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Speaker 1: It literally told people that there was a John Longuard

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Speaker 1: who had contacted you and me and asked us to

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Speaker 1: take a deal to infuse some of the real ideas

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Speaker 1: he had into our TV series so that the.

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Speaker 2: Truth could come out.

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Speaker 1: And I think what's strange about that, of course, is

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Speaker 1: boy did it work. It came back on us. As

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Speaker 1: you said, we call it, folks, the boomerang effect.

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Speaker 2: Well, and here's the thing is that we created this

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Speaker 2: as a marketing ploy and when jac approached us, what

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Speaker 2: he said to us was, we want to give you

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Speaker 2: some information so that you can use the Cover of

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Speaker 2: Fiction to disseminate it to the public in this slow

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Speaker 2: drip fashion. I'm Brice Able.

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Speaker 1: Have you ever wondered if there's a secret connection between

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Speaker 1: Hollywood and UFOs?

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Speaker 2: And I'm Brent Friedman. You are listening to sound, light,

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Speaker 2: and frequency. Our entire podcast is usually about separating truth

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Speaker 2: from fiction, but this time it's going to get personal

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Speaker 2: and things may get a little dark, but rest assured

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Speaker 2: there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

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Speaker 2: So our show today is called Cover of Fiction. Now,

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Speaker 2: in case you don't know what that means, let me

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Speaker 2: just explain really quickly that in storytelling, cover of fiction

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Speaker 2: means basically using made up plots and characters to explore

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Speaker 2: or maybe even expose some sort of real world facts

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Speaker 2: or truth or even personal experiences. What that does for

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Speaker 2: creators is it functions as sort of a shield for

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Speaker 2: the ability to tell stories that might be too sensitive

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Speaker 2: or controversial or maybe even get them into legal hot water.

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Speaker 2: You've probably heard the saying the names have been changed

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Speaker 2: to protect the innocent. Well, in this case, the writers

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Speaker 2: are the innocent. Weirdness that sounds Rice, Why don't you

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Speaker 2: jump in and give us an example that I've got

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Speaker 2: a great example.

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Speaker 1: I think we could all remember Succession, which of course

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Speaker 1: is a terrific show, one of my favorite shows on HBO.

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Speaker 1: And I know a lot about Succession only because as

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Speaker 1: the former chairman of the TV Academy, I go to

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Speaker 1: all the Emmy Awards and I watched Succession win Outstanding

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Speaker 1: Drama Series three times in twenty twenty, twenty two, and

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Speaker 1: twenty three. It got seventy five Emmy nominations nineteen Emmys,

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Speaker 1: and it is a perfect example of exactly the cover

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Speaker 1: of fiction you're talking about. Because people always point out

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Speaker 1: that the roy family, if you will in succession is

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Speaker 1: the equivalent of the Murdoch family. You got Logan Roy,

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Speaker 1: who would be Rupert Murdoch. You got Kendall Roy who

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Speaker 1: was Lachlan Murdoch. You got Roman Roy who was James Murdoch,

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Speaker 1: you got Shivroy who was Elizabeth Murdoch. I mean, it

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Speaker 1: really does lay over very well. The thing is, the

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Speaker 1: creator of the show, Jesse Armstrong, has repeatedly pushed back

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Speaker 1: on It's the Murdochs because he says it's not a

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Speaker 1: direct portrait and you know, this is just a commentary

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Speaker 1: on multiple real world dynasties and media power structures. But

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Speaker 1: I think probably Brent, that goes back to what you

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Speaker 1: were just saying. Some lawyer said you really should say

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Speaker 1: this isn't the Murdochs because you know what the Murdoch's

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Speaker 1: coming after you. So there is always that whenever you

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Speaker 1: use cover of fiction. And let's face it, half the

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Speaker 1: time you watch a movie and you know it's about somebody.

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Speaker 1: In fact, it might even be a biopic about somebody,

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Speaker 1: and at the end they have the legal disclaimer that

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Speaker 1: says there are no living people. Nobody forget what the

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Speaker 1: disclaimer is, but you read it, you go, that's not

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Speaker 1: even true. But anyway, so cover of fiction is the

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Speaker 1: title of the show, and boy do we have some

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Speaker 1: covers of some fiction's here to talk about.

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Speaker 2: Well, I think you make a great point, which is

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Speaker 2: that even if it is cover of fiction, sometimes the

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Speaker 2: writers or the creators won't cop to that. And that's

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Speaker 2: the case with the example we want to bring up,

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Speaker 2: which is the series Dark And I think you have

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Speaker 2: a great story that tees up a pretty interesting discussion.

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Speaker 1: That's true, And just so everyone knows, we actually made

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Speaker 1: our own series called Dark Skies, all about the cover

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Speaker 1: of fiction. We're going to get there, but we're going

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Speaker 1: to get there in an unusual way. The first thing

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Speaker 1: I want to point out is I know a lot

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Speaker 1: of investigative reporters in the UFO UAP space, So I'm

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Speaker 1: not going to lay this at any one particular reporter's feet.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to say it's a composite thing or whatever.

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Speaker 1: But I'm not allowed to say their name. They asked

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Speaker 1: me not to use their name. But this person told

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Speaker 1: me about three years ago that multiple sources from the

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Speaker 1: intelligence community had communicated the same message to them at

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Speaker 1: the basic same time. Within a week, they had heard

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Speaker 1: this from three different sources in the intelligence community, and

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Speaker 1: the quote that stood out to me because I wrote

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Speaker 1: it down at the time. I was on the phone

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Speaker 1: with this person and they said it, and I thought,

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Speaker 1: I've had to write that down because I don't want

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Speaker 1: to forget that one. And they said, if you really

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Speaker 1: want to understand the phenomenon, then you should watch the

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Speaker 1: German TV series Dark and pay attention to its focus

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Speaker 1: on a grim nuclear future, which kind of shivered me

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Speaker 1: Timbers there.

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Speaker 2: Brent, Absolutely, that is pretty chilling.

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Speaker 1: I'm only imagining that very few people who are listening

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Speaker 1: to us right now have actually fought their way through Dark.

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Speaker 1: I think it's three seasons long. It is in German.

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Speaker 1: It's called Dark for various reasons, but among them is

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Speaker 1: it's literally shot dark. So I was trying to I've

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Speaker 1: watched some of it with my wife and she's like,

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Speaker 1: I can't follow this thing. It's in German and it's

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Speaker 1: all in shadow.

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Speaker 2: But here's the good news. When we started talking about this,

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Speaker 2: I thought, well, I'm going to watch at least the

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Speaker 2: first season and then, you know, maybe read some reviews.

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Speaker 2: I binged it like I got super into it, and

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Speaker 2: the humor here is that if you asked me to

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Speaker 2: try and explain to you what it was about off

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Speaker 2: the top of my head, there's no way I can.

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Speaker 2: So I'm going to read something to you here, but

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Speaker 2: just to follow up on what you said. It is

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Speaker 2: on Netflix. It aired in twenty seventeen. I think there's

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Speaker 2: three seasons up until two twenty. It received a lot

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Speaker 2: of critical acclaim it's got a very passionate fan base now.

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Speaker 2: But on the surface, interestingly, based on your quote, it

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Speaker 2: seems to have nothing to do with aliens or UAP

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Speaker 2: or does it. Let me catch up to speed on

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Speaker 2: what the show is. It follows four families in the

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Speaker 2: German town of Wynden, where the disappearance of local children

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Speaker 2: reveals a time travel conspiracy spanning multiple generations from nineteen

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Speaker 2: twenty one up through twenty fifty three. At the center

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Speaker 2: of this mystery is a wormhole in a cave system

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Speaker 2: directly beneath a nuclear power plant. The series explores fate,

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Speaker 2: free will, religion, quantum physics, and the cyclical nature of time. Well,

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Speaker 2: on the other hand, Brent, you had me at Wormhole.

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Speaker 2: It really did? Yeah, listen, Okay, I did.

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Speaker 1: I didn't Binge the whole thing, but you'll laugh that

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Speaker 1: this is my way of experiencing the series. The first

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Speaker 1: thing I did is I watched the first episode. Then

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Speaker 1: I watched the last episode of season three. Then I

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Speaker 1: went back and finished number two and three of season one,

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Speaker 1: and then I watched all three episodes of the in sequence.

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Speaker 1: And I still don't understand what it is. Maybe I

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Speaker 1: miss something by leaving out most of season one, two

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Speaker 1: and three.

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Speaker 2: I don't know. I think it's possible. That was a

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Speaker 2: very interesting way to adjust that series. It makes no sense.

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Speaker 1: But then I thought, this is going to be a

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Speaker 1: wild ride anyway, and it's going to be hard for

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Speaker 1: me to figure it out. And what if I don't

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Speaker 1: make it through all three seasons. If we're going to

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Speaker 1: talk about this thing, I kind of want to the end.

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Speaker 1: And the end did help me a little bit. I'm

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Speaker 1: not going to spoil it for anybody right now, but

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Speaker 1: it helped.

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Speaker 2: Look, I think for anyone who's even seen the show,

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Speaker 2: you're probably wondering, wait a minute, so what does this

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Speaker 2: have to do with UAP and the phenomenon? And let's

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Speaker 2: get into a little bit, because it's a very interesting series,

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Speaker 2: very well told in the show there's an inscription above

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Speaker 2: that cave with the wormhole. It's a Latin phrase that says,

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Speaker 2: sick Mundus create us st that was my best Latin accent.

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Speaker 2: That translates to thus the world was created. Now, interestingly,

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Speaker 2: that's taken from the ancient Emerald Tablets of Hermes, which

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Speaker 2: is a cornerstone of alchemy, known for that famous quote

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Speaker 2: as above, so below. Well, so this cave that has

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Speaker 2: the wormhole, sick Mundus is also not just the inscription

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Speaker 2: above that cave, but also the series secret society of

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Speaker 2: time travelers who are trying to alter timelines to solidify

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Speaker 2: their own reality. So basically it's a very complicated story,

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Speaker 2: not unlike the truth about UAP, which everyone finds to

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Speaker 2: be impenetrable at this point because there's so many theories. Now,

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Speaker 2: I know this isn't still an explanation, So let me

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Speaker 2: speculate a little bit on if Dark was in fact

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Speaker 2: working under the cover of fiction, its explanation of UAP

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Speaker 2: in my mind would be that aliens are interdimensional, not extraterrestrial. Additionally,

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Speaker 2: they would be infiltrating our timeline to alter it for

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Speaker 2: some unknown agenda, maybe to prevent that grim nuclear future

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Speaker 2: that you mentioned at the top of the show, and

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Speaker 2: then you start to wonder, well, if several people in

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Speaker 2: the intelligence agency are pointing to it, is that what

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Speaker 2: they are pointing to, that idea of time traveling aliens

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Speaker 2: and somehow our nuclear future. Well, guess what we've talked

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Speaker 2: about even before on the show, that a lot of

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Speaker 2: alien and UFO sightings have taken place around nuclear bases.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's the first thing I thought when this

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Speaker 1: guy told me this. I thought, well, we do know

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Speaker 1: one thing. Nuclear weapons seem to have gotten the attention

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Speaker 1: of whoever the others are.

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Speaker 2: Whether these this.

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Speaker 1: Non human intelligence seems to have historically been interested in

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Speaker 1: what we do with our nuclear power. It doesn't mean

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Speaker 1: they're extraterrestrials coming from far away to take a look

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Speaker 1: at as it could be, but as you said, it

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Speaker 1: could be interdimensional, might even be something will get to

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Speaker 1: in a minute as a theory. But I don't want

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Speaker 1: to interrupt the flow here, so keep flowing.

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Speaker 2: Well, let me throw out one more key point that

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Speaker 2: I think will take us where you want to go,

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Speaker 2: and that is that a very interesting aspect of dark

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Speaker 2: is the idea that free will is an illusion that

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Speaker 2: we live and in what you would call a deterministic universe,

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Speaker 2: which means that the past, the present, and the future

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Speaker 2: are already thick and only those in the case of

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Speaker 2: this story, with access to time travel technology can choose

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Speaker 2: in what reality we actually live in. Now, does that

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Speaker 2: connect to any interesting quotes that you might know about it? Well,

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Speaker 2: I'll tell you one thing.

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Speaker 1: There's a government insider, a former CIA officer named Jim Simavan.

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Speaker 1: He was actually one of the people that Tom DeLong

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Speaker 1: hooked into his to the Stars Academy at the very beginning,

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Speaker 1: and at first he was very reticent to be interviewed.

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Speaker 1: Now he's been kind of a regular but on Coast

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Speaker 1: to Coast with George Napp, this is the quote. He says,

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Speaker 1: there's a whole other reality that surrounds us, we just

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Speaker 1: simply don't have the ability to see or interact with,

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Speaker 1: which is a crazy thing for a CIA officer to say.

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Speaker 1: And then he goes on he says, there is a

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Speaker 1: force out there that can control our environment, that can

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Speaker 1: put thoughts into our heads, that can lie to you,

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Speaker 1: deceive you, and that you are not in control of

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Speaker 1: your life. And listen, I thought the CIA had its

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Speaker 1: handful handsful putting down coups and things like that in

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Speaker 1: third world countries. But apparently they've got more on their minds.

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Speaker 2: Yes, again, that sounds very much to me like the

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Speaker 2: illusion of free will. But here's the thing. If dark

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Speaker 2: is prophetic in the ways that those intelligence officers mentioned

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Speaker 2: to a person, you know, and Semivan is somehow right

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Speaker 2: in his proclamation, then think about it. It's no wonder

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Speaker 2: that the truth about the UAP phenomenon has not been

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Speaker 2: disclosed because it's way too disturbing, you know. You think

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Speaker 2: about that, and I don't think anyone wants to hear

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Speaker 2: that as the truth of disclosure. So there is one

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Speaker 2: more element of dark that I want to mention that

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Speaker 2: is not so dark, And this quite fascinating. It's that

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Speaker 2: the main characters find themselves stuck in kind of a

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Speaker 2: tragic time loop and they're trying to change it by

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Speaker 2: creating what's known as the bootstrap paradox. Now, that's a

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Speaker 2: time travel problem where or someone is sent back in time,

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Speaker 2: becoming the cause of itself and creating an infinite, self

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Speaker 2: sustaining loop. Basically, it implies that the item that was sent,

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Speaker 2: the person that was sent, has no actual point of

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Speaker 2: origin or creator, and that is by definition a paradox.

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Speaker 2: It's just mind bending, it is.

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Speaker 1: And by the way, you said, maybe they can't tell

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Speaker 1: us anything because it's too disturbing. Another reason might be

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Speaker 1: that it's too confusing because people have not actually been

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Speaker 1: able to figure out how that works. And a great

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Speaker 1: example of that is a movie. Maybe not everyone has

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Speaker 1: seen Dark but most people have seen Terminator with Arnold Schwarzenegger,

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Speaker 1: which is, I believe, an example of this bootstrap paradox

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Speaker 1: you're talking about. And it was of course directed by

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Speaker 1: James Cameron, who we talked about a lot for his

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Speaker 1: work on The Abyss recently and Terminator of course he

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Speaker 1: directed it. And in a nutshell, the plot is that

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Speaker 1: Skynet sends a Terminator back in time Okay to kill

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Speaker 1: the leader of the human resistance, and the eminence of

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Speaker 1: that robot are eventually used to create Skynet. So I

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Speaker 1: remember trying to discuss with this with the people I

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Speaker 1: saw the movie with when I first saw it, and

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Speaker 1: we all kind of said.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, let's go get a drink. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But what has always moved me about the Terminator movie

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Speaker 1: that just makes me smile even today is I think

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Speaker 1: the writers and the director got so wound up. Well,

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Speaker 1: I guess he was the writer as well, or at

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Speaker 1: least one of the writers. I don't remember right now.

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Speaker 1: But you get to the end and you go, this

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Speaker 1: is a little confusing. I'm not quite sure. Maybe we

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Speaker 1: need something to deal with this. And then there's the

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Speaker 1: voiceover in it. You know, and you and I both

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Speaker 1: know in putting together movies and TV series quite often

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Speaker 1: in post you'll go, this isn't quite working right. Maybe

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Speaker 1: a little voice over here would help. So here's the

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Speaker 1: voiceover from the end of Terminator, read by the Linda

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Speaker 1: Hamilton character, and she says, this is the voiceover. Should

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Speaker 1: I tell you about your father? That's a tough one.

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Speaker 1: Will it change your decision to send him here?

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Speaker 2: Knowing?

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Speaker 1: But if you don't send Kyle, you could never be God.

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Speaker 1: You can go crazy thinking about all this. And I

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Speaker 1: thought that's kind of that's kind of a good move.

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Speaker 1: The way you get people to say, oh, I guess

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Speaker 1: I guess it all makes sense is to say you'll

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Speaker 1: go crazy thinking about it, so don't think.

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Speaker 2: About it too much. Just enjoy the movie. And I

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Speaker 2: think that's probably solid advice. Brett.

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Speaker 1: If you're talking about a movie. You've got a friend

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Speaker 1: that overthinks everything, and you go, you know what the

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Speaker 1: problem is, you're overthinking everything. You should just relax and

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Speaker 1: listen to the movie. But that doesn't apply when you're

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Speaker 1: talking about real life. You know, if it's your life,

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Speaker 1: it's your if it's the nature of your existence, if

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Speaker 1: it's about what reality really is. Yeah, I don't think

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Speaker 1: you can tell somebody I don't think about it just

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Speaker 1: it'll just confuse you.

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Speaker 2: Reality is a reality, very true. I'm going to overthink

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Speaker 2: Dark one more time because as we talk about all

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Speaker 2: of this and lay all these ideas on the table,

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Speaker 2: there's one more thing. And this is basically my final

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Speaker 2: take on Dark. Based on everything we've heard, here's my theory.

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Speaker 2: What if humans from the distant future have been coming

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Speaker 2: back to steer our progress from the shadows, letting us

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Speaker 2: believe we still had free will, and they have an

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Speaker 2: agenda to intervene if necessary and prevent a catastrophe natural

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Speaker 2: or man made, in order to somehow fix or improve

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Speaker 2: their own future. But wait, there's more. Okay, what if

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Speaker 2: the future humans have become so mutated that they look

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Speaker 2: like grays, so what we call aliens are really us

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Speaker 2: from the future, and all this high stakes activity going

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Speaker 2: on Earth right now in the twentieth and twenty first

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Speaker 2: century is what brings real aliens, extraterrestrial and interdimensional to

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Speaker 2: our planet. That's my theory on maybe what Dark is

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Speaker 2: trying to tell us through the cover of fiction.

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Speaker 1: Well, my friend, we agree about that because I have

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Speaker 1: that theory as well. The only difference between us right

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Speaker 1: now is I wrote a movie about it, which we're

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Speaker 1: going to talk about soon. But I thought the thing

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Speaker 1: that really made me feel very relevant idea to today

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Speaker 1: is we've just spent some time talking about Disclosure Day,

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Speaker 1: which is going to be Spielberg's big movie coming out

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Speaker 1: in June, and he was on The Colbert Show about

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Speaker 1: a year ago, or maybe even a couple of years ago,

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Speaker 1: and this is what Stephen Spielberg told Stephen Colbert. He said,

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Speaker 1: the most optimistic thing I feel about these things that

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Speaker 1: we are seeing in our skies the Army and Navy

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Speaker 1: and Air Force are recording on their gun cameras, is

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Speaker 1: that what if they're not from an advanced civilization three

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Speaker 1: hundred million light years from here, what if it's five

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Speaker 1: hundred thousand years in the future. That is coming back

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Speaker 1: to document the second half of the twentieth century and

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Speaker 1: endo the twentieth century because they are anthropologists and they

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Speaker 1: know something that we don't quite know yet that has occurred,

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Speaker 1: and they are trying to track the last one hundred.

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Speaker 2: Years of our history.

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Speaker 1: Well, that seemed pretty damn specific to me that he

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Speaker 1: would lay it out like that five hundred thousand years ago. Now,

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Speaker 1: I don't know if anybody's brief Steven Spielberg and said,

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Speaker 1: and by the way, it's not a million years, it's

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Speaker 1: only half a million years, So be sure to get

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Speaker 1: that right when you go on TV and talk about it.

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Speaker 1: And by the way, Colbert said, the most hopeful part

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Speaker 1: of that to me is that we survive. And Spielberg said, yes,

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Speaker 1: that we survive, or a certain percentage of us survived.

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Speaker 1: That allows these other generations to flourish. I always thought

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Speaker 1: Spielberger is supposed to be such an optimist. It's like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: most of us aren't going to make it, but some

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Speaker 1: of us might. So you know what, we got things

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Speaker 1: to talk about. Let's take a break here and come back.

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Speaker 1: And I want to tell everybody about a movie I

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Speaker 1: know they've never seen, but that has a lot to

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Speaker 1: say about time traveling aliens.

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Speaker 2: So we'll be right back. So let's look at another

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Speaker 2: example of the bootstrap paradox.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, listen, I knew nothing about the bootstrap

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Speaker 1: paradoix or anything when I wrote the movie Official Denial,

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Speaker 1: but it's certainly about it. This is kind of personal

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Speaker 1: to me. It's kind of a film that people can't

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Speaker 1: see right now because it's not available. You can't get

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Speaker 1: a DVD of it, and it's not streaming. But in

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Speaker 1: its day it was kind of a big thing. I

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Speaker 1: wrote a movie originally called Progenitor as a screenplay, and

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Speaker 1: it was a story about a guy who thinks he's

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Speaker 1: being abducted, and so what he ends up doing is,

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Speaker 1: you know, he's complaining and his wife wants to have kids,

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Speaker 1: and he doesn't want to have kids because it's the

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Speaker 1: kind of world we're building here and everything. The only

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Speaker 1: people that believe the guy his name is Paul Corliss,

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Speaker 1: he's the main character. The only people that believe the

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Speaker 1: guy is the government. They know he's being abducted and

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Speaker 1: they want to shoot down a UFO, so they wire

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Speaker 1: up his house so that the next time he is

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Speaker 1: abducted they can scramble Apache helicopters or you know, interceptor jets,

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Speaker 1: or even use SDI to shoot one down, and they do.

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Speaker 1: The thing about that particular story is that I tried

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Speaker 1: to cram every damn piece of ufology that I couldn't

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Speaker 1: that rent and I think I'm looking at it right

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Speaker 1: now about all the things that are in it, and

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Speaker 1: it's pretty successful at getting upology in there, and it

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Speaker 1: had a checkered history to get out there. I first

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Speaker 1: wrote this thing, and my agent was like, I don't know, man,

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Speaker 1: this is so strange.

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Speaker 2: I don't know if we can send this out to anybody.

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Speaker 2: It's nuts.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you got And then he started listing all

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Speaker 1: the things that I thought were great about and I said, okay,

380
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Speaker 1: well you know it's what I got, so send it out.

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Speaker 1: And I got called in to LA Law for a

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Speaker 1: potential assignment. And I go into the LA Law office

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Speaker 1: with David Kelly, who everybody knows David Kelly. I'm in

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Speaker 1: his office. He's got stacks of screenplays everywhere, I mean

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Speaker 1: hundreds of them, at least two hundred scripts. And on

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Speaker 1: one of the stacks is my progenitor script. And he says,

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Speaker 1: that's why he brought me in and I said, cool,

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Speaker 1: do you know anything about UFOs? Are you a UFO?

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Speaker 1: He goes, no, I don't know anything about that. I

390
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Speaker 1: don't really care about that, but I know good writing,

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Speaker 1: and that was good writing. So I ended up writing

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Speaker 1: a couple of episodes of La Law about that. But

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Speaker 1: the thing is, the entire this is not a spoiler now,

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Speaker 1: it was a spoiler back in the day. But the

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Speaker 1: whole movie goes through to the end, and there are

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Speaker 1: many machinations that we could talk about. In fact, I

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Speaker 1: could do a whole episode about.

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Speaker 2: It, but we won't.

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Speaker 1: But you get to the very end, and this Paul

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Speaker 1: Corliss character is now being allowed to go free. After

401
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Speaker 1: all the movie has transpired and they had a Majestic twelve.

402
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Speaker 1: And by the way, that's something that's so interesting to me.

403
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Speaker 1: Half of the things that are in official denial are

404
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Speaker 1: also in dark skies or TV series. I just recycled

405
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Speaker 1: a lot of good eufology. But the guy stops him

406
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Speaker 1: who's been running Majestic twelve, And he says, okay, just

407
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Speaker 1: tell me where are they from?

408
00:21:58,160 --> 00:21:58,920
Speaker 2: What do they want?

409
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Speaker 1: And the guy says, is it's not where they're from.

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Speaker 1: It's when they're us And that's basically the Rod Serling

411
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Speaker 1: Twilight Zone twist of the entire movie. And so the

412
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Speaker 1: thing about it, and then I'll turn it back over.

413
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Speaker 1: When I aimed for the there us from the future thing,

414
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Speaker 1: it wasn't because I thought they were us from the future,

415
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Speaker 1: like Spielberg is positing. I mean, I could posit it,

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Speaker 1: but I had nothing to base that on. I just thought, well,

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Speaker 1: that's a very cool twist. You know, why would you

418
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Speaker 1: be abducting people? Maybe you need to study the DNA,

419
00:22:32,400 --> 00:22:36,440
Speaker 1: maybe there's something wrong, maybe whatever. So yeah, Official Denial

420
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Speaker 1: was the first original film that the Sci Fi Channel

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Speaker 1: ever made, So that's my distinction.

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Speaker 2: Thank you, and I'm.

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Speaker 1: Happy about that, and I you know, I just I

424
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Speaker 1: wish that somehow it could be on TV again and

425
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Speaker 1: maybe maybe somebody will hear this and make that happen.

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Speaker 2: That would be a lovely thing. So one other thing

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Speaker 2: I want to talk about with regards to Official is

428
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Speaker 2: when we first started talking about that movie, you had

429
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Speaker 2: mentioned that you weren't exactly thrilled with the way it

430
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Speaker 2: turned out, the way it was produced. I think you

431
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Speaker 2: have a funny anecdote about that.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if it's an anecdote, but I'll tell

433
00:23:12,800 --> 00:23:15,199
Speaker 1: you what happened. The darn thing just didn't get a

434
00:23:15,200 --> 00:23:18,480
Speaker 1: big budget. I wrote it to be a big feature

435
00:23:18,560 --> 00:23:22,200
Speaker 1: film that Steven Spielberg would direct someday as his follow

436
00:23:22,280 --> 00:23:25,359
Speaker 1: up to Close Encounters. That was kind of my imagination,

437
00:23:25,840 --> 00:23:27,879
Speaker 1: running a muck at the time, thinking that would be

438
00:23:27,880 --> 00:23:29,760
Speaker 1: a lovely thing. But at the end of the day,

439
00:23:29,800 --> 00:23:31,920
Speaker 1: the people that wanted to make it were at the

440
00:23:31,960 --> 00:23:34,440
Speaker 1: Sci Fi Channel and they didn't have a lot of money.

441
00:23:34,480 --> 00:23:38,040
Speaker 1: They didn't have Spielberg signed up to direct films for them,

442
00:23:38,040 --> 00:23:40,000
Speaker 1: and they didn't have the money to make a big film.

443
00:23:40,359 --> 00:23:41,360
Speaker 2: So we had I.

444
00:23:41,320 --> 00:23:46,000
Speaker 1: Think a two million plus budget, which is nothing, and

445
00:23:46,119 --> 00:23:48,760
Speaker 1: it wasn't much more than nothing back in nineteen ninety

446
00:23:48,800 --> 00:23:51,440
Speaker 1: three when they shot it. But they thought, well, we'll

447
00:23:51,480 --> 00:23:54,920
Speaker 1: make some more money advantage if we shoot it in Australia.

448
00:23:55,440 --> 00:23:59,280
Speaker 1: So the director, Brian Trenchard Smith, took my script and

449
00:23:59,359 --> 00:24:02,199
Speaker 1: ran off to Australia to shoot this thing. And he

450
00:24:02,280 --> 00:24:03,919
Speaker 1: was lovely. I mean, he would call me and we

451
00:24:03,960 --> 00:24:06,120
Speaker 1: would talk a lot about what was in the script.

452
00:24:06,240 --> 00:24:09,720
Speaker 1: But a decision was made, that's all I can say.

453
00:24:09,960 --> 00:24:13,600
Speaker 1: A decision was made that the alien, which is a

454
00:24:13,720 --> 00:24:18,400
Speaker 1: central character in the Official Denial film, that alien would

455
00:24:18,440 --> 00:24:22,800
Speaker 1: be played by a twelve year old ballerina in a

456
00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:27,080
Speaker 1: rubber suit. Interesting choice, Yeah, it was. And I got

457
00:24:27,080 --> 00:24:29,359
Speaker 1: to tell you, even though I wrote it, it's just

458
00:24:29,400 --> 00:24:31,880
Speaker 1: one of those things I can barely watch. And Yeah,

459
00:24:31,920 --> 00:24:34,199
Speaker 1: to this day I had people writing me who have

460
00:24:34,240 --> 00:24:37,320
Speaker 1: found a copy someplace or seen it on YouTube or whatever,

461
00:24:37,640 --> 00:24:39,920
Speaker 1: and they call me or write me and say, oh,

462
00:24:39,960 --> 00:24:42,080
Speaker 1: I just loved your film. It has all these great

463
00:24:42,119 --> 00:24:44,480
Speaker 1: ideas in it. And I want to write them back

464
00:24:44,480 --> 00:24:46,600
Speaker 1: and go, wait, did you actually see the alien in

465
00:24:46,680 --> 00:24:49,199
Speaker 1: this thing? But they didn't care because they sort of

466
00:24:49,359 --> 00:24:51,560
Speaker 1: looked at it like a I don't know, like a play.

467
00:24:52,119 --> 00:24:54,840
Speaker 1: So it didn't have to be as authentic as you

468
00:24:54,920 --> 00:24:57,919
Speaker 1: might imagine. So God bless those people who said that,

469
00:24:58,480 --> 00:25:00,919
Speaker 1: and you and I did learn one less and from it.

470
00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:03,480
Speaker 1: We took a look at Official Denial, which is on

471
00:25:03,520 --> 00:25:05,840
Speaker 1: the day you told me your Harrington story, I told

472
00:25:05,880 --> 00:25:08,280
Speaker 1: you about Official Denial. And one of the things that

473
00:25:08,359 --> 00:25:12,760
Speaker 1: we decided from my experience was let's not put young

474
00:25:12,800 --> 00:25:16,000
Speaker 1: girls in rubber suits and expect people to think that

475
00:25:16,040 --> 00:25:19,199
Speaker 1: they're an alien. You can't really move your face. You

476
00:25:19,200 --> 00:25:21,160
Speaker 1: can't move your mouth, you can't move your eyes. It's

477
00:25:21,160 --> 00:25:23,720
Speaker 1: not a good look. And so at least for Dark Skies,

478
00:25:23,960 --> 00:25:27,160
Speaker 1: we rejected that possibility and went for some other aliens

479
00:25:27,200 --> 00:25:29,560
Speaker 1: that were not still as good as you could do today,

480
00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:32,399
Speaker 1: but they were better. So yeah, that was that's my

481
00:25:32,480 --> 00:25:35,720
Speaker 1: one caveat to the whole thing. But just to tell

482
00:25:35,760 --> 00:25:39,520
Speaker 1: you the things that are actually in official denial, you

483
00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:44,320
Speaker 1: got Majestic twelve, you got my Labs, which are military abductions, right.

484
00:25:44,640 --> 00:25:48,160
Speaker 1: You've got Native Americans who know more about what's going

485
00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:51,680
Speaker 1: on because of the time travel aspect than anyone else

486
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:56,159
Speaker 1: seems to know. You have a guy getting given a choice.

487
00:25:56,480 --> 00:25:58,560
Speaker 1: We'll tell you everything you need to know, but then

488
00:25:58,600 --> 00:26:01,199
Speaker 1: you work for us, which we did with Carl Sagan

489
00:26:01,240 --> 00:26:05,240
Speaker 1: and Dark Skies. That appears in official denial. First he

490
00:26:05,320 --> 00:26:08,919
Speaker 1: gets handed a Majestic badge, which of course is what

491
00:26:09,080 --> 00:26:11,159
Speaker 1: happened on the night of our Dark Skuy's party. We

492
00:26:11,240 --> 00:26:14,840
Speaker 1: gave everybody a Majestic badge. And there's an autopsy in it.

493
00:26:15,240 --> 00:26:19,600
Speaker 1: There's a conversation about disclosure and how it would lead

494
00:26:19,640 --> 00:26:22,600
Speaker 1: to mass panic and the collapse of institutions, which is

495
00:26:22,680 --> 00:26:24,480
Speaker 1: like the book I wrote with Richard Dolan.

496
00:26:24,800 --> 00:26:25,880
Speaker 2: I mean, I was.

497
00:26:26,080 --> 00:26:28,439
Speaker 1: Reviewing this before we went on the air with this,

498
00:26:28,840 --> 00:26:32,200
Speaker 1: and I thought, my god, I've recycled everything I've ever

499
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:35,399
Speaker 1: thought about the UFO topic. And I've been doing it

500
00:26:35,440 --> 00:26:38,000
Speaker 1: since nineteen ninety three. So I feel kind of bad

501
00:26:38,040 --> 00:26:40,159
Speaker 1: I'm recycling. But I think it may be that some

502
00:26:40,200 --> 00:26:42,800
Speaker 1: of the things that are in that movie are actually accurate,

503
00:26:43,200 --> 00:26:46,440
Speaker 1: and that's why we've gone back to that well from

504
00:26:46,520 --> 00:26:47,120
Speaker 1: time to time.

505
00:26:47,320 --> 00:26:51,720
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean absolutely fascinating. It's in a weird way.

506
00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:55,400
Speaker 2: Official Denial is like the greatest hits of ufology, kind

507
00:26:55,440 --> 00:26:59,320
Speaker 2: of story beats, and like you said there, they keep

508
00:26:59,320 --> 00:27:03,720
Speaker 2: getting reused, used because they're very durable, right, They're very interesting,

509
00:27:04,040 --> 00:27:07,040
Speaker 2: and so yeah, I think if you haven't had a

510
00:27:07,119 --> 00:27:09,520
Speaker 2: chance to see Official Denial, I recommend going to check

511
00:27:09,560 --> 00:27:09,800
Speaker 2: it out.

512
00:27:09,840 --> 00:27:12,560
Speaker 1: And if you're going to find a copy anywhere, Yeah,

513
00:27:12,760 --> 00:27:15,320
Speaker 1: I'd like to say that it's a government conspiracy. They

514
00:27:15,320 --> 00:27:19,000
Speaker 1: are suppressing Official Denial print. They know that if the

515
00:27:19,040 --> 00:27:21,440
Speaker 1: public gets a chance to see this movie. I wrote

516
00:27:21,760 --> 00:27:23,720
Speaker 1: that all hell is going to break loose. So they're

517
00:27:23,760 --> 00:27:24,960
Speaker 1: doing the only thing they could do.

518
00:27:25,320 --> 00:27:28,200
Speaker 2: That's exactly what they're doing well. So now, the other

519
00:27:28,280 --> 00:27:31,199
Speaker 2: thing that I thought was interesting about official denial is

520
00:27:31,240 --> 00:27:34,600
Speaker 2: that you actually said that you were inspired to write

521
00:27:34,600 --> 00:27:39,480
Speaker 2: the script because of Communion. The book absolutely true. Tell

522
00:27:39,480 --> 00:27:40,399
Speaker 2: me a little bit about that.

523
00:27:40,680 --> 00:27:42,920
Speaker 1: You know, here's the thing, if you just go back

524
00:27:42,960 --> 00:27:46,040
Speaker 1: in history we all just so people know, Whitley Strieber,

525
00:27:46,160 --> 00:27:49,960
Speaker 1: of course, is the guy who wrote a book called Communion,

526
00:27:50,200 --> 00:27:52,520
Speaker 1: and then it became a movie called Communion a.

527
00:27:52,480 --> 00:27:53,320
Speaker 2: Couple of years later.

528
00:27:53,359 --> 00:27:57,200
Speaker 1: But he is like probably America's best known abductee because

529
00:27:57,200 --> 00:28:00,080
Speaker 1: he's written seven books about it or whatever. And I

530
00:28:00,119 --> 00:28:02,119
Speaker 1: will tell you how I got inspired by it, but

531
00:28:02,200 --> 00:28:05,280
Speaker 1: first I want to just tell everybody what exactly it is.

532
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:09,320
Speaker 1: The book was published in nineteen eighty seven. It's called Communion,

533
00:28:09,400 --> 00:28:12,760
Speaker 1: a True Story, and it is whitt least Reeber, who

534
00:28:12,840 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 1: is a writer, a novelist. It's his intensely personal and

535
00:28:17,119 --> 00:28:22,680
Speaker 1: autobiographical account of what he says about these continuing nighttime

536
00:28:22,800 --> 00:28:26,960
Speaker 1: nightmares he's having at his isolated New York cabin and

537
00:28:27,000 --> 00:28:31,440
Speaker 1: followed by lost time and recurring flashbacks, and this sense

538
00:28:31,480 --> 00:28:35,400
Speaker 1: of his own reality is unraveling. But what people mostly

539
00:28:35,440 --> 00:28:37,919
Speaker 1: remember about it, Brent, And I'm sure this will be

540
00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:40,560
Speaker 1: true for many of the people hearing this is the

541
00:28:40,640 --> 00:28:43,680
Speaker 1: cover of the book is an image of what we

542
00:28:43,840 --> 00:28:47,440
Speaker 1: now believe are the Grays. And it's such a haunting,

543
00:28:47,920 --> 00:28:51,280
Speaker 1: evocative piece of art that is on the cover of

544
00:28:51,320 --> 00:28:54,160
Speaker 1: that that has stopped people in their tracks, which is

545
00:28:54,240 --> 00:28:56,840
Speaker 1: exactly what it did to me. I was in a

546
00:28:57,160 --> 00:28:59,400
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble because right now we have the Internet

547
00:28:59,400 --> 00:29:01,920
Speaker 1: to do research, but back when this was coming out,

548
00:29:02,240 --> 00:29:04,440
Speaker 1: when I needed to do research on a movie I

549
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:06,640
Speaker 1: was writing, I would go to Barnes and Noble. It

550
00:29:06,720 --> 00:29:08,400
Speaker 1: was like going to the library, but I got to

551
00:29:08,400 --> 00:29:10,520
Speaker 1: buy them and take them home. So I was in

552
00:29:10,680 --> 00:29:13,120
Speaker 1: a Barnes and Noble this is the last days of

553
00:29:13,160 --> 00:29:18,000
Speaker 1: the Reagan administration, and I see this table with a

554
00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:21,600
Speaker 1: hundred of these Communion books on it, and I pick

555
00:29:21,720 --> 00:29:24,600
Speaker 1: up this book. I had an armload of books I

556
00:29:24,640 --> 00:29:26,800
Speaker 1: was going to read, and I was ready.

557
00:29:26,600 --> 00:29:27,240
Speaker 2: To go buy them.

558
00:29:27,320 --> 00:29:29,480
Speaker 1: But I look at this thing, and I put all

559
00:29:29,520 --> 00:29:31,320
Speaker 1: of the books down that I was going to go buy,

560
00:29:31,360 --> 00:29:34,640
Speaker 1: and I marched straight up and bought it, took it

561
00:29:34,720 --> 00:29:37,400
Speaker 1: home and read it, and it freaked me out. It

562
00:29:37,560 --> 00:29:41,520
Speaker 1: just it was that iconic face come to life, and

563
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:47,280
Speaker 1: also the sense that Streeber was authentically disturbed. But now

564
00:29:47,320 --> 00:29:51,120
Speaker 1: here's the thing that makes it such an interesting off

565
00:29:51,200 --> 00:29:53,920
Speaker 1: ramp in eufology. At the time the book came out,

566
00:29:54,320 --> 00:29:59,000
Speaker 1: Streeber was an established novelist, all right. He was the guy.

567
00:29:59,480 --> 00:30:04,080
Speaker 1: He was a man who was writing these wonderful books.

568
00:30:04,240 --> 00:30:06,760
Speaker 1: And some of them were made into movies. Wolf Hunger,

569
00:30:07,800 --> 00:30:09,920
Speaker 1: The Hunger. Yeah, what was the other one?

570
00:30:09,960 --> 00:30:12,720
Speaker 2: You saw? You saw? Wolf and The Hunger were two

571
00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:14,600
Speaker 2: movies that I saw when they came out, and I

572
00:30:14,680 --> 00:30:17,080
Speaker 2: loved them. That was how that was my introduction to

573
00:30:17,080 --> 00:30:20,280
Speaker 2: Whitley Streeber was not through the book Communion, but actually

574
00:30:20,280 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 2: through those movies right on.

575
00:30:22,040 --> 00:30:25,040
Speaker 1: So I had enjoyed those books, but the ones I

576
00:30:25,080 --> 00:30:28,240
Speaker 1: really got turned on by were two that he had written.

577
00:30:28,320 --> 00:30:29,520
Speaker 2: One called war Day.

578
00:30:29,400 --> 00:30:32,240
Speaker 1: Which was the aftermath of a nuclear war, a limited

579
00:30:32,320 --> 00:30:34,720
Speaker 1: nuclear what that would be like, and it was riveting

580
00:30:34,720 --> 00:30:38,800
Speaker 1: and he and Whitley Strueber is a phenomenally talented writer.

581
00:30:39,160 --> 00:30:41,560
Speaker 1: I mean, he just knows the English language and how

582
00:30:41,560 --> 00:30:43,560
Speaker 1: to put it together. And then the other one was

583
00:30:43,680 --> 00:30:47,800
Speaker 1: Nature's End, which was sort of about the ecological collapse

584
00:30:47,880 --> 00:30:50,840
Speaker 1: of the world. But the point is they were novels,

585
00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:54,959
Speaker 1: so his book with that face on it says Communion

586
00:30:55,160 --> 00:31:00,280
Speaker 1: a true story, and it's supposed to be autobiographical. And

587
00:31:00,360 --> 00:31:04,480
Speaker 1: the first thing I thought was, well, maybe what he's

588
00:31:04,560 --> 00:31:07,840
Speaker 1: done is he's written the new novel, but in order

589
00:31:08,080 --> 00:31:11,800
Speaker 1: to make it feel very present and scary, he'll make

590
00:31:11,840 --> 00:31:15,320
Speaker 1: it his story. So that my first take was this

591
00:31:15,480 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 1: probably didn't really happen to him, but it's his latest novel,

592
00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:20,840
Speaker 1: so I have to read it. And I was reading

593
00:31:20,840 --> 00:31:22,920
Speaker 1: all this stuff. But after I read it, I thought,

594
00:31:23,080 --> 00:31:25,280
Speaker 1: I'm going to have to get off that position because

595
00:31:25,480 --> 00:31:30,280
Speaker 1: it sounded just too clearly lived. So I'm curious, at

596
00:31:30,320 --> 00:31:33,640
Speaker 1: what point did you read the book and what did you.

597
00:31:33,600 --> 00:31:36,800
Speaker 2: Think of it? So something you just said is, you know,

598
00:31:36,800 --> 00:31:39,040
Speaker 2: we're talking about the cover of fiction. It sounded like,

599
00:31:39,400 --> 00:31:41,040
Speaker 2: and I've heard this from other people too, that the

600
00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:45,880
Speaker 2: suspicion was that he was writing under the cover of nonfiction. Yes, right, exactly,

601
00:31:45,920 --> 00:31:49,720
Speaker 2: that he had made up another amazingly you know, interesting

602
00:31:49,760 --> 00:31:52,960
Speaker 2: story and put in a true story on the cover

603
00:31:53,200 --> 00:31:57,080
Speaker 2: to give you that kind of patina of reality. But

604
00:31:57,480 --> 00:32:00,320
Speaker 2: in answer to your question, I didn't read the the

605
00:32:00,320 --> 00:32:04,120
Speaker 2: book until probably ten or eleven years ago. I was

606
00:32:04,160 --> 00:32:07,080
Speaker 2: obviously well aware of it. I knew what the basic

607
00:32:07,160 --> 00:32:12,000
Speaker 2: story was, and however, I found it through Whitley Strieber's

608
00:32:12,240 --> 00:32:15,880
Speaker 2: Dreamland podcast. I started listening to that about ten years ago.

609
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:19,360
Speaker 2: I've been an active subscriber to it since then. I

610
00:32:19,360 --> 00:32:21,720
Speaker 2: don't think I've missed more than maybe a handful of

611
00:32:21,760 --> 00:32:24,680
Speaker 2: episodes over the last decade. And he would often talk

612
00:32:24,720 --> 00:32:28,280
Speaker 2: about Communion, obviously, and I started to get interested in it.

613
00:32:28,640 --> 00:32:30,960
Speaker 2: I went back and read the book, and then I

614
00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:34,200
Speaker 2: watched the movie, and I will say, kind of like

615
00:32:34,280 --> 00:32:38,480
Speaker 2: you with some regrets about how Official Denial was produced,

616
00:32:38,880 --> 00:32:41,520
Speaker 2: I think Whitley has some of those same regrets about

617
00:32:41,520 --> 00:32:45,440
Speaker 2: how the movie of Communion turned out. Because here's the thing.

618
00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:49,320
Speaker 2: I read that book and I was blown away. It

619
00:32:49,400 --> 00:32:54,720
Speaker 2: felt very to me, very grounded emotionally, even though it's outrageous,

620
00:32:55,200 --> 00:32:59,440
Speaker 2: it felt very kind of serious, and I was along

621
00:32:59,480 --> 00:33:04,000
Speaker 2: for the ride. The movie takes a distinctly different tone,

622
00:33:05,120 --> 00:33:09,160
Speaker 2: largely due to Christopher Walkin's performance, but I think that

623
00:33:09,400 --> 00:33:10,160
Speaker 2: at at the end of the.

624
00:33:10,200 --> 00:33:15,040
Speaker 1: Day, there Christopher Walkin. I mean, who doesn't love Christopher Walkin.

625
00:33:15,080 --> 00:33:17,200
Speaker 1: But the minute you put that guy on screen, say

626
00:33:17,200 --> 00:33:20,280
Speaker 1: he's your main character, and you're supposed to believe everything

627
00:33:20,320 --> 00:33:23,479
Speaker 1: he says and love him as a charming, charming person.

628
00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:27,719
Speaker 1: Not really, and he was in this improvisational mode at

629
00:33:27,760 --> 00:33:29,080
Speaker 1: which apparently you know.

630
00:33:29,000 --> 00:33:31,840
Speaker 2: He was just he was trying to be unique and

631
00:33:32,240 --> 00:33:35,800
Speaker 2: all that. Yeah, well, look, this all takes us into

632
00:33:35,960 --> 00:33:39,160
Speaker 2: very interesting terrain. We've already come a great distance, but

633
00:33:39,240 --> 00:33:42,600
Speaker 2: we are here because the director of Communion had a

634
00:33:42,720 --> 00:33:46,560
Speaker 2: very interesting experience that all circles back to our first

635
00:33:46,560 --> 00:33:48,720
Speaker 2: episode when we had a party crasher.

636
00:33:48,680 --> 00:33:51,440
Speaker 1: Right, well, absolutely well, First of all, the director is

637
00:33:51,520 --> 00:33:55,120
Speaker 1: a gentleman, I hope I pronounced it correctly, Philippe Mora,

638
00:33:55,640 --> 00:33:59,080
Speaker 1: and he and strieberhead met and decided that they would

639
00:33:59,160 --> 00:34:01,880
Speaker 1: make a movie out of this. Now what's interesting is

640
00:34:02,160 --> 00:34:06,000
Speaker 1: so they started collaborating and other people tried to get

641
00:34:06,120 --> 00:34:09,080
Speaker 1: the option on that book, including I think Spielberg but

642
00:34:09,160 --> 00:34:11,840
Speaker 1: other people as well, and they said, no, we're making

643
00:34:11,880 --> 00:34:15,439
Speaker 1: our movie. I'd bet Whitley Strieber today would say, yeah,

644
00:34:15,440 --> 00:34:17,879
Speaker 1: we should have gone with that Spielberg kid. That would

645
00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:22,040
Speaker 1: have been a good choice. But what is fascinating about

646
00:34:22,040 --> 00:34:25,280
Speaker 1: this Though we've told our story about how JC crashed

647
00:34:25,760 --> 00:34:27,960
Speaker 1: the Dark Sky's party, said he was from O and

648
00:34:28,040 --> 00:34:31,359
Speaker 1: I the office of Naval Intelligence, and they wanted to

649
00:34:32,040 --> 00:34:35,880
Speaker 1: talk to us about using our show to incorporate certain

650
00:34:36,280 --> 00:34:39,600
Speaker 1: ideas into it. Well, guess what happened with Felipe More.

651
00:34:39,719 --> 00:34:44,640
Speaker 1: This is from an interview from a site called Flashback Files.

652
00:34:45,360 --> 00:34:49,440
Speaker 1: He says he was followed by someone in an airport

653
00:34:49,480 --> 00:34:51,960
Speaker 1: who he kept seeing. He kept seeing this guy, but then,

654
00:34:52,160 --> 00:34:54,239
Speaker 1: you know, you see people several times in there where

655
00:34:54,280 --> 00:34:56,319
Speaker 1: didn't think too much about it, but he'd seen him

656
00:34:56,360 --> 00:34:59,400
Speaker 1: a couple of times. He takes his seat and the

657
00:34:59,440 --> 00:35:02,080
Speaker 1: guy sitting next to him, So I wrote down his

658
00:35:02,239 --> 00:35:04,760
Speaker 1: telling of the story. So rather than me tell his story,

659
00:35:04,920 --> 00:35:07,239
Speaker 1: I'm going to let Mara tell his story so that

660
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:10,040
Speaker 1: we're accurate here. This is what he said in the

661
00:35:10,120 --> 00:35:14,319
Speaker 1: Flashback Files. After the film was made, I flew to

662
00:35:14,400 --> 00:35:16,960
Speaker 1: San Antonio to see Whitley, who was living there at

663
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:19,440
Speaker 1: the time, and I was followed by a guy that

664
00:35:19,520 --> 00:35:22,960
Speaker 1: looked like Robert Redford in that Cia movie. He was

665
00:35:23,080 --> 00:35:25,359
Speaker 1: right behind me as I checked in. When we get

666
00:35:25,360 --> 00:35:27,400
Speaker 1: on the plane, the guy is seated right next to

667
00:35:27,440 --> 00:35:30,319
Speaker 1: me and he started chatting and he said, what are

668
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:32,960
Speaker 1: you doing in San Antonio? I said that I was

669
00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:35,200
Speaker 1: seeing my friend Whitley. Strieber and that we had just

670
00:35:35,280 --> 00:35:38,520
Speaker 1: made this movie Communion, and he said that's the best

671
00:35:38,520 --> 00:35:41,880
Speaker 1: movie ever made about alien abduction. And he asked more questions.

672
00:35:42,200 --> 00:35:44,640
Speaker 1: So at one point I just asked him if he

673
00:35:44,680 --> 00:35:48,040
Speaker 1: was a journalist and he said, no, sir. He opened

674
00:35:48,080 --> 00:35:50,960
Speaker 1: his jacket and showed me a badge which said Defense

675
00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:55,200
Speaker 1: Intelligence Agency or DIA, which, by the way, i'd never

676
00:35:55,280 --> 00:35:59,000
Speaker 1: heard of, Morris says, but subsequently I've learned that it's

677
00:35:59,040 --> 00:36:02,279
Speaker 1: like the CIA of the Pentagon. Now and this is

678
00:36:02,320 --> 00:36:05,600
Speaker 1: Morris speaking, I have to abbreviate the conversation because this

679
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:08,000
Speaker 1: guy and I talked during the whole flight from San

680
00:36:08,040 --> 00:36:11,040
Speaker 1: Antonio to Los Angeles. He asked me if I had

681
00:36:11,080 --> 00:36:13,680
Speaker 1: ever met any aliens. I said, no, Sarah, I haven't

682
00:36:13,719 --> 00:36:17,920
Speaker 1: met any aliens. He said, has mister Strieber met any aliens?

683
00:36:18,160 --> 00:36:20,840
Speaker 1: And I said, well, he thinks he has, but I

684
00:36:20,880 --> 00:36:24,080
Speaker 1: don't know. So the questioning was like that. It seemed

685
00:36:24,080 --> 00:36:26,640
Speaker 1: to me that they were really interested to know whether

686
00:36:26,680 --> 00:36:29,440
Speaker 1: it was a hoax or not. But it wasn't a hoax.

687
00:36:29,520 --> 00:36:33,040
Speaker 1: I mean, Whitley did believe it. Pretty interesting huh.

688
00:36:32,560 --> 00:36:36,799
Speaker 2: Wow, Yeah, that's fascinating. It reminds me of our conversation

689
00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:40,719
Speaker 2: with JC right, you know that when he said you

690
00:36:40,800 --> 00:36:44,719
Speaker 2: got a lot right, he was so complimentary about what

691
00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:47,520
Speaker 2: we'd done, and it was a great entree. It was

692
00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:49,799
Speaker 2: a great way to kind of grease the wheels and

693
00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:54,680
Speaker 2: get us talking. So similar technique used by an intelligence

694
00:36:54,719 --> 00:36:59,759
Speaker 2: agent strikes me as possibly pre planned, not the coincidence

695
00:36:59,760 --> 00:37:03,319
Speaker 2: that it might have looked like. But be that as

696
00:37:03,320 --> 00:37:06,480
Speaker 2: it may. A couple other things that are interesting. Sticking

697
00:37:06,480 --> 00:37:08,680
Speaker 2: with Whitley for a moment and his point of view,

698
00:37:08,680 --> 00:37:12,000
Speaker 2: because he's had such a unique life. The sum total

699
00:37:12,000 --> 00:37:14,160
Speaker 2: of his experience is not in the Book of Communion.

700
00:37:14,719 --> 00:37:17,719
Speaker 2: He's written many books. He's had a lot of incredible

701
00:37:17,719 --> 00:37:22,280
Speaker 2: experiences since then. And when you talk about official denial

702
00:37:22,440 --> 00:37:26,040
Speaker 2: possibly being like a unified field theory of ufology, his

703
00:37:26,200 --> 00:37:29,640
Speaker 2: life is like a unified field theory of upology. And

704
00:37:29,680 --> 00:37:32,200
Speaker 2: there's just two quotes he's said that I want to

705
00:37:32,239 --> 00:37:34,640
Speaker 2: share because I think it gets to the essence of

706
00:37:35,280 --> 00:37:37,640
Speaker 2: not just Whitley, but also what we're dealing with or

707
00:37:37,680 --> 00:37:40,160
Speaker 2: what we're trying to make sense of. Here's one of them.

708
00:37:40,239 --> 00:37:43,040
Speaker 2: This is Whitley Streeber're talking. I wondered if I might

709
00:37:43,080 --> 00:37:45,600
Speaker 2: not be in the grip of demons. He's talking about

710
00:37:45,640 --> 00:37:49,279
Speaker 2: when he was abducted by the Grays, if they were

711
00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:53,040
Speaker 2: not making me suffer for their own purposes or simply

712
00:37:53,200 --> 00:37:57,919
Speaker 2: for their enjoyment. Now there's a degree of sadistic alien there.

713
00:37:57,960 --> 00:38:01,520
Speaker 2: But I think the more interesting thing is him deflecting

714
00:38:01,800 --> 00:38:06,080
Speaker 2: not to aliens but to demons. Right. This is an

715
00:38:06,120 --> 00:38:09,879
Speaker 2: ongoing idea of are they aliens or angels, right, and

716
00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:14,160
Speaker 2: or demons? So he was really early on. I think

717
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:19,080
Speaker 2: he was on the vanguard of having that concept. Secondarily,

718
00:38:19,440 --> 00:38:23,280
Speaker 2: here's the other quote. Very quietly, he said, hidden away

719
00:38:23,320 --> 00:38:26,800
Speaker 2: from the scorn and disbelief of the people who cling

720
00:38:26,880 --> 00:38:31,600
Speaker 2: to the old, dying reality, a new one is being born. Now.

721
00:38:31,920 --> 00:38:35,280
Speaker 2: I personally believe that, and I think that that's another

722
00:38:35,800 --> 00:38:39,080
Speaker 2: reason that I tend to believe what happened to him

723
00:38:39,560 --> 00:38:42,400
Speaker 2: in that book, and that he reflected it as accurately

724
00:38:42,440 --> 00:38:45,279
Speaker 2: as he can remember. And that's the fact that he

725
00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:49,440
Speaker 2: was very vulnerable. That story produced a lot of what

726
00:38:49,560 --> 00:38:53,320
Speaker 2: he says, you know, scorn and disbelief. Right, he wasn't

727
00:38:53,520 --> 00:38:57,840
Speaker 2: applauded for coming out and talking about the rectal probe

728
00:38:57,880 --> 00:39:00,440
Speaker 2: and other things that happen and the kind of the

729
00:39:00,480 --> 00:39:02,960
Speaker 2: nervous breakdown, if you will, that he was having and

730
00:39:03,000 --> 00:39:05,759
Speaker 2: how that impacted his life. Those things are really hard

731
00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:09,080
Speaker 2: to talk about. And again, as an experiencer, I can

732
00:39:09,200 --> 00:39:12,239
Speaker 2: identify with that idea of you tell somebody or you

733
00:39:12,360 --> 00:39:16,160
Speaker 2: share with someone your most kind of intimate stories, and

734
00:39:16,520 --> 00:39:20,720
Speaker 2: instead of getting compassion or even belief, you're often ostracized,

735
00:39:21,239 --> 00:39:24,520
Speaker 2: and it's really hard to deal with that. So for

736
00:39:24,640 --> 00:39:26,520
Speaker 2: all of those reasons, and for the fact that I

737
00:39:26,560 --> 00:39:28,560
Speaker 2: have listened to him for ten years, I tend to

738
00:39:28,600 --> 00:39:32,279
Speaker 2: believe that he experienced something very close to what he

739
00:39:32,360 --> 00:39:35,160
Speaker 2: laid out. What he has chosen to interpret that as

740
00:39:35,680 --> 00:39:39,359
Speaker 2: later in his life, that's open to discussion, but I

741
00:39:39,400 --> 00:39:42,560
Speaker 2: think that I hear the details, I hear the emotion

742
00:39:42,680 --> 00:39:44,480
Speaker 2: in his voice when he talks about it, and that

743
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:47,000
Speaker 2: all rings very true to me. So that's my take

744
00:39:47,040 --> 00:39:48,919
Speaker 2: on it. Bryce what's your take?

745
00:39:49,200 --> 00:39:52,320
Speaker 1: Well, listen, I'm not an experiencer, so I can't say, well,

746
00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:55,360
Speaker 1: that was exactly like my experience, So I have to

747
00:39:55,400 --> 00:39:58,000
Speaker 1: believe him. But I have thought a long time about this.

748
00:39:58,560 --> 00:40:01,320
Speaker 1: I was, as you know, friends with Stanton Freedman. I

749
00:40:01,360 --> 00:40:04,640
Speaker 1: asked Stanton Friedman once, Hey, Stam, what do you think

750
00:40:04,640 --> 00:40:07,880
Speaker 1: about Whitley Streeber. Do you think he's telling the truth? Stanton,

751
00:40:08,120 --> 00:40:10,560
Speaker 1: who had an opinion about everything, looked at me for

752
00:40:10,640 --> 00:40:13,520
Speaker 1: like thirty to forty seconds silently. You could just he

753
00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:16,600
Speaker 1: was thinking through his answer, and he said, well, I

754
00:40:16,920 --> 00:40:20,480
Speaker 1: think something happened to him, but I don't know if

755
00:40:20,680 --> 00:40:24,040
Speaker 1: the whole story is true. That was his analysis. So

756
00:40:24,400 --> 00:40:26,560
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about that for a while. That was

757
00:40:26,600 --> 00:40:29,200
Speaker 1: not an impression of Stanton Friedman, by the way. That

758
00:40:29,280 --> 00:40:32,920
Speaker 1: was just for drama anyway. So I've gotten to know

759
00:40:33,160 --> 00:40:36,480
Speaker 1: Whitley a little bit. I've worked on projects with him,

760
00:40:36,600 --> 00:40:40,600
Speaker 1: and I've met him at conferences, and I even had

761
00:40:40,600 --> 00:40:43,400
Speaker 1: Whitley and his wife Anne come to our house for

762
00:40:43,440 --> 00:40:47,040
Speaker 1: one of these projects and we had lunch, he and

763
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:50,799
Speaker 1: Jackie and Anne and myself. And I will say this

764
00:40:50,960 --> 00:40:55,600
Speaker 1: on the experiencer aspect, let's remember the impact his late wife,

765
00:40:55,600 --> 00:41:01,160
Speaker 1: Ann Streeber had. After Communion was published. They started getting letters,

766
00:41:01,560 --> 00:41:04,000
Speaker 1: and not just a few, like a quarter of a

767
00:41:04,040 --> 00:41:06,320
Speaker 1: million letters, If I'm not mistaken.

768
00:41:06,040 --> 00:41:08,359
Speaker 2: I think by now it's over half a million.

769
00:41:08,440 --> 00:41:12,239
Speaker 1: Okay, and read them all and they even published a

770
00:41:12,239 --> 00:41:14,360
Speaker 1: book about it. But she read all of them and

771
00:41:14,400 --> 00:41:16,600
Speaker 1: they were all, you know, I saw your book and

772
00:41:16,640 --> 00:41:19,160
Speaker 1: that image just made me. I had to buy it

773
00:41:19,239 --> 00:41:22,520
Speaker 1: because it's made me believe something. And then they read

774
00:41:22,560 --> 00:41:25,320
Speaker 1: the book and they go Your experience is so similar

775
00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:28,400
Speaker 1: to mine, So you kind of have to ask yourself

776
00:41:28,440 --> 00:41:31,160
Speaker 1: first of all, are all these people crazy? Are they

777
00:41:31,160 --> 00:41:33,840
Speaker 1: all hoaxers? Are they all whatever? And the answer is no,

778
00:41:33,960 --> 00:41:36,200
Speaker 1: they're not. So if you ask me what do I

779
00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:40,520
Speaker 1: think about Whitley Streeber and whether he's telling the truth?

780
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:41,120
Speaker 2: I do.

781
00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:45,040
Speaker 1: I think Whitley Streeber is an honest man with some

782
00:41:45,080 --> 00:41:47,279
Speaker 1: pain in this experience.

783
00:41:47,760 --> 00:41:48,000
Speaker 2: I know.

784
00:41:48,040 --> 00:41:51,600
Speaker 1: It's also it cost him money and career too, because

785
00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:56,360
Speaker 1: instead of churning out a novel every year, he was

786
00:41:56,480 --> 00:41:59,839
Speaker 1: turning out alien books, and some of them did better

787
00:41:59,880 --> 00:42:02,560
Speaker 1: than others, as you might imagine. But I think his

788
00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:06,440
Speaker 1: passion and his attention to details speak very strongly to

789
00:42:06,520 --> 00:42:08,040
Speaker 1: the fact that one.

790
00:42:07,920 --> 00:42:18,360
Speaker 2: Of these happened to him. One of the most discussed

791
00:42:18,400 --> 00:42:22,319
Speaker 2: reasons for using cover of fiction regarding the UAP phenomenon

792
00:42:22,600 --> 00:42:25,680
Speaker 2: is what's called ontological shock. For those of you that

793
00:42:25,719 --> 00:42:29,000
Speaker 2: don't know what that means, it's basically a feeling of

794
00:42:29,280 --> 00:42:34,279
Speaker 2: profound disorientation when you come to realize that what you

795
00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:38,080
Speaker 2: believe to be reality is no longer true. Now there's

796
00:42:38,120 --> 00:42:41,040
Speaker 2: a feeling amongst some of the people at the very

797
00:42:41,080 --> 00:42:45,080
Speaker 2: highest level, those who know the truth about the UAP phenomenon,

798
00:42:45,640 --> 00:42:49,440
Speaker 2: that humanity is not ready for that truth. And if

799
00:42:49,480 --> 00:42:52,279
Speaker 2: you think about it, that's a very convenient way of

800
00:42:52,400 --> 00:42:56,240
Speaker 2: spinning the secret keepers as noble that they are somehow

801
00:42:56,280 --> 00:43:00,279
Speaker 2: trying to protect us from this awful truth. Put this

802
00:43:00,400 --> 00:43:03,759
Speaker 2: in full context. When we created Dark Skies, our main

803
00:43:03,880 --> 00:43:09,160
Speaker 2: character was someone named John Loengarde. He had the opposite

804
00:43:09,400 --> 00:43:12,640
Speaker 2: view of these secret keepers who are protecting us from

805
00:43:12,640 --> 00:43:15,400
Speaker 2: the truth. In fact, he had a fundamental belief that

806
00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:18,319
Speaker 2: people have a right to know the truth, regardless of

807
00:43:18,320 --> 00:43:20,920
Speaker 2: how shocking it is, which is why in our story

808
00:43:21,360 --> 00:43:25,000
Speaker 2: he joins the secret keeping agency Majestic twelve. His goal

809
00:43:25,160 --> 00:43:27,319
Speaker 2: was he wanted to learn the truth, and ultimately, when

810
00:43:27,360 --> 00:43:29,640
Speaker 2: he did find out the truth, he decided to get

811
00:43:29,680 --> 00:43:32,880
Speaker 2: it to his hero JFK, so that JFK could tell

812
00:43:32,920 --> 00:43:36,799
Speaker 2: the world. But unfortunately, in our world, JFK was assassinated,

813
00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:42,440
Speaker 2: so full disclosure. When we started Dark Skys, the idea

814
00:43:42,640 --> 00:43:46,120
Speaker 2: of using cover of fiction for a noble purpose was

815
00:43:46,239 --> 00:43:49,080
Speaker 2: not exactly what we had in mind. We actually had

816
00:43:49,160 --> 00:43:51,600
Speaker 2: a different agenda something we're going to walk you through now.

817
00:43:51,719 --> 00:43:54,640
Speaker 2: But the interesting thing about it is by doing this,

818
00:43:54,840 --> 00:43:58,560
Speaker 2: by using the cover of fiction, it created something called

819
00:43:58,560 --> 00:44:01,239
Speaker 2: the boomerang effect and came back to us in a

820
00:44:01,239 --> 00:44:03,080
Speaker 2: way that we could never have imagined.

821
00:44:03,320 --> 00:44:06,400
Speaker 1: Boy, it sure did, and it's an interesting story. I

822
00:44:06,440 --> 00:44:08,080
Speaker 1: just want to pick up on a couple of things first.

823
00:44:08,120 --> 00:44:11,479
Speaker 1: Whenever we start to talk about Dark Skys, I feel like, look,

824
00:44:11,560 --> 00:44:13,359
Speaker 1: it was a long time ago. People need to know

825
00:44:13,400 --> 00:44:17,360
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. It is a NBC television series,

826
00:44:17,400 --> 00:44:20,840
Speaker 1: a one hour drama, an alien invasion story set in

827
00:44:20,880 --> 00:44:23,759
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, and Brent, you and I created that

828
00:44:23,960 --> 00:44:27,640
Speaker 1: for the network and it was a big deal when

829
00:44:27,680 --> 00:44:31,080
Speaker 1: it was on the air for NBC. So anyway, that's

830
00:44:31,080 --> 00:44:33,160
Speaker 1: what it was. And one of the things that was

831
00:44:33,200 --> 00:44:35,640
Speaker 1: so great about it. You mentioned that the people have

832
00:44:35,680 --> 00:44:38,200
Speaker 1: a right to know. That's what John Loannguard believed.

833
00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:39,200
Speaker 2: But what was so.

834
00:44:39,200 --> 00:44:41,520
Speaker 1: Great about the series is it became kind of a

835
00:44:41,520 --> 00:44:46,600
Speaker 1: conversation about disclosure, disclosure of UFO reality and whether we

836
00:44:46,640 --> 00:44:49,920
Speaker 1: should or should not get involved with that ontological shock

837
00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:52,960
Speaker 1: and the way I always explain it to people. Is

838
00:44:53,000 --> 00:44:56,320
Speaker 1: we had two major characters. John Loanguard said the people

839
00:44:56,360 --> 00:44:58,120
Speaker 1: have a right to know, which is sort of the

840
00:44:58,200 --> 00:45:01,439
Speaker 1: journalistic point of view and the pro public point of view.

841
00:45:01,800 --> 00:45:05,040
Speaker 1: And the head of Majestic twelve, who was Frank Back,

842
00:45:05,239 --> 00:45:08,279
Speaker 1: always had the point of view of Jack Nicholson. You

843
00:45:08,480 --> 00:45:12,640
Speaker 1: can't handle the truth right, And what we loved about

844
00:45:12,640 --> 00:45:15,399
Speaker 1: it is that they both were right. That's what made

845
00:45:15,400 --> 00:45:18,359
Speaker 1: it such a fair fight. Yeah, that Mark could make

846
00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:21,759
Speaker 1: a real argument that if we let this out right now,

847
00:45:21,800 --> 00:45:24,319
Speaker 1: people are going to freak out and the world as

848
00:45:24,320 --> 00:45:26,120
Speaker 1: we know it is going to fall apart, and we

849
00:45:26,239 --> 00:45:29,120
Speaker 1: got to keep ourselves together because there's aliens on Earth

850
00:45:29,160 --> 00:45:31,480
Speaker 1: and we can't let that continue. And Loan Guard is

851
00:45:31,560 --> 00:45:34,160
Speaker 1: right because if you're going to fight something that is

852
00:45:34,239 --> 00:45:37,680
Speaker 1: ontologically shocking, you better know what it is. So there

853
00:45:37,719 --> 00:45:41,680
Speaker 1: you go. Okay, so let's talk about John Loannguard.

854
00:45:41,880 --> 00:45:42,719
Speaker 2: I feel like.

855
00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:45,200
Speaker 1: That's the kind of wave that we can get into

856
00:45:45,239 --> 00:45:48,560
Speaker 1: what you were talking about and make it clear how

857
00:45:48,680 --> 00:45:52,080
Speaker 1: Cover of Fiction not only happened but came back and

858
00:45:52,239 --> 00:45:55,360
Speaker 1: bid us pretty strongly at that party that we've talked

859
00:45:55,360 --> 00:45:59,799
Speaker 1: about several times here. So okay, here's how John Loannguard,

860
00:45:59,840 --> 00:46:04,120
Speaker 1: the main character of Dark Skies, came to be. And

861
00:46:04,239 --> 00:46:07,760
Speaker 1: it's not a simple story. It starts in nineteen ninety

862
00:46:07,760 --> 00:46:11,680
Speaker 1: one when I was pitching a series called Sightings. And

863
00:46:12,000 --> 00:46:14,399
Speaker 1: this is not the Sightings that people remember, the one

864
00:46:14,400 --> 00:46:16,239
Speaker 1: that was a reality show that got on.

865
00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:18,239
Speaker 2: I think Fox. This is before that.

866
00:46:18,600 --> 00:46:22,040
Speaker 1: And I was pitching a UFO hour drama called Sightings

867
00:46:22,080 --> 00:46:25,000
Speaker 1: and I had a main character named John Lowengarde. That's

868
00:46:25,000 --> 00:46:28,840
Speaker 1: about the main comparison to our Dark Skies. And that's

869
00:46:29,000 --> 00:46:31,080
Speaker 1: a series got pitched at all four networks and all

870
00:46:31,080 --> 00:46:31,879
Speaker 1: four turned it down.

871
00:46:32,120 --> 00:46:35,520
Speaker 2: So there you go. That didn't happen. That happens, Yeah

872
00:46:35,719 --> 00:46:36,240
Speaker 2: it does.

873
00:46:36,520 --> 00:46:39,440
Speaker 1: And in fact, just a sidebar, I once pitched a

874
00:46:39,480 --> 00:46:42,040
Speaker 1: show with the Morgan Freeman. It was called Harley and

875
00:46:42,120 --> 00:46:46,240
Speaker 1: Davidson Attorneys at Law, and it was about two motorcycle

876
00:46:46,280 --> 00:46:49,080
Speaker 1: guys that were driving around the country. Freeman was in

877
00:46:49,120 --> 00:46:51,480
Speaker 1: love with this idea. They were driving around the country

878
00:46:51,520 --> 00:46:54,040
Speaker 1: and they were doing law and stuff like that, which

879
00:46:54,040 --> 00:46:55,759
Speaker 1: I don't even know if it's reasonable to do that,

880
00:46:55,760 --> 00:46:57,000
Speaker 1: because I think you have to have a law of

881
00:46:57,200 --> 00:46:58,759
Speaker 1: license and whatever state you're in.

882
00:46:58,840 --> 00:47:01,040
Speaker 2: And they were driving around.

883
00:47:00,920 --> 00:47:06,000
Speaker 1: But Morgan Freeman went, God bless him to every single network.

884
00:47:06,040 --> 00:47:09,160
Speaker 1: He sat in the office, he told the story with me.

885
00:47:09,520 --> 00:47:12,160
Speaker 1: We sat on the same couch, and it was a

886
00:47:12,200 --> 00:47:14,840
Speaker 1: thrill for me because you know who doesn't love Morgan Freeman.

887
00:47:15,360 --> 00:47:17,880
Speaker 2: And yet, what do you think happened? Let me guess

888
00:47:17,960 --> 00:47:18,759
Speaker 2: no one bought it.

889
00:47:19,080 --> 00:47:21,279
Speaker 1: No one bought it, Otherwise I'd be the guy that

890
00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:25,040
Speaker 1: created the Morgan Freeman show. Did not happen, because sometimes

891
00:47:25,120 --> 00:47:28,720
Speaker 1: networks go, well, that's just it was lovely meeting you, Morgan,

892
00:47:28,800 --> 00:47:31,800
Speaker 1: but whatever. So it does happen where you know, pretty

893
00:47:31,840 --> 00:47:34,680
Speaker 1: good ideas just are the right idea or the wrong

894
00:47:34,719 --> 00:47:38,000
Speaker 1: idea at the right time or whatever. Anyway, flash forward

895
00:47:38,040 --> 00:47:41,280
Speaker 1: a couple of years. I'm working at Lois and Clark

896
00:47:41,800 --> 00:47:45,240
Speaker 1: and I'm coming off Official Denial, my sci fi channel

897
00:47:45,480 --> 00:47:47,359
Speaker 1: film that you and I have talked about in this

898
00:47:47,400 --> 00:47:50,240
Speaker 1: episode and other episodes. And I get a phone call

899
00:47:50,520 --> 00:47:52,600
Speaker 1: in my office at Lewis and Clark and it's some

900
00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:57,600
Speaker 1: guy who says he's seen Official Denial and he has notes.

901
00:47:57,640 --> 00:48:01,040
Speaker 1: If that sounds familiar, yes, it is familiar. There was

902
00:48:01,080 --> 00:48:03,640
Speaker 1: a guy calling me saying he's got notes on my thing.

903
00:48:03,719 --> 00:48:06,200
Speaker 1: But you know that happens from time to time. They're

904
00:48:06,239 --> 00:48:09,520
Speaker 1: not all like our JC saying I'm from the Office

905
00:48:09,520 --> 00:48:11,960
Speaker 1: of Naval Intelligence and I have notes. This guy was

906
00:48:12,000 --> 00:48:14,080
Speaker 1: just a guy calling in from the road. Yes, he

907
00:48:14,200 --> 00:48:18,160
Speaker 1: said that he had worked for Majestic twelve, but that's

908
00:48:18,160 --> 00:48:20,680
Speaker 1: pretty easy to say on a phone call. And I

909
00:48:20,760 --> 00:48:23,839
Speaker 1: said to the guy, Brent, I go, so what's your name?

910
00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:25,879
Speaker 1: I thought that would be an easy question, a good

911
00:48:25,880 --> 00:48:28,200
Speaker 1: way to start, and this guy goes, well, it doesn't

912
00:48:28,239 --> 00:48:31,120
Speaker 1: work that way. Oh really, give me a name, And

913
00:48:31,840 --> 00:48:35,400
Speaker 1: I was like, well, that's interesting. So my brain just

914
00:48:35,480 --> 00:48:40,000
Speaker 1: goes to that failed sightings pitch and I go, well, okay,

915
00:48:40,280 --> 00:48:43,840
Speaker 1: you're John Loanguard. So that guy became John Loanguard and

916
00:48:43,880 --> 00:48:46,080
Speaker 1: a couple of phone calls I had with him, So

917
00:48:46,520 --> 00:48:49,560
Speaker 1: that's where you come in. Now, about a year or

918
00:48:49,600 --> 00:48:53,839
Speaker 1: so after that, you and I are having our now

919
00:48:53,960 --> 00:48:59,000
Speaker 1: infamous lunch at the Caudasoul Italian restaurant in Universal City,

920
00:48:59,280 --> 00:49:01,760
Speaker 1: and you tell me about Harrington.

921
00:49:01,640 --> 00:49:06,000
Speaker 2: John Harrington. Right, So now we've got two John's, two Johns.

922
00:49:06,680 --> 00:49:08,480
Speaker 1: So when you and I decide that we're going to

923
00:49:08,520 --> 00:49:11,440
Speaker 1: create a show, John seems like a good name, but

924
00:49:11,480 --> 00:49:13,520
Speaker 1: we can't call him John Harrington.

925
00:49:13,640 --> 00:49:16,560
Speaker 2: Right, because you have had that story. We want to

926
00:49:16,600 --> 00:49:21,279
Speaker 2: work under the cover of fiction. So John Harrington has

927
00:49:21,360 --> 00:49:23,840
Speaker 2: disclosed certain things that we are going to work into

928
00:49:23,880 --> 00:49:25,960
Speaker 2: our series, and you had a phone call with somebody

929
00:49:26,000 --> 00:49:28,920
Speaker 2: who had some thoughts that might have worked from Justic twelve.

930
00:49:29,080 --> 00:49:33,560
Speaker 2: We create John Lowngard as our composite character to carry

931
00:49:33,560 --> 00:49:37,320
Speaker 2: the torch into our series and be the truth.

932
00:49:37,560 --> 00:49:41,359
Speaker 1: You and I liked that name very much because even

933
00:49:41,360 --> 00:49:44,440
Speaker 1: though its spelled l oe n g A r D

934
00:49:44,800 --> 00:49:47,799
Speaker 1: loan Guard, we liked it because it was subliminal for

935
00:49:48,000 --> 00:49:52,080
Speaker 1: loan guard, basically the guy standing at the gates.

936
00:49:51,800 --> 00:49:54,479
Speaker 2: Yes, right, what's funny is on a side note mention

937
00:49:54,600 --> 00:49:56,560
Speaker 2: that to several people, and there really like I didn't

938
00:49:56,600 --> 00:49:59,680
Speaker 2: get that. So it was so subliminal that it went

939
00:49:59,719 --> 00:50:02,560
Speaker 2: right over everyone's head. And of course we thought this

940
00:50:02,760 --> 00:50:06,319
Speaker 2: was a completely made up original name. And as another.

941
00:50:06,120 --> 00:50:09,719
Speaker 1: Sidebar to the John Loengard story, while Darkskuys is in

942
00:50:09,800 --> 00:50:13,800
Speaker 1: production and is deep into production and it's like halfway

943
00:50:13,800 --> 00:50:17,480
Speaker 1: through the season, we get a phone call from a

944
00:50:17,600 --> 00:50:23,840
Speaker 1: Life magazine photographer named John Lohngard John Longard, and he's saying,

945
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:26,479
Speaker 1: why are you using my name? And we're like, wait,

946
00:50:26,560 --> 00:50:31,320
Speaker 1: who are you? I'm John Lowngard and it's spelled Loe

947
00:50:31,400 --> 00:50:34,920
Speaker 1: n Gard, something that I thought I made up in

948
00:50:35,040 --> 00:50:39,200
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one. So okay, So that's the backdrop for this.

949
00:50:39,200 --> 00:50:41,640
Speaker 1: This brings us to the letter the real cover of fiction,

950
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:44,400
Speaker 1: the real cover of fiction. So you and I are

951
00:50:44,440 --> 00:50:47,880
Speaker 1: creating this show and we get this idea that we

952
00:50:47,920 --> 00:50:52,040
Speaker 1: should tell the story under the cover of fiction. That's

953
00:50:52,520 --> 00:50:56,479
Speaker 1: a lovely little embrace of our idea because we want

954
00:50:56,520 --> 00:50:59,479
Speaker 1: to use it in this briefing book that we're coming

955
00:50:59,560 --> 00:51:02,920
Speaker 1: up with, where it's basically going to be telling whoever

956
00:51:03,280 --> 00:51:07,080
Speaker 1: we're pitching the show, Hey, we need you to put

957
00:51:07,120 --> 00:51:12,360
Speaker 1: this television series on the airwaves. It's the true story

958
00:51:12,400 --> 00:51:15,400
Speaker 1: of what's really going on with UFOs. It's a true

959
00:51:15,440 --> 00:51:19,600
Speaker 1: story about the nineteen sixties and Majestic twelve. But we're

960
00:51:19,680 --> 00:51:22,840
Speaker 1: all going to wink pretend it's a TV series.

961
00:51:23,080 --> 00:51:24,919
Speaker 2: Do I have that right? You do? And the other

962
00:51:25,040 --> 00:51:27,960
Speaker 2: nuance to this was also there was a degree of

963
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:31,400
Speaker 2: self preservation on my part in embracing this idea of

964
00:51:31,440 --> 00:51:34,359
Speaker 2: cover of fiction and going with the name John lowengardis

965
00:51:34,360 --> 00:51:37,319
Speaker 2: because I did not want to use the name of

966
00:51:37,400 --> 00:51:40,280
Speaker 2: John Harrington. I wanted to take some of the things

967
00:51:40,280 --> 00:51:44,760
Speaker 2: that he told us and defintely integrate them into the show,

968
00:51:45,400 --> 00:51:48,319
Speaker 2: but at the same time distance ourselves and say, no,

969
00:51:48,440 --> 00:51:52,280
Speaker 2: this is a fictional series. And yet we also wanted

970
00:51:52,320 --> 00:51:54,080
Speaker 2: to have it both ways. We wanted to be able

971
00:51:54,120 --> 00:51:57,839
Speaker 2: to tell the NBC and Sony executives that, well, wait

972
00:51:57,880 --> 00:52:00,560
Speaker 2: a minute, there's some actual truth here, and we're telling

973
00:52:00,560 --> 00:52:03,560
Speaker 2: this under the cover of fiction because our composite character,

974
00:52:03,640 --> 00:52:08,440
Speaker 2: John Lownguard disclosed some things to us, so that I

975
00:52:08,480 --> 00:52:11,239
Speaker 2: think the net effect of that was it made it

976
00:52:11,320 --> 00:52:12,000
Speaker 2: more enticing.

977
00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:16,120
Speaker 1: Here's where things get twisted and weird. Yes, and yes

978
00:52:16,239 --> 00:52:19,880
Speaker 1: we know it's odd, and yes we know it's confusing,

979
00:52:20,000 --> 00:52:21,040
Speaker 1: but so be it.

980
00:52:21,040 --> 00:52:21,640
Speaker 2: It happened.

981
00:52:22,120 --> 00:52:26,120
Speaker 1: So while we're planning these notebooks and we're building them,

982
00:52:26,239 --> 00:52:28,480
Speaker 1: I mean, we're going to as you pointed out a

983
00:52:28,480 --> 00:52:31,680
Speaker 1: few episodes back, we're going to the Kinkos and making

984
00:52:31,680 --> 00:52:35,600
Speaker 1: all these color copies of things and making this super

985
00:52:35,640 --> 00:52:39,520
Speaker 1: secret notebook. But we thought, you know, it just misses something.

986
00:52:39,560 --> 00:52:42,920
Speaker 1: What is it that it could have that would give

987
00:52:42,960 --> 00:52:46,879
Speaker 1: it that marketing twist? And ladies and gentlemen, for those

988
00:52:46,920 --> 00:52:49,279
Speaker 1: of you who are watching this is a copy of

989
00:52:49,320 --> 00:52:51,720
Speaker 1: the Loan Guard letter. For those of you not watching,

990
00:52:51,840 --> 00:52:54,840
Speaker 1: I'm holding up a short little letter that is signed

991
00:52:54,840 --> 00:52:57,120
Speaker 1: by a guy named John Lowngard, and I'm going to.

992
00:52:57,120 --> 00:52:57,879
Speaker 2: Read it to you now.

993
00:52:58,200 --> 00:53:00,880
Speaker 1: And of course, Brent, it's a little over the top,

994
00:53:01,040 --> 00:53:03,040
Speaker 1: but that was kind of the point at the time.

995
00:53:03,200 --> 00:53:08,400
Speaker 1: It's dated January two, nineteen ninety five, so this is

996
00:53:08,560 --> 00:53:12,239
Speaker 1: almost a year before we actually shot the pilot, the

997
00:53:12,280 --> 00:53:15,799
Speaker 1: two hour Pilot, And it says, Bryce and Brent, the

998
00:53:15,880 --> 00:53:19,520
Speaker 1: truth must be told. You have been chosen as instruments

999
00:53:19,520 --> 00:53:22,879
Speaker 1: to achieve this objective. The truth, however, must not be

1000
00:53:22,960 --> 00:53:26,040
Speaker 1: represented as truth. Too many people who are needed in

1001
00:53:26,080 --> 00:53:30,000
Speaker 1: the struggle will die. The cover of fiction must be

1002
00:53:30,120 --> 00:53:33,040
Speaker 1: used to present this truth. Those who fear the light

1003
00:53:33,160 --> 00:53:35,960
Speaker 1: will not want to bring attention to you by allowing

1004
00:53:36,000 --> 00:53:38,719
Speaker 1: your death. This is the only way. Do not be

1005
00:53:38,840 --> 00:53:43,120
Speaker 1: afraid the fight for humanity. Demand your courage. John Wohnguard,

1006
00:53:43,360 --> 00:53:46,840
Speaker 1: We were so brave, Bryce, We were so brave anyway.

1007
00:53:46,960 --> 00:53:49,200
Speaker 1: So that was the conceit, and we stuck with it

1008
00:53:49,600 --> 00:53:53,880
Speaker 1: and people enjoyed it. And just so everyone understands, that letter,

1009
00:53:54,200 --> 00:53:57,240
Speaker 1: a copy of that letter was the very first thing

1010
00:53:57,719 --> 00:54:01,400
Speaker 1: in the briefing book that we took it ABC, NBC,

1011
00:54:01,480 --> 00:54:05,360
Speaker 1: and CBS on that faithful day, and it literally told

1012
00:54:05,600 --> 00:54:08,719
Speaker 1: people that there was a John Longuard who had contacted

1013
00:54:08,760 --> 00:54:13,360
Speaker 1: you and me and asked us to take a deal,

1014
00:54:14,000 --> 00:54:17,840
Speaker 1: if you will, to infuse some of the real ideas

1015
00:54:17,880 --> 00:54:21,840
Speaker 1: he had into our TV series so that the truth

1016
00:54:21,880 --> 00:54:24,880
Speaker 1: could come out. And I think what's strange about that,

1017
00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:28,399
Speaker 1: of course, is boy did it work. It came back

1018
00:54:28,480 --> 00:54:31,080
Speaker 1: on us. As you said, we call it, folks, the

1019
00:54:31,120 --> 00:54:32,120
Speaker 1: boomerang effect.

1020
00:54:32,440 --> 00:54:35,680
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and here's the thing is that we created

1021
00:54:35,719 --> 00:54:40,640
Speaker 2: this as a marketing ploy, and when jac approached us,

1022
00:54:41,160 --> 00:54:44,040
Speaker 2: what he said to us was, we want to give

1023
00:54:44,080 --> 00:54:47,439
Speaker 2: you some information so that you can use the cover

1024
00:54:47,520 --> 00:54:51,200
Speaker 2: of fiction to disseminate it to the public in this

1025
00:54:51,360 --> 00:54:54,359
Speaker 2: slow drip fashion. So it is spinning, keep going. If

1026
00:54:54,400 --> 00:54:57,959
Speaker 2: you think about that, it's mind boggling because we put

1027
00:54:57,960 --> 00:55:02,160
Speaker 2: out this idea of a person coming to us telling

1028
00:55:02,239 --> 00:55:05,040
Speaker 2: us to use the cover of fiction, and then lo

1029
00:55:05,200 --> 00:55:07,600
Speaker 2: and behold at the premiere party, he walked out of

1030
00:55:07,600 --> 00:55:11,319
Speaker 2: your bushes and came and said just that. Now, if

1031
00:55:11,320 --> 00:55:14,839
Speaker 2: you think about it, either A it's just a coincidence,

1032
00:55:15,560 --> 00:55:19,319
Speaker 2: or B. He did say he had read not just

1033
00:55:19,480 --> 00:55:22,840
Speaker 2: our pilot script, but our entire bible, so he could

1034
00:55:22,880 --> 00:55:26,800
Speaker 2: have been kind of ironically referencing the cover of Fiction

1035
00:55:26,960 --> 00:55:29,759
Speaker 2: letter that we used, although there was no indication of that.

1036
00:55:29,880 --> 00:55:32,560
Speaker 2: He didn't put up air quotes around cover of Fiction

1037
00:55:32,719 --> 00:55:34,839
Speaker 2: or he wasn't winking at us at the time. And

1038
00:55:35,040 --> 00:55:40,120
Speaker 2: the last possibility is that again this whole concept of

1039
00:55:40,160 --> 00:55:43,960
Speaker 2: putting something out into the consciousness and somehow the boomerang

1040
00:55:43,960 --> 00:55:47,000
Speaker 2: effect brings it back to you in the real world.

1041
00:55:47,360 --> 00:55:50,000
Speaker 1: It's just crazy. Now I have a couple of things

1042
00:55:50,040 --> 00:55:52,439
Speaker 1: I want to sort of throw on that fire, couple

1043
00:55:52,520 --> 00:55:55,200
Speaker 1: of logs to throw on the late Robbie Graham wrote

1044
00:55:55,440 --> 00:55:58,759
Speaker 1: a terrific book about Hollywood and UFOs. It was called

1045
00:55:58,800 --> 00:56:02,160
Speaker 1: Silver Screen Sauce and it's still available now, and he

1046
00:56:02,239 --> 00:56:05,160
Speaker 1: wrote extensively about what happened to us at Dark Skies

1047
00:56:05,640 --> 00:56:08,240
Speaker 1: in his book, and one of the things he said

1048
00:56:08,280 --> 00:56:11,680
Speaker 1: that feels so relevant right now is he said, no

1049
00:56:11,800 --> 00:56:15,400
Speaker 1: Hollywood product has so actively sought to blur the boundaries

1050
00:56:15,440 --> 00:56:20,320
Speaker 1: between UFO fact and fantasy as the NBCTV show Dark Skies.

1051
00:56:21,040 --> 00:56:23,840
Speaker 1: So when that happened, we weren't thinking that JC was

1052
00:56:23,840 --> 00:56:25,719
Speaker 1: going to come out of the bushes at a Hollywood

1053
00:56:25,920 --> 00:56:28,640
Speaker 1: premiere party. We were just trying to blur fact and

1054
00:56:28,760 --> 00:56:32,520
Speaker 1: fiction into the sales and marketing of the TV series.

1055
00:56:33,000 --> 00:56:35,480
Speaker 1: He goes on to write The Dark Sky's Bible and

1056
00:56:35,560 --> 00:56:39,680
Speaker 1: the loan Guard letter in particular, exemplified the now complete

1057
00:56:39,719 --> 00:56:44,719
Speaker 1: inseparability and symbiosis of the euphological fact and Hollywood fantasy,

1058
00:56:44,960 --> 00:56:47,280
Speaker 1: which is a nice way to say what we were doing.

1059
00:56:47,680 --> 00:56:50,480
Speaker 1: Loan guards statement to his creators that they had been

1060
00:56:50,560 --> 00:56:54,080
Speaker 1: chosen as instruments to tell the truth about UFOs under

1061
00:56:54,080 --> 00:56:57,640
Speaker 1: the cover of fiction would later ring disturbingly true for

1062
00:56:57,760 --> 00:57:01,640
Speaker 1: Zabel and Freedman. So yeah, yeah, that happened.

1063
00:57:01,640 --> 00:57:01,719
Speaker 2: And.

1064
00:57:03,239 --> 00:57:06,799
Speaker 1: To this day, honestly, Brent, I'm glad we're doing this

1065
00:57:06,880 --> 00:57:09,680
Speaker 1: thing because at least we have the time to explain it.

1066
00:57:09,960 --> 00:57:12,120
Speaker 1: When I've been at like a dinner party or whatever,

1067
00:57:12,160 --> 00:57:14,560
Speaker 1: and I even attempted to try to explain this, it

1068
00:57:14,600 --> 00:57:17,240
Speaker 1: made no sense and I just dropped it. So with

1069
00:57:17,640 --> 00:57:20,200
Speaker 1: the extra time we have, you can lay it out.

1070
00:57:20,320 --> 00:57:23,040
Speaker 1: I think we really did intend to put a lot

1071
00:57:23,040 --> 00:57:27,200
Speaker 1: of true things into the TV series. That's true. Our

1072
00:57:27,240 --> 00:57:30,440
Speaker 1: whole concept was, let's tell a story in the sixties

1073
00:57:30,480 --> 00:57:32,800
Speaker 1: where all the things in the sixties, and all the

1074
00:57:32,880 --> 00:57:36,600
Speaker 1: people in the sixties are part of our story. So

1075
00:57:37,000 --> 00:57:40,080
Speaker 1: we have all these wonderful characters in it. You know,

1076
00:57:40,120 --> 00:57:43,920
Speaker 1: everyone from well, you know, John Lennon is in it,

1077
00:57:44,000 --> 00:57:47,280
Speaker 1: Carl Sagan, Betty and Barney Hill are in it, Jay Allen, Heinek,

1078
00:57:47,520 --> 00:57:50,680
Speaker 1: Jim Morrison, you name it. I mean, they're all in

1079
00:57:50,720 --> 00:57:53,160
Speaker 1: this thing. So what we were trying to do was

1080
00:57:53,240 --> 00:57:56,560
Speaker 1: blend fact and fiction under the guise of a drama.

1081
00:57:57,160 --> 00:58:01,800
Speaker 1: But our bigger point was, folks, these UFO events actually

1082
00:58:01,800 --> 00:58:03,880
Speaker 1: did happen, and we were just sort of filling in

1083
00:58:03,920 --> 00:58:07,200
Speaker 1: the blanks around them. Yeah, little did we know that

1084
00:58:07,240 --> 00:58:09,000
Speaker 1: we would be sucked into it.

1085
00:58:09,120 --> 00:58:12,600
Speaker 2: Well, and you referenced Robbie Graham. He also had another

1086
00:58:12,720 --> 00:58:15,920
Speaker 2: interesting quote about dark skies that'll take us to the

1087
00:58:15,920 --> 00:58:17,240
Speaker 2: home stretch of our episode.

1088
00:58:17,240 --> 00:58:20,720
Speaker 1: Well, okay, so I hope that listen. I'm sure people

1089
00:58:20,760 --> 00:58:25,160
Speaker 1: will be leaving quote comments with question marks across them,

1090
00:58:25,200 --> 00:58:28,360
Speaker 1: saying what but that's what happened and we can revisit

1091
00:58:28,400 --> 00:58:33,000
Speaker 1: that again. But here's how Robbie Graham ended his discussion

1092
00:58:33,120 --> 00:58:36,480
Speaker 1: of our show. He says the show was dark in name,

1093
00:58:37,080 --> 00:58:41,240
Speaker 1: dark in themes, and dark in visual content, with violent

1094
00:58:41,320 --> 00:58:45,439
Speaker 1: and intense scenes in most episodes, So Brent, not only

1095
00:58:45,520 --> 00:58:48,440
Speaker 1: was it called Dark Skies, according to Robbie, we were

1096
00:58:48,520 --> 00:58:51,000
Speaker 1: dark and that reminds me of something.

1097
00:58:51,360 --> 00:58:53,680
Speaker 2: Yes, well, now we're back right where we started from

1098
00:58:53,920 --> 00:58:57,480
Speaker 2: with the show dark and the whole concept of this

1099
00:58:57,640 --> 00:59:01,320
Speaker 2: truth that everyone keeps saying at the highest levels needs

1100
00:59:01,360 --> 00:59:04,360
Speaker 2: to only be dispensed under the cover of fiction, must

1101
00:59:04,440 --> 00:59:08,400
Speaker 2: be incredibly dark. Well, let's step out of the fictional

1102
00:59:08,400 --> 00:59:13,480
Speaker 2: world and go to some actual kind of whistleblowers, if

1103
00:59:13,480 --> 00:59:16,600
Speaker 2: you will, talking about what they feel the truth. Is

1104
00:59:17,200 --> 00:59:19,400
Speaker 2: the first one I'm going to cite is Luel Azando,

1105
00:59:19,800 --> 00:59:23,840
Speaker 2: who was a recent whistleblower, wrote the book Imminent was

1106
00:59:24,080 --> 00:59:27,640
Speaker 2: part of the if I believe we're correctly military defense

1107
00:59:28,120 --> 00:59:30,160
Speaker 2: analyst or what was this exact ty.

1108
00:59:30,160 --> 00:59:33,880
Speaker 1: He ran and again he ran a TIP, which is

1109
00:59:33,960 --> 00:59:40,400
Speaker 1: the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program right right, although people

1110
00:59:40,720 --> 00:59:44,040
Speaker 1: argue to this day about whether he really ran AWSAP,

1111
00:59:44,400 --> 00:59:46,680
Speaker 1: and I get so confused. I'm not even going to

1112
00:59:46,840 --> 00:59:48,080
Speaker 1: wade into those waters.

1113
00:59:48,200 --> 00:59:52,360
Speaker 2: Yes, I know, it's tomatoes, tomatoes, So anyway, luel Azondo

1114
00:59:52,480 --> 00:59:55,920
Speaker 2: did an interview with Ji Mungle on his Theories of

1115
00:59:55,960 --> 01:00:00,400
Speaker 2: Everything show where Kurt asked if the general public knew

1116
01:00:00,600 --> 01:00:03,200
Speaker 2: or saw what you saw, what would the next week

1117
01:00:03,280 --> 01:00:08,440
Speaker 2: look like? How would the public react. Elisondo's response was somber.

1118
01:00:08,880 --> 01:00:12,800
Speaker 2: I think there would be this big exhale for about

1119
01:00:12,840 --> 01:00:15,680
Speaker 2: a day and then this turning inward and trying to

1120
01:00:15,720 --> 01:00:18,800
Speaker 2: reflect on what this means to us and our species

1121
01:00:19,120 --> 01:00:24,560
Speaker 2: and ourselves. That's pretty dark, just dark. You know, he's

1122
01:00:24,640 --> 01:00:25,960
Speaker 2: choosing his words carefully.

1123
01:00:26,560 --> 01:00:29,520
Speaker 1: That's a great quote. And he goes on and says

1124
01:00:29,520 --> 01:00:33,160
Speaker 1: in other interviews, multiple times he asked questions about, well,

1125
01:00:33,440 --> 01:00:36,280
Speaker 1: maybe the truth is we're not the apex species, the

1126
01:00:36,320 --> 01:00:39,720
Speaker 1: apex predator. We think we are here on planet Earth. Well,

1127
01:00:39,760 --> 01:00:43,000
Speaker 1: that's disturbing. I would call it dark, but it certainly

1128
01:00:43,320 --> 01:00:47,080
Speaker 1: throws into question how we might feel about our tendency

1129
01:00:47,080 --> 01:00:48,320
Speaker 1: here on this planet.

1130
01:00:48,400 --> 01:00:51,680
Speaker 2: Well exactly. And so then you, you know, you have

1131
01:00:51,720 --> 01:00:54,800
Speaker 2: to ask the question, are people at the top in

1132
01:00:54,880 --> 01:00:59,160
Speaker 2: the know correct in saying that this truth cannot just

1133
01:00:59,240 --> 01:01:01,760
Speaker 2: come out on var furnished, that it needs to come

1134
01:01:01,800 --> 01:01:05,240
Speaker 2: out slowly under the cover of fiction. And as much

1135
01:01:05,280 --> 01:01:09,800
Speaker 2: as everyone in the UFO community gets frustrated by that

1136
01:01:09,800 --> 01:01:15,480
Speaker 2: that inability to have full disclosure, maybe there is something

1137
01:01:15,560 --> 01:01:19,120
Speaker 2: to be said for protecting us from ontological shock.

1138
01:01:19,320 --> 01:01:22,840
Speaker 1: Well, so I mean, clearly, Brent, just if our own

1139
01:01:22,880 --> 01:01:25,480
Speaker 1: show is any example of this has been going on

1140
01:01:25,560 --> 01:01:28,360
Speaker 1: since the fifties. There have been alien movies well, and

1141
01:01:28,560 --> 01:01:32,240
Speaker 1: long before that there were alien serials and alien books

1142
01:01:32,240 --> 01:01:35,920
Speaker 1: and alien this and that. Aliens have been around for

1143
01:01:35,960 --> 01:01:39,160
Speaker 1: a while. So if the idea was to avoid ontological

1144
01:01:39,200 --> 01:01:42,320
Speaker 1: shock by showing people alien movies and stuff, well, then

1145
01:01:42,400 --> 01:01:44,880
Speaker 1: mission is accomplished in my view at this point.

1146
01:01:45,000 --> 01:01:48,240
Speaker 2: I mean we've been doing that. Yeah. Anyway, I know

1147
01:01:48,360 --> 01:01:53,320
Speaker 2: this episode has gotten dark as well, and I feel

1148
01:01:53,360 --> 01:01:55,320
Speaker 2: like now we owe it to the viewers and the

1149
01:01:55,360 --> 01:01:58,400
Speaker 2: listeners to try and bring things back up a little bit.

1150
01:01:58,560 --> 01:02:00,440
Speaker 2: I have a way to lighten them bright and the

1151
01:02:00,440 --> 01:02:04,080
Speaker 2: show for an ending. Maybe it's a personal story, and

1152
01:02:04,200 --> 01:02:07,360
Speaker 2: I think it's relevant and maybe nice. I've made it

1153
01:02:07,360 --> 01:02:09,880
Speaker 2: clear that I got elected to be the CEO of

1154
01:02:09,920 --> 01:02:13,680
Speaker 2: the Television Academy right before nine to eleven. So my

1155
01:02:13,760 --> 01:02:16,800
Speaker 2: first job was to cancel the Emmys, and we set

1156
01:02:16,800 --> 01:02:20,760
Speaker 2: them up for October seventh, and then we invaded Afghanistan

1157
01:02:20,840 --> 01:02:23,200
Speaker 2: that day, so we canceled the Emmys a second time.

1158
01:02:23,440 --> 01:02:25,560
Speaker 2: And if you want to have a dark time, in

1159
01:02:25,600 --> 01:02:28,880
Speaker 2: America that was a dark time, and in Hollywood in particular,

1160
01:02:29,320 --> 01:02:31,560
Speaker 2: there were a lot of people who were questioning, as

1161
01:02:31,680 --> 01:02:34,000
Speaker 2: was I, you know, what is the relevance of an

1162
01:02:34,000 --> 01:02:37,080
Speaker 2: award show in a time of national tragedy. Maybe we

1163
01:02:37,120 --> 01:02:41,000
Speaker 2: should just forget about them and move on. So that

1164
01:02:41,120 --> 01:02:42,840
Speaker 2: was hanging over us, and there were a lot of

1165
01:02:42,880 --> 01:02:46,120
Speaker 2: celebrities and producers and all that that question whether we

1166
01:02:46,120 --> 01:02:49,240
Speaker 2: should even keep rescheduling the Emmys. In the midst of that,

1167
01:02:49,640 --> 01:02:52,560
Speaker 2: while that discussion is ongoing, we had an event that

1168
01:02:52,640 --> 01:02:56,320
Speaker 2: had been previously scheduled, which was an event to honor

1169
01:02:56,440 --> 01:03:00,760
Speaker 2: Gregory Peck, and it was in the Academy Theater and

1170
01:03:00,920 --> 01:03:03,360
Speaker 2: Gregory Peck was getting up in years, he didn't live

1171
01:03:03,480 --> 01:03:06,240
Speaker 2: much longer than this, and he was waiting for the

1172
01:03:06,280 --> 01:03:09,360
Speaker 2: event to happen, and I was there getting ready. I

1173
01:03:09,400 --> 01:03:12,080
Speaker 2: was going to introduce him from the stage, so I thought, well,

1174
01:03:12,080 --> 01:03:13,720
Speaker 2: I'd better go up and say hello. So I go

1175
01:03:13,800 --> 01:03:16,520
Speaker 2: up to Gregory Peck and say, mister Peck, I'm Bryce Able,

1176
01:03:16,640 --> 01:03:19,760
Speaker 2: I'm going to introduce you tonight. How you doing, Can

1177
01:03:19,760 --> 01:03:21,360
Speaker 2: I get you anything? You know that kind of thing.

1178
01:03:21,440 --> 01:03:24,320
Speaker 1: And he was very pleasant, very nice, and we had

1179
01:03:24,360 --> 01:03:28,920
Speaker 1: a nice conversation, including the fact that he actually the

1180
01:03:28,960 --> 01:03:32,800
Speaker 1: head of the Motion Picture Academy when Martin Luther King

1181
01:03:32,920 --> 01:03:38,200
Speaker 1: was assassinated, and wow, I believe they postponed, but they

1182
01:03:38,240 --> 01:03:41,560
Speaker 1: still did them and he gave a memorable tribute to

1183
01:03:41,560 --> 01:03:45,160
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King. So with that kind of in my mind,

1184
01:03:45,200 --> 01:03:47,960
Speaker 1: I thought, I'll ask him about it, and we talked

1185
01:03:47,960 --> 01:03:50,360
Speaker 1: about it, and I said, you know, mister Pack, a

1186
01:03:50,360 --> 01:03:53,760
Speaker 1: lot of people, a lot of celebrities who have to

1187
01:03:53,800 --> 01:03:56,520
Speaker 1: be on the red carpet are trying to figure out, well,

1188
01:03:56,520 --> 01:03:59,880
Speaker 1: how should I handle this? What is the right way

1189
01:04:00,480 --> 01:04:04,480
Speaker 1: to be on a red carpet during this time? And

1190
01:04:04,560 --> 01:04:06,280
Speaker 1: I got to tell you, it's such a great moment.

1191
01:04:06,360 --> 01:04:08,959
Speaker 1: It's seared in my memory. The guy did not miss

1192
01:04:09,000 --> 01:04:11,959
Speaker 1: a beat, you know, he's up in years, didn't take

1193
01:04:12,080 --> 01:04:14,360
Speaker 1: a second to think about it. He looks at me

1194
01:04:14,440 --> 01:04:19,120
Speaker 1: and he goes, well, I would be sober, but not somber,

1195
01:04:19,360 --> 01:04:22,200
Speaker 1: with a twinkle in my eye to assure the people

1196
01:04:22,520 --> 01:04:27,120
Speaker 1: that everything is going to be okay. And wow, there's

1197
01:04:27,160 --> 01:04:31,680
Speaker 1: your word, somber. He said, I would be sober, but

1198
01:04:31,840 --> 01:04:33,760
Speaker 1: not somber. And there is a difference.

1199
01:04:34,160 --> 01:04:36,840
Speaker 2: There is a difference, and those are words of wisdom,

1200
01:04:37,000 --> 01:04:40,479
Speaker 2: and I would expect nothing less from someone like Gregory Peck.

1201
01:04:40,680 --> 01:04:44,360
Speaker 1: So maybe as we walk our way through this over

1202
01:04:44,520 --> 01:04:49,080
Speaker 1: these next episodes and talk about the debate about disclosure

1203
01:04:49,120 --> 01:04:51,400
Speaker 1: and what's going on right now and how it should

1204
01:04:51,400 --> 01:04:53,640
Speaker 1: all be handled, I'll just say it again, I would

1205
01:04:53,640 --> 01:04:56,360
Speaker 1: be sober, but not somber, with a twinkle in my

1206
01:04:56,480 --> 01:04:59,720
Speaker 1: eye to assure the people that everything is going to

1207
01:04:59,760 --> 01:05:09,000
Speaker 1: be okay. Sound, Light, and Frequency is an iHeart podcast

1208
01:05:09,080 --> 01:05:12,920
Speaker 1: produced by Stellar Productions. It's executive produced by Nick Johnson

1209
01:05:13,160 --> 01:05:16,400
Speaker 1: and for Stellar Jackie's Abel. Our show's music was written

1210
01:05:16,400 --> 01:05:19,560
Speaker 1: by Anna Stumpf and Hamilton Lighthauser and Your hosts and

1211
01:05:19,640 --> 01:05:23,320
Speaker 1: executive producers are Bryce Abel, That's Me and Brent Friedman.

1212
01:05:23,640 --> 01:05:24,520
Speaker 1: Watch the Skies