I

566
00:30:18,800 --> 00:30:22,360
Speaker 1: have been taking meetings and producing a TV series and

567
00:30:22,400 --> 00:30:25,040
Speaker 1: going to New York for the announcements. Other people have

568
00:30:25,120 --> 00:30:28,960
Speaker 1: been talking about us. At that time, he says, we

569
00:30:29,120 --> 00:30:31,600
Speaker 1: have tried to deal with it for some time. It

570
00:30:31,680 --> 00:30:37,480
Speaker 1: has mushroomed beyond any reasonable expectations. The situation is no

571
00:30:37,560 --> 00:30:40,440
Speaker 1: longer in the realm of logic or reason.

572
00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:42,760
Speaker 3: And by the way, that was an understatement.

573
00:30:43,320 --> 00:30:46,760
Speaker 1: Yes, he did describe I'm not even going to name

574
00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:49,520
Speaker 1: who he described, but it was one of the people involved,

575
00:30:49,680 --> 00:30:52,080
Speaker 1: and he described that person as going insane and getting

576
00:30:52,080 --> 00:30:55,480
Speaker 1: everybody else crazed. Those are his words, not ours. But

577
00:30:55,600 --> 00:30:57,800
Speaker 1: what he meant was that the feature side was in

578
00:30:57,880 --> 00:31:01,720
Speaker 1: panic mode. And we were told by this same Columbia executive,

579
00:31:02,080 --> 00:31:04,959
Speaker 1: they're asking us to pull the plug on funding the

580
00:31:05,000 --> 00:31:08,960
Speaker 1: TV show. And by they, he's talking about the feature division.

581
00:31:09,360 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 1: They're saying we don't want it out period. And that's

582
00:31:13,440 --> 00:31:16,240
Speaker 1: a quote. Now, at that point, I was thinking, this

583
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:19,520
Speaker 1: isn't good because they're coming back at us. But on

584
00:31:19,600 --> 00:31:22,960
Speaker 1: the other hand, cooler heads will prevail. But now we're

585
00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:27,000
Speaker 1: being told they want the show killed. Yeah, they don't

586
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:27,840
Speaker 1: want it around.

587
00:31:28,120 --> 00:31:30,000
Speaker 3: It's never going to see the light of day. That

588
00:31:30,160 --> 00:31:32,920
Speaker 3: was the essential message. And by the way, I think

589
00:31:32,960 --> 00:31:35,959
Speaker 3: it's fair to say, you and I have what we

590
00:31:36,000 --> 00:31:39,080
Speaker 3: think is a great show, but our status in Hollywood

591
00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:42,440
Speaker 3: compared to Steven Spielberg and Barry Sonnenfeld, it was nothing.

592
00:31:42,480 --> 00:31:45,320
Speaker 3: This was the ultimate David and Goliath story. Yeah, we

593
00:31:45,360 --> 00:31:47,520
Speaker 3: were a couple of kids who got lucky. From many

594
00:31:47,560 --> 00:31:49,960
Speaker 3: people's point of view, these guys wrote a great script,

595
00:31:50,280 --> 00:31:50,960
Speaker 3: we shot it.

596
00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:52,280
Speaker 4: They should be happy.

597
00:31:52,520 --> 00:31:55,120
Speaker 1: And by the way, they were trying to say, don't worry,

598
00:31:55,160 --> 00:31:58,720
Speaker 1: we're here protecting you. Yes, it's the tone, because this

599
00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:02,280
Speaker 1: guy said personally, I don't see the problem tonally. Character wise,

600
00:32:02,520 --> 00:32:05,160
Speaker 1: they are very different pieces. One is a comedy, the

601
00:32:05,200 --> 00:32:07,800
Speaker 1: other is a drama. The movie is not coming out

602
00:32:07,880 --> 00:32:10,440
Speaker 1: until next summer, so it's hard to understand what this

603
00:32:10,600 --> 00:32:12,960
Speaker 1: is about since the pilot will have aired almost a

604
00:32:13,040 --> 00:32:15,440
Speaker 1: year before. And I thought when he said that, yeah,

605
00:32:15,440 --> 00:32:18,280
Speaker 1: that's my point. These quotes I just read are the

606
00:32:18,320 --> 00:32:23,800
Speaker 1: executive's language, not ours. We're not paraphrasing. We're going with

607
00:32:23,920 --> 00:32:25,880
Speaker 1: quotes that were written down in the room and then

608
00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:30,560
Speaker 1: transcribed immediately afterwards. I guess now you could argue, okay,

609
00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:34,040
Speaker 1: that's bad. What happened then it got worse.

610
00:32:34,640 --> 00:32:37,120
Speaker 3: This is like opening up an old wound. I think

611
00:32:37,200 --> 00:32:40,960
Speaker 3: that the important thing to say here is that, just

612
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:43,080
Speaker 3: to cut to the chase a bit, what ultimately was

613
00:32:43,120 --> 00:32:46,640
Speaker 3: coming out is the fact that after all of this time,

614
00:32:47,080 --> 00:32:49,960
Speaker 3: we were essentially being accused of plagiarism.

615
00:32:50,280 --> 00:32:51,920
Speaker 4: We were being accused.

616
00:32:51,600 --> 00:32:55,560
Speaker 3: Of having stolen the idea of men in Black. Not

617
00:32:55,960 --> 00:32:58,160
Speaker 3: just the idea of men in black, but there were

618
00:32:58,200 --> 00:33:01,720
Speaker 3: certain things in our pilot and in our series that were,

619
00:33:02,040 --> 00:33:06,120
Speaker 3: from somebody's point of view, considered to be plagiarism theft.

620
00:33:06,640 --> 00:33:10,160
Speaker 3: And so this was no longer a matter of trying

621
00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:14,280
Speaker 3: to just appease a film studio and a studio juggling

622
00:33:14,320 --> 00:33:18,840
Speaker 3: to important assets. There was now fingers being pointed at us.

623
00:33:19,240 --> 00:33:20,360
Speaker 4: It freaked me out.

624
00:33:20,480 --> 00:33:22,760
Speaker 1: First of all, I think it's pretty obvious to anyone

625
00:33:22,760 --> 00:33:25,200
Speaker 1: who knows this and who knows the timeline here, and

626
00:33:25,240 --> 00:33:29,160
Speaker 1: it's just impossible times ten. But the executive did say,

627
00:33:29,160 --> 00:33:31,360
Speaker 1: here's a final quote for you. He said, it's hit

628
00:33:31,480 --> 00:33:35,320
Speaker 1: meltdown with the feature guys. They think their screenplay was stolen.

629
00:33:35,520 --> 00:33:38,560
Speaker 1: Their attitude is we're movie people. All of our ideas

630
00:33:38,560 --> 00:33:41,920
Speaker 1: are original. Everyone in TV just steals from us. You

631
00:33:41,960 --> 00:33:44,440
Speaker 1: and I had been working for Sony for years at

632
00:33:44,480 --> 00:33:49,120
Speaker 1: that point, and again all these other projects in ufology

633
00:33:49,240 --> 00:33:52,160
Speaker 1: that I'd done and that you were thinking about and whatever.

634
00:33:52,400 --> 00:33:55,920
Speaker 1: But they said, we are now talking about extensive pilot

635
00:33:56,040 --> 00:34:01,080
Speaker 1: reshoots and it affects the framing of the series. Happened, folks,

636
00:34:01,520 --> 00:34:05,720
Speaker 1: is this was a shocking meeting and they basically laid

637
00:34:05,760 --> 00:34:08,960
Speaker 1: this at our feet and left, and you and I

638
00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:11,440
Speaker 1: wrote down all these quotes, and then we went into

639
00:34:11,760 --> 00:34:15,200
Speaker 1: shock and uh where we were? And that takes us

640
00:34:15,200 --> 00:34:20,320
Speaker 1: to Wednesday, July third. Okay, July first Time and Newsweek

641
00:34:20,360 --> 00:34:22,960
Speaker 1: are out, Hey, it's going to be great. July second,

642
00:34:23,200 --> 00:34:27,920
Speaker 1: No Hammer comes down. July third, Independence Day is released,

643
00:34:27,960 --> 00:34:31,120
Speaker 1: and it is the biggest box office success in film

644
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:35,080
Speaker 1: history at that time. So Aliens are big and everybody's

645
00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:39,360
Speaker 1: happy about all that, except for us, because that's the

646
00:34:39,480 --> 00:34:43,200
Speaker 1: day that we get told there are a number of

647
00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:49,000
Speaker 1: non negotiable demands that have been made by the feature folks,

648
00:34:49,520 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 1: conveyed by attorneys, through studio executives, through other attorneys, but

649
00:34:55,120 --> 00:34:56,239
Speaker 1: to us eventually.

650
00:34:56,640 --> 00:35:00,000
Speaker 3: One of the things you wrote down contemporaneously is before

651
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:02,799
Speaker 3: or these demands were sent to us. One of the

652
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:07,640
Speaker 3: executives said, these are the specifics which need to be addressed.

653
00:35:07,880 --> 00:35:12,880
Speaker 3: You will probably be shocked and dismayed by what they are. Wow, Okay,

654
00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:16,520
Speaker 3: I can't wait to see these demands. Okay, here they are, folks.

655
00:35:16,600 --> 00:35:20,319
Speaker 3: These are the non negotiable demands. That's pretty amazing to

656
00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:24,040
Speaker 3: even have demand the word demand used, let alone non negotiable,

657
00:35:24,280 --> 00:35:27,520
Speaker 3: because again, no crime had been committed here. These are

658
00:35:27,560 --> 00:35:31,200
Speaker 3: just two projects that are at the same studio, drawing

659
00:35:31,320 --> 00:35:36,760
Speaker 3: from a mutual UFO backdrop. So now crime had been committed,

660
00:35:36,840 --> 00:35:40,360
Speaker 3: but crime had been accused and we were the accused. So,

661
00:35:40,520 --> 00:35:42,400
Speaker 3: in other words, for us to get off the hook,

662
00:35:42,440 --> 00:35:45,520
Speaker 3: we were told these changes would need to be made. Yes,

663
00:35:46,040 --> 00:35:49,400
Speaker 3: we could not have a government secret organization operating outside

664
00:35:49,440 --> 00:35:53,000
Speaker 3: the law. So therefore Majestic twelve and are pilot gone.

665
00:35:53,120 --> 00:35:57,040
Speaker 3: No organization could be in Washington, DC could not have that.

666
00:35:57,440 --> 00:36:00,040
Speaker 3: No secret entrance could be used in other words, we

667
00:36:00,080 --> 00:36:02,719
Speaker 3: had an elevator in the halls of Congress that took

668
00:36:02,760 --> 00:36:06,399
Speaker 3: you down to Majestic twelve. Nope, could not have that,

669
00:36:06,760 --> 00:36:09,640
Speaker 3: could not have a public hub of transportation. We are

670
00:36:09,680 --> 00:36:13,080
Speaker 3: also told we would have to lose the mentor relationship

671
00:36:13,120 --> 00:36:16,120
Speaker 3: between our main character, Frank Bach played by J. T.

672
00:36:16,280 --> 00:36:20,120
Speaker 3: Walsh and our main character John Loanguard played by Eric Close,

673
00:36:20,360 --> 00:36:23,080
Speaker 3: which was an older guy bringing in a younger guy

674
00:36:23,120 --> 00:36:24,000
Speaker 3: to the organization.

675
00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:27,719
Speaker 1: We were told we couldn't have an autopsy. Yeah, we

676
00:36:27,760 --> 00:36:31,480
Speaker 1: couldn't have an autopsy. Our patient zero in our pilot,

677
00:36:31,680 --> 00:36:35,160
Speaker 1: Elliot Grantham, who was a farmer, Nope, couldn't be a farmer.

678
00:36:35,440 --> 00:36:37,960
Speaker 1: Could not have a farmer in the show back, could

679
00:36:38,040 --> 00:36:40,879
Speaker 1: not wear an artifact around his neck, which is where

680
00:36:40,880 --> 00:36:45,040
Speaker 1: he wore the Roswell artifact that Loanguards stole and then

681
00:36:45,200 --> 00:36:49,360
Speaker 1: gave to RFK, who gave it to JFK. Bach cannot

682
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:53,080
Speaker 1: show Loanguard a collection of still photos of UFOs. Bach

683
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:56,399
Speaker 1: cannot say the line I'm a figment of your imagination

684
00:36:56,960 --> 00:37:00,440
Speaker 1: and Loanguard's narration about Majestic being above the line had

685
00:37:00,480 --> 00:37:02,520
Speaker 1: to be cut, so non negotiable.

686
00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:04,040
Speaker 3: Go make those changes.

687
00:37:04,280 --> 00:37:04,600
Speaker 4: Yeah.

688
00:37:04,640 --> 00:37:07,359
Speaker 3: In the midst of all of this, there was a

689
00:37:07,400 --> 00:37:11,799
Speaker 3: secondary track going on of how are you guys going

690
00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:15,680
Speaker 3: to defend yourself because you've been accused of some serious crimes.

691
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:19,120
Speaker 3: And while we may actually spend the money to fix

692
00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:22,680
Speaker 3: all of this, wouldn't you guys be responsible for these costs?

693
00:37:22,719 --> 00:37:25,279
Speaker 3: This is only happening because of what you've done. And

694
00:37:25,360 --> 00:37:29,399
Speaker 3: so there was a point where Columbia Television went from

695
00:37:29,440 --> 00:37:31,680
Speaker 3: being We're on your side, we're trying to help you,

696
00:37:31,880 --> 00:37:35,120
Speaker 3: to you guys better lawyer up. And that was the

697
00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:38,480
Speaker 3: next step in our adventure was how in the world

698
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:40,800
Speaker 3: do we fend off this attack?

699
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:44,240
Speaker 1: That was a meeting that we were called into after

700
00:37:44,320 --> 00:37:48,680
Speaker 1: these non negotiable demands at a studio executive's office where

701
00:37:48,680 --> 00:37:50,440
Speaker 1: those things were said. And I'll tell you what the

702
00:37:50,480 --> 00:37:53,440
Speaker 1: answer was, folks. You folks probably remember that Brent and

703
00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:56,160
Speaker 1: I have told you about how we sold Darkskuys with

704
00:37:56,239 --> 00:37:59,080
Speaker 1: a big briefing notebook. We went back to what we

705
00:37:59,160 --> 00:38:03,920
Speaker 1: knew and we created a new briefing notebook. It's pretty big,

706
00:38:03,960 --> 00:38:07,040
Speaker 1: as you can see. It says Dark Skies summary of

707
00:38:07,120 --> 00:38:11,000
Speaker 1: events supporting documents relating to the creation of a UFO

708
00:38:11,120 --> 00:38:14,520
Speaker 1: government cover up television series, and boy oh boy, we

709
00:38:14,600 --> 00:38:16,480
Speaker 1: had to get into it. And I'll tell you something.

710
00:38:16,680 --> 00:38:18,759
Speaker 1: It's easy to make light of it now, but there's

711
00:38:18,800 --> 00:38:21,280
Speaker 1: nothing to be made light of. But we went through

712
00:38:21,719 --> 00:38:24,680
Speaker 1: these non negotiable demands, and I'm not going to be

713
00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:28,000
Speaker 1: so defensive. I have to defend every non negotiable demand.

714
00:38:28,080 --> 00:38:31,600
Speaker 1: But for example, the idea of the autopsy, there's an autopsy.

715
00:38:31,719 --> 00:38:35,000
Speaker 1: First of all, Independence Day has an autopsy scene, which

716
00:38:35,080 --> 00:38:38,200
Speaker 1: was just in the theaters. Nobody was after them. Fox

717
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:41,839
Speaker 1: had an alien autopsy TV special during this time, which

718
00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:45,960
Speaker 1: was a huge thing. X Files had autopsy scenes Galore

719
00:38:46,560 --> 00:38:50,200
Speaker 1: Scully did autopsies right, and I had an alien autopsy

720
00:38:50,239 --> 00:38:53,640
Speaker 1: in my official denial film. So the idea that somebody

721
00:38:53,760 --> 00:38:56,520
Speaker 1: can tell you you can't have an autopsy scened odd.

722
00:38:56,840 --> 00:38:59,799
Speaker 1: But this meeting that you're describing, we were told that

723
00:38:59,840 --> 00:39:02,680
Speaker 1: we're in serious trouble. Who's going to reimburse the money

724
00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:05,279
Speaker 1: to the company if we have to take the show

725
00:39:05,360 --> 00:39:08,359
Speaker 1: down because of you. It's time for you to lawyer up.

726
00:39:08,840 --> 00:39:10,680
Speaker 1: So we had to suck it up. We had to

727
00:39:10,719 --> 00:39:13,719
Speaker 1: hire a litigator of our own, and that litigator is

728
00:39:13,719 --> 00:39:17,800
Speaker 1: what caused us to do this notebook that person said, look,

729
00:39:18,000 --> 00:39:21,960
Speaker 1: this is an existential threat to your livelihood if this

730
00:39:22,080 --> 00:39:25,720
Speaker 1: is allowed to stand and the studio does not produce

731
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:30,400
Speaker 1: your TV series and potentially sues you guys for the

732
00:39:30,440 --> 00:39:34,400
Speaker 1: cost of production and gives and tells NBC that the

733
00:39:34,440 --> 00:39:36,759
Speaker 1: show they picked up and were promoting could not be

734
00:39:36,880 --> 00:39:39,120
Speaker 1: on TV. Now you're going to be in all the

735
00:39:39,200 --> 00:39:42,160
Speaker 1: trades and it's going to look like you did this.

736
00:39:42,600 --> 00:39:45,560
Speaker 1: I remember a time when we were making these notebooks

737
00:39:45,760 --> 00:39:47,400
Speaker 1: and it was like two in the morning, and we

738
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:50,400
Speaker 1: were sitting in my office and we were not feeling

739
00:39:50,800 --> 00:39:54,520
Speaker 1: happy because we knew that we were a big fat

740
00:39:54,719 --> 00:39:58,319
Speaker 1: target was painted on us and people were coming after us.

741
00:39:58,680 --> 00:40:02,279
Speaker 1: And it wasn't fair, wasn't right, it wasn't honest, it

742
00:40:02,320 --> 00:40:05,520
Speaker 1: wasn't anything, but it was happening. And I remember we

743
00:40:05,600 --> 00:40:07,479
Speaker 1: started to say, what are you going to do when

744
00:40:07,520 --> 00:40:10,120
Speaker 1: we can't work in Hollywood anymore? And I remember saying

745
00:40:10,160 --> 00:40:12,120
Speaker 1: to you, I used to be a TV reporter. I

746
00:40:12,120 --> 00:40:14,200
Speaker 1: can probably go back. Maybe I can go back and

747
00:40:14,280 --> 00:40:16,680
Speaker 1: do that. I'll never forget what you said. You said,

748
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:20,560
Speaker 1: why would a TV news organization hire a guy that

749
00:40:20,600 --> 00:40:23,279
Speaker 1: had been fired from his job because he got in

750
00:40:23,320 --> 00:40:26,240
Speaker 1: a fight with Steven Spielberg. I literally at that point

751
00:40:26,320 --> 00:40:27,920
Speaker 1: was thinking, maybe I can get a job as a

752
00:40:27,920 --> 00:40:30,719
Speaker 1: costco manager or something. And I don't know what you

753
00:40:30,760 --> 00:40:33,040
Speaker 1: were I can't remember, though, what were you saying you

754
00:40:33,080 --> 00:40:35,080
Speaker 1: would do if we got run out of town?

755
00:40:35,280 --> 00:40:38,959
Speaker 3: I was having much different fears. We need some context here.

756
00:40:39,400 --> 00:40:42,120
Speaker 3: Number one, this was my first TV show. You had

757
00:40:42,120 --> 00:40:45,759
Speaker 3: already had a thriving TV career, and so this was

758
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:49,280
Speaker 3: my first big break in Hollywood. I had some independent

759
00:40:49,320 --> 00:40:52,520
Speaker 3: films made, but here I am, but nothing has aired yet,

760
00:40:52,560 --> 00:40:55,520
Speaker 3: and now the whole thing is being killed before it's

761
00:40:55,520 --> 00:40:58,680
Speaker 3: even off the ground. And I was thinking, I don't

762
00:40:58,680 --> 00:41:01,479
Speaker 3: know if they give us a bill for a couple

763
00:41:01,520 --> 00:41:03,919
Speaker 3: million dollars, I don't know how much money Bryce has.

764
00:41:03,960 --> 00:41:06,520
Speaker 3: Maybe he can pay his half. I cannot pay mine.

765
00:41:06,840 --> 00:41:09,560
Speaker 3: I had only been married a couple of years earlier.

766
00:41:09,920 --> 00:41:12,600
Speaker 3: We finally bought our first house, so I'm already thinking

767
00:41:12,640 --> 00:41:14,400
Speaker 3: I'm going to lose the house. I'm not going to

768
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:16,600
Speaker 3: have the money, so I'm going to jail. I don't

769
00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:19,040
Speaker 3: need a job. That's the one thing I have over Bryce.

770
00:41:19,120 --> 00:41:20,440
Speaker 3: Bryce is going to have to figure out how to

771
00:41:20,520 --> 00:41:22,759
Speaker 3: keep working. I'm going to jail by the way. The

772
00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:24,920
Speaker 3: other part of this is they did shut down the

773
00:41:24,960 --> 00:41:27,720
Speaker 3: show to deal with all of this. They put production

774
00:41:27,880 --> 00:41:30,840
Speaker 3: on hold, and this was our job twenty four to seven.

775
00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:34,440
Speaker 3: For about a week, we lived in this hellscape, and

776
00:41:34,760 --> 00:41:39,520
Speaker 3: I remember having nightmares about jail. So this was as

777
00:41:39,600 --> 00:41:42,759
Speaker 3: you said, it's interesting and fun to tell the story now,

778
00:41:42,800 --> 00:41:46,480
Speaker 3: but at the time I had gone from oh my goodness,

779
00:41:46,520 --> 00:41:49,160
Speaker 3: I've arrived to I'm going to jail for the rest

780
00:41:49,200 --> 00:41:51,319
Speaker 3: of my life like that was. It was a roller

781
00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:57,640
Speaker 3: coaster ride.

782
00:41:58,800 --> 00:42:00,600
Speaker 1: I had a ten year old, in eight year old

783
00:42:00,600 --> 00:42:03,640
Speaker 1: and a four year old and your father. Now, of course,

784
00:42:04,200 --> 00:42:08,359
Speaker 1: you know the responsibility that carries your job is to

785
00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:08,960
Speaker 1: make sure.

786
00:42:08,800 --> 00:42:09,880
Speaker 4: Those kids are okay.

787
00:42:10,320 --> 00:42:12,600
Speaker 1: And I thought I was doing pretty good at my

788
00:42:12,760 --> 00:42:15,560
Speaker 1: job of being a parent, and then suddenly I thought,

789
00:42:15,680 --> 00:42:17,279
Speaker 1: I'm going to have to suck it up and do

790
00:42:17,400 --> 00:42:20,879
Speaker 1: something because I can't just quit parenting. I've got these

791
00:42:20,960 --> 00:42:23,280
Speaker 1: children that need my help. So it was a tough time.

792
00:42:23,600 --> 00:42:26,319
Speaker 1: And as you said, we stopped and we used the

793
00:42:26,360 --> 00:42:30,239
Speaker 1: skills that we had created to write this notebook. And

794
00:42:30,320 --> 00:42:32,200
Speaker 1: I showed you guys what the notebook looked like, just

795
00:42:32,239 --> 00:42:34,160
Speaker 1: so you know. There were ten parts of the notebook.

796
00:42:34,280 --> 00:42:37,400
Speaker 1: They included statements from us, a statement from one of

797
00:42:37,400 --> 00:42:42,160
Speaker 1: our producers, the chronology of events, which was incredibly detailed

798
00:42:42,560 --> 00:42:46,320
Speaker 1: because we had all the calendar stuff and meetings and everything.

799
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:50,240
Speaker 1: It had memos and letters, including some of those contemporaneous notes.

800
00:42:50,719 --> 00:42:53,480
Speaker 1: It had a section about the government cover up and

801
00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:57,200
Speaker 1: Majestic twelve and UFO literature. It had a killer section

802
00:42:57,360 --> 00:43:00,520
Speaker 1: on Men in Black and UFO literature that pretty well

803
00:43:00,600 --> 00:43:03,600
Speaker 1: laid out everything we just said about Gray Barker and Company.

804
00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:07,319
Speaker 1: It had a bibliography of UFO research that laid out

805
00:43:07,600 --> 00:43:09,640
Speaker 1: all the men in Black stuff, and then it had

806
00:43:09,640 --> 00:43:12,360
Speaker 1: a whole section of exhibits. It's a thing to behold,

807
00:43:12,680 --> 00:43:16,160
Speaker 1: although I didn't like beholding it for this episode because

808
00:43:16,400 --> 00:43:18,520
Speaker 1: it brought back a lot of painful memories.

809
00:43:18,560 --> 00:43:21,880
Speaker 3: To be completely honest, the other notebook we made to

810
00:43:21,960 --> 00:43:25,200
Speaker 3: get this show sold was really fun to make. It

811
00:43:25,239 --> 00:43:29,000
Speaker 3: was a fantastic creative endeavor. This was the opposite. This

812
00:43:29,200 --> 00:43:32,680
Speaker 3: was we're trying to put something together to keep the

813
00:43:32,719 --> 00:43:35,240
Speaker 3: show alive and keep us out of jail.

814
00:43:35,480 --> 00:43:36,760
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it was bad.

815
00:43:37,239 --> 00:43:42,000
Speaker 1: And again, the horrific meeting that laid this challenge at

816
00:43:42,040 --> 00:43:45,160
Speaker 1: our feet was on July third, six days later, Tuesday,

817
00:43:45,239 --> 00:43:49,320
Speaker 1: July ninth, so basically a week after the things had started,

818
00:43:49,680 --> 00:43:53,280
Speaker 1: we presented this new briefing book to Columbia and Sony

819
00:43:53,520 --> 00:43:56,480
Speaker 1: and we didn't hear anything immediately, so we just went

820
00:43:56,520 --> 00:43:59,280
Speaker 1: to ground. We didn't know what actually was going to happen,

821
00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:04,560
Speaker 1: but we had enough that Sony's lawyers, Columbia TV's lawyers,

822
00:44:05,080 --> 00:44:09,080
Speaker 1: ambulance lawyers, all the executives, everybody had a copy of it,

823
00:44:09,400 --> 00:44:11,840
Speaker 1: and so we just held our breath, crossed our fingers,

824
00:44:11,880 --> 00:44:12,800
Speaker 1: and hoped for the best.

825
00:44:13,080 --> 00:44:15,359
Speaker 3: And I think one of the important things to note

826
00:44:15,440 --> 00:44:20,400
Speaker 3: here is that we produced this incredible defense document binder,

827
00:44:20,719 --> 00:44:23,400
Speaker 3: and like you said, we don't hear anything at first.

828
00:44:23,560 --> 00:44:26,640
Speaker 3: I want to remind everybody that when we were presented

829
00:44:26,680 --> 00:44:30,279
Speaker 3: with the demands, they were non negotiable. But after we

830
00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:34,240
Speaker 3: presented our defense, there was some negotiations that took place

831
00:44:34,280 --> 00:44:36,640
Speaker 3: because we did not have to do in the end

832
00:44:36,840 --> 00:44:39,200
Speaker 3: all of those requirements or those times.

833
00:44:39,239 --> 00:44:42,640
Speaker 1: I remember our hot shot litigator though, calling us up

834
00:44:42,760 --> 00:44:46,719
Speaker 1: and saying, hey, okay, listen, great notebook really lays out

835
00:44:46,719 --> 00:44:49,200
Speaker 1: the overwriting truth of your cause, et cetera, et cetera.

836
00:44:49,480 --> 00:44:54,120
Speaker 1: We've negotiated a compromise, So I think we were hopeful. Oh, great,

837
00:44:54,360 --> 00:44:58,040
Speaker 1: a compromise. Guess what the compromise was, folks. We had

838
00:44:58,080 --> 00:45:04,160
Speaker 1: to massively revise our script, which was already shot, already produced,

839
00:45:04,520 --> 00:45:08,560
Speaker 1: and already edited, already submitted to the network and ready

840
00:45:08,560 --> 00:45:13,320
Speaker 1: for air. That was all going away, and we would

841
00:45:13,320 --> 00:45:16,120
Speaker 1: have to do most of these notes that they had

842
00:45:16,200 --> 00:45:19,680
Speaker 1: laid out, most of these non negotiable demands, and when

843
00:45:19,760 --> 00:45:22,239
Speaker 1: we laid out a production schedule to do it, it

844
00:45:22,280 --> 00:45:24,560
Speaker 1: would take eleven days of reshooting.

845
00:45:25,200 --> 00:45:26,240
Speaker 4: And we talked.

846
00:45:26,040 --> 00:45:28,479
Speaker 1: Earlier about how we thought it was not quite fair

847
00:45:28,480 --> 00:45:31,239
Speaker 1: that we would have to pay for the recolorization of

848
00:45:31,280 --> 00:45:34,879
Speaker 1: the suits. Hey, that was nothing. They made us pay

849
00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:37,239
Speaker 1: for eleven days of reshooting.

850
00:45:36,760 --> 00:45:39,080
Speaker 3: Now, just to be clear, and for anyone that's obviously

851
00:45:39,080 --> 00:45:42,160
Speaker 3: seen the pilot, there were things that we were able

852
00:45:42,160 --> 00:45:45,080
Speaker 3: to keep. We still have an autopsy scene, we still

853
00:45:45,120 --> 00:45:48,400
Speaker 3: have Majestic twelve. We didn't have to give up everything,

854
00:45:48,440 --> 00:45:50,279
Speaker 3: but as Brice said, we did have to make a

855
00:45:50,320 --> 00:45:54,359
Speaker 3: substantial number of changes. And this was all in the

856
00:45:54,360 --> 00:45:58,560
Speaker 3: course of trying to deliver a series for the upcoming

857
00:45:58,600 --> 00:46:02,120
Speaker 3: fall season. If a complete detour, and by the way,

858
00:46:02,120 --> 00:46:04,640
Speaker 3: the show had already been shut down for a period

859
00:46:04,640 --> 00:46:06,399
Speaker 3: of time where they were sorting all of this out.

860
00:46:06,480 --> 00:46:09,640
Speaker 3: So now instead of going back into producing the episodes,

861
00:46:09,840 --> 00:46:12,920
Speaker 3: we had to go reproduce part of the pilot.

862
00:46:13,239 --> 00:46:16,879
Speaker 1: Yes, now you are correct. We did get to keep

863
00:46:16,920 --> 00:46:20,279
Speaker 1: some things, but that's because there was a secondary negotiation

864
00:46:20,360 --> 00:46:23,640
Speaker 1: that came after everybody said okay, well that'll be the solution.

865
00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:27,480
Speaker 1: Then Dark Skies will have to reshoot all kinds of things.

866
00:46:27,760 --> 00:46:30,760
Speaker 1: Then it got into the minutia. It's not even minutia,

867
00:46:30,840 --> 00:46:33,719
Speaker 1: but the details what scenes would be cut. A lot

868
00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:37,200
Speaker 1: of scenes had to be reshot. They wanted to reshoot them.

869
00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:39,359
Speaker 1: They don't want to colorize the suits at this point,

870
00:46:39,400 --> 00:46:42,560
Speaker 1: they just wanted to reshoot them without black suits. You

871
00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:44,680
Speaker 1: and I did, at least something I'm very proud of.

872
00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:47,760
Speaker 1: We sucked it up on the changes they were giving

873
00:46:47,800 --> 00:46:50,239
Speaker 1: us and said, okay, if we have to reshoot a

874
00:46:50,320 --> 00:46:52,960
Speaker 1: scene just to get a guy in a different suit,

875
00:46:53,280 --> 00:46:56,680
Speaker 1: let's do what anybody writer would do. Let's go read

876
00:46:56,719 --> 00:46:58,520
Speaker 1: the scene that we shot and see if we can

877
00:46:58,560 --> 00:47:02,240
Speaker 1: do better in some respects. We shot a few scenes

878
00:47:02,239 --> 00:47:04,120
Speaker 1: that were better, but now there is a bit of

879
00:47:04,200 --> 00:47:08,480
Speaker 1: drama here that came as if that's not dramatic enough, right,

880
00:47:08,840 --> 00:47:11,279
Speaker 1: And I'm sure you remember this very well. I was

881
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:15,400
Speaker 1: told by one of the Columbia executives that it was

882
00:47:15,440 --> 00:47:18,480
Speaker 1: going to be my job to go with him to

883
00:47:18,800 --> 00:47:23,880
Speaker 1: NBC to meet with a top NBC executive and explain

884
00:47:23,960 --> 00:47:27,040
Speaker 1: to them that we were shooting all of this stuff

885
00:47:27,120 --> 00:47:30,440
Speaker 1: this eleven days because it was our idea, yes. And

886
00:47:30,520 --> 00:47:32,919
Speaker 1: I didn't want to do that because I thought that's

887
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:35,400
Speaker 1: not honest on my part, that you want me to

888
00:47:35,560 --> 00:47:38,200
Speaker 1: own that, and I didn't want to go. But then

889
00:47:38,560 --> 00:47:40,759
Speaker 1: you and I had a conversation where we realized, if

890
00:47:40,800 --> 00:47:44,480
Speaker 1: I don't go to make that argument, then the Columbia

891
00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:48,160
Speaker 1: executive and the network executive are going to make the

892
00:47:48,160 --> 00:47:50,680
Speaker 1: decisions for us. And so I think we made the

893
00:47:50,760 --> 00:47:53,239
Speaker 1: decision it would be better to have me in the room.

894
00:47:53,320 --> 00:47:55,480
Speaker 1: So I went to that room. I did the best

895
00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:59,399
Speaker 1: I could without being completely a bald faced liar, which

896
00:47:59,520 --> 00:48:00,080
Speaker 1: I didn't.

897
00:47:59,840 --> 00:48:00,400
Speaker 4: Want to be.

898
00:48:00,520 --> 00:48:02,360
Speaker 1: I made an argument that there was going to be

899
00:48:02,400 --> 00:48:04,920
Speaker 1: some changes, but we could make him better, and the

900
00:48:05,000 --> 00:48:07,719
Speaker 1: executive from NBC looked at me for quite a long

901
00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:10,280
Speaker 1: time in silence. The room was silent. There were about

902
00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:13,319
Speaker 1: seven people, maybe six people in it very silent, and

903
00:48:13,360 --> 00:48:16,759
Speaker 1: then he looks at me and he says, h ambling, right,

904
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:20,520
Speaker 1: And I looked at the Columbia executive and are we

905
00:48:20,640 --> 00:48:23,480
Speaker 1: going to fess up to this? And he nods, So

906
00:48:23,560 --> 00:48:27,239
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, another long silence. When you're in a

907
00:48:27,320 --> 00:48:29,200
Speaker 1: room with a bunch of people and it goes thirty

908
00:48:29,239 --> 00:48:32,879
Speaker 1: seconds when nobody speaks, that seems like forever. And that's

909
00:48:32,920 --> 00:48:35,839
Speaker 1: what happened. And then the guy says, you better make

910
00:48:35,880 --> 00:48:39,040
Speaker 1: it better. He used actually the F word in that sentence,

911
00:48:39,080 --> 00:48:40,840
Speaker 1: but he said you better make it better. And he

912
00:48:40,880 --> 00:48:43,840
Speaker 1: stood up and left. And also he made the point

913
00:48:43,840 --> 00:48:47,160
Speaker 1: to the executives, you guys are paying for this, yes,

914
00:48:47,239 --> 00:48:49,359
Speaker 1: of course, or come to the network and ask us

915
00:48:49,560 --> 00:48:50,240
Speaker 1: for a dime.

916
00:48:50,600 --> 00:48:51,399
Speaker 4: This is on you.

917
00:48:51,800 --> 00:48:54,640
Speaker 3: So I want to add one other detail to this,

918
00:48:55,080 --> 00:48:57,080
Speaker 3: the ending of this story, and that there was a

919
00:48:57,120 --> 00:49:02,320
Speaker 3: third track, a very small, minor track, but super important

920
00:49:02,440 --> 00:49:05,960
Speaker 3: to how this all got resolved behind the scenes, unbeknownst

921
00:49:06,000 --> 00:49:09,600
Speaker 3: to us and not explained to us or revealed really

922
00:49:09,680 --> 00:49:13,040
Speaker 3: to me until after the fact by someone that had

923
00:49:13,080 --> 00:49:16,239
Speaker 3: a behind the scenes view of what was going down.

924
00:49:16,640 --> 00:49:20,000
Speaker 3: NBC was aware of what was happening. Hollywood is a

925
00:49:20,000 --> 00:49:23,560
Speaker 3: small town. People talk, and it just so happens that

926
00:49:23,719 --> 00:49:26,640
Speaker 3: if you remember the story of how we sold Dark Skies,

927
00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:30,080
Speaker 3: it was bought in the room by the head of

928
00:49:30,200 --> 00:49:32,719
Speaker 3: NBC at the time, a man named Don Olmeyer, who

929
00:49:32,719 --> 00:49:34,560
Speaker 3: has since passed away, Rest in peace.

930
00:49:34,920 --> 00:49:38,040
Speaker 4: And this was his show. So comfortable using his name

931
00:49:38,120 --> 00:49:40,200
Speaker 4: right now? Yes, okay, this was his show.

932
00:49:40,520 --> 00:49:43,279
Speaker 3: This was, as we've talked about before, this was the

933
00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:47,040
Speaker 3: centerpiece of the trilogy that he was using to promote

934
00:49:47,080 --> 00:49:50,400
Speaker 3: the new Saturday night lineup. So word got to him

935
00:49:50,520 --> 00:49:54,040
Speaker 3: apparently behind the scenes as all of these other demands

936
00:49:54,040 --> 00:49:58,840
Speaker 3: and things were happening, and he, I'm speculating, must have

937
00:49:58,920 --> 00:49:59,880
Speaker 3: taken it personally.

938
00:50:00,160 --> 00:50:01,080
Speaker 4: This was his show.

939
00:50:01,200 --> 00:50:03,400
Speaker 3: He bought it, and now it was being changed, it

940
00:50:03,440 --> 00:50:05,759
Speaker 3: was being threatened to be canceled, and no one was

941
00:50:05,800 --> 00:50:08,120
Speaker 3: talking to him about this when he heard all of

942
00:50:08,160 --> 00:50:12,480
Speaker 3: the details, apparently because the pilot had already been delivered

943
00:50:12,719 --> 00:50:13,560
Speaker 3: to NBC.

944
00:50:14,080 --> 00:50:16,359
Speaker 4: Yeah, he told people.

945
00:50:16,440 --> 00:50:19,040
Speaker 3: At the top, guess what, I'm going to air the

946
00:50:19,040 --> 00:50:23,439
Speaker 3: pilot the way it was. And you can't stop blessed Oldmyer, Right,

947
00:50:23,560 --> 00:50:26,719
Speaker 3: he's our patron saint in all of this, because his

948
00:50:27,120 --> 00:50:30,600
Speaker 3: insistence that he would air the pilot is ultimately what

949
00:50:31,080 --> 00:50:34,279
Speaker 3: caused all of the Men in Black team to back

950
00:50:34,320 --> 00:50:38,840
Speaker 3: down and actually negotiate with us, right, That's why suddenly

951
00:50:38,880 --> 00:50:41,880
Speaker 3: it went from non negotiable demands. So it was a

952
00:50:41,880 --> 00:50:46,000
Speaker 3: combination of our excellent defense binder and also the fact

953
00:50:46,000 --> 00:50:49,880
Speaker 3: that we had an invisible hero behind the scenes standing

954
00:50:50,000 --> 00:50:52,960
Speaker 3: up and fighting the good fight on our behalf. And

955
00:50:53,239 --> 00:50:56,719
Speaker 3: that combination of things is how we were able to

956
00:50:56,920 --> 00:51:00,719
Speaker 3: actually navigate this minefield and ultimately get our show on

957
00:51:00,760 --> 00:51:03,600
Speaker 3: the air. And there's one last great irony I think

958
00:51:03,920 --> 00:51:08,080
Speaker 3: in all of this about what actually was released when

959
00:51:08,120 --> 00:51:10,360
Speaker 3: we made the DVD of the series.

960
00:51:10,520 --> 00:51:12,040
Speaker 1: When I had to go in and talk to that

961
00:51:12,200 --> 00:51:16,279
Speaker 1: NBC executive, I didn't know that bit about olmar No,

962
00:51:16,280 --> 00:51:18,440
Speaker 1: none of us knew this was all in retrospect. But

963
00:51:18,520 --> 00:51:22,120
Speaker 1: hearing you stated, Brent, that explains though, why things like

964
00:51:22,160 --> 00:51:25,359
Speaker 1: the autopsy got to remain in the Dark Sky's pilot yep,

965
00:51:25,680 --> 00:51:28,880
Speaker 1: Because it was very clear that Olmayer was going to

966
00:51:28,920 --> 00:51:32,440
Speaker 1: air it anyway. So if indeed he had aired that,

967
00:51:32,680 --> 00:51:36,400
Speaker 1: and then that still had to be excised from what

968
00:51:36,719 --> 00:51:40,080
Speaker 1: he'd already aired it. So things were worked out not

969
00:51:40,160 --> 00:51:42,279
Speaker 1: always with us in the room. And like I said,

970
00:51:42,280 --> 00:51:44,279
Speaker 1: at the beginning of this. A lot of these things

971
00:51:44,280 --> 00:51:47,160
Speaker 1: were conveyed to us by people. But here is the

972
00:51:47,239 --> 00:51:49,640
Speaker 1: ultimate irony. If you've ever wanted to go to film

973
00:51:49,680 --> 00:51:51,600
Speaker 1: school but you thought I can't afford to go to

974
00:51:51,640 --> 00:51:54,840
Speaker 1: film school, we got a deal for you, because it

975
00:51:54,880 --> 00:51:58,920
Speaker 1: turns out that first cut of Dark Skies it was

976
00:51:59,000 --> 00:52:01,239
Speaker 1: the way we liked it, It's the way we wrote it,

977
00:52:01,280 --> 00:52:04,000
Speaker 1: et cetera. Then there was a second cut, which we'll

978
00:52:04,000 --> 00:52:07,480
Speaker 1: call the NBC aircut, okay, because that's the one that

979
00:52:07,640 --> 00:52:11,279
Speaker 1: ultimately got delivered to them after these eleven days of reshoots,

980
00:52:11,719 --> 00:52:14,920
Speaker 1: and that's the one that aired on September twenty first

981
00:52:15,239 --> 00:52:18,200
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety six. Guess what it turns out when

982
00:52:18,200 --> 00:52:21,279
Speaker 1: they put the finally, after fourteen years, put out the

983
00:52:21,400 --> 00:52:25,040
Speaker 1: Dark Sky's DVD set, we realized I didn't know this

984
00:52:25,200 --> 00:52:29,000
Speaker 1: at the time, that when the NBC had aired their

985
00:52:29,440 --> 00:52:32,640
Speaker 1: the version of the pilot that came with all the

986
00:52:32,760 --> 00:52:37,960
Speaker 1: reshoots in it, Sony had accidentally shared the original version

987
00:52:38,000 --> 00:52:41,680
Speaker 1: of the pilot with all the international buyers. Okay, so

988
00:52:42,280 --> 00:52:46,160
Speaker 1: I never knew that. And then suddenly, when the Shout

989
00:52:46,200 --> 00:52:49,440
Speaker 1: Factory people get all the tapes delivered to them to

990
00:52:49,520 --> 00:52:50,920
Speaker 1: make the DVD set.

991
00:52:51,120 --> 00:52:52,480
Speaker 4: They're like, so there's.

992
00:52:52,320 --> 00:52:54,319
Speaker 1: Two pilots here, what are they?

993
00:52:54,840 --> 00:52:56,319
Speaker 4: And I went, you're kidding me.

994
00:52:56,600 --> 00:53:00,840
Speaker 1: And so that DVD set, which again has left production

995
00:53:00,960 --> 00:53:03,960
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five, is still available as a used

996
00:53:04,080 --> 00:53:07,880
Speaker 1: thing on Amazon in places has both movies in it.

997
00:53:08,360 --> 00:53:11,600
Speaker 1: You could literally watch them both and see, that's interesting.

998
00:53:11,800 --> 00:53:14,160
Speaker 1: How did they keep the essence of the show and

999
00:53:14,239 --> 00:53:15,680
Speaker 1: still shoot eleven days?

1000
00:53:15,960 --> 00:53:16,720
Speaker 4: What changed?

1001
00:53:16,920 --> 00:53:19,239
Speaker 1: And there's a bunch of things that changed. Some of

1002
00:53:19,280 --> 00:53:22,600
Speaker 1: them are even better in some respects. The second one

1003
00:53:23,040 --> 00:53:25,680
Speaker 1: moves a little better in a few places, and in

1004
00:53:25,719 --> 00:53:27,360
Speaker 1: a few places it's heartbreaking.

1005
00:53:27,600 --> 00:53:29,319
Speaker 4: That's how I would describe it.

1006
00:53:29,520 --> 00:53:32,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, So in the end, we got the show on

1007
00:53:32,520 --> 00:53:36,360
Speaker 3: the air through a lot of turmoil, and in the

1008
00:53:36,400 --> 00:53:39,400
Speaker 3: weirdest way because it was tangled up in Men in

1009
00:53:39,440 --> 00:53:43,399
Speaker 3: Black the franchise. It felt like we were in the phenomenon.

1010
00:53:43,520 --> 00:53:45,640
Speaker 3: It felt like we were in a fight for our lives.

1011
00:53:46,080 --> 00:53:49,160
Speaker 3: This was also the whole time period where JC was

1012
00:53:49,200 --> 00:53:51,799
Speaker 3: coming into play as our real Men in Black. So

1013
00:53:52,280 --> 00:53:54,280
Speaker 3: I look back on this time and I just think

1014
00:53:54,480 --> 00:53:57,680
Speaker 3: I was not ready for anything that unfolded. That was

1015
00:53:57,760 --> 00:54:00,760
Speaker 3: the wildest kind of year and a half of my life.

1016
00:54:01,120 --> 00:54:06,040
Speaker 3: And I feel fortunate to have survived it and obviously

1017
00:54:06,040 --> 00:54:08,880
Speaker 3: made such a great friend and collaborator with you. But

1018
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:12,680
Speaker 3: as you said earlier, I still when we were researching this,

1019
00:54:13,040 --> 00:54:16,560
Speaker 3: I felt all of that kind of queasiness, the trauma

1020
00:54:16,719 --> 00:54:20,840
Speaker 3: of how close we came to losing our careers, losing

1021
00:54:20,920 --> 00:54:26,279
Speaker 3: possibly everything, simply because there were two ideas that were

1022
00:54:26,280 --> 00:54:30,359
Speaker 3: on a collision course heading into the public consciousness, and

1023
00:54:31,000 --> 00:54:34,359
Speaker 3: one had bigger gorillas, as they say, attached to it

1024
00:54:34,480 --> 00:54:35,080
Speaker 3: than our show.

1025
00:54:35,360 --> 00:54:37,759
Speaker 1: I hear here to all that, here's my closing thought.

1026
00:54:37,920 --> 00:54:40,840
Speaker 1: One of my favorite pieces of television, Brint, is Band

1027
00:54:40,840 --> 00:54:44,240
Speaker 1: of Brothers, which is ironic because it's a mini series

1028
00:54:44,400 --> 00:54:48,000
Speaker 1: that Steven Spielberg produced and Tom Hanks was involved in it,

1029
00:54:48,239 --> 00:54:50,240
Speaker 1: and that's why I sat with them at the Emmys

1030
00:54:50,320 --> 00:54:52,719
Speaker 1: and I've seen it twenty times. And one of the

1031
00:54:52,760 --> 00:54:55,040
Speaker 1: things I like about Band of Brothers is that it's

1032
00:54:55,080 --> 00:54:59,600
Speaker 1: really talking about how these friendships between these men was

1033
00:54:59,719 --> 00:55:03,279
Speaker 1: for war. Now, I'm not going to compare literally what

1034
00:55:03,360 --> 00:55:06,080
Speaker 1: you and I went to as war, but when I

1035
00:55:06,200 --> 00:55:08,640
Speaker 1: started thinking back on what we were going to do

1036
00:55:08,719 --> 00:55:11,040
Speaker 1: for this episode, and we've talked about a lot of

1037
00:55:11,080 --> 00:55:13,799
Speaker 1: things in this podcast, it wasn't the fact that you

1038
00:55:13,840 --> 00:55:17,400
Speaker 1: told me about John Harrington that has forged my friendship

1039
00:55:17,440 --> 00:55:20,320
Speaker 1: with you. It's not that that made me go, boy,

1040
00:55:20,440 --> 00:55:22,680
Speaker 1: that's a lifetime friend that I got to make.

1041
00:55:22,719 --> 00:55:24,000
Speaker 4: It was interesting, and.

1042
00:55:23,960 --> 00:55:26,200
Speaker 1: It wasn't even getting dark skies.

1043
00:55:25,760 --> 00:55:26,360
Speaker 4: On the air.

1044
00:55:26,760 --> 00:55:31,560
Speaker 1: The time where we were bonded in battle wasn't doing that.

1045
00:55:32,160 --> 00:55:36,000
Speaker 1: It was the week in July primarily where we had

1046
00:55:36,040 --> 00:55:40,080
Speaker 1: to live through what happened, where we both knew during

1047
00:55:40,120 --> 00:55:43,440
Speaker 1: that time there was nobody else on earth who can

1048
00:55:43,480 --> 00:55:46,040
Speaker 1: help us out of the situation but each other. So

1049
00:55:46,560 --> 00:55:50,160
Speaker 1: that my friend is the positive and the upside of

1050
00:55:50,200 --> 00:55:51,680
Speaker 1: this whole story, Yes.

1051
00:55:51,760 --> 00:55:53,600
Speaker 3: Makes it all worth it in its own weird way.

1052
00:55:53,760 --> 00:55:56,400
Speaker 1: So maybe on our next episode we won't have to

1053
00:55:56,440 --> 00:55:58,359
Speaker 1: be so serious. We'll go for something else.

1054
00:56:04,080 --> 00:56:06,680
Speaker 3: If you're enjoying this podcast, it really helps us if

1055
00:56:06,719 --> 00:56:09,160
Speaker 3: you leave a rating and a review wherever you listen

1056
00:56:09,200 --> 00:56:12,400
Speaker 3: to your podcast, and if you're listening on YouTube, please subscribe,

1057
00:56:12,640 --> 00:56:14,960
Speaker 3: smash that like button and give us a comment.

1058
00:56:15,640 --> 00:56:18,759
Speaker 1: Sound Light and Frequency is an iHeart podcast produced by

1059
00:56:18,840 --> 00:56:22,600
Speaker 1: Stellar Productions. It's executive produced by Nick Johnson and for

1060
00:56:22,680 --> 00:56:26,000
Speaker 1: Stellar Jackie's Abel. Our show's music was written by Anna

1061
00:56:26,080 --> 00:56:29,840
Speaker 1: Stumpf and Hamilton Lighthouser. And your hosts and executive producers

1062
00:56:29,840 --> 00:56:33,160
Speaker 1: are Bryce Abel That's me and Brent Friedman. Watch the

1063
00:56:33,200 --> 00:57:02,399
Speaker 1: Skies