Speaker 1: Are aliens here on Earth? Hollywood sure thinks so, and
Speaker 1: so did John Harrington. But there are other voices echoing
Speaker 1: the same idea, a veritable chorus in fact of leaders
Speaker 1: in the disclosure movement. Let's start with David Grush, the
Speaker 1: former US Air Force officer and intelligence official who testified
Speaker 1: to Congress, has recently stated publicly that the government holds
Speaker 1: records on several distinct kinds of non human biological life.
Speaker 1: Then there's doctor hal Putoff, a theoretical physicist and the
Speaker 1: co founder of the Stargate Remote viewing Project, who claimed
Speaker 1: that the US government has recovered bodies from at least
Speaker 1: four separate extraterrestrial species. Lastly, doctor Eric Davis, a renowned
Speaker 1: astrophysicist who has worked extensively for the government and defense industry.
Speaker 1: But he goes one step further. He outlined four distinct
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial biological life forms associated with recovered UFO wreckage, Gray's, Nordic's,
Speaker 1: and Reptilians insectoids. So the question has quickly evolved from
Speaker 1: are we alone? To how many aliens are living amongst us?
Speaker 1: And if they are here, what form are they taking? Now?
Speaker 1: Beyond the four already mentioned we've also heard stories of
Speaker 1: little grays and large grays, tall whites and Nordics or
Speaker 1: are those the same things? Reptilians and insectoids but also
Speaker 1: mantoids or are those insectoids. It's all a little confusing,
Speaker 1: and just to take it even one step further, David
Speaker 1: Grush even recently throughout the idea that we could also
Speaker 1: be looking at sentient plasmoids, whatever that means. For today,
Speaker 1: though we're primarily interested in aliens disguised as humans stranded
Speaker 1: here on Earth, living amongst us, trying to assimilate and survive.
Speaker 2: For this episode, we thought we'd try something where we're
Speaker 2: really just talking about the solo stranded on Earth, in
Speaker 2: other words, just one alien physically present on Earth at
Speaker 2: a time. And we got this inspiration, folks, because we
Speaker 2: did an episode a few back called The Men Who
Speaker 2: Fell to Earth, which was literally about a franchise, The
Speaker 2: Man Who Fell to Earth. That was a book and
Speaker 2: it was a movie, and it was as a pilot
Speaker 2: and it was everything, but it was about David Bowie,
Speaker 2: in most people's recognition, being stranded here on Earth. So
Speaker 2: we thought, let's take a look at this whole stranded
Speaker 2: mentality because the thing is the stranded alien thing is
Speaker 2: sci Fi's clean moral experiment. There's no agenda most times
Speaker 2: other than the alien is here and can't get back.
Speaker 2: But there's just one of them, so they are really alienated.
Speaker 2: And then the question is always going to be reflected
Speaker 2: in the movies or TVs. How are we going to
Speaker 2: deal with them? And how are they going to deal
Speaker 2: with us? Because now it's one on one. And of
Speaker 2: course the greatest storyline about that everybody remembers is Et,
Speaker 2: but we're not going to start there. I was just
Speaker 2: thinking as we were doing this, Brent, there's a whole
Speaker 2: lot more to the stranded on alien than just Et.
Speaker 2: Although he's the one on everybody remembers. Yes, I'll give
Speaker 2: you one and then I'll let you run. The most
Speaker 2: popular alien stranded on Earth has got to be kel El. Superman,
Speaker 2: Oh right, right. He's a crash victim. Now he doesn't
Speaker 2: have any idea of his home planet really when he
Speaker 2: gets here, so it's not like he's feeling like, oh
Speaker 2: I miss it so much, but he's still alienated. And
Speaker 2: one of the things about Superman has always been he's
Speaker 2: at his core, he's an alien, a stranger he's a
Speaker 2: strange visitor, but he's not the only guy either. There's
Speaker 2: been a lot of product out there in Hollywood generated
Speaker 2: on the concept of aliens being here one at a time,
Speaker 2: and the earliest one I could find I'm talking not
Speaker 2: books or anything, I'm talking about film, and it's The
Speaker 2: Man from Planet X. That's nineteen fifty one, where an
Speaker 2: alien lands on a Scottish island and he's this vulnerable
Speaker 2: visitor and he bonds with the human signe and I
Speaker 2: won't go into it because no one's going to watch this, okay,
Speaker 2: But they were talking about in fifty one. And then
Speaker 2: a personal favorite from nineteen fifty four is Devil Girl
Speaker 2: from Mars, which is she shows up, she's the sole Martian,
Speaker 2: she needs helf repairing her ship. The Cosmic Man in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty nine, another one single alien arrives in a
Speaker 2: sphere and the military immediately surrounds it. But another one
Speaker 2: that we'll be talking about maybe in a future episode.
Speaker 2: But Jerry Lewis in nineteen sixty in the film Visit
Speaker 2: to a Small Planet, is the guy who shows up
Speaker 2: here and he's all alone. And then I'm just going
Speaker 2: to lay this out there because it's the one that
Speaker 2: everybody grew up on, and it's my favorite Martian.
Speaker 1: I remember thinking he was such a persnickety alien, but
Speaker 1: I love the actor who was It was Ray Walston.
Speaker 1: Ray Walston, Yeah, so I loved him and other things
Speaker 1: and I bill, yes, it was the human. Yes. I
Speaker 1: remember thinking when Mark came out with Robin Williams Yes,
Speaker 1: that this was probably inspired by my favorite Martian.
Speaker 2: They're both sort of the alien observer who has been
Speaker 2: into human life if you will, who listen. I don't
Speaker 2: know what it says for alien intelligence that for season
Speaker 2: after season they're still surprised by humanity because they've been
Speaker 2: there for a while. My favorite Martian, though, is interesting
Speaker 2: because the Martian who's here is an anthropologist, right. But
Speaker 2: again the Crash references in these things. He crash lands
Speaker 2: near Los Angeles. This reporter Tim O'Hare played by Bixby,
Speaker 2: shelters him and invents this whole Uncle Martin identity. Listen.
Speaker 2: It doesn't hold up well. Most sitcoms from the sixties
Speaker 2: are pretty silly. Mork and Mindy at least as Robin
Speaker 2: Williams who you watch Mark and MINDI and you just
Speaker 2: go did they have scripts? For this or did they
Speaker 2: just have improvisational things for Rod.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's with everything he did. Actually, one of the
Speaker 1: funny things about more coan Miindi, someone pointed out to
Speaker 1: me recently was at the beginning of the show and
Speaker 1: the title sequence he crash lands in an egg.
Speaker 2: Yes, so a lot of crash land.
Speaker 1: And I remember when I saw that, I'm like, what,
Speaker 1: so he's not an alien because that's not a UFO.
Speaker 1: What's going on here? It was so confusing.
Speaker 2: Shout out to Boulder, Colorado where that takes place, and
Speaker 2: just one other and then we can move on because
Speaker 2: we could literally and will if the podcast continues, we'll
Speaker 2: be talking about all of these things in greater detail.
Speaker 2: But in nineteen seventy eight, the one that is the
Speaker 2: closest to et and sort of form and structure is
Speaker 2: the cat from outer space. And it is so bizarre.
Speaker 2: There's a cat. It's not actually a cat. It's an
Speaker 2: alien that looks like a cat, an Abyssinian cat. Now
Speaker 2: I'm not a cat person.
Speaker 1: My brother had an Abyssinian okay, yours, well, beautiful like
Speaker 1: they look like Egyptian cats. If that's a thing.
Speaker 2: You were harboring, your brother was harboring an alien apparently
Speaker 2: and not being straight with you about that. So anyway,
Speaker 2: this one emergency lands, contacts its distant mothership, receives a
Speaker 2: deadline it's going to be coming for you, recruits a human,
Speaker 2: tries to retrieve and repair the spacecraft that's not ET material.
Speaker 2: But there is a lot of that though, of repairing spacecraft. Listen,
Speaker 2: I'm throwing aside about ten pages of research here right now,
Speaker 2: because the truth is, there's just so many of these things.
Speaker 2: And this episode, we're going to start with the Granddaddy.
Speaker 2: After this break here, we're gonna trot out ET.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love ET, by the way, because I watched it
Speaker 2: again last night, and I have to say it was
Speaker 2: so much fun. It's just fun. And it's forty four
Speaker 2: years old right now.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and it still holds up. It's one of
Speaker 1: those movies that I feel will be an enduring classic
Speaker 1: for generations. I'm Brent Friedman. Years ago, a family friend
Speaker 1: who became a cabinet member in the Reagan administration disclosed
Speaker 1: to me that aliens are real. They're here, and he'd
Speaker 1: seen them.
Speaker 2: I'm Bryce's Abel. Later, when we were producing Dark Skies,
Speaker 2: an NBCTV series about an alien invasion. We were approached
Speaker 2: by men who said they were from the Office of
Speaker 2: Naval Intelligence and they wanted to give us inside information
Speaker 2: in exchange for access to our show.
Speaker 1: We didn't take that deal, but we have never stopped
Speaker 1: thinking about it.
Speaker 2: That's why we do this podcast. We're working out ideas
Speaker 2: in real time about how Hollywood is portrayed aliens and
Speaker 2: why every.
Speaker 1: Episode is different because there are so many questions.
Speaker 2: We're looking for answers. It's an act of investigation. Let's
Speaker 2: do this together, all right, folks, let's talk ET. We
Speaker 2: all have our memories, which we like to do on
Speaker 2: this show. Brent, where were you? What was so interesting
Speaker 2: to me, though, is in nineteen eighty two when ET
Speaker 2: came out and there's this whole backstory, and I know
Speaker 2: you've got some good stuff to lay on us. But
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty two, I didn't know much about it,
Speaker 2: but I was reviewing films at PBS. It wasn't my
Speaker 2: full time gig. I wasn't a film reviewer, but if
Speaker 2: anybody reviewed films there, I would review the films. Okay,
Speaker 2: there was a screening of ET the Extraterrestrial That was
Speaker 2: interesting because you knew at least it was about an
Speaker 2: extraterrestrial and you knew Steven Spielberg had made it. So
Speaker 2: I went and saw this thing blind. I took my wife, Jackie,
Speaker 2: she wasn't we weren't married yet, but we went out
Speaker 2: on a date into Beverly Hills and watched it. And
Speaker 2: so I really got that wonderful experience where a film.
Speaker 2: I love to do this even today, where you let
Speaker 2: a film you know is going to be okay, it's
Speaker 2: pretty good, you've heard about it, but you don't know
Speaker 2: the details, you haven't asked about the details, and it
Speaker 2: washes over you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Man, that was just great. And as I understand it,
Speaker 2: we came very close not to having the wonderful ET
Speaker 2: version that we all remember.
Speaker 1: It's true, there's a really interesting backstory to ET. But
Speaker 1: let me frame this with something to remind our listeners
Speaker 1: and viewers that, in our opinion, there is some evidence
Speaker 1: that Steven Spielberg took the same deal that we were
Speaker 1: offered by JC, that was intelligence for influence. Now we've
Speaker 1: already examined close encounters, we've examined disclosure Day through that optic,
Speaker 1: but now here we are with ET. Now, according to
Speaker 1: our source Toby Hooper again another episode we I think
Speaker 1: it was episode number two. We talked about this, just
Speaker 1: like Close Encounters. He said that Stephen was given information
Speaker 1: and that ET was based on a true story. Now,
Speaker 1: if you do some digging, you're going to find out
Speaker 1: there's some truth in that statement on ET. You have
Speaker 1: to understand that after Close Encounters, the studio was very
Speaker 1: interested in doing a sequel, of course, and what Spielberg
Speaker 1: pitch was a violent home invasion film, and the idea
Speaker 1: was by doing that under the Close Encounters banner, it
Speaker 1: would keep the title alive at the studio. The plot
Speaker 1: was inspired by the infamous nineteen fifty five Kelly Hopskinville
Speaker 1: Goblin encounter in Kentucky, where basically a rural family claimed
Speaker 1: that they were besieged by small, aggressive, gremlin like creatures.
Speaker 1: Now this is interesting because it'll come back later in
Speaker 1: our show. Spielberg hired screenwriter John sALS to pen a
Speaker 1: script featuring five distinct alien visitors. There was a vicious
Speaker 1: leader named Scar with a light emitting finger, and a gentle,
Speaker 1: curious outcast named Buddy, and Buddy ends up befriending the
Speaker 1: family's autistic son, who gets left behind, and then Buddy
Speaker 1: gets left behind on Earth when his hostile crew departs.
Speaker 1: So just to put a bow on this, legendary makeup
Speaker 1: artist Rick Baker was hired to design the terrifying creatures,
Speaker 1: and Toby Hooper was actually in line to direct it,
Speaker 1: so obviously none of that happened. Spielberg had a change
Speaker 1: of heart. He didn't want to make something scary. He
Speaker 1: was very caught up in the emotional concept of the
Speaker 1: single alien connecting with the lonely child. He scrapped the
Speaker 1: whole project and hired Melissa Matheson to write the script
Speaker 1: because in fact John Sales had turned it down, and
Speaker 1: then all of the abandoned horror elements, both from the
Speaker 1: Family Horror and The Alien Horror, got diverted into other
Speaker 1: movies that Spielberg was associated with, particularly Poltergeist and Gremlins.
Speaker 2: First of all, just a couple of things that sparked.
Speaker 2: Whilet's say you're talking about that was first I had
Speaker 2: always heard that Spielberg, at least this is what he
Speaker 2: said on the extras on the that I watched last night.
Speaker 2: He said he always wanted to tell the story about
Speaker 2: children of divorce because that's what he was, and so
Speaker 2: he was going to make a movie about children of divorce,
Speaker 2: and he was going to make the ET version that
Speaker 2: you described, and then he decided let's put them both together,
Speaker 2: in which case that also gave you a lighter, brighter
Speaker 2: Et than the one that was originally described. And just
Speaker 2: for perspective, we haven't described actually what the story of
Speaker 2: ET is, because, let's face it, most of the people
Speaker 2: listening to this already know that it's Elliott who befriends Et.
Speaker 2: And what's interesting, though, is to see Elliott and Et merge,
Speaker 2: not just mentally but physically. By the end of the film,
Speaker 2: they are symbiotically connected and almost die together, which is
Speaker 2: partly why I think people like it. Some majefrities weeping,
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Elliott can't die, He can't die. That
Speaker 2: was a very popular movie, though, let's just put this
Speaker 2: in perspective about what it did. It touched people so
Speaker 2: much that it surpassed Star Wars as the highest grossing
Speaker 2: film of its time.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 2: That's truly amazing. It received nine Academy Award nominations and
Speaker 2: I think it won four of them. It got entered
Speaker 2: into the National Film registry, but I think ninety four.
Speaker 2: So over a decade later, it turned phone home into
Speaker 2: a universal phrase. Parents have been telling kids now, phone
Speaker 2: home for ages now. And it got me addicted to
Speaker 2: Reese's pieces. And I bet the M and M people
Speaker 2: to this day regret not fighting stronger to get that.
Speaker 2: And it also made Ello It's moon crossing bicycle one
Speaker 2: of cinema's most recognizable images, and our friend of the show,
Speaker 2: Ernie Klein, has stated that it is his favorite scene
Speaker 2: in film. So I just have one question for you,
Speaker 2: because we all know what we're talking about. At the
Speaker 2: very end, they're being pursued by the government, which again
Speaker 2: is one of the standards of these stranded on Earth things.
Speaker 2: Quite often, the government is the bad guy. The human
Speaker 2: that the alien has bonded with is trying to help them,
Speaker 2: but the government's trying to capture them. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: And at the end of ET and by the way,
Speaker 2: they shot that out near my house, I look at
Speaker 2: ET and I'm like, wow, that looks like my neighborhood there.
Speaker 2: But at the end of it, they're being pursued relentlessly,
Speaker 2: and suddenly these five kids on bicycles are airborne and honestly, today, Brent,
Speaker 2: if they shot, if they did a remake, none of
Speaker 2: those kids would be on real bicycles. They would all
Speaker 2: be a gang of those fat tire electrical bikes, which
Speaker 2: has the city council while to live up in arms
Speaker 2: because they drive around like gangs. Here's my question for you, though. Yep,
Speaker 2: these five kids, one of them has et in the
Speaker 2: basket and they're flying through the sky. Why are they
Speaker 2: pedaling their bicycles?
Speaker 1: That's an existential question. I guess it's muscle memory.
Speaker 2: I never thought about it at all, and yet there
Speaker 2: they are and they're pedaling. Yet they're flying through the air.
Speaker 2: Do they think that pedaling will is making them go fast? Well,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: If I jump into my ten year old brain riding
Speaker 1: a bike, if I started to get altitude, I would
Speaker 1: keep pedaling. I think it would just be wrote instinct
Speaker 1: out of fear that if I stop, I'm going to
Speaker 1: actually go down and crash. But I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: a very funny.
Speaker 2: Question, and that whole ending does very much make one
Speaker 2: thing very clear, and that's what Spielberg said. Out to
Speaker 2: do children see a person and they see the alien,
Speaker 2: they see this person not like them, but a person
Speaker 2: adults initially see that same creature entity NHI as a
Speaker 2: specimen or a security problem. And that's where a lot
Speaker 2: of the conflict and some of these things has come about.
Speaker 2: And I just want to get to the wrap on
Speaker 2: ET because we had so many other things to talk about.
Speaker 2: But I told you I saw it and reviewed it.
Speaker 2: Or was the film reviewer for this PBS station here
Speaker 2: in la Kset. So I went back and I was
Speaker 2: going to review it, and they didn't let me review ET.
Speaker 2: They said it was not serious. It was we were a
Speaker 2: news group, news beat is what it's called, and so
Speaker 2: they didn't see this as newsy enough. Now imagine today
Speaker 2: a film like ET came out, people would all be
Speaker 2: wanting to review it because we're getting tranches of government
Speaker 2: documents and all that stuff. But back then, I just
Speaker 2: remember my news director looking at me as I'm standing
Speaker 2: in his office, saying, it's great and we could really
Speaker 2: talk about this, we could do that, and he just
Speaker 2: looked at me and said, we are not going to
Speaker 2: review that film. Go back to your office, get some
Speaker 2: work done. So times have changed a little bit. We're
Speaker 2: a little more open to that kind of thing a
Speaker 2: little more.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, my last thought on et is just from
Speaker 1: a cinematic standpoint, something that always stuck with me was
Speaker 1: how Steven Spielberg introduced the government bad guy played by
Speaker 1: Peter Coyote. It's just his keys that shangled, and the
Speaker 1: idea being is that the alien entity the et is
Speaker 1: so has hyper senses, and so he associates that sound
Speaker 1: of the jangling keys with being hunted, and it's just
Speaker 1: such an interesting thing. It makes him very childlike right
Speaker 1: off the bat. And I never forgot that. I never
Speaker 1: forgot from a cinematic standpoint how economical that was.
Speaker 2: With the exception of the Mother Mary, no adults are
Speaker 2: portrayed except for Keys Laid in the film. You're seeing
Speaker 2: from sort of ground level, from a kid's level, and
Speaker 2: when you finally see him, it's Peter Coyote, who, by
Speaker 2: the way, if I'm not mistaken, is the voice of
Speaker 2: most of Ken Burns things and most of James Fox's
Speaker 2: UFO documentaries. Oh that's right, including the Phenomenon. So there's
Speaker 2: connections everywhere. What I particularly liked, though, is that Keys
Speaker 2: Peter Coyote, when he's finally revealed he's a decent guy.
Speaker 2: He's there to get a job done, but he also
Speaker 2: understands how painful this is for Elliott and how once
Speaker 2: they think that Et is dead, it's hey, let's give
Speaker 2: the kid a moment alone with his grief. And so
Speaker 2: he's a decent guy. And then, frankly, like a lot
Speaker 2: of these movies, at the end, there's a big goodbye scene.
Speaker 2: Et gets to say goodbye to Elliott and Gerty the
Speaker 2: little girl gets to kiss him goodbye. And let's face it,
Speaker 2: Keys who is there in the scene. He could run
Speaker 2: up and grab Et in his own arms and run
Speaker 2: in the other direction, but he doesn't. He lets him go,
Speaker 2: which is something that's going to happen in another film
Speaker 2: we want to talk about. Starman. Okay, flash forward just
Speaker 2: two years, folks, just two years, and there's a pair
Speaker 2: of aliens alone stranded on Earth movies and they're released
Speaker 2: the same year, nineteen eighty four, and they are Starman
Speaker 2: starring Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen, and also The Brother
Speaker 2: from Another Planet starring Joe Morton, directed by John Sales
Speaker 2: who actually plays one of the maybe men in black
Speaker 2: or whatever in the thing. And they both are very
Speaker 2: different tellings of a story about an alien who is
Speaker 2: left here on the planet, and the one that's by
Speaker 2: far closest to ET is Starman.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And I think both of those movies do
Speaker 1: something that made them very relatable and gave them an
Speaker 1: emotional center. So with Et, et is coming to a
Speaker 1: family that doesn't have a father, and not to say
Speaker 1: that he is a father figure, but he brings the
Speaker 1: family together. He provides that paternal protective center. In Starman,
Speaker 1: we meet a woman named I believe Jenny played by
Speaker 1: Karen Allen, and she has lost her husband. And what
Speaker 1: does Starman do. He comes to her in the guise
Speaker 1: of her dead husband, not on purpose, though not on purpose,
Speaker 1: He just sees a piece of hair and he goes
Speaker 1: DNA like, Yes, he comes out of an orb.
Speaker 2: Frankly, he's an orb. Yes.
Speaker 1: Yes. And so both of those stories then lend themselves
Speaker 1: to being more about how the alien character helps repair
Speaker 1: the humans and bring them together, bring them closure, or
Speaker 1: whatever the case may be, and that makes it very
Speaker 1: relatable on a human level.
Speaker 2: I have a personal connection. I think that both of
Speaker 2: one is emotional and the others. In Brother from Another Planet,
Speaker 2: Joe Morton plays the brother and I worked and wrote
Speaker 2: for Joe Morton on a show called Equal Justice in
Speaker 2: ABC series, and Joe is a great guy. This is
Speaker 2: like seven years after the movie where his career was
Speaker 2: really starting. I don't think his career took off because
Speaker 2: a Brother, which a lot of people did not see.
Speaker 2: It was just a smaller indie film where a Starman
Speaker 2: was a mega hit. A couple of things about Starman.
Speaker 2: It begins with the Voyager spacecraft's gold record. Folks, remember
Speaker 2: that we sent out a couple of voyager craft with
Speaker 2: a gold record album on it that basically is an
Speaker 2: invitation to come visit Earth. Yes, and that's why Jeff
Speaker 2: Bridges in orb form is coming to Earth. He's been invited, Yes,
Speaker 2: So he doesn't get treated very well as an invite,
Speaker 2: and it's the same thing he gets there. They always
Speaker 2: put a clock on it, so the clock is okay,
Speaker 2: in three days, you have to be I think Arizona
Speaker 2: in order for the craft to come pick you up, which,
Speaker 2: of course the craft has to pick up Et and
Speaker 2: all that. Couple of funny things that I thought. My
Speaker 2: other connection though to Starman is Karen Allen plays Jenny.
Speaker 2: Four years later, I had my first TV series on CBS.
Speaker 2: It was called k O'Brien, and we were casting the
Speaker 2: lead actress who would play a female surgeon in New
Speaker 2: York City, and the one that Bill Asher, who was
Speaker 2: my executive producer on it, and I both wanted, was
Speaker 2: Karen Allen. Okay, and I think we were close to
Speaker 2: getting her, and the network veto did. And you know
Speaker 2: why they veto did. Why she wasn't sexy enough.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2: They didn't think that she was attractive enough or something,
Speaker 2: and Bill and I were just like, yeah's, first of all,
Speaker 2: I disagree. She's got some love scenes with Jeff Bridges
Speaker 2: and Starman that are pretty convincing and all that, but
Speaker 2: what a stupid thing. And I also think I might
Speaker 2: still be at least an asterisk in the history of
Speaker 2: television had we actually cast Karen Allen, because she would
Speaker 2: have carried that film a couple of interesting things. Though
Speaker 2: I said that they had sexual contact, Okay, the whole
Speaker 2: picture is like, they can't really have sexual contact because
Speaker 2: he looks like her husband and that would be wrong
Speaker 2: and blah blah blah. However, the whole thing is a
Speaker 2: chase thing. It's got all those interesting things. It's a
Speaker 2: road chase, they're in a trucker haven, they're being chased,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah blah blah, all that stuff, and they
Speaker 2: end up as people on the run do inside a
Speaker 2: train car, all right, And in the middle of the night,
Speaker 2: that's when they decide to knock one out. So Jeff Bridges,
Speaker 2: the alien who looks like her dead husband, and Jenny
Speaker 2: played by Karen Allen have some hot sex in a
Speaker 2: moving train car. Now that's not why I'm telling you this.
Speaker 2: It's not prairie folks. I'm analyzing this s shoe. You
Speaker 2: know what he says after having sex with her. I
Speaker 2: was so stunned by this I had to write it down.
Speaker 1: Brent.
Speaker 2: His line is, quote, I think I'm becoming a Planet
Speaker 2: Earth person, which I don't know if that's the I'm
Speaker 2: not even going to touch that one. So that's a
Speaker 2: great quote that doesn't get enough attention. Here's the quote
Speaker 2: from Starman that gets all the attention, and I wish
Speaker 2: it was more true than it sounds reading it today.
Speaker 2: His quote about people about what he's learned when he
Speaker 2: gets to the end is you are at your very
Speaker 2: best when things are worst, and there is something to
Speaker 2: be said about that example of humanity's bad behavior is
Speaker 2: freaking everywhere. We know that, we're aware those of you
Speaker 2: who are listening and watching us know that. And yet
Speaker 2: there are moments when humanity really pulls its act together.
Speaker 2: People are in trouble and we want to help him
Speaker 2: and all that, and he seems to have recognized that
Speaker 2: he isn't a spoiler to say what gift he gives
Speaker 2: her at the end.
Speaker 1: I think we have to talk about that gift because
Speaker 1: it explains why they made a TV gift on I
Speaker 1: want to go back to two interesting things for me anyway.
Speaker 1: One was we talk about the similarities between Starman and Et.
Speaker 1: To be clear, from our stranded point of view, Et
Speaker 1: was left behind by his crew of scientists who were
Speaker 1: about to get exposed or caught, and Et couldn't make
Speaker 1: it back to the ship in time, and the ship
Speaker 1: left without him, right right, it's really stranded. He's really stranded.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's stranded.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so that's why he's trying to phone home
Speaker 1: to try and get a ride back. He's calling a zuber.
Speaker 1: But Starman, actually, as you said, was invited here and
Speaker 1: then he was It's not just that he was not
Speaker 1: well received. He was shot down, yes, by the US government,
Speaker 1: So what a welcoming party. And then additionally, I think,
Speaker 1: with regards to that fresh perspective, some of the movies
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about now more so than Et,
Speaker 1: it's the stranger from a strange land, the outsider who
Speaker 1: comes with a fresh perspective and is able to look
Speaker 1: at humans and see the best and the worst. And
Speaker 1: so a lot of these movies, really they seem like
Speaker 1: they're about the alien on earth, but they're really about us.
Speaker 1: They're really about having someone who comes and adds commentary
Speaker 1: to us and sees how we do things and reminds
Speaker 1: us that, as you just said, there is an idealized
Speaker 1: version of humanity in which we are greater than the
Speaker 1: some of our parts, and we do extraordinary things, and
Speaker 1: that is true in some cases. And I think that
Speaker 1: having an alien come down who is painted as a
Speaker 1: higher intelligence actually find anything admirable about us is comforting
Speaker 1: and that makes it a feel good movie.
Speaker 2: And also so one of the things that does seem
Speaker 2: to pop up, It certainly pops up in Et. The
Speaker 2: kids want to help him, and even Keys ends up
Speaker 2: helping him. Same thing happens in Starman, in that there's
Speaker 2: this I don't know why they always put SETI guys
Speaker 2: on the recovery team, because the SETI guys, the Search
Speaker 2: for Extraterrestrial Intelligence guys are always the ones waiting for
Speaker 2: messages from space and don't believe in crashes and recoveries
Speaker 2: and aliens there on Earth. But he does, and he
Speaker 2: ends up helping Starman get away. Yes, and by the way,
Speaker 2: if anybody in the real government cover up behaved as
Speaker 2: people in movies do, this thing would be solved ages ago, Brent,
Speaker 2: there'd have been so many leaks and all that. Charles
Speaker 2: Martin Smith, the actor in this thing, would clearly have
Speaker 2: been put away in prison forever app for what he did.
Speaker 2: But in the movie, it's a good thing. Okay, So
Speaker 2: here's the spoiler, so cover your ears if you don't
Speaker 2: want to know. But we get to the end and
Speaker 2: there is a goodbye sequence, and I'm trying to remember
Speaker 2: what my spoiler was going to be that oh, yes,
Speaker 2: the prize he gives her is he's impregnated her. She's
Speaker 2: going to have the child that she never could have
Speaker 2: with Jeff Bridges, the original Father. But guess what, since
Speaker 2: he's made of the same DNA she's going to get
Speaker 2: that kid. Oh and by the way, she also gets
Speaker 2: two little silver balls or something.
Speaker 1: That, yes, that the child will know what to do with.
Speaker 2: The child will know what to do beautiful, Yes, I
Speaker 2: hope you does so.
Speaker 1: And so that that sets up then what ultimately the
Speaker 1: TV series became. Yeah, because the series then continues with
Speaker 1: the idea that Starman. At the end of the movie
Speaker 1: spoiler alert, he escapes, he gets his ride back home,
Speaker 1: but then in the TV series he comes back to
Speaker 1: Earth to essentially help raise and guide his teenage son,
Speaker 1: and they're searching for Jenny and staying ahead of the
Speaker 1: government who is looking for him again. And it takes
Speaker 1: idea of a stranded alien and turns it into more
Speaker 1: of this fugitive family drama that felt a lot to
Speaker 1: mean more like Highway to Heaven or Touch My Angel,
Speaker 1: where the characters are moving from place to place and
Speaker 1: imparting some sort of moral lesson. And it wasn't my
Speaker 1: cup of tea, but it did keep the basic germ
Speaker 1: of the series alive, but it completely took away at
Speaker 1: what made it interesting for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd rather watch my favorite Martian, to be honest,
Speaker 2: with you than the Starman TV series. I don't want
Speaker 2: to march forward until we pay some homage to the
Speaker 2: Brother from another Planet, which is if the Yen is Starman,
Speaker 2: the yang is Brother from another Planet. Because Joe Morton,
Speaker 2: in case you didn't know, as an African American man,
Speaker 2: and so the Brother okay, and the Brother from another
Speaker 2: Planet is almost like a slave narrative as well as
Speaker 2: a story about immigration and race and class. You can
Speaker 2: see John Sales was like, Hey, I am not interested
Speaker 2: in your cute little alien thing. I've got things on
Speaker 2: my mind I want to talk about. And so the
Speaker 2: only way that you can actually tell that this brother
Speaker 2: is an alien is he has three toes. Yes, I've agrees,
Speaker 2: but otherwise he looks like a black man. And so
Speaker 2: what happens is that's what makes people enjoy the film. First,
Speaker 2: it's it looks very low budget. They shot it in
Speaker 2: four weeks or something and whatever. But it's the idea
Speaker 2: that here is an bonafide extraterrestrial on Earth, but nobody
Speaker 2: sees him as that at all. In them now, they
Speaker 2: see him not as that et they see him as
Speaker 2: a black guy. And people that are also black respond.
Speaker 2: One way to him people that aren't respond another way,
Speaker 2: and I enjoyed seeing it again, although it does feel
Speaker 2: a little slow and a little off putting a little bit.
Speaker 2: So my vote goes to Starman as the film that's
Speaker 2: really got the staying power. It's not a perfect film
Speaker 2: by any means, but I enjoyed it so much because
Speaker 2: Brent again history. I covered Voyager one for CNN, I
Speaker 2: covered Voyager two for PBS, and I always wondered if
Speaker 2: I was first covering these things? Is the sort of
Speaker 2: the Stephen Hawking thing that we were talking about in
Speaker 2: a recent episode. It's like, is this good for us
Speaker 2: to be telling if the universe is teeming with life? Okay,
Speaker 2: so maybe some good people will hear this record, But
Speaker 2: what if some of the people aren't so good? There's
Speaker 2: a map to Earth on it for crying out loud,
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, all right, moving on, moving on, There's
Speaker 2: still a couple of movies that we want to talk about.
Speaker 1: Do you have a preference about what you want to
Speaker 1: dive into next?
Speaker 2: Oh, I got some TV series I want to talk about,
Speaker 2: So I'm going to let you run into the movie
Speaker 2: world there.
Speaker 1: While we're on the topic of more benevolent feel good
Speaker 1: stranded stories. Let's talk about k Pax.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: K Pax is a movie starring Kevin Spacey, and basically
Speaker 1: it's the very kind of ambiguous version of the stranded
Speaker 1: alien story. He is in I Believe a mental institution.
Speaker 2: New York Psychiatric Hospiglees exactly, and he calls himself.
Speaker 1: Prot PRT, and he claims to be from the planet
Speaker 1: k Pax, and he frankly displays impossible knowledge and unusual
Speaker 1: abilities and tells all of the patients there that he
Speaker 1: can take one of them with him when he leaves
Speaker 1: back to his home planet. The nice thing about the
Speaker 1: movie is, though, is it keeps it very mysterious and
Speaker 1: open ended about is he really crazy like everyone else
Speaker 1: seems to be there, or is he actually an extraterrestrial
Speaker 1: with all of these incredible abilities.
Speaker 2: It's a really good film. And I say that even
Speaker 2: knowing that Kevin Spacey is a controversial guy and all that,
Speaker 2: But when it came out, he wasn't. It was a
Speaker 2: great performance by him. It was Kevin Spacey at his
Speaker 2: crazy best. And the only reason K PAX probably gets
Speaker 2: honorable mention in this category. Is he in an alien? Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's really a disturbed human being who has created all
Speaker 2: this because of the terrible things that have happened to him.
Speaker 2: So yeah, but he sure comes across as an alien.
Speaker 2: He does. And there's a sea where he eats an
Speaker 2: entire banana with the skin on that still gives me nightmares.
Speaker 2: So yeah, what's funny.
Speaker 1: Is I went online and was searching, and there's still
Speaker 1: a whole There's a decent percentage of the audience that
Speaker 1: still is convinced, no, he was an alien. There's just
Speaker 1: enough ambiguity in it that I think you and I
Speaker 1: look at it and say, no, it was sorry, so
Speaker 1: damaged human.
Speaker 2: So it is interesting because whether he is or whether
Speaker 2: he isn't, the premise of the thing is interesting, which is,
Speaker 2: how would we deal with someone who thinks he's an alien.
Speaker 2: We probably lock him up in or we'd cut his
Speaker 2: brain open, or in this case, he's just considered detritus
Speaker 2: and he's thrown into the psychiatric institute. I have a
Speaker 2: TV series that I'm watching right now, Brent, that's the
Speaker 2: opposite of Kpax. Okay, all right, And I don't know
Speaker 2: if you've been watching it or not. And I'm kind
Speaker 2: of torn about this about the whole spoiler policy. It's
Speaker 2: hard to do something that analyzes these films and TV
Speaker 2: series and say, but we're never going to tell you
Speaker 2: what they're really about. Yeah, so I want to talk
Speaker 2: about Sugar on Apple TV plus. What's your take? Can
Speaker 2: I talk about it?
Speaker 1: I think you can. I think this is a great
Speaker 1: place for anyone who's listening that is saying, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I've heard about Sugar, I want to watch it. Don't
Speaker 1: spoil it. Okay, Well pause right here and we'll wave you.
Speaker 2: Okay, So here I go. Here's Sugar and Spice. I
Speaker 2: started watching Sugar, which is a TV series stalling starring
Speaker 2: Colin Ferrell. I like Colin Ferrell, and I found his
Speaker 2: performance on this thing to be quite interesting. He is
Speaker 2: a private investigator and only he's very refined. He's fair
Speaker 2: and decent and calm, and he watches a lot of
Speaker 2: TV or a lot of movies, a lot of old movies,
Speaker 2: which is another thing, by the way. Quite often individual
Speaker 2: ets that are stranded and often watch our TV or
Speaker 2: films or whatever to learn about Yeah, and in fact,
Speaker 2: that's not particularly wrong. If you were an American who
Speaker 2: moved to Germany to take a job, you should start
Speaker 2: watching German TV. Learned the language, learn the customs. So
Speaker 2: it's a really interesting movie. He is a private investigator.
Speaker 2: He's involved in some kind of missing person's case. And
Speaker 2: I'm cruising along with this going it's kind of moody.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of voice over. He's driving a hot
Speaker 2: convertible around Los Angeles. I enjoy watching it. There's just
Speaker 2: a lot to like about it for me. Not everyone's
Speaker 2: going to like it, but for me, I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: So I'm watching this. I get six episodes. At the
Speaker 2: end of the sixth episode, he goes into the bathroom
Speaker 2: and he injects himself with something and he turns into
Speaker 2: a blue skinned alien, and I'm like, what now? Why
Speaker 2: is this an individual alien stuck on Earth? Story? First
Speaker 2: of all, it's just fascinating that happened, because the next episode,
Speaker 2: maybe that was the end of episode seven, I don't
Speaker 2: remember right now, But the next episode, it turns out
Speaker 2: there's a group of these aliens, yes, that basically go
Speaker 2: from planet to planet. The species is interested in other
Speaker 2: intelligent life, which actually fits with something I've been saying
Speaker 2: four years, which is all intelligent life is probably interesting
Speaker 2: to all other intelligent life. And so maybe that's why
Speaker 2: I like the series so much, that their expectation is
Speaker 2: that they can come to Earth and investigate. But it
Speaker 2: turns out that what the big bad powers that be
Speaker 2: are hunting them down, and so they just we have
Speaker 2: to go home. This is the season one and he
Speaker 2: decides to stay. Yeah, so he becomes the solo alien
Speaker 2: left on Earth. And there is a season two out
Speaker 2: and I ain't going to say anything about season two.
Speaker 2: So if you think I've spoiled everything, you can go
Speaker 2: straight to season two because it's a whole new storyline.
Speaker 2: But what I find so interesting about Sugar and so
Speaker 2: compelling is not that I think that's probably happening, but
Speaker 2: it might be. It might be. We hear about shape shifters,
Speaker 2: and one of the greatest problems of all these things
Speaker 2: brand is trying to figure out how does an alien
Speaker 2: make itself look like a human? Yes, there's always a
Speaker 2: different plan in obviously, in the Manufeld Earth he puts
Speaker 2: some kind of covering on him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a costumer.
Speaker 2: And in Starman he uses the DNA and recreates it.
Speaker 2: In this one, it's there's not an outfit or anything
Speaker 2: on him. By injecting himself, he gives his body time
Speaker 2: to not have to project the human sphere. And I'm
Speaker 2: not going to say anything other than he's got the
Speaker 2: same freaking problem that Jeff Bridges has in Starman, which
Speaker 2: is there's a hot woman that his humanity tells him
Speaker 2: he wants to go to bed with, but his alienness says, no,
Speaker 2: we don't interfere. So I'm not going to comment on
Speaker 2: how that's resolved in season two. But I do find
Speaker 2: Sugar to be a great show. Have you seen any
Speaker 2: part of it? Or I have seen the first season
Speaker 2: on your recommendation? Actually, thanks, yes, And it was interesting
Speaker 2: because you didn't tell me why.
Speaker 1: I should watch it. You just said it was a
Speaker 1: great show. And I'd heard that from a few other people.
Speaker 1: So at some point, when I hear it from enough
Speaker 1: people whose opinions I respect and trust, I say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I have to watch this. So I did not know
Speaker 1: the twist, but I knew there were certain things in
Speaker 1: the story telling before you get to the big reveal
Speaker 1: that made me think there was something going on with him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that because he had such an extraordinary set of morals
Speaker 1: and ethics, right, He's a private detective that does not
Speaker 1: like violence. He does not want to hurt people, and
Speaker 1: like you said, he was very gentlemanly around women, and
Speaker 1: he just there was a sense about him that made
Speaker 1: him feel bigger and better than humans. He was somehow
Speaker 1: above everyone else in the movie. So when the big
Speaker 1: reveal came that he was an alien, I thought, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: that makes sense of everything.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a little surprising, but I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: actually that's the best kind of surprise where I am
Speaker 1: a little startled in the moment, but everything makes sense
Speaker 1: because the storytelling it was set up really well.
Speaker 2: Now we're trying to be disciplined this time and actually
Speaker 2: bring in one of these shows in under an hour,
Speaker 2: so I'm actually going to bolt a head into something.
Speaker 2: There's a pair of projects that I find fascinating because
Speaker 2: they're both about something similar. One of them is a
Speaker 2: television series that's out now, I think it's finished its run,
Speaker 2: but it's very contemporaneous, that is Resident Alien. And the
Speaker 2: other is a favorite film of mine that I've seen
Speaker 2: multiple times because I find it so odd and interesting
Speaker 2: and compelling, and that's under the skin. Yes, Now, I
Speaker 2: don't know you've probably seen a little bit of each other.
Speaker 2: You've probably seen Under the Skin.
Speaker 1: Yes, I have seen Under the Skin. I have not
Speaker 1: watched all of Resident Alien, but I will prepare myself
Speaker 1: for any spoilers.
Speaker 2: Why not you do a little bit on Under the
Speaker 2: Skin then, and I will tell you why. I think
Speaker 2: Resident Alien and Under the Skin are both two sides
Speaker 2: of the same coin when it comes to alienness on Earth.
Speaker 1: Interesting. And it's nice that we're pivoting from Sugar into
Speaker 1: Under the Skin because another complete one eighty flip where
Speaker 1: we just said the thing you admire about Sugar is
Speaker 1: his moral and his ethics. His morals and his ethics
Speaker 1: in Under the Skin, throw out all of that, at
Speaker 1: least initially for the first part of the movie. What
Speaker 1: we have there is a story of a predatory alien
Speaker 1: in the form of Scarlett Johansson, who is basically moving
Speaker 1: through Scotland in human form, and she's luring lonely men
Speaker 1: into this very surreal harvesting process. Ultimately, the harvesting process
Speaker 1: is I understood it to ultimately consume men, or to
Speaker 1: consume humans. That's why she was sent to her race
Speaker 1: to go bring back human food essentially, so it's a
Speaker 1: fairly dark story. However, just like Sugar, she comes to
Speaker 1: develop a compassion for humanity and ultimately decides she doesn't
Speaker 1: want this mission anymore. And now when she tries to
Speaker 1: get away and to stop permission, she becomes hunted by
Speaker 1: her own handler. The movie ultimately ends in a fairly
Speaker 1: ironic way in that she is subjected to the same
Speaker 1: brutal thing fate that she subjected many of her captures to,
Speaker 1: when a human logger does to her what she's done
Speaker 1: to again her captives. So I think the interesting thing
Speaker 1: about the movie is that even a terrifying predatory alien
Speaker 1: who is coming here to eat humans, still, if you
Speaker 1: spend enough time with us, you can learn compassion and empathy,
Speaker 1: and you can change your ways, and it may get
Speaker 1: you killed. The last thing I did want to point
Speaker 1: out I think it's interesting about that empathy angle is
Speaker 1: that that is the message of the movie, is that
Speaker 1: empathy is dangerous because it makes us vulnerable, and yet
Speaker 1: that is the exact opposite message of Disclosure Day. Empathy
Speaker 1: in that case is seen as a superpower that will
Speaker 1: elevate humans to a higher level of consciousness.
Speaker 2: You've used the word compassion that she develops compassion. I'm
Speaker 2: not necessarily challenging the word, but I am questioning it.
Speaker 2: I always thought she was developing curiosity more than compassion,
Speaker 2: that she has not quite come to the compassionate take
Speaker 2: on things, but she's beginning to understand that there are
Speaker 2: different kinds of humans and certain things are awakening within her,
Speaker 2: that she's like, what is going on here? One thing,
Speaker 2: I just wanted to really point out that I did
Speaker 2: not realize what's so great about doing these shows. You
Speaker 2: start doing this research and pattern recognition kicks in. You
Speaker 2: just said under the Skin, she's a young woman driving
Speaker 2: a white van around Scotland. Okay, guess what. At the
Speaker 2: beginning of this I talked about the man from Planet
Speaker 2: X who lands on an isolated Scottish island nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 2: and I talked about Devil Girl from Mars nineteen fifty four,
Speaker 2: where she has a damaged saucer and comes down near
Speaker 2: a remote Scottish inn. Wow, what's up with these people
Speaker 2: from Scotland and these aliens walking among them?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know anyway. I love Under the Skin. I
Speaker 2: couldn't get my wife to watch it with me to
Speaker 2: save my life. She would not watch it. It's creepy,
Speaker 2: it's dark, it's creepy. It is. But part of what's
Speaker 2: interesting is Scarlett Johansen is awesome.
Speaker 1: Yes, she's amazing.
Speaker 2: Awesome in this thing. She does such a great performance.
Speaker 2: I think the director has done a great job with
Speaker 2: it himself, and it just feels authentic. The same problem though,
Speaker 2: where she starts to she has one mission when she
Speaker 2: gets there, but she has to hang out with these
Speaker 2: humans and it starts to change her. That's more what
Speaker 2: I would say, She's just changing a little bit. Okay,
Speaker 2: it's another rave for me for a TV series, and
Speaker 2: it's Resident Alien, which, like I said, four seasons in
Speaker 2: I think, just so you know what this one's about.
Speaker 2: The concept is there's a badass alien, okay, who does
Speaker 2: get marooned in Colorado and his solution to being marooned.
Speaker 2: In the pilot, I believe the first episode is Toper.
Speaker 2: He murders a small town doctor. He murders them and
Speaker 2: does what Jeff Ridges does in Starman. He uses his
Speaker 2: DNA to recreate himself as that doctor. Okay, So in
Speaker 2: the he is on a journey. He shows up in
Speaker 2: this town. He has his whole. I'm not going to
Speaker 2: get into all the details, but he's there for bad intent,
Speaker 2: that's it. And when he's got this marooning going on,
Speaker 2: he needs to find a way to go underground, so
Speaker 2: he takes this guy's identity. And the thing is, if
Speaker 2: he was like Scarlett Johansson in a big city, then
Speaker 2: she's a tiny cog in a big city and she's invisible.
Speaker 2: She's this dark force out there. But he can't do that.
Speaker 2: He's in this small Colorado town and everybody knows him.
Speaker 2: He's the doctor. He's smart enough to try to fake it,
Speaker 2: but he has contempt for humans at the beginning, and
Speaker 2: over these four seasons he makes actual friends with certain humans.
Speaker 2: And I guess that isn't that the solution to everything?
Speaker 2: Isn't that why we've tried over the years to have
Speaker 2: We used to have exchange programs. Americans would go to
Speaker 2: Russia during the Cold War and Russians would come to America,
Speaker 2: And we did that with China. When if you can
Speaker 2: trade with another country, maybe you don't want to destroy it.
Speaker 2: So that theory writ large is now writ small and
Speaker 2: resident alien, where people who are quirky and weird, as
Speaker 2: he is become his friends and he starts to change. Now,
Speaker 2: if that was all that this Resident Alien is, Brent,
Speaker 2: I would probably not be saying and you should watch it.
Speaker 2: But it does something that's near and dear to our hearts,
Speaker 2: because we certainly have tried to do it in Dark Sky,
Speaker 2: where we try to say, what do we know about
Speaker 2: the state of ufology, Let's cram the shit out of
Speaker 2: it into our TV series. Let's let it all hang out.
Speaker 2: That's what they do. This is such an inventory of
Speaker 2: UFO lore and Resident Alien. Now, I want to make
Speaker 2: clear to everybody it's a comedy. This isn't a drama.
Speaker 2: It's a comedy. But it's got abduction, it's got missing time.
Speaker 2: There are implants, there are grays, there are hybrids, there's
Speaker 2: men in black, there's experiences, there's government secrecy, interspecies, agendas,
Speaker 2: multiple species. It's got it all in there. So I've
Speaker 2: enjoyed watching it because I go, these guys know who
Speaker 2: the creative team behind it knows as much about UFO
Speaker 2: law as I do. And I feel like in some
Speaker 2: respects they're speaking directly to me with these things. And
Speaker 2: the only thing that I would say matches it in
Speaker 2: the same sort of way. Is that movie Paul, yes,
Speaker 2: seth Rogen plays Yes, Oh, but it is.
Speaker 1: This is my question to you, is, as we're ending
Speaker 1: getting closer to the end of the episode, should we
Speaker 1: do a whole episode on comedic aliens? Because I feel
Speaker 1: like Paul deserves a lot of time. It's a really
Speaker 1: fun movie.
Speaker 2: Let's put a pen in Paul. The only thing I
Speaker 2: should say about him is he's the original Roswell Alien,
Speaker 2: pretty much as it's Yes Who's gotten out. I think
Speaker 2: we should do an episode about comedy where we can
Speaker 2: go into more detail on Resident Alien and Paul and
Speaker 2: a number of other things. And I've already spoken to
Speaker 2: some folks about possibly guesting on that and getting through it.
Speaker 2: We even have a title that we fooled around it with,
Speaker 2: which is an ET walks into a bar that was
Speaker 2: the started like a joke. Okay, concluding remarks here, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: what have we learned? What should we learn here?
Speaker 1: I think I come back to something I said at
Speaker 1: the beginning, which is that Hollywood loves these stories of
Speaker 1: streng aliens for all the reasons that we've talked about,
Speaker 1: and there can be a range of the stories, but
Speaker 1: even in the most the darkest version of the story,
Speaker 1: like Under the Skin, the alien comes around and, as
Speaker 1: you said, if not gains full compassion, becomes curious and
Speaker 1: at least a little open minded to humans. So I
Speaker 1: think they're comforting. They are telling us about ourselves. Whether
Speaker 1: it's brother from another planet offering social satire, whether it's
Speaker 1: a relationship story like Starman, or whether it's the repair
Speaker 1: of a dysfunctional family. All of these things feel like
Speaker 1: the alien is bringing benefit and making the world a
Speaker 1: better place in some way. What I want to talk about,
Speaker 1: and just because when you talk about pattern recognition, the
Speaker 1: thing that jumped out to me is I noticed that
Speaker 1: in several of these movies, specifically Et, Starman and k Pax,
Speaker 1: the main characters are Messiah figures. So they're a being
Speaker 1: with a higher intelligence and a higher for compassion and love,
Speaker 1: and they find themselves trapped on our crazy planet, which
Speaker 1: at times must feel like hell to them. I want
Speaker 1: to bring up a quote because I think this takes
Speaker 1: us into an area that is super relevant right now.
Speaker 1: Billy Graham, the famous evangelist known as America's pastor, had
Speaker 1: an interesting quote once. He said, UFOs are astonishingly angel
Speaker 1: like in some of their appearances, and if you look
Speaker 1: at what people have reported, that's actually quite true and structurally,
Speaker 1: a lot of the films we're talking about could be
Speaker 1: seen through that lens of fallen angel stories, where these
Speaker 1: divine beings who find themselves stranded on earth at the
Speaker 1: mercy of humans, with their usually supreme morality tested in
Speaker 1: some cases and even tempted. I guess my question is this,
Speaker 1: when you look at these type of movies, are they
Speaker 1: shaping or reinforcing that the religious belief system? And if so,
Speaker 1: it's no wonder that many people today believe that aliens
Speaker 1: are fallen angels and even demons, And in fact, many
Speaker 1: leaders have been teaching for some time that fallen angels
Speaker 1: want to pull people away from God. They argue that
Speaker 1: teaching people to believe in aliens is a trick to
Speaker 1: make humanity trust advanced science instead of faith. Now, for
Speaker 1: many reasons, scholars religious scholars view extraterrestrials as physical beings
Speaker 1: from outer space, but they do not view them as
Speaker 1: physical beings from outer space, but as spiritual beings acting
Speaker 1: as ministers of deception in a hidden cosmic war. So
Speaker 1: I think when we talk about disclosure. We have to
Speaker 1: remember that disclosure is coming to very different groups of
Speaker 1: people are whose different belief systems are going to be
Speaker 1: challenged in different ways. And all of this leads me
Speaker 1: to one practical question which I've heard you voice and
Speaker 1: I love this question, which is, if that's true, why
Speaker 1: would angels or demons need UFOs? Why would they need
Speaker 1: material physical crafts to enter our realm? And circling back
Speaker 1: to something we talked about in an episode called All
Speaker 1: about the Wu. You can't really answer that question without
Speaker 1: sounding derisive or cynical, but it goes back to something
Speaker 1: I think that Jacques Valet's idea of whatever the aliens are,
Speaker 1: they seem to take the form of whatever our current
Speaker 1: culture can understand, meaning these aliens are shaped and made
Speaker 1: manifest by our collective consciousness a bell that I continued
Speaker 1: to ring. And so therefore aliens really have They couldn't
Speaker 1: have popped into pop culture, so to speak, really before
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century when flight was discovered. The Wright Brothers
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh three made us realize we could fly,
Speaker 1: and then once we could fly on Earth, we could
Speaker 1: fly into space. And then suddenly the whole concept of
Speaker 1: aliens starts to emerge because why our imagination has been
Speaker 1: expanded about what's possible. Now, I'm going to conclude this
Speaker 1: with something that may be controversial. It's what I believe.
Speaker 1: I'm not scared to God on a limb here. I
Speaker 1: believe that science and spirituality are seen as separate, even oppositional,
Speaker 1: in our society, and is that by design? Is that
Speaker 1: to keep the populace divided. That's a conspiracy theory that
Speaker 1: we're not going to go down in today. But underlying
Speaker 1: all of this is this idea that if quantum mechanics
Speaker 1: proves anything, there is no separation on any level. We
Speaker 1: are connected and quantumly entangled, and what affects one of
Speaker 1: us to some degree affects all of us. Likewise, the
Speaker 1: core tenants of science and spirituality are not separate. They
Speaker 1: are both inherently trying to answer the same questions about
Speaker 1: our existence, one through evidence and one's through faith. So,
Speaker 1: in my version of disclosure, if it ever comes, I
Speaker 1: believe that what we're going to learn is that aliens
Speaker 1: and angels and demons are all manifestations of our collective consciousness,
Speaker 1: co created with an intelligent universe informed by our individual
Speaker 1: beliefs and imaginations, which then tends to start explaining the
Speaker 1: wide range and varying details you find when examining stories
Speaker 1: about aliens on Earth, whether they are benevolent, malicious, or
Speaker 1: something in between.
Speaker 2: First, I'm not smart enough to debate that with you,
Speaker 2: and second, I don't have the time to debate it
Speaker 2: with you, So that is going to be in another episode.
Speaker 2: My concluding statement about what we've talked about today is
Speaker 2: I don't believe really we should be thinking about angels
Speaker 2: and demons. And a lot of people are, and I
Speaker 2: think it's to explain the UFO issue, and a lot
Speaker 2: of them are in the Pentagon, and I think that's
Speaker 2: not helpful because I think it is more like what
Speaker 2: you said. It's like it's chicken in the egg. Whatever
Speaker 2: it is, it's the phenomenon. Now, some people see the
Speaker 2: phenomenon has this explanation for religion and vice versa, and
Speaker 2: I'm not going to get into that right now, but
Speaker 2: I will say this, if you look at all the
Speaker 2: movies and TV series we've talked about, I do not
Speaker 2: believe that is the core experience of the phenomenon. It
Speaker 2: revealed to us as I enjoy these movies. I think
Speaker 2: there's a lot of one offs out there. I don't
Speaker 2: think there's a lot of individual ets or from some
Speaker 2: other place that are stranded on Earth. I think there
Speaker 2: might have been a few over time. This Vargina case
Speaker 2: from Brazil possibly was an alien stranded on Earth. Maybe
Speaker 2: some of the crash wreckage like Roswell had a living
Speaker 2: alien or whatever. But in general, I think the explanation
Speaker 2: for what we're seeing is more species oriented. That there's
Speaker 2: a group a species, somebody is interested in us as
Speaker 2: a species, and it isn't one of them running around.
Speaker 2: It's multiples. It's more like sugar at the beginning. I
Speaker 2: just think there's a lot more to explore, and of
Speaker 2: course that's what we're going to be doing. We need
Speaker 2: to say goodbye, so I'm going to say everybody, thank
Speaker 2: you for watching. We appreciate that you will subscribe and
Speaker 2: comment and do all the things that help us. If
Speaker 2: you like what you're seeing, watch the Skies. Sound, Light
Speaker 2: and Frequency is an iHeart podcast produced by Stellar Productions.
Speaker 2: It's executive produced by Nick Johnson and for Stellar Jackie's Abel.
Speaker 2: Our show's music was written by Anna Stumpf and Hamilton Lighthouser,
Speaker 2: and your hosts and executive producers are Bryce Abel That's
Speaker 2: me and Brent Friedman. Watch the Skies
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