Speaker 1: We think about aliens a lot, Brent, and I partly
Speaker 1: because sound, light and frequency lives at that intersection of
Speaker 1: Hollywood and UFOs, which means we do spend a fair
Speaker 1: amount of time asking what aliens look like, particularly when
Speaker 1: they cross over from witness reports and folklore and nightmare
Speaker 1: fuel onto movie and television screens. As creatives, we do
Speaker 1: know a fair amount about the phenomenon as people report
Speaker 1: it and they say it's real, and we know the
Speaker 1: familiar categories. If you think about it, it's the Big
Speaker 1: Four first, of course, grays certainly, but also Nordic's mantids
Speaker 1: and reptilians on screen. Of course, the menu gets even stranger.
Speaker 1: Then you have xenomorph's, benevolent light beings, humanoids from another dimension,
Speaker 1: aquatic intelligences, and the good old bug eyed monsters and
Speaker 1: whatever else a writer, a director, a studio or a
Speaker 1: special effects budget can dream up. But the journey from
Speaker 1: the mind to the movie theater is rarely a straight line,
Speaker 1: and it's almost never easy. I'll give you a case
Speaker 1: in point. I learned that the hard way on my
Speaker 1: first produced UFO movie, which we've talked about on this podcast.
Speaker 1: It was called Official Denial which was the original film
Speaker 1: that launched the Sci Fi Channel. Now, the script had
Speaker 1: about as many UFO ideas as I could cram into
Speaker 1: ninety minutes without requiring an actual forklift, But it also
Speaker 1: had a captured gray in it. Because I was trying
Speaker 1: to be authentic. That turned out to be my biggest mistake.
Speaker 1: We had a modest budget to put it. Kindly, when
Speaker 1: it came time to put that alien on screen, the
Speaker 1: surviving gray called Doss was played by a fifteen year
Speaker 1: old Australian dancer named Holly Brisly inside a rubbery alien suit.
Speaker 1: And let me be clear, Holly gave it everything that
Speaker 1: she could. This is not a story about her failing.
Speaker 1: This is a story about the unforgiving nature of alien creation.
Speaker 1: Because if the alien doesn't work, the mythology starts to collapse,
Speaker 1: and audiences they can believe in majestic twelve or hidden basses,
Speaker 1: recovered craft, often even time distortion, but only if the
Speaker 1: being at the center of it all feels real. And
Speaker 1: that's why today's conversation matters, because an alien is never
Speaker 1: really just a creature effort. It's the answer to the
Speaker 1: question that the whole story is asking. So today Brent,
Speaker 1: and I have brought in a person who knows exactly
Speaker 1: how hard that work is and who's triumphed at it
Speaker 1: over and over. And Brent, let's talk about our guests,
Speaker 1: and let's bring this man in and get into the art,
Speaker 1: the science, and even the terror of the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and talking about what it means to make an alien.
Speaker 2: I'm Brent Friedman. Years ago, a family friend who became
Speaker 2: a cabinet member in the Reagan administration just closed to
Speaker 2: me that aliens are real, They're here, and he'd seen them.
Speaker 1: I'm Bryce's Abel. Later, when we were producing Dark Skies,
Speaker 1: an NBCTV series about an alien invasion, we were approached
Speaker 1: by men who said they were from the Office of
Speaker 1: Naval Intelligence and they wanted to give us inside information
Speaker 1: in exchange for access to our show.
Speaker 2: We didn't take that deal, but we have never stopped
Speaker 2: thinking about it.
Speaker 1: That's why we do this podcast. We're working out ideas
Speaker 1: in real time about how Hollywood is portrayed aliens and
Speaker 1: why every.
Speaker 2: Episode is different because there are so many questions.
Speaker 1: We're looking for answers. It's an active investigation. Let's do
Speaker 1: this together, all right.
Speaker 2: This is a very exciting episode for me because one
Speaker 2: of my favorite parts of the process of development is
Speaker 2: taking those ideas that we put on the page and
Speaker 2: talking with an actual artist who's going to bring our
Speaker 2: imagination to life. It's always a fun negotiation, if you will,
Speaker 2: trying to figure out how those words can become actual
Speaker 2: living things that fit within the budget and the schedule.
Speaker 2: But before I go any further, I want to introduce
Speaker 2: to you today our guest who is one of the
Speaker 2: absolute rock stars of Hollywood. He's definitely one of the
Speaker 2: best special effects experts that I've ever had the privilege
Speaker 2: of knowing for three decades, mind you, and we even
Speaker 2: got to work a few times together. Todd Masters is
Speaker 2: the founder of Master's Effects, which has a long list
Speaker 2: of credits ranging from look Who's Talking to Star Trek
Speaker 2: First Contact, to Tales from the Crypts the TV series
Speaker 2: to Stargate SG one, and of course Brice our TV
Speaker 2: series Dark Skies. Unfortunately, that quick rundown is not going
Speaker 2: to do Todd justice. We need a full episode to
Speaker 2: go over his long list of credits. But let me
Speaker 2: just say this, Todd Masters is an innovator and an
Speaker 2: Emmy Award winner, and most importantly a real good dude
Speaker 2: who I'm proud to call my friend.
Speaker 1: Wow, Hey, Todd, don't.
Speaker 2: I got him? I got him blushing.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what I was get some some foundation on.
Speaker 3: Actually it's not thirty, it's forty, if you can believe it. Oh,
Speaker 3: but he is just about to be forty years old.
Speaker 3: I've actually been doing this twelve, so that's more like
Speaker 3: forty six years or something. Did you say twelve? Yeah,
Speaker 3: I started with us twelve.
Speaker 1: Hey, Todd, Sorry, in all those years, how many monsters
Speaker 1: and aliens have you created? How what's the number.
Speaker 3: At I'm possible to remember it?
Speaker 1: Or is it a dozens?
Speaker 3: Or is it it's well in the many hundreds. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's We've been going strangely since the eighties. Brent. I
Speaker 3: think we met on The Resurrected, which we were doing
Speaker 3: in the late eighties. Yes, we were both five years old,
Speaker 3: I recall.
Speaker 2: Yes, I was three. I think you were five.
Speaker 3: Or yeah, you didn't have to be. But no, magically
Speaker 3: a practical effects company still beats pretty strong. So it's
Speaker 3: shocks even me the numbers like you've seen start Trek
Speaker 3: First Contact is going to be thirty in November, feels
Speaker 3: to the Crypts streaming right now. Those episodes are really old,
Speaker 3: so it's just wild.
Speaker 2: But we have Dark Skies is coming up on our
Speaker 2: thirty year anniversary this year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what do we want to do?
Speaker 2: So the number I want to go back to is twelve.
Speaker 2: I know things are done differently in Canada, but how
Speaker 2: did you start working in special effects when you were
Speaker 2: twelve years old?
Speaker 3: I was a really big kid, had a really deep voice,
Speaker 3: kind of like that, and I was just fascinated by
Speaker 3: Ray Harry Housen movies and these animated cyclopses and every Sunday.
Speaker 3: This is before we had recording mechanisms this. I don't
Speaker 3: even think there was satellites beaming this end. It was
Speaker 3: probably just Yarn and the Tin Cans. But we used
Speaker 3: to watch Sunday Sci Fi Channel. I'm sure you guys
Speaker 3: did too. I saw in the magazines Ray Harryhausen and
Speaker 3: a couple other names, and somehow I got keyed in
Speaker 3: that there's these things called phone books, and so I
Speaker 3: started I went to the Seattle Library and I pulled
Speaker 3: out the London phone book. Hey there's Ray Harry not
Speaker 3: many Ray Harryhausen's, and so I started calling him and
Speaker 3: a couple others like Will Vinton and Tom Burman, just
Speaker 3: because there was no Internet, there was no real there
Speaker 3: wasn't even many books, and so I'm sure I called
Speaker 3: Harry Hausen Ont like three in the morning. I didn't
Speaker 3: undertand type songs, and so that kind of started this pursuit.
Speaker 3: And I looked in the local phone book for animation
Speaker 3: and stuff, and I found these guys called the Hill
Speaker 3: Brothers cartoons down the worst part of Seattle. Took the
Speaker 3: bus down there at twelve, just talked my way into
Speaker 3: getting a gig, and we were doing an educational film
Speaker 3: about birth control. And I was this kid that my
Speaker 3: parents hadn't told me anything yet, right, So all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, I'm painting sperm and I'm painting prophylactics and
Speaker 3: uteruses as cartoons. And so I got a pretty good
Speaker 3: education that summer, and by the time I was thirteen,
Speaker 3: I became head of the department, which was pretty funny.
Speaker 3: And I just was like this kind of talker. I
Speaker 3: could talk myself into almost anything. And there was another
Speaker 3: thing going on downtown Seattle at this lab called Alpha Cine,
Speaker 3: which the Hill Brothers told me about. That's where we
Speaker 3: were having our film process. I went down there and
Speaker 3: I talked myself into an effects job in the optical
Speaker 3: training department. I started cleaning inner positives and shit like this.
Speaker 3: One day film comes through sideways and I go to
Speaker 3: my boss what is this And he's like, oh, that's
Speaker 3: Star Wars too. I'm like what And it was Empire
Speaker 3: Strikes Back. And so I started working at Empire Strikes
Speaker 3: Back at twelve or something, I don't know, Wow, and yeah,
Speaker 3: it was a blue screen of snowspeeder se.
Speaker 1: For the people who are listening who may not know,
Speaker 1: tell us who Ray Harryhausen is was.
Speaker 3: Mister Harry Housen is well known in our world as
Speaker 3: kind of the godfather of horror and science fiction effects
Speaker 3: and animation. He did a lot of aliens in fact,
Speaker 3: so back in like the fifties and the forties he
Speaker 3: got to start with making these little black and whites
Speaker 3: like Mighty Joe Young and there's a great one Earth
Speaker 3: versus the Flying Saucers where all these Saucerers smash into Washington, DC.
Speaker 3: He's probably best known for the Seventh Voyage of Simbad
Speaker 3: effects and the Cyclops early technicolor. This is model animation
Speaker 3: so it was a puppet that they had jointed and
Speaker 3: they shoot a frame, he'd move at shooter. Frame went
Speaker 3: all the way up to Clash of the Titans. But
Speaker 3: he's known now as kind of the guy that opened
Speaker 3: the door for George Lucas and Phil Tippa and Spielberg
Speaker 3: for this kind of upgraded fantasy because before him, there
Speaker 3: was really just people in bad suits.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this when you just mentioned that
Speaker 1: it's been hundreds of these creatures, whether they be alien
Speaker 1: or monsters, that you've been involved in creating. I'm sure
Speaker 1: many of the directors are producers or writers that you
Speaker 1: work with are like Brent and I we were like, hey,
Speaker 1: we need something completely original, but it's got to be
Speaker 1: super authentic and no one's ever have seen anything like
Speaker 1: this before, but it needs to be familiar. So I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've had that conversation many times when.
Speaker 3: You're talking every day. Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 1: So when you're creating all these different let's call them
Speaker 1: aliens for now, let's separate the aliens from the monsters.
Speaker 1: Although they're all kind of nhi, aren't they they're non
Speaker 1: human intelligence of some kind. But when you're creating an
Speaker 1: alien and somebody says, give me something different, Where do
Speaker 1: you start. What's the process by which you identify how
Speaker 1: to give somebody something that unique.
Speaker 3: Let's really changed over the last few years with AI.
Speaker 3: A lot of people are doing like AI concepts right now.
Speaker 3: Back in the day, more like the nineties and the
Speaker 3: early two thousand and I still do it. We generally
Speaker 3: look at the room. We try to figure out tonality,
Speaker 3: what is the thing that we're trying to create. If
Speaker 3: it is an alien show, I might go looking for
Speaker 3: whatever the alien group is, for things that look like
Speaker 3: they're going to inspire me, inspire the direct and other people.
Speaker 3: And I look for hits because it's I'm not a
Speaker 3: big fan of AI and everything. We still do here
Speaker 3: and there for concepts, but it's better to use your
Speaker 3: human powers to try to source out the samples. I
Speaker 3: am not a fan of starting the process with, oh,
Speaker 3: this has to be a makeup or this has to
Speaker 3: be a long armed guy in a suit. I don't
Speaker 3: think that really helps the film in some cases, maybe,
Speaker 3: but I find it better to just feel through the
Speaker 3: void a little bit with these helpers like the style
Speaker 3: guides and maybe Sama and lots of conversation, just.
Speaker 1: As an example, a lot of people who are listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast have gone on the journey with me
Speaker 1: and Brent where we walk them through the Dark Sky's experience,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of them have gotten either they've
Speaker 1: seen clips from Dark Skies or if they were lucky,
Speaker 1: they bought an old copy of the DVD set or whatever.
Speaker 1: For those people who are saying, wait, there's these grays
Speaker 1: in Dark Skies? How did we make the grays? Were
Speaker 1: they puppets? Were they people? Were they cgi? How would
Speaker 1: you describe the Dark Skies aliens?
Speaker 2: They're saying, I'm going to back that up just a
Speaker 2: little bit, okay, because that's all a fascinating explanation. But Bryce,
Speaker 2: if you remember one of the things that we threw
Speaker 2: at Todd and we were those director like saying we
Speaker 2: want something totally different, totally new. Our whole approach was
Speaker 2: we had read stories that there were small grays and
Speaker 2: there were larger grays, and so we were like, Okay,
Speaker 2: instead of having two grays, what if we take the
Speaker 2: idea that it's the same creature that just has the
Speaker 2: capacity to stand up and expand yes night. And so
Speaker 2: we came at Todd with that and I'm sure you
Speaker 2: were like, wait, what, So with that in mind, take
Speaker 2: us through the process, if you you can run going
Speaker 2: back thirty years, What was it like trying to design
Speaker 2: these dark sky's grays that we threw at you.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, we love that idea just because
Speaker 3: we hadn't seen it before and we were going into
Speaker 3: this project with this certain familiarity in the design style,
Speaker 3: meaning that if you recall, we made early mccketts, which
Speaker 3: are little clay design sculpts. Yes, we did a very
Speaker 3: traditional if I can use my fingers there, traditional gray
Speaker 3: just standing there. I think Jeremy Iyello sculpted at this
Speaker 3: mccutt And then we did another one where it was
Speaker 3: that all stretched out just again feel in the dark
Speaker 3: or we close, is this what we want and do
Speaker 3: it at small scale? Back then we did it in
Speaker 3: small scale like that just because it's easier to fix
Speaker 3: and change. We love the idea of the stretchy stuff
Speaker 3: because we were just right there on switching into this
Speaker 3: new material cult normal plastic, which was a high temperature,
Speaker 3: vinally kind of substance. It wasn't silicone, it was it
Speaker 3: was actually sex toy material that one of our artists
Speaker 3: had discovered he had made a bunch of frogs for
Speaker 3: that one Tom Cruise movie This shit Magnolia. Yeah that
Speaker 3: all fell down. Oh you know who that was. That
Speaker 3: was Steve Johnson that did that stuff. He had kind
Speaker 3: of done some groundwork already and found this really amazingly
Speaker 3: elastic stuff. So we started sourcing it. It was sextuy
Speaker 3: material and the makers of Fleshlight, if you want to
Speaker 3: get there, And so we started using that stuff for
Speaker 3: all the stretchy stuff. It was super stretchy. I mean
Speaker 3: we could plasticize it and stretch it around the building.
Speaker 3: It was crazy. And it was also translucent so we
Speaker 3: can get some nice backlighting, which monsters always loved that.
Speaker 3: So we were encouraged by that, and it was almost
Speaker 3: like you fed into our plan because we wanted to
Speaker 3: kind of pursue more of that. As far as the
Speaker 3: rest of the design and all that, we were totally
Speaker 3: going off your guys leads. I don't remember every specific,
Speaker 3: but so there was on set practical puppets that we
Speaker 3: had a couple one that just had a lot of
Speaker 3: animatronics in the face, usually remote control, and that was
Speaker 3: with that really weird translucent sex toyskins, and then we
Speaker 3: had another one that did the change. Oh, and then
Speaker 3: we and these were really full bodies and we had
Speaker 3: some really funky hands and they were pretty cool. They
Speaker 3: seemed to work for the most part. This is back
Speaker 3: in the mid late nineties, where we were pretty good
Speaker 3: amatronics at that point, but we had never pulled that
Speaker 3: kind of material and we were doing pneumatics all sorts of.
Speaker 3: We were crazy back then, but we got some cool stuff.
Speaker 3: There was also digital ones that kind of were also
Speaker 3: part of the equation, and we'd often have meetings to
Speaker 3: figure out where why ends and the other begins.
Speaker 2: Are you talking about practical and digital?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So they would shoot clean plates, which is basically
Speaker 3: shooting all the actors except for the grays, and then
Speaker 3: they would digitally create a model, light it in the
Speaker 3: computer and composite it onto that clean plate. And that
Speaker 3: worked good for walks because we couldn't really do a walk.
Speaker 3: They worked good for wide shots. Close ups were pretty
Speaker 3: challenging back then for digital assets, so that's usually where
Speaker 3: our stuff came in. But yeah, I think I'd have
Speaker 3: to watch the show again. Practical effects, but they're kind
Speaker 3: of they seem to last a little longer than that
Speaker 3: era's digital effects.
Speaker 1: Speaking of the skies, you just described the dark s
Speaker 1: eyzed ones, which, by the way, we'll probably show these
Speaker 1: in the video version of this. Brent I recalled that
Speaker 1: we had an artist sketch out some beautiful artwork about yes,
Speaker 1: these grays could do, and you saw them punched over
Speaker 1: with their legs and then expanding, and so I think
Speaker 1: we probably dropped those on Todd and people watching this
Speaker 1: or seeing them now. But Todd, when you also did
Speaker 1: speaking of skies, you did Falling Skies, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 1: did you not?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: All right, years later, at least more than ten years.
Speaker 1: You've had a whole lot of new tools in your
Speaker 1: belt at that time. What did those tools allow you
Speaker 1: to do in Falling Skies that you weren't able to
Speaker 1: do in Dark Skies?
Speaker 3: Falling Skies was pretty interesting for us because they had
Speaker 3: shot a pilot in Toronto and we didn't quite have
Speaker 3: our Toronto shop up and running yet, and so they
Speaker 3: did the pilot without us. You got to remember this,
Speaker 3: Falling Skies was a Spielberg show. Yeah, after the pilot,
Speaker 3: I got called by those guys, come on down to ambling.
Speaker 3: We want to talk to you about doing more practical stuff.
Speaker 3: Now we're going to be in Vancouver. Rarely do we
Speaker 3: hear this one, even back then. We want to do
Speaker 3: less digital and more practical. You're the guy to do this.
Speaker 3: You know how to mix things, so you know, music
Speaker 3: to my ears. I hadn't seen anything until I went
Speaker 3: down there to a bunch of people in the ambulance
Speaker 3: office and they showed me the pilot and say their
Speaker 3: skinner design sucked. It was so bad, and so I
Speaker 3: had to find this way. I didn't even have a
Speaker 3: gig yet, I had to find this way to tell
Speaker 3: them fucking Steven Spielberg, and it was like, I think
Speaker 3: it would be better because the original design had the
Speaker 3: big buck teeth. It was hilarious. You probably want to
Speaker 3: do this and that and maybe changes goddamn buck teeth.
Speaker 3: I guess that sort of got them excited about us,
Speaker 3: because we weren't afraid to say, look, you got buck
Speaker 3: teeth at a show and it's going to kill you.
Speaker 3: And we redesigned the skinners. And as we got more
Speaker 3: comfortable with the producers and showrunners on the show during
Speaker 3: the making of it, new characters come along and theirs too.
Speaker 3: Right the mas. So, yeah, I have a whole array
Speaker 3: of gas station cups with all our characters on each
Speaker 3: one of them. It's pretty cute. But yeah, they started
Speaker 3: doing the max. I don't know if this was like
Speaker 3: following any uphiology or anything, but they did all this
Speaker 3: stuff and then they brought in Doug Jones to be
Speaker 3: playing this character called CoA Cheese And there was a
Speaker 3: lot going on during there. We were doing skinners, we're
Speaker 3: doing makeup effects, we're juggling other shows trying to figure
Speaker 3: out what this thing is going to be. The Doug
Speaker 3: thing shows up and they have this concept that I
Speaker 3: also not my job, but I view I vetoed it
Speaker 3: saying it was gonna suck, and this was the original
Speaker 3: digital they're planning to do it digitally, and it was
Speaker 3: just it looked like a digital muppet. So we pitched
Speaker 3: a hybrid way. Since it was Doug, we knew Doug
Speaker 3: would really bring it.
Speaker 2: Who's Doug again for the audience?
Speaker 3: Oh sorry. Doug Jones is the pre eminent sup performer actor.
Speaker 3: I would think he's probably more an actor that he's
Speaker 3: a suit guy. It's hard to describe a talent like that.
Speaker 3: Is he's a sweaty suit guy, but he does a
Speaker 3: lot of suits. He works with Ilmobile too quite a bit.
Speaker 3: His resume is crazy long, and so we got him
Speaker 3: involved in following Skuys to play this character called Coachese.
Speaker 3: Everybody loved Doug and it really should have been a
Speaker 3: Doug character. So we figured out a way to digitally
Speaker 3: slave his blinks and his brows and his little face
Speaker 3: breathings and all that stuff with his voice track. It
Speaker 3: was really very innovative by our team, and we started
Speaker 3: doing several seasons of practical and digital and mixing them together. Anyway,
Speaker 3: that's kind of going way out there. One thing I
Speaker 3: want to say about Doc and the character Go Cheese,
Speaker 3: and I didn't realize this until you guys started doing
Speaker 3: the Spielberg stuff, the character that they designed for Night Skies,
Speaker 3: which was the pre et but Alien's Bad Story, which
Speaker 3: was designed by Rick Baker oddly another huge makeup effects guy. Dude,
Speaker 3: and I got to say, there is a similarity between
Speaker 3: CoA Cheese and Night Sky's character, just in the way
Speaker 3: all the forms, and I had never seen it until
Speaker 3: you guys started talking about this, and the Toby thing
Speaker 3: kind of got my ears perked a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you get to know Toby Hooper?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: Toby Hooper told Brent that Steven Spielberg told him that
Speaker 1: he had been read in he knew things. Is how
Speaker 1: Toby put it. Did he say something they told Steven
Speaker 1: to do a deal and he was spoke in a
Speaker 1: cigar when he said that you've worked with Spielberg, you've
Speaker 1: assessed him personally, as have Brent, and I do you now?
Speaker 1: Spielberg denies it and Toby says it happened. Where do
Speaker 1: you come down on that one?
Speaker 3: I don't think Toby has any reason to lie. And
Speaker 3: the way I heard it from him was that he
Speaker 3: and Steven had been buddies for so long and Steven
Speaker 3: had just brought it up casually that there was some
Speaker 3: sort of arrangement for close encounters. I think it was,
Speaker 3: and I don't know if it was earlier, like night
Speaker 3: skies or whatever. I just I'm following the popular knowledge
Speaker 3: of night skies. But yeah, I have it in my
Speaker 3: head in Toby's voice that he had mentioned it, and
Speaker 3: I don't think it was with you guys, but it
Speaker 3: could have been, because we were really Toby was our
Speaker 3: buddy was. Actually, Toby just keeps coming up lately. He's
Speaker 3: like a spirit. I've been talking to some other friends
Speaker 3: of mine from the Tales of the Crypt group that
Speaker 3: they just brought up Toby and how he's just there.
Speaker 3: He was a very powerful Texan, a good director like
Speaker 3: that because he could really bark, and we liked that
Speaker 3: a lot with him. He was very much a non
Speaker 3: bullshit guy. I don't remember Toby bullshit. He was very specific.
Speaker 3: I can tell you a story after story where he
Speaker 3: ramed somebody out, or he took a stand on something
Speaker 3: that wasn't accurate. He was not a bullshit guy. Spielberg
Speaker 3: I don't know as well, but I also get that
Speaker 3: same impression that he doesn't have time for bullshit. That
Speaker 3: it just why would you, why would you even bring
Speaker 3: it up?
Speaker 2: Yeap, Look, I want to go back to you mentioned
Speaker 2: the movie that we met on, which was The Resurrected,
Speaker 2: and I think just as a testimony to how realistic
Speaker 2: your effects can look back then, even back then, this
Speaker 2: was what like eighty nine eighty seven.
Speaker 3: I think we shot at in eighty nine, okay, and
Speaker 3: I think it came out in ninety one.
Speaker 2: So just to tee this up a little bit and
Speaker 2: then I'll let you tell the story. This was an
Speaker 2: HP Lovecraft adaptation that Dan O'Bannon directed. I've spoken about
Speaker 2: this project a couple times on the show, and Todd
Speaker 2: was in charge of the special effects, and this was
Speaker 2: being shot in Canada back in eighty nine, and something
Speaker 2: crazy happened with the special effects. Tell the story.
Speaker 3: Which day you want me to start with? There's this, well,
Speaker 3: a couple of things. Congratulations, the movie is thirty five
Speaker 3: years old, June one. It was crazy phenominal. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: think it was filmed on leather. It's so damn long ago.
Speaker 3: It definitely was on film. I could tell you all
Speaker 3: sorts of stuff about that. But one of the locations
Speaker 3: we were filming was this little creek and it was
Speaker 3: the flashback dream sequence to Victorian Ages.
Speaker 2: Or whatever, the seventeen hundreds or Seen.
Speaker 3: Sixteen, and so all this cast was in costumes. We
Speaker 3: had the old house. It was beautifully done, and the
Speaker 3: whole scene is this kid looking into the creek and
Speaker 3: seeing body parts floating down like a horrific nightmare. And
Speaker 3: we had made these fucking things that part these things
Speaker 3: that were really awful, and the torso and a bunch
Speaker 3: of several arms and just all sorts of things. The
Speaker 3: floor effects. Guys like, I've got to string him up
Speaker 3: to wire, so once we throw him down the creek,
Speaker 3: we could reel them back in. And we've got to
Speaker 3: take two and reel them back in and take three. Okay,
Speaker 3: that's a smart idea. So he rigged up I think
Speaker 3: it was like a dozen fishing reels, not necessarily the rod,
Speaker 3: but the reel on piano wire, and he did that. Well.
Speaker 1: I don't even know how this story ends, guys, but
Speaker 1: this sounds so bad. It's worse.
Speaker 3: Anyway. This was Sunday when he rigged it. Sunday night,
Speaker 3: this big storm came through. We show up Monday to
Speaker 3: shoot this little creek and it is a raging river,
Speaker 3: is just going out of control. But show must go on.
Speaker 3: We set up cameras, we roll it. We throw body
Speaker 3: parts down the raging river, and everybody's like, great, okay,
Speaker 3: take two. They start railing back the things, and one
Speaker 3: by one, being like jaws, all the body parts float away.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, it's not like we flew up the
Speaker 3: Canada with a carton or you know, crate full of
Speaker 3: these things. We got to go after those. So I
Speaker 3: steal a boat. I jumped in this little dinghy that
Speaker 3: I go after him down this raging river and I
Speaker 3: almost got there. Then the boat flooded. Fortunately there was
Speaker 3: some safety people there that kept me from drowning. And anyway,
Speaker 3: life goes on. A couple a week later, we get
Speaker 3: some cops calling, of course, because some teenagers had reeled
Speaker 3: in a torso. They were at the Fraser River fishing,
Speaker 3: just fishing, yeah, and they reeled in a torso, and
Speaker 3: so they heard we were shooting upstream and they found us.
Speaker 3: They had told a bunch of tabloids that we had
Speaker 3: done this, and so it was all over the acquire
Speaker 3: all these things. And we didn't get busted. We got
Speaker 3: kind of severely reprimanded. Turns out my mom knew the
Speaker 3: corner got away. But yeah, it's always who you know.
Speaker 3: It's always yeah, isn't it true? So yeah, that was
Speaker 3: just one of many moments on that film.
Speaker 1: Hey Todd, tell me what you know about the UFO phenomenon.
Speaker 1: Are you a student of it? Because you've created aliens?
Speaker 1: Do you pay attention to it and to what's going
Speaker 1: on in the with the Congress and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: or do you keep your distance from it? What's your take.
Speaker 3: That's a great question, which I've actually been thinking about
Speaker 3: a lot after listening to your guys' shows, which, by
Speaker 3: the way, I think your show is great. I I'm
Speaker 3: kind of one of these people that it really has
Speaker 3: to be in front of me to believe it. I'm
Speaker 3: not like a religious person that believes in some invisible
Speaker 3: entity or anything. I'm spiritual, but I feel things. I
Speaker 3: might believe it more, but I don't this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: I feel like I need to be very objective because
Speaker 3: people always come to me with stuff, and I'm supposed
Speaker 3: to spurt it out in a variety of flavors aliens.
Speaker 3: There's certainly a lot of compelling stuff, especially lately, and
Speaker 3: I saw some of that stuff with the pilot, the conversation.
Speaker 3: I remember those guys coming through the production office.
Speaker 1: So you actually can vouch for these guys coming to
Speaker 1: see us at the Dark Sky.
Speaker 3: I remember something really weird happen, and of course remember
Speaker 3: us reshooting all that Ganglion stuff, and that confused me forever.
Speaker 3: But I was also I don't know everything that's going
Speaker 3: to go on at NBC, And then listening to your guys' stories, Brent,
Speaker 3: you and I talking a few times going through shit.
Speaker 3: I've participated in some other shadowy stuff, just being a
Speaker 3: makeup effects guys to disguise Michael Jackson quite a bit,
Speaker 3: just going out and world, and so that kind of
Speaker 3: got me involved in disguising other people that I kind
Speaker 3: of wonder about.
Speaker 2: And so when you say disguising, go back to Michael Jackson.
Speaker 2: So Michael Jackson, famous celebrity, wants to go out in public,
Speaker 2: and you give him a complete new identity.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Actually, me and Steve Johnson, who was going to
Speaker 3: be our other guest tonight, he and I did it.
Speaker 3: We got hired. We started a little studio after the
Speaker 3: whole Predator thing and a bunch of other things that
Speaker 3: kind of shifted us in a new direction. So we
Speaker 3: started doing Smooth Criminal. One of their producers came to
Speaker 3: us and said, hey, Michael likes you guys, and he
Speaker 3: does this with other makeup effects people. Because we're kind
Speaker 3: of sort of still fresh back then, he said could
Speaker 3: you do him some stuff? And so we started engaging
Speaker 3: with Michael's personal handlers and Michael. We stole a face
Speaker 3: cast from Rick Baker. We started doing different face is Michael.
Speaker 3: He always wanted to be African American, so we started
Speaker 3: doing a few different African American faces, just different looks.
Speaker 3: At one point I went to Michael and I said,
Speaker 3: I think we could make a really good disguise if
Speaker 3: we make you white. And he looks at me and
Speaker 3: he goes, I don't know if I can get the
Speaker 3: walk down. It's the funniest damn moment. But he was
Speaker 3: a sweetheart. He was such a nice guy. I personally,
Speaker 3: I think you need.
Speaker 1: To do the rest of our podcast in his voice.
Speaker 3: No, probably, But Michael was a he was a jumped.
Speaker 3: He was one of the best persons I've ever worked with.
Speaker 1: Just to drive back to this, if you're challenged constantly
Speaker 1: to create new, interesting alien creatures, if you will, one
Speaker 1: of the things that we see a lot, and it's
Speaker 1: certainly true in the Star Trek universe, most aliens, if
Speaker 1: you will, look kind of humanoid, because you got to
Speaker 1: have actors that are humans to play them, and so
Speaker 1: you end up with the people that have one nose
Speaker 1: and one mouth, two ears.
Speaker 3: You usually have a piece of sushi right here.
Speaker 1: But two wise, two arms, two legs right And have
Speaker 1: you ever given that some thought is that part of
Speaker 1: do you think that could be common in the universe?
Speaker 1: That's not just describing human beings, but it could be
Speaker 1: a kind of an archetype. The humanoid might be just
Speaker 1: something that evolution spews up on other planets from time
Speaker 1: to time. Are there other human beings out there, for example,
Speaker 1: or humanoids rather in your view, because that's just something
Speaker 1: that works. What's your take on that?
Speaker 3: There's some good questions. I believe that you just said
Speaker 3: that evolution is the great designer. That's just my belief.
Speaker 3: I don't believe that there's a invisible spirit out there
Speaker 3: that's sketching it out, or many iterations of the God,
Speaker 3: et cetera, trying to offend. It's just my situation, my thoughts.
Speaker 3: I've certainly seen some weird shit, which makes me definitely wonder,
Speaker 3: you know, between art and science. You know, maybe there
Speaker 3: is the joining of God. I don't know. I haven't
Speaker 3: seen it. I haven't been there. I've been there a
Speaker 3: little bit, but I think it's like you said, it's
Speaker 3: the evolutionary process over millions of years. Like a river,
Speaker 3: a river is not a straight line. It keeps bumping
Speaker 3: into something, turning bumping into something turning. So in some
Speaker 3: sense it feels like the two leg, two arm design
Speaker 3: basic works pretty well. We can walk, we can run,
Speaker 3: we can jump, we can sit, but we got hands
Speaker 3: to grab things. So I think in some senses that
Speaker 3: design works pretty well. It's tempting to continue to do it,
Speaker 3: not just because we can shove Doug Jones in there,
Speaker 3: but also it's just what the human is. We've only
Speaker 3: evolved so far. In my ears, I've actually seen invisible
Speaker 3: stuff that's actually invisible. I've seen all sorts of creatures
Speaker 3: with different leg formats, like squids and Michael Rooker and
Speaker 3: octopus of course jellyfish. There is a huge spectrum of
Speaker 3: design that to me feels like it's there for a reason.
Speaker 3: Is there because they've been trying it for so many
Speaker 3: millions of years. They kept hitting something, resisting and moving
Speaker 3: to something better, back and forth. Feels like we're still
Speaker 3: evolving in the open.
Speaker 1: I mentioned the Big Four, which are grays, which we've
Speaker 1: already talked about. You designed a version of the grays
Speaker 1: for us, but the other four are mantids and Nordics
Speaker 1: and reptilians. So just as I bet you've designed some
Speaker 1: things like that. But if someone were to come to
Speaker 1: you right now and go, Okay, here's the thing we
Speaker 1: want the Big Four and they're all in a spaceship
Speaker 1: together and they're talking to each other, would you a
Speaker 1: try to just create something fresh and original from your
Speaker 1: own head or would you be start reading up on
Speaker 1: them and what the witness accounts say about it. So
Speaker 1: how would you approach that? Would you say, I need
Speaker 1: since these people are describing these things as real things,
Speaker 1: my job is do you get close to that? Or
Speaker 1: would you say screw that, this is Hollywood. I'm going
Speaker 1: to make whatever works best for the movie. How would
Speaker 1: you take that on?
Speaker 3: I'd probably call you first, both you guys, give you
Speaker 3: some encyclopedia hits. I'm serious. Like what I mentioned before,
Speaker 3: it's like the design void, much like a writer's quest
Speaker 3: into breaking story. It's lovely, No, it's you kind of
Speaker 3: have to take what you know of the environs, read
Speaker 3: the room of what people are expecting, because there's always
Speaker 3: a certain level of that. And then I think also
Speaker 3: doing so that's research, like talking to some people like
Speaker 3: you guys would be amazing for that. But also I
Speaker 3: do a lot of looking around on the web, just
Speaker 3: to see what's out there. We reference stuff we've done before,
Speaker 3: we reference with the creatives and the film want to
Speaker 3: see or what they think it's near. And then I
Speaker 3: think we kind of do a version of the second part,
Speaker 3: which is say fuck at all, because sometimes the strangest
Speaker 3: things will fall down from the skies and you'll have
Speaker 3: a design that's fresh and unique for the story. It's tricky.
Speaker 3: It's a little when you guys write a scene or
Speaker 3: a script or a story or something like that, trying
Speaker 3: to design the characters in dialogue and actions and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. No fat productions, right, You want every piece
Speaker 3: to play a part. So I kind of do that
Speaker 3: in design, and I want to make sure that I'm
Speaker 3: designing this stuff right now, and it's throughout the script.
Speaker 3: And I don't know how much this monster is in
Speaker 3: the writer's head, but it seems like a lot because
Speaker 3: he keeps referencing his back or his gnarly hands or
Speaker 3: his ripped open skin throughout this script, just little teasers,
Speaker 3: building blocks. So I definitely want to make sure that
Speaker 3: those those items are in there too.
Speaker 1: So hey, Brent, we're going to have to ask the
Speaker 1: question of this man.
Speaker 3: How much do I look at you talk about JR.
Speaker 3: Geeger because he's always a big part of this. Baby.
Speaker 1: Listen, here's the thing, because this is something that Brent
Speaker 1: and I have spent a long time on this this
Speaker 1: podcast talking about, and I'm glad to hear that you've
Speaker 1: heard a few of the episodes. So you know, because
Speaker 1: you were at Dark Skis and also because you're a
Speaker 1: podcast listener, that we were approached by someone who claimed
Speaker 1: to be from the Office of Naval Intelligence and was
Speaker 1: offering us some kind of deal to incorporate material into
Speaker 1: Dark Skies as a form of slow drip disclosure. So question,
Speaker 1: have you ever in your career been approached by anybody
Speaker 1: who has government authority to work with the government or
Speaker 1: to help the government, or be a part of anything
Speaker 1: the government is doing in terms of preparing the public
Speaker 1: for accepting the reality that we are not alone.
Speaker 3: Every part of that until you ask that last accepting
Speaker 3: the reality if we're not alone as a yes.
Speaker 1: Let's go for the yes part. Expand on that, then
Speaker 1: what can you share with this because I think what
Speaker 1: we're trying to understand is we have been saying there's
Speaker 1: a relationship between Hollywood and some of these issues and
Speaker 1: anything that you can shed light on about that would
Speaker 1: be very helpful to us. As we call this an
Speaker 1: active investigation, which means when we get a guy like
Speaker 1: you on screen, we say, what do you know? So
Speaker 1: tell us what you know.
Speaker 2: And just to preface something, our active investigation has already
Speaker 2: turned up one director who was approached by a similar
Speaker 2: deal and no, no, we're talking about Brett Leonard and
Speaker 2: who did lawnmower Man And if you haven't heard that episode,
Speaker 2: you should check it out. But the idea is that
Speaker 2: we have enough evidence, anecdotal and even empirical now to
Speaker 2: say that there is some sort of a relationship going
Speaker 2: all the way back into the fifties between the government
Speaker 2: and Hollywood with regards to UFOs. But we also know
Speaker 2: that extends in other areas. Right if you look at
Speaker 2: a movie like Ourgo, right, look at the story behind Ourgo,
Speaker 2: the government and Hollywood work together, So we know that
Speaker 2: relationship exists. And I guess, based on things you and
Speaker 2: I have spoken about, I find it interesting that you
Speaker 2: may have had a relationship that was tangential to what
Speaker 2: we have or what someone was trying to make with us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I was actually going to bring up ourgo,
Speaker 3: so hopefully your viewers listeners know about the story. This
Speaker 3: was a during the Iranian one of the many revolutions.
Speaker 3: But this is back I think the seventies seventy nine,
Speaker 3: and so they broke into the US embassy in Tehran
Speaker 3: and broke everything, stole files, burn shit, abducted people. It
Speaker 3: was horrific and a small pile of the American people
Speaker 3: in the embassy trucked out of the back door just
Speaker 3: by fortune right before they got caught and went to
Speaker 3: the Canadian embassy and where they hid for a period
Speaker 3: of time in several weeks. Meanwhile, Ben Fleck, who is
Speaker 3: basically the lead character in the movie, I would recommend
Speaker 3: reading the book. Their book kind of gets into a
Speaker 3: better but movie's good too. He plays this lead investigator
Speaker 3: who is in one of these kind of shadowy groups.
Speaker 3: He goes to Hollywood and seize this gentleman by the
Speaker 3: name of John Chambers. John Chambers is the Oscar winner
Speaker 3: for Planet of the Apes, the original nineteen sixty eight movie,
Speaker 3: and he did he was the early leader prosthetic effects.
Speaker 3: He had also done a lot of disguise work. He
Speaker 3: actually had he was a military guy. I think he
Speaker 3: was eighty or was he Marines. I'll look it up.
Speaker 3: But he was a military guy and he had actually
Speaker 3: been well known. He was contracted to make the CIA's
Speaker 3: first disguise kid. He had remember aesthetics in a little box.
Speaker 3: I'll see if I could find you a photo of it.
Speaker 3: But Chambers was one of a kind. In the movie,
Speaker 3: he's played by John Goodman, which is perfect because he
Speaker 3: was a big, very joyful, bouncy guy. But you could
Speaker 3: tell Chambers was He's either fucking with you behind the scenes,
Speaker 3: or some mills is going on. There's rumors that he
Speaker 3: was involved in making some big Foots. Chambers legends go
Speaker 3: on forever. He's no longer with us. I knew a
Speaker 3: lot of people that knew him very well. So in Argo,
Speaker 3: they pretty much just lay it out for you. We
Speaker 3: have a secret Hollywood group who helps us, and so
Speaker 3: there's a number of these that are out there. If
Speaker 3: you ever wonder why do some movies get such a
Speaker 3: selection of military gag for their film, there's usually someone
Speaker 3: behind the scenes that's making a deal with the military.
Speaker 3: Let me read your script, make sure it doesn't make
Speaker 3: us look like assholes, and we'll figure out a way
Speaker 3: that we can help you, and we'll bring you a
Speaker 3: bunch of actual military people too, if you like. So
Speaker 3: these things do go on since World War Two. If
Speaker 3: you recall, there's another great book called Five Came Back.
Speaker 3: Not the movie because that movie sucks, but the book,
Speaker 3: and it's all about John Ford. It's all about blanking
Speaker 3: a bunch of folks that were in military units.
Speaker 2: John Houston, John Houston.
Speaker 3: John Houston. Yeah, the men, the real men, if you recall,
Speaker 3: they all came back from various departments, whatever you want
Speaker 3: to call them, and they got right installed into the
Speaker 3: studios Fox, MGT, Warner.
Speaker 2: So they went right from war into Hollywood, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And if you ever prepared them for Hollywood, yeah, you think.
Speaker 3: About especially not maybe recently, but in the not so
Speaker 3: distant past. Going to set was like packing to go
Speaker 3: for war. You got to have your kid, you got
Speaker 3: to have all your shit. You're going to be away
Speaker 3: from base. The food sucks. It's like camping. It's as hard,
Speaker 3: if not harder. In many cases. Obviously, these guys are
Speaker 3: getting reality on them, but it is a grind sometimes
Speaker 3: to make a movie. And you'll notice that the movies
Speaker 3: are organized by call sheets, production reports, all of these
Speaker 3: things that kind of came right out of war organization. Interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's trippy, So there is definitely a connection. I've been
Speaker 3: in a couple of movies where I've overheard some people.
Speaker 3: I'm suspicious now that I've learned this, and so I
Speaker 3: have an eye on everything. And some movies are are
Speaker 3: we fucking making this movie? It's usually because it's a
Speaker 3: military thing. It's probably propaganda. What's the biggest propaganda machine
Speaker 3: out there? It's cinema, it's TV.
Speaker 1: Have you personally ever worked on You mentioned that there
Speaker 1: were other organizations that seem to coalesce around these kind
Speaker 1: of issues. Have you ever worked with one of them
Speaker 1: to assist the government? And if so, what were.
Speaker 3: You doing and what were the other people doing there?
Speaker 3: I really like your guys beards. I'm really just how
Speaker 3: good you look after all these years.
Speaker 1: You're a charming guy. But here's the thing that we've
Speaker 1: been saying in our We say in our show that
Speaker 1: we're bearing witness because there's a giant mosaic of contact
Speaker 1: that's been put together over these decades since nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 3: And then we.
Speaker 1: Don't have the entire picture ourselves, but we have a
Speaker 1: piece of the picture in that mosaic. We have that
Speaker 1: one piece, and if enough of those pieces of the
Speaker 1: jigs saw puzzle come together, suddenly you've got the full picture.
Speaker 1: So what's your piece of the jigsaw puzzle?
Speaker 3: For us? There's so much I can't talk about.
Speaker 1: And just you can't talk about Why not? If you
Speaker 1: can't talk about it, fine, but why can't you talk
Speaker 1: about it?
Speaker 3: Meet me at Brand's house someday we'll put away. There's
Speaker 3: a whole network out there that's watching us and listening
Speaker 3: to us. It's been a few years for me, but
Speaker 3: they're still around. It's not this kind of powerless, silent group.
Speaker 3: We exist in a world that is per our ability
Speaker 3: to consume it. I'm not one that's witnessed a bunch
Speaker 3: of real aliens running around or anything like that, at
Speaker 3: least I don't think so. But I also I've had
Speaker 3: some odd people come to my office because we're masters
Speaker 3: of facts. We do weird shit. And like I said,
Speaker 3: back when I was doing more disguise stuff, there was
Speaker 3: a couple of people that can't through that I don't
Speaker 3: really know what it was about, and they told me
Speaker 3: that I shouldn't know about it. And that kind of
Speaker 3: so I in some ways I became not trying to
Speaker 3: compare myself to the great John Chambers, but we did
Speaker 3: similar things. And there's some groups out there that they're
Speaker 3: not dangerous, they're actually helping, not just the US, but
Speaker 3: other countries. A lot of countries do this stuff.
Speaker 1: There's people that came around.
Speaker 3: What did they want you to do? Disguise them? Oh,
Speaker 3: I see, yeah, Like I was doing this Jamie Kennedy
Speaker 3: show called the Jamie Kennedy Experiment for a while, and
Speaker 3: of course Michael and so we started learning something about
Speaker 3: disguising that was different than movie makeup, and it's things
Speaker 3: like when we're walking down the street, we don't really
Speaker 3: study people that well, so you can kind of get
Speaker 3: away with shit, so you can make them fast. And
Speaker 3: with Jamie we learned not only did they not look
Speaker 3: at you, but we can get away with sweat was
Speaker 3: actually a good idea. Making people a little shinier, making
Speaker 3: that natural feel as opposed to cameras and film stocks
Speaker 3: have changed over the years, of course, high death and everything.
Speaker 3: So we've done makeups for camera over the years that
Speaker 3: are just they don't look real. Now we're an environment
Speaker 3: that it's like an eyebrows out of whack or something
Speaker 3: like that. Sometimes that actually does offend the eyeball. So
Speaker 3: there's a bit of an odd route to figure out
Speaker 3: what disguise is and what the whole point of trying
Speaker 3: to fool someone. So we got pretty good at that,
Speaker 3: and we're a shot that works fast. And I've just
Speaker 3: recalled a couple of things going through. What was that
Speaker 3: and what are we doing? And it's just our crazy business.
Speaker 1: You've heard our story. Okay, you were there at the time.
Speaker 1: What do you think happened to.
Speaker 3: Us when it happened? I honestly don't remember if I
Speaker 3: witnessed them going into your office or not. I do remember.
Speaker 3: I think it was two guys. I wasn't at the
Speaker 3: pool party, so I didn't get any of that.
Speaker 1: But I'm probably still holding a grudge about that.
Speaker 3: We meant, I did bred.
Speaker 1: I thought you were sending the invite. And do you
Speaker 1: think because this is what people ask us, and you know,
Speaker 1: you're an experienced guy, You've talked to people. People ask us,
Speaker 1: do you think that they were really who they said
Speaker 1: they were? People from Office of Naval Intelligence or from
Speaker 1: the intelligence agencies, or do you think that they and
Speaker 1: were they on the level or were they trying to
Speaker 1: disinform you or were they something else entirely? Were they
Speaker 1: just trying to goof on us? What would your take be?
Speaker 3: Some of this is going to go to the fog
Speaker 3: of brain. But because I don't, all I remember is
Speaker 3: something happened, because there was a bit of a excitement,
Speaker 3: you know, enough of that that you know, everybody on
Speaker 3: set gossips, right, and so there was enough excitement for
Speaker 3: me to kind of hear what And I seem to
Speaker 3: recall seeing these guys in the production office. We were
Speaker 3: in North Hollywood off Laurel Canyon, was it, yes, Caddy
Speaker 3: corner to four taco shops in.
Speaker 1: A former porn warehouse.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, there you go.
Speaker 3: So I just remember back then just being everything's going on?
Speaker 3: What was that? Okay? Next? And then when you guys
Speaker 3: started talking about it, I think, Brent, you and I
Speaker 3: had met in person a couple of years ago, and
Speaker 3: you had started bringing this up, and it kind of
Speaker 3: rattled my brain because first I was like, was I
Speaker 3: at that party? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: And I hate to play the report here, but that's
Speaker 1: in my blood. That's what I was trained at Okay,
Speaker 1: I understand, well, I understand that you're in some distance
Speaker 1: and I get that, and I'm not going to try
Speaker 1: to push me on that, but I would like you
Speaker 1: describe for us why you feel it's important to maintain
Speaker 1: that distance. In other words, you could just say, hey, Bryce, Brent,
Speaker 1: let me just tell you the way it's all gone
Speaker 1: down for me.
Speaker 3: But you're not.
Speaker 1: You're choosing not to do that, So tell me why
Speaker 1: you feel that you still need to choose not to
Speaker 1: do that. What is preventing you from what we would
Speaker 1: call full disclosure.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of people that were that I worked with,
Speaker 3: and I don't want to expose some you probably know,
Speaker 3: so that's first and foremost. It's I do a lot
Speaker 3: of weird shit, and my entire life doesn't sound real
Speaker 3: from it could go on on. I think, Brandon, you
Speaker 3: know some of this stuff. It's just for whatever reason,
Speaker 3: I'm just speacon of craziest stuff. But it's not like
Speaker 3: I'm crazy, It's just things happen to me. And as
Speaker 3: far as is that kind of stuff, not only am
Speaker 3: I worried about exposing somebody, but nobody's don't believe any
Speaker 3: It's like I can tell you blow of burd blow
Speaker 3: by blow some shit that I don't even believe.
Speaker 1: One of the most popular episodes we've done is something
Speaker 1: called All about the WU, where Brent told something I
Speaker 1: love that stories from his life and thing's happened to us.
Speaker 1: So you just said things just happened to me, crazy
Speaker 1: things just happened. Okay, give us one example of give
Speaker 1: us your WU story. What has happened to you where
Speaker 1: you went? Huh, that doesn't quite me. Go yeah, give
Speaker 1: us an example of one of those.
Speaker 3: That was murdered once and it didn't seem to take.
Speaker 1: I guess not here you are here, I think you
Speaker 1: better explain that one.
Speaker 3: What happened? Well, I was poisoned once, not very well,
Speaker 3: and I died. I went to the light and I'm
Speaker 3: not bullshitting and all this really happened. And actually there's
Speaker 3: been a lot of NDE near death experience people that
Speaker 3: just over the years I've bumped into, and for whatever reason,
Speaker 3: we start talking about these moments, and it's so trippy
Speaker 3: because the classic going to the light story seems to
Speaker 3: be with many of them. My experience was I just
Speaker 3: faded out. I was at home. I had worked too much,
Speaker 3: my roommate had given me a bunch of pills. I
Speaker 3: thought they were for my gout. And she left, and
Speaker 3: the little time passes, and I started feeling really weird,
Speaker 3: and I could tell that the lights were dimming in
Speaker 3: my place, and I just picked up a sketch pad.
Speaker 3: I started writing, if anybody finds me, that's what's going on.
Speaker 3: I'm starting to feel like I want to go to sleep.
Speaker 3: And then I kept writing over and over again, just
Speaker 3: to keep me going, don't go to sleep, don't go
Speaker 3: to sleep, don't go to sleep, don't go to sleep,
Speaker 3: and just forever, and eventually everything went black, and then
Speaker 3: a portal of light, whatever you want to call it, Caroline,
Speaker 3: it was up there. And something must have happened because
Speaker 3: I woke up in a different place and I had
Speaker 3: fluids all over me. I guess I had ejected it
Speaker 3: out or something like that, but fucking hell of the hangover.
Speaker 3: The bathroom was on the second floor. I couldn't get
Speaker 3: to it, I couldn't move. Eventually I found enough energy
Speaker 3: to crawl on my hands and knees of marble staircases.
Speaker 3: And so, yeah, there's a lot past that, but that
Speaker 3: was fifteen years ago. In March that happened, and I
Speaker 3: do have evidence now of what I think happened, which
Speaker 3: I don't think we need to get into here.
Speaker 1: What does your near death experience lead you to believe
Speaker 1: about the nature of reality?
Speaker 3: That's why I thought your WU episode was so interesting
Speaker 3: because I thought it was fascinating. I think it was
Speaker 3: that episode, but I thought it was fascinating that you've
Speaker 3: strung all the paranormal and all this stuff in many ways,
Speaker 3: like this invisible mycilium that's just pieces of us over
Speaker 3: the years, Brandon, you and I have mind melded on stuff,
Speaker 3: and there's other people that you just feel the mycilia
Speaker 3: a little bit, I think, and I always think the
Speaker 3: best way to deal with that is to not deal
Speaker 3: with it. Just don't even think about it, because how
Speaker 3: do we know we're a bunch of stupid Homo sapiens
Speaker 3: only dragging our knuckles just a few weeks ago. How
Speaker 3: do we know that all these pieces of information are correct?
Speaker 3: Because there's so much being thrown at humans right now,
Speaker 3: it has to be some other feeling. So what the
Speaker 3: fuck is that is that? God? I don't think it
Speaker 3: is I think it's energy. I think it's us artists
Speaker 3: that are really good, writers that are really good I
Speaker 3: think brand new and I have hit on this a
Speaker 3: few times. Bryce, We've never had this conversation come on up,
Speaker 3: but it's something that I've been relearning with my own
Speaker 3: art is for it to really be good, you need
Speaker 3: to crawl into it a bunch. You need to, Brent.
Speaker 3: Your writings are always so dimensional and fucking weird, and
Speaker 3: just the ideas that you are able to generate with
Speaker 3: some of your stories are mind boggling different directions I
Speaker 3: would have never thought, at least I didn't think at
Speaker 3: the time. And so that whole ability to crawl into
Speaker 3: your painting or you're drawing or you're writing in ways
Speaker 3: that are like beyond being interrupted by present society, that
Speaker 3: are really feeling it. That's true art. That's love, I think,
Speaker 3: and I think that kind of is our by Cilia. Interesting.
Speaker 1: Hey, Brent, we got to take this thing home. So
Speaker 1: let's each ask in the question we've been waiting to ask.
Speaker 1: Let's end up with a question at peace. Why don't
Speaker 1: you go first?
Speaker 2: Here's my question? Oh boy, you mentioned friend and partner
Speaker 2: at one point, somebody I also know Steve Johnson and
Speaker 2: back in the nineties. I believe he was asked to
Speaker 2: come and be part of the alien Autopsy show that happened,
Speaker 2: to come in and actually validate is this real or
Speaker 2: is this not real?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So my question is you know him. I don't
Speaker 2: know the circumstances under which he was invited to do that,
Speaker 2: but that to me is as another example of how
Speaker 2: whether it's validating an alien for a TV show or
Speaker 2: just validating anything at all using your expertise as a
Speaker 2: special effects person. Is this something that happens regularly in
Speaker 2: the business, and not just with the government, but that
Speaker 2: you are asked not to make something that is fake,
Speaker 2: but to look at something that might be fake and
Speaker 2: say whether it's real, which is a whole different use
Speaker 2: of your expertise.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, that's that is the unspoken uniqueness of people
Speaker 3: that have been doing this kind of design, doing effects
Speaker 3: like this, knowing materials, knowing how to fake human skin
Speaker 3: and stuff like that. Yeah, that's definitely something that I've
Speaker 3: been approached a few times to suss out if something
Speaker 3: is believable or realistic.
Speaker 2: And does that I'm interested in that as a skill
Speaker 2: in the world that we live in where now everything
Speaker 2: that happens on the Internet is immediately deemed AI or
Speaker 2: faith or right, And so what do you how where
Speaker 2: do you see this going?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Someone like yourself can probably look at something and determine
Speaker 2: using all the skills you have whether something is real
Speaker 2: or not real. But for everybody else that doesn't have
Speaker 2: access to todd Masters.
Speaker 3: Yeah, where are we?
Speaker 2: Where are we in terms of determining what's real? Because
Speaker 2: we're on the verge of potential disclosure. All these new
Speaker 2: pieces of media and things are coming out, and who
Speaker 2: knows if they're going to trot out an alien at
Speaker 2: some point. How do we discern what's real and what's
Speaker 2: not real? What's the best advice you can give us?
Speaker 3: You're right, today's AI is uncanny, and I even get
Speaker 3: fooled by it. And I thought I was pretty good
Speaker 3: with my four eyes. But it's coming so fast and
Speaker 3: so hard and so good. It's really hard to defend
Speaker 3: yourself as a human being. I think that this stuff
Speaker 3: is dangerous, but it's all hyper sensationalized, that even the
Speaker 3: simplest lower thing is fake and people think it's better
Speaker 3: than the really crazy one. It's just it's near impossible.
Speaker 3: I personally think that we got to Maybe the toothpaste
Speaker 3: might already be out, but it feels like we need
Speaker 3: to reel this back.
Speaker 1: Here's my finale for you. One of the things Brent
Speaker 1: and I have realized over the years is that when
Speaker 1: you start to create TV series about UFO and aliens
Speaker 1: or whatever, or just work in Hollywood talking about these things,
Speaker 1: people come up to you and they go, are you
Speaker 1: the guy that? And then they tell you their story.
Speaker 1: For me, I've had plumbers come up to me and
Speaker 1: tell me harrowing stories about when they were younger and
Speaker 1: things like that. And I remember when I was working
Speaker 1: with stan Lee. Stan didn't actually believe in aliens. He
Speaker 1: loved to write about aliens, but he didn't actually believe
Speaker 1: that the Flying Saucers or UFOs were aliens. But he
Speaker 1: did say that his guy who ran the bullpen for him.
Speaker 1: I believe his name was Saul Brodsky. Help I got
Speaker 1: that right. But he told in detail a story about
Speaker 1: Saul driving to Las Vegas and seeing a light in
Speaker 1: the back of the card just like Spielberg, and then
Speaker 1: this thing goes over his car and it's right in
Speaker 1: front of him, and it's clearly a craft and it's
Speaker 1: pacing him and so Stan told me that story. So
Speaker 1: my question for you is, you've had a lot of
Speaker 1: time on a lot of projects. You're standing around sets.
Speaker 1: You obviously have an open mind to the creature feature
Speaker 1: aspect of what's going on with the phenomenon. What has
Speaker 1: anyone in Hollywood ever told you one of their personal
Speaker 1: stories that is about the UFO UAP phenomenon, And hopefully
Speaker 1: they have and you can tell that to us. But regardless,
Speaker 1: when you comprehend and think about this whole large project
Speaker 1: that we're involved in, however it turns out, what do
Speaker 1: you think personally is going to be the final explanation
Speaker 1: or at least the early explanation for the UFO UAP phenomena.
Speaker 1: What do you think we're going to learn in the
Speaker 1: days ahead.
Speaker 3: I think this actually comes from one of your episodes, perhaps,
Speaker 3: but I seem to think that this whole alternate universe, quantum,
Speaker 3: all that stuff plays a part. Maybe that's how the
Speaker 3: maicilium is multi dimensional. I used to do a show
Speaker 3: called Fringe, which was all about alternate realities, and the
Speaker 3: writers on that show had a lot of fun with
Speaker 3: all aspects of that. But around that time, there was
Speaker 3: also what the bleep do we know? And other kind
Speaker 3: of alternate explainers. Man, that's such fascinating. There's a point
Speaker 3: where I got to go back to work and I
Speaker 3: can't really go down those rabbit holes. So that's kind
Speaker 3: of where I'm at with the belief of it.
Speaker 1: Listen, Todd, you and I haven't seen each other in
Speaker 1: a few years. We did see each other at some
Speaker 1: conference or something some hotel ev I remember, not a
Speaker 1: few years back. Yeah, yeah, but it's always great to
Speaker 1: see you again. Thank you for your quality, wonderful work
Speaker 1: on Dark Skies, helping to bring our fever dream to life.
Speaker 1: That's always been a favorite memory for me. And thanks
Speaker 1: to your vouching. Thank you for vouching for Toby Hooper
Speaker 1: because he's not here a vouch for himself, and to
Speaker 1: hear another person who knew him and state the same
Speaker 1: thing Brent said is not something small, it's something big
Speaker 1: because of what's going on right now.
Speaker 3: So thank you. Yeah, Toby's a hero of mine, and
Speaker 3: I just he's not a like I said, he's not
Speaker 3: a faker, he's not a bullshit or I missed that guy,
Speaker 3: all right, Todd.
Speaker 2: Everything Bryce said times two. Thank you so much. It's
Speaker 2: been really fun and I look forward to having one
Speaker 2: of our own private conversations later.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sounds good. Guys.
Speaker 4: Okay, yank you, Okay, watch these guys b bye.
Speaker 1: Sound Light and Frequency is an iHeart podcast produced by
Speaker 1: Stellar Productions. It's executive produced by Nick Johnson and for
Speaker 1: Stellar Jackie's Abel. Our show's music was written by Anna
Speaker 1: Stuff and Hamilton Lighthouser, and your hosts and executive producers
Speaker 1: are Bryce Abel, That's Me and Brent Friedman Watch the
Speaker 1: Skies