WEBVTT

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Oh he is, folks, it's
show tied. People pay good money to

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see this movie. When they go
out to a theater, they want cold

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sodas, pop, popcorn, and
no monsters in the protection booth. Everyone

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pretend podcasting isn't boring. Don it
off my changes. It wasn't a dream.

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There's a group that meets people who've
seen the same sort of things you

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had. Which group of aliens abductor
job? We are not victims, we

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are participants. I don't recall them
being human. Your people, can you

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sit there? You're a for one
big surprise. Welcome to the Projection Booth.

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I'm your host. Mike White joined
me once again as mister Joseph Madri.

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Hey, Mike, thanks for having
me here. I've been thinking that

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I need more cow bell in my
life. Also back in the booth is

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mister Jonathan Penner. Hi. I
just came back from an alien exploration of

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the far reaches of the galaxy,
and I'm going to report on it.

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This week, we are looking at
Phelipe Mora's unusual and challenging nineteen eighty nine

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film Communion, written by Whitley Strieber
and adapted from his own book and his

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own life. The film stars Christopher
Walking as Reaper, a writer who experiences

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an alien abduction. We will be
spoiling this film as we go along,

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so if you don't want anything ruined, not that I think we can ruin

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it, please go ahead, turn
off the podcast and come back after you

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have seen it. We will still
be here. So, Joe, when

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was the first time you saw Communion
and what did you think. I saw

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it for the first time on home
video in probably the mid nineties. This

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was really a big science fiction fan
or didn't watch a lot of movies about

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UFOs and aliens. It wasn't really
my genre, so I don't remember even

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at the time knowing anything about the
book or that it was based on a

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book. I think. I really
like the first third of the film.

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I thought it was a good kind
of suspenseful, dread filled horror movie,

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and then I just didn't know what
to make really of the rest of the

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movie, the rubber aliens and Christopher
Walking being Christopher Walking. There was a

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lot to take in there, so
it wasn't really something that made a huge

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impression on me. I actually came
back to it years later, in twenty

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twelve, I read the book because
I had an opportunity to work on a

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TV show where I was actually going
to be interviewing Whitley. So I read

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the book and watched the movie for
that and actually ended up kind of going

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down the rabbit hole. And I
have now read all of Whitley's Communion books

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and quite a few of the novels
that he's written as well, and so

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I had a very different experience watching
the film all those years later, having

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met Whitley, having just read the
book. But we can get into all

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that, and Jonathan, how about
yourself. Yeah, I hadn't seen the

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film until you and I talked about
doing and that's the reason I pinked it.

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I'd never seen it, I'd heard
about it, I'd seen a couple

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of fleet More films, and obviously
I'd seen many many Christopher Walkin films.

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So I saw it quite recently.
Was appalled. The first time I saw

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it, I thought it was just
just a garbage heap of a movie and

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fascinating for all the wrong reasons.
And then I saw it again. I

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said, there's gotta be more to
it than this, And I think there's

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a little bit more to it.
I think it's a better film than my

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initial gut reaction was to it,
but it's still a absolute clusterfuck of the

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movie. It is a problematical film. This was a new film for me

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as well. I don't know how
I missed it the first time it was

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out in nineteen eighty nine. I
was going to the movies all the time.

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I don't even remember this movie existing
when it came out. I don't

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know how I missed it, and
I just kind of after a while knew

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that it was around. I definitely
remember the VHS cover art of the Alien

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and yeah, this I guess it
was just because we've had Whitley on the

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show a few times now, and
I said all right, And I had

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been introduced to Felipe Mora via Facebook, and I said, okay, this

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is perfect. We'll get Whitley,
We'll get Phelipe bon here, We'll do

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this, not really knowing what this
movie was all about. And I don't

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know if we're being punked or not
when it comes to this movie. This

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it is wild. This is you
mentioned Christopher Walking. This is the most

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Christopher Walking, Christopher Walkin has ever
Christopher Walking in his entire life, Like

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every impersonation of Christopher Walking where you
know, you just go all out with

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that. This is that times ten. I've never seen Christopher Walking as unhinged

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and twitchy as he is in this
movie. It's just it's remarkable. It

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is a wonderful, wild performance.
Maybe wonderful isn't the right world, but

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it is wild. It is definitely
wild. The reason I think that you

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didn't see it when it first came
out is barely exist. That's my memory

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that whatever company put it out there
was it was a disaster movie, you

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know, and no one liked it, and Whitley hated it was really against

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him where they wasn't gonna take his
name off it, et cetera, et

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cetera. And of course the picture
doesn't really work because the aliens, and

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we're going to get into that.
But I think that he just said,

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like we're doing a happening. He's
the kind of director that says, this

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is what I've got and I'm gonna
do the best that I can. And

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he had walk In and Lindsey Krauss, and they just almost literally made it

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up as as they went, and
he was like, you guys direct yourselves,

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you know, and and walk In, who's famous for doing the player

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notes in the dialogue, does that
to such a degree here that it really

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takes over the performance. Where he's
sitting there saying what was clearly written to

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be thought, is that something in
the corner? He says, is that

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something in the corner? Do I
see something? Now? Is this real?

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And so he just says everything that's
written for him to say, and

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it turns into a psychopathic performance.
It's amazing. Christopher Walkin has talked in

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at least one interview, probably more
about how he said that basically he never

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really gets into character. He's never
playing somebody else. He's always doing Christopher

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walking and so it's always him.
I think, trying to figure out how

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can I personalize this, how can
I believe what I'm going through? And

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trying to have these sort of in
the moment reactions, you know, I

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think some of the kind of absurdities, the more absurd moments in his performance

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are really him, you know,
kind of reacting to the absurdities of the

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script or the absurdities of the situation, and just all he can do is

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laugh or dance or I mean,
you know, bow like whatever it is.

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I mean, just whatever pops into
his head, and so it is

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completely like an improv class where it's
just somebody throws something out of it,

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and he's just reacting in the moment
as if he doesn't know the story,

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he doesn't know the context, he
hasn't read the script. He's just kind

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of going with it in the moment, and that's his way of kind of

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bringing it alive. Like I'm Christopher
walking here being Christopher walking, and you

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just stuck these little blue guys in
front of me, and here's what I

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fucking think. It's ridiculous. That's
the tone of his performance. It kind

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of works because it's so insane and
so absurd that most actors would try to

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play that straight. He does kind
of when you're talking, Joe reminds me

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of like John Cassavetti's who laughed a
lot, because that's a natural emotional reaction

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to stress or to the kinds of
shit that he put his characters through,

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and so walking just giggling or grinning
or dancing or laughing. It's true.

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If you're facing some of the stuff
that he faced on those sets and was

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asked to play them straight, you
couldn't do it. It would be absurd,

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And so you do have this this
movie about obviously very intelligent guy.

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He wears hats and he makes voices
and he's doing all this crap, you

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know. I mean, you guys
know Whitley. I've never met the man

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or heard him. So does he
do that while he's writing? Does he

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wear goofy hats and knocking a mi
rocky and brooving glax and he does all

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this crazy shit? You know?
I've spoken with him several times and I've

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never had him act the way that
he acts in this. I don't know

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if things were different in the mid
eighties but or when he's in the privacy

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of his own home. But he
seems like a very pretty put together guy.

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Aliens aside, but he seems like
he's got his shit together, and

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I don't see him doing these things
that Walkin is doing. Get up,

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I'm cooking, I'm cooking, I'm
on a roll. What's the matter with

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you? Boom? You hi?
You get Walkin? Sorry? You know?

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And and apparently Strieber was Striber.
Strieber was very unhappy with the movie

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and with Walkin's portrayal of him.
Is that is that your understanding? I

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think initially he was, and I
think he's been a little more positive about

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it, the performance and the film, I think in recent years. But

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he I know that at the time
he talked about he and his wife were

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on the set at least initially,
that they would go while they were filming,

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and he was so Actually, no, I don't think they were on

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the side. I think it was
that they were watching dailies. They actually

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got dailies of the performances, and
it was just so difficult for them because

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they you know, I think Whitley
has said he couldn't tell if he was

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being mocked or if this was you
know, this was just Christopher Walkin's way

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of playing it straight, you know, or if it was just the performance.

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He couldn't tell. He just couldn't
tell what was going on. But

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he just knew that that's not me. And it was just so stressful trying

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to figure that out, figure out
what was going on, that he had

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to kind of say, you know, I'm working on this new novel.

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You guys, go you make the
movie, you know, do what you're

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going to do. He just kind
of cut them loose. I think at

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a certain point, well, I
don't know if we're being mocked. You

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know, this whole movie, just
the structure of it is so odd.

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Characters just kind of pop in and
out. Even in the beginning of the

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movie, they're like, Oh,
we're going to go up to the cabin,

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and then suddenly I know that Walking. Well, we might as well

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just call him Walking rather than Whitley
when it comes to talking about the character,

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because this is going to get too
confusing otherwise. So Walking. When

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his wife and kid comes home,
he's just like, Oh, all of

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these horrible things happened. My computer
crashed, and I had such a terrible

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day. First the computer turns off. Then the wolf paint thing jumps off

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the wall. It attacks me without
provocation. Then your mother calls, the

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toilet explodes, but docham cooking tries
to tell me how to live my life.

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The computer completely erased itself when it
turned off. No wonder that I

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can't write my great American novel.
Does this mean you're too tired to go

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in the country. No, it
doesn't mean that. What did you lose?

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I lost, you know, I
lost another day. What I lost

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was gold, golden notions, erased, smoke, dreams, fentileness. What

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I crave is you know, colation. All of a sudden, there's a

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fire in the kitchen and then the
one armed man from the Fugitive is there

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and his wife and they just kind
of like walk into the frame and I'm

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like, where did these people come
from? They didn't even come through the

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front door, Like I see the
front door to the apartment because the fireman

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is about to come through it.
Where did these people come from? And

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the whole movie is edited like that, just we'll just drop into the middle

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of a scene, We'll just pick
up in the middle of a conversation.

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And I know we've talked about movies
on the show before that do that,

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but this just keeps you so off
balance with all of that stuff. Even

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from the very beginning of the movie, where you know, the first time

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we met meet Walkin's character, he
just pops out at a bed and just

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like someone's here, and I'm like, okay, like have we started already?

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Is there an alien in the room
right now? Can you show me

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where the alien is? Because even
when the movie is opening with the opening

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credits, like it's a you know, a shot of the city in New

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York and stuff, and I'm like, is this like the UFO POV.

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Is that what I'm supposed to be
getting from this, But there's so many

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times where I'm like, I don't
know if you're fucking around with me or

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not. Like if you look at
some of the furniture in the room and

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some of the things that are going
out in the room, I'm like,

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well, this this is going to
show up later. But in Whitley's experiences,

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let's call it, I'm in Walkins's
experiences. There's like a lamp behind

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him at one point that is in
the shape of a UFO. I'm like,

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Okay, are we supposed to think
that this is all just coming from

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the real world? Is he like
Kaiser sozeing us or I'm not sure.

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So I feel like this movie's just
like kind of fucking around with me while

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I'm watching it. I actually hadn't
noticed someone what you're saying about the people

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not being sort of introduced in the
scene just already being there. I hadn't

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noticed that. But now that you've
pointed that out, it occurs to me

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that the book is actually structured differently. The narrative is structured differently, so

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it starts with the abduction. December
twenty sixth abduction, which is I don't

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know, maybe half an hour into
the movie, forty minutes in the movie

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something like that, and he has
this experience and he sort of vaguely remembers

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the details and he wakes up I
think with the pain behind the ear or

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the pain in the head, I
can't remember which one it is. But

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then he eventually is so kind of
tormented and so on edge and doesn't know

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what happened that he goes and does
the hypnosis sessions, and then he remembers

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that there was this experience back in
October and that he's had this dread for

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sort of an extended period of time, and he under hypnosis has a memory

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of the October experience that actually is
the beginning of the film, where there

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were other people there in the house. So, you know, I think

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then in the hypnosis session too sort
of you know, has this realization that

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something's been going on for much longer
than that, and so it's almost like

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they kind of said, where we're
going to back up the story. We're

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going to show you those moments semi
objectively and work our way up to where

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the December twenty sixth abduction happens.
Which is where the book begins. So

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may but maybe maybe the structure of
the screenplay was actually followed the book and

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then they change that in post.
That might explain some of the differences.

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Yeah, that makes a lot of
sense what you're saying. I mean,

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it does look to me like a
picture that was really cobbled together almost They

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just didn't have either the money or
the script. If he wrote the script

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himself structurally, it may they may
have backed into it and realized, well,

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this makes no sense if we start
here and go backwards in time and

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you know, what's a flash forward, what's under hypnosis, what's actually happening?

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And you know, they said,
well, it works a lot better

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doing it in a straight narrative form, you know, the Lesser two Evils,

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because it doesn't really work, you
know, per se the cop of

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the Fireman as this big part.
It's got this juice cameo as he talks

216
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about, Oh, you've been cited
before, like what are we supposed to?

217
00:17:07.400 --> 00:17:10.279
Who? What? What are we
talking about here? So you know,

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the whole movie really struck me as
being made like on the fly they

219
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had enough money for Christopher Walking,
Francis Sternhagen got three days of work.

220
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Lindsey Krast was just giggling the whole
time, watching walk and do his thing,

221
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and Okay, I'll, you know, I'll pretend I'm married to this

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crazy guy. And the kid is
out of some Pepsi commercial or something.

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So the one armed man is sort
of semi famous his but like his decision

224
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to leave, they didn't have enough
time to actually get coverage. So he's

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sort of outside looking around and then
he comes in and he says, Okay,

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I gotta go. They don't work
with him at all. It's like

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they just ran out of time.
It was an eighteen day shoot or something.

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And my guess is, and you
guys tell me, you know the

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book, how much time is actually
spent with these aliens, because they surely

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didn't have the money to make the
aliens that they had on the page.

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I mean, they must have written
unless he literally says, they cannot move

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their faces. They are made of
rubber and look like really bad Halloween masks.

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I like the little blue guy aliens. I think that they have some

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good movement in the face, as
I was very surprised. But yeah,

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the grays, let's call them the
ones that look like the typical aliens that

236
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you see with the almond eyes that
were in South Park and stuff. Those

237
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guys they look like balloons. They
just look like balloons kind of floating around.

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I'm like, am I supposed to
be laughing at this? So the

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first two times that you see them, it's a when he's under hypnosis.

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So I'm sort of sitting there saying, Okay, maybe his memory or it's

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all foggy. But then the last
time it's him going and finding them somewhere

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we don't even know where inside,
And then he does that crazy dance routine

243
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where he's dressed as a magician.
Is that in the book? Is that

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like? Or is that walking?
You know what? Fuck this? I

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need a mustache and a top end. That's the only way I can make

246
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this thing make any sense to me. I will offer a theory here that

247
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I think is supported by by the
books the well I know, I know

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that Phelipe Moore has said that the
aliens were supposed to look kind of fake.

249
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We're supposed to look kind of rubbery, which is a very convenient thing

250
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to say after the fact, when
you know it's a problem for everybody and

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you just didn't have the budget,
and you go, well, no,

252
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that was intentional. That's very convenient. But it does kind of jive with

253
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some of Whitley's reflections in the Communion
book and in later books, which is

254
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which is that he doesn't know what
these things are, and you know,

255
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he calls them the visitors, and
he's and he's always very pointed about saying,

256
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look, I didn't say that they
were aliens. You know that that

257
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wasn't my It's one of many possibilities
that he throws out, but he kind

258
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of keeps it more vague than that. And after Communion he started looking at

259
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all of the work that he'd done
previously, the novels he'd written, you

260
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know, about were wolves and vampires
and witches and demons and all of this

261
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stuff, and kind of looking at
how the monster creatures in there had some

262
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similarities. And he sort of has
this theory that the visitors have been with

263
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him for his whole life and that
he has kind of created different masks for

264
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them, or they have presented themselves
in different masks, and the alien mask,

265
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whether it's the grays or the blues
or whatever is. You know,

266
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they're wearing masks. They're not showing
you what they really are, the true

267
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nature of whatever they are, that's
just a mask they wear. So I

268
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feel fairly confident in saying that,
you know, the thing with the aliens

269
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at the end taken off their faces
and Christopher walking going no, No,

270
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that's not it. You know this
was actually, you know, something that

271
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is in the book that was important
to Whitley in terms of his truth,

272
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his interpretation of what's happening, and
that Felipmore did that to be accurate or

273
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to be true to Whitley. So
I don't know that that necessarily clears up

274
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anything makes so much sense, and
thank you for that. It's just unfortunately

275
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a disastrous mistake they've made. I
think right honestly, because there is potentially

276
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a fascinating movie about a bright guy
and his family who have had this inexplicable,

277
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unexplainable thing happened to them that they
may have lived with that may be

278
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generational. I mean, that is
interesting, and as a psychological horror picture

279
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or even just psychological study, I
could see that being in the hands of

280
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it's not even a better director,
and we can talk about more as a

281
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director in the hands of a company
that didn't say no, it's a fucking

282
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scary alien movie. We need the
lights outside, we need to do some

283
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version of Poltergeist with with aliens or
I don't know what what they pitched it

284
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as what they certainly sold it that
way, you know. And the real

285
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heart of the story is not that
it's a shame, because it could it

286
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could have been a much more interesting
movie. Certainly, that ending that very

287
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Kubreckian. I would say almost the
ending. It ends about five times.

288
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But there's this crazy scene in the
gallery when the two of them have these

289
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sort of monologues to each other with
these bold, beautiful paintings behind them,

290
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total stylistic anomaly to the rest of
the movie. And I sat there saying,

291
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well, holy shit, now that
suddenly I'm like in the hands of

292
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a filmmaker who's trying to, you
know, talk to the audience and make

293
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a real movie here. So the
rest of it was just christ I gotta

294
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show some aliens and have some quote
spooky stuff to get financing for this.

295
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I don't know, it's sort of
backwards movie making. I don't know.

296
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Well, the question is what is
the movie supposed to do, you know,

297
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like, what genre is it supposed
to be and what experience are we

298
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supposed to be having, because I
do think that the you know, the

299
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cover art and the pitch, you
know, it's I came at it sort

300
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of expecting a science fiction horror movie
that's going to be fairly formulaic, and

301
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you know, to me, the
formula for this type of thing. And

302
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even when these you know, when
ghost stories or stories about alien abduction or

303
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whatever are are presented in that based
on a true story or based on true

304
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experiences, way, the formula is
extremely simple. And the formula is ordinary

305
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people in extraordinary circumstances. And there's
an arc that the main character goes through

306
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from having the shit scared out of
them, being exposed to something that they

307
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didn't know about, didn't believe existed, whatever. And there's this sort of

308
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arc that goes through fighting it,
resisting it, accepting it, and then

309
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coming to some sort of transcendent realization
at the end, learning to live with

310
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it, learning to embrace it on
some level, whatever. And that's an

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arc of a story that's sort of
you know, that makes sense. It's

312
00:23:56.920 --> 00:24:00.880
a very simple arc. Well,
this film does doesn't really have that,

313
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partly because you start with Christopher Walkin
playing the main character and it's like,

314
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all right, well, already you
fucked up the ordinary people part, because

315
00:24:07.519 --> 00:24:12.640
there's nothing ordinary about Christopher Walkin.
Whitley Strieber. To meet him in person

316
00:24:14.319 --> 00:24:18.000
is he seems like a very down
to earth guy. I mean, I

317
00:24:18.039 --> 00:24:19.559
remember meeting him being like, oh, he kind of seems like, you

318
00:24:19.599 --> 00:24:23.359
know, my kindly old grandfather.
You know, he's better spoken, but

319
00:24:23.839 --> 00:24:27.759
he's until he starts talking about aliens. You would not you know, you

320
00:24:27.759 --> 00:24:32.480
would not expect him to go there. He's not like some he's not ranting,

321
00:24:32.599 --> 00:24:36.160
you know, he's not eccentric,
he's not waving his hands around him.

322
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He's none of those things. He's
actually a very articulate storyteller and seems

323
00:24:41.160 --> 00:24:45.160
to be very down to earth.
You know, you're talking about what a

324
00:24:45.200 --> 00:24:48.359
mistake it is with with Walkin,
because he is just so utra in this.

325
00:24:48.599 --> 00:24:53.359
But they're also making this character completely
incompetent. Like I said, he's

326
00:24:53.400 --> 00:24:59.519
burning the duck, he's crashing his
computer, but he's also telling these wild

327
00:24:59.640 --> 00:25:03.480
stories. He can't figure out the
code to get into the how he has

328
00:25:03.519 --> 00:25:07.920
trouble a lot with electronics in this, and yeah, he just keeps screwing

329
00:25:07.920 --> 00:25:11.240
stuff up. So you're like,
Okay, Well, he already seems like

330
00:25:11.279 --> 00:25:15.400
he's totally off kilter, so when
these things happen to him, it's like,

331
00:25:15.599 --> 00:25:18.839
Okay, is that real or is
that just happening in his mind?

332
00:25:18.240 --> 00:25:21.640
And then, like I said,
there's so many things in the movie that

333
00:25:21.720 --> 00:25:26.359
undercut him, Like even when it
comes to all the lights that are outside

334
00:25:26.400 --> 00:25:30.160
of the cabin that come on,
these motion sensitive lights, and they say

335
00:25:30.160 --> 00:25:33.039
like, oh yeah, even a
mosquito would set this off. So it's

336
00:25:33.079 --> 00:25:37.839
like when the lights, because you
don't see much in the first encounter,

337
00:25:38.279 --> 00:25:41.119
but you just see lights all the
time, And I'm like, well,

338
00:25:41.119 --> 00:25:45.359
that totally could be the case lights
on the truck. It totally could be

339
00:25:45.519 --> 00:25:48.880
the lights and the compound outside the
cabin, because really they only see the

340
00:25:48.960 --> 00:25:52.799
lights up until the very end of
this movie, they only see the lights

341
00:25:52.839 --> 00:25:56.559
at the cabin. So I'm like, well, you've already set up that

342
00:25:56.640 --> 00:26:02.440
you've got these bright lights, and
also you've also set up that Whitley's got

343
00:26:02.440 --> 00:26:06.599
this whole thing set up so much
that anything will trigger these lights, so

344
00:26:06.640 --> 00:26:08.079
they could be going off all night
long. I mean, I've got a

345
00:26:08.400 --> 00:26:11.559
motion sensor on my back porch that
goes off all the time. I don't

346
00:26:11.599 --> 00:26:15.279
know what's out there, but you
know, I'm in the city, out

347
00:26:15.279 --> 00:26:18.839
in the forest. Who knows what
the hell's setting this thing off? But

348
00:26:18.960 --> 00:26:22.480
what you just pitched is a more
interesting movie, or or even if that's

349
00:26:22.519 --> 00:26:26.880
the movie that they wanted to make, they just didn't have the wherewithal to

350
00:26:27.200 --> 00:26:30.880
do it, whether it was ever
on the page or in their mind.

351
00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.240
You know, the idea that Walking
is already off the wall, his idea

352
00:26:34.279 --> 00:26:38.079
that Mi Stripper's an artist, he's
a novelist. He lives in his mind.

353
00:26:38.400 --> 00:26:42.599
He's an eccentric guy, not the
most down to earth guy ultimately,

354
00:26:42.599 --> 00:26:47.039
because what he does is not it's
down to earth because he sits alone in

355
00:26:47.079 --> 00:26:51.400
a room. But you know that
makes some sense to me, at least

356
00:26:51.400 --> 00:26:55.599
intellectually, setting up a character like
that, an incompetent guy who'd if the

357
00:26:55.640 --> 00:26:57.640
aliens had been with him his whole
life. You know, you can over

358
00:26:57.720 --> 00:27:00.319
intellectualize it and say, well,
yeah, he's a funny guy. He's

359
00:27:00.319 --> 00:27:04.240
a weird guy. No one can
explain why he's like that. And now

360
00:27:04.279 --> 00:27:08.400
we understand it's not just this encounter, it's his whole life he's been going

361
00:27:08.480 --> 00:27:12.440
through. That's that's kind of cool. What happens, what that ultimate revelation

362
00:27:12.720 --> 00:27:18.160
is. It's obviously change Stribber's life, and this has become his identity.

363
00:27:18.160 --> 00:27:21.599
I mean, he really owns this
now. You know, he's known not

364
00:27:21.680 --> 00:27:23.480
as the guy I wrote Wolfin,
but as a guy who claims he was

365
00:27:23.519 --> 00:27:26.960
abducted and et cetera, et cetera. So so the shame of the movie

366
00:27:26.960 --> 00:27:30.799
and the reason that though the first
time I really really did not like it,

367
00:27:30.799 --> 00:27:33.680
it's grown on me. Though I
don't still don't like it, I

368
00:27:33.720 --> 00:27:38.880
find it fascinating document of sort of
what could have been and why. You

369
00:27:38.920 --> 00:27:42.599
know what, what's the danger of
casting Christopher walking Well, you get your

370
00:27:42.640 --> 00:27:48.200
movie made, but then you got
the Christopher Walkin movie that's not probably the

371
00:27:48.240 --> 00:27:49.960
movie that you thought you were gonna
make. And you know, it's almost

372
00:27:49.960 --> 00:27:53.039
to deal with the devil, you
know. I take a lot of the

373
00:27:53.039 --> 00:27:57.079
things that are in his books with
a huge grain of salt, but I

374
00:27:57.160 --> 00:28:03.759
find him to be not only fascinating, but really kind of sympathetic for the

375
00:28:03.799 --> 00:28:07.640
way that he the earnestness with which
he really is, you know, book

376
00:28:07.680 --> 00:28:11.240
after book trying to figure things out, you know, I mean, it's

377
00:28:11.279 --> 00:28:14.319
really just him trying to figure out
who he is and his place in the

378
00:28:14.319 --> 00:28:17.839
world and you know, does God
exist? And I mean all these big,

379
00:28:18.359 --> 00:28:22.599
you know questions that he's actually working
through book after book, And because

380
00:28:22.680 --> 00:28:26.319
he does it in such an earnest
way, I find him sympathetic and I

381
00:28:26.759 --> 00:28:30.960
enjoy reading him, and I don't
find you know, walk In as as

382
00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:37.680
Whitley Strieber. I find every bit, if not more, fascinating, certainly

383
00:28:37.720 --> 00:28:41.200
fascinating. He is very watchable in
this movie, probably for the wrong reasons.

384
00:28:41.240 --> 00:28:45.880
But the problem I think is that
he's not at all sympathetic because on

385
00:28:45.960 --> 00:28:51.119
top of him doing sort of his
nutty professor routine and burning the duck and

386
00:28:51.559 --> 00:28:56.480
you know, wearing that silly fedora
and talking to himself and singing and dancing

387
00:28:56.519 --> 00:28:57.680
and you know, I mean,
just on top of the goofy stuff,

388
00:28:57.680 --> 00:29:02.640
which is like, okay, he's
a goofy. He's a pretty shitty husband.

389
00:29:02.720 --> 00:29:04.920
I mean, he almost blows his
wife away with a shotgun, and

390
00:29:04.960 --> 00:29:08.400
then you know, he's not like, oh sorry, you know, it's

391
00:29:08.559 --> 00:29:14.279
just like he just continues to be
a jerk, and she basically says,

392
00:29:14.319 --> 00:29:15.480
you know, I've already got one
kid. I don't know another, and

393
00:29:15.480 --> 00:29:19.960
he just sort of responds with childish
antics and as a father. I mean

394
00:29:21.000 --> 00:29:23.839
this may just come from years of
watching Christopher Walking in his on screen persona,

395
00:29:23.880 --> 00:29:26.960
but I you know, I just
I get nervous watching him in scenes

396
00:29:26.960 --> 00:29:30.240
with the kid. I'm just like
he's he's at best and aloof father and

397
00:29:30.279 --> 00:29:33.559
at worst he's Jack Nicholson in The
Shining. You know, he's scarier than

398
00:29:33.599 --> 00:29:38.640
the aliens because he's Christopher Walking.
It just doesn't it doesn't work for the

399
00:29:38.680 --> 00:29:44.079
story. And I think at the
end of the day, I actually think

400
00:29:44.359 --> 00:29:48.000
that kind of his performances and the
eccentricities that he brought to that role,

401
00:29:48.079 --> 00:29:52.599
as fascinating as they are and as
watchable as he is, I think that's

402
00:29:52.839 --> 00:29:59.000
kind of what turned people against Whitley
Stream. When he's driving them up to

403
00:29:59.079 --> 00:30:03.279
the cabin the first time, I'm
immediately thinking of him talking to Woody Allen

404
00:30:03.519 --> 00:30:07.200
in Annie Hall. I tell you
this because as an artist, I think

405
00:30:07.200 --> 00:30:14.160
he'll understand. Sometimes when I'm driving
on the road at night, I see

406
00:30:14.240 --> 00:30:18.039
two headlights coming toward me fast,
I have this sudden impulse to turn the

407
00:30:18.039 --> 00:30:23.839
wheel quickly head on into the oncoming
car. I can anticipate the explosion,

408
00:30:26.359 --> 00:30:36.839
the sound of shattering glass flames rising
out of the flowing gasoline. Right,

409
00:30:37.000 --> 00:30:42.279
well, I have to go down, Dwayne, because I'm doing back on

410
00:30:42.319 --> 00:30:47.279
the planet Earth. He brings a
lot of baggage with him when it comes

411
00:30:47.359 --> 00:30:51.599
to his personas you know, like
even when he's with his kid, I

412
00:30:51.680 --> 00:30:55.160
just keep thinking he's gonna like touch
him and like suddenly have a psychic flash,

413
00:30:55.200 --> 00:30:56.400
you know, like that that ice
is gonna break, you know,

414
00:30:56.519 --> 00:31:03.039
like those type of things. Because
he plays and he will go from zero

415
00:31:03.079 --> 00:31:07.519
to sixty so quickly, like when
he is screaming at his computer, and

416
00:31:07.559 --> 00:31:11.440
then even and I feel terrible calling
the guy that one armed man. He

417
00:31:11.480 --> 00:31:14.359
obviously has two arms. But when
yeah, when he's like, hey,

418
00:31:14.400 --> 00:31:17.160
I gotta get out of here,
like all of a sudden, it's I

419
00:31:17.319 --> 00:31:19.880
need to leave, and just like
screams out, I'm like, whoa man

420
00:31:19.920 --> 00:31:26.000
this is? We are just going
for it big time. This feels almost

421
00:31:26.039 --> 00:31:29.759
like like a like a local theater
type of production. Sometimes when it's like,

422
00:31:29.759 --> 00:31:32.039
oh, you need to get a
point across, well, you better

423
00:31:32.079 --> 00:31:34.759
scream to the rafters. We have
two takes. We're gonna shoot it in

424
00:31:34.839 --> 00:31:40.000
a master and because we because we
got to get out of the cabin and

425
00:31:40.200 --> 00:31:44.319
we have thirty minutes, guys,
So here you go, and they they

426
00:31:44.519 --> 00:31:48.319
just fucking go great, go wild. You know, there's no there's no,

427
00:31:48.720 --> 00:31:51.160
they don't carve it out at all. I'm gonna lie down over here,

428
00:31:51.240 --> 00:31:52.640
I'm gonna wear a hat, I'm
gonna put my feet up, I'm

429
00:31:52.640 --> 00:31:56.240
gonna grab the kid and hug him
in a fucking crazy way. Okay,

430
00:31:56.279 --> 00:32:00.480
good is he in focus and rolling? You know, I'm sorry, but

431
00:32:00.680 --> 00:32:02.799
you know, I'm just assuming that
this kind of picture was made in this

432
00:32:04.440 --> 00:32:08.440
really really fast, almost straight to
video way, and if it if it

433
00:32:08.519 --> 00:32:12.880
got a release, and it did
get a release, not a successful one,

434
00:32:13.119 --> 00:32:16.519
and then you go to the video
store and there's he had been in

435
00:32:16.599 --> 00:32:21.039
what was the well, he did
a series of of horror movies where he's

436
00:32:21.079 --> 00:32:23.640
the demon or the anti Christ were
what were those called him? Yeah,

437
00:32:23.640 --> 00:32:27.880
that was later the Prophecy movies.
Yeah, yeah, it was a few

438
00:32:27.960 --> 00:32:30.640
years later. I want to say
it was like ninety three or something like

439
00:32:30.640 --> 00:32:35.119
that. That those are, you
know, and and the Dead Zone had

440
00:32:35.160 --> 00:32:39.119
been a couple of years before,
and so he was playing and brain scan,

441
00:32:39.400 --> 00:32:44.480
what's the one he did the Douglas
Trumbull brainstorm. You know, so

442
00:32:44.599 --> 00:32:47.559
he was he was playing in the
genre fields because he was so out there.

443
00:32:47.599 --> 00:32:50.640
He was good. You know,
how do you how do you attain

444
00:32:50.759 --> 00:32:53.039
Christopher Walking? How do you give
him stuff to do that where the stakes

445
00:32:53.039 --> 00:32:57.720
are high enough that he's not that
he at least makes sense in the movie.

446
00:32:58.400 --> 00:33:01.720
I mean, it's a fascinating kind
of movie. Lindsay Kraus just hanging

447
00:33:01.759 --> 00:33:07.000
on for dear life as far as
I can tell, honestly, where do

448
00:33:07.079 --> 00:33:12.680
they get the folks in the UFO
group? They reminded me like they're coming

449
00:33:12.720 --> 00:33:15.279
out of Color of Night or something
with that group therapy man. You know,

450
00:33:15.359 --> 00:33:17.559
it was supposed to be New York. It was not New York.

451
00:33:17.720 --> 00:33:22.839
They shot some second unit or I
don't know, they had the stock footage

452
00:33:22.880 --> 00:33:25.559
of the helicopter stuff. Maybe they
got on a rooftop for one for one

453
00:33:25.640 --> 00:33:30.279
night. It was shot in California
or someplace else. So it was a

454
00:33:30.400 --> 00:33:34.839
very very strange product. Tell me, would you guys know about Philip Moore?

455
00:33:34.839 --> 00:33:38.920
Because I'd first heard of him and
seen in the theater your your sister,

456
00:33:39.119 --> 00:33:44.880
my sister's a werewolf howling too,
which between that and the Marsupials.

457
00:33:44.960 --> 00:33:49.079
Really, I mean, he put
a nail in the coffin of a very

458
00:33:49.119 --> 00:33:52.640
promising franchise. Howling is fantastic.
Well, what does he have to say

459
00:33:52.640 --> 00:33:58.039
about that? Howling too is fantastic
because you can so tell it was written

460
00:33:58.079 --> 00:34:01.000
as a vampire movie and they just
like a finding replace with the word vamp

461
00:34:01.160 --> 00:34:05.240
or with the word WoT wear wolf. You know, it's just like it

462
00:34:05.359 --> 00:34:08.360
is such a vampire movie and then
suddenly they're wear wolves. But yeah,

463
00:34:08.360 --> 00:34:13.320
and then the frickin' Marsupials. It
is so good. I love Howling three

464
00:34:13.400 --> 00:34:16.159
because it's just it takes the piss. I mean, it's such a It's

465
00:34:16.199 --> 00:34:20.679
more of a comedy than a horror
movie to me. He doesn't care.

466
00:34:20.760 --> 00:34:22.360
He's like, Okay, I'm gonna
shoot. It's the most fun to do

467
00:34:22.440 --> 00:34:25.519
in the world is to be on
set and shoot. And you're gonna give

468
00:34:25.559 --> 00:34:30.239
me money if I change vampire to
were wolf? Great? Done, I

469
00:34:30.280 --> 00:34:35.239
sign up. I make them kangaroos
great. To your point, Joe,

470
00:34:35.239 --> 00:34:37.760
there's so many interesting things here that
they could be exploring, Like when his

471
00:34:37.840 --> 00:34:40.320
son comes out and says, where
are we sad? And you're just like

472
00:34:40.440 --> 00:34:44.880
Oh, what's going on. It's
like, Oh, he's experiencing these things

473
00:34:44.920 --> 00:34:47.480
too, but he doesn't really know
how to process them. When he starts

474
00:34:47.519 --> 00:34:51.280
talking about the little blue doctors and
you're like, oh, those are the

475
00:34:51.320 --> 00:34:54.559
little blue aliens. Okay, that's
interesting that he's seeing these, but they

476
00:34:54.559 --> 00:34:58.400
don't really explore it. And I
don't know if that's just because we've got

477
00:34:58.440 --> 00:35:01.480
a kid actor he's not good enough
to explore the pathos or something, but

478
00:35:01.840 --> 00:35:05.920
it really feels like we should be
exploring that. And then later on,

479
00:35:06.079 --> 00:35:09.079
Yeah, there's questions of God and
existence and I'm like, wow, these

480
00:35:09.280 --> 00:35:13.519
these are really good points, and
like, yeah, you can explore them

481
00:35:13.519 --> 00:35:16.679
in the book much more than you
are in the movie. I feel in

482
00:35:16.719 --> 00:35:21.239
the book you can do you can
explore these things on kind of an intellectual

483
00:35:21.559 --> 00:35:24.599
level and and and in a movie
you really can't because you're all you're doing

484
00:35:24.679 --> 00:35:29.519
is turning it into dialogue, and
it's going to be long winded dialogue and

485
00:35:29.559 --> 00:35:31.159
it's going you know, I mean, you have to move the story forward

486
00:35:31.159 --> 00:35:34.480
in a film, which is why
I say, you know, you find

487
00:35:34.519 --> 00:35:38.960
your formula for this type of story
that's that's about an encounter with the unknown

488
00:35:39.079 --> 00:35:43.679
and and how that transforms the person
who had the encounter. You know,

489
00:35:43.760 --> 00:35:46.800
that's that's the story. That's a
pretty simple, you know formula. And

490
00:35:47.400 --> 00:35:52.039
in the book, certainly the last
you know, maybe third of the Communion

491
00:35:52.039 --> 00:35:55.840
book, and then you know,
huge chunks of all the follow up books

492
00:35:57.440 --> 00:36:06.320
are really him kind of speculating rather
than being a chronicle of advents or sequence

493
00:36:06.400 --> 00:36:10.840
of events or any kind of linear
narrative. And so you have, you

494
00:36:10.840 --> 00:36:15.400
know, with the Communion book and
then with the Communion movie, you know,

495
00:36:15.440 --> 00:36:21.000
you have sort of the beginning of
a really good story that just kind

496
00:36:21.000 --> 00:36:23.440
of you know, they had to
figure out what what is our third act

497
00:36:23.519 --> 00:36:24.800
going to be? What are we
going to do? I mean, I

498
00:36:24.840 --> 00:36:29.480
guess that's where you end up with
bowing to the aliens or whatever. I

499
00:36:29.519 --> 00:36:31.079
mean, you know, that whole
rigm role where he's the magician, which

500
00:36:31.239 --> 00:36:35.639
I have no idea where the magician
thing came from. All I can figure

501
00:36:35.719 --> 00:36:37.280
is that they were they were standing
there going all right, we're saying that

502
00:36:37.440 --> 00:36:43.360
these visitors can be anything. So
that means they can disguise themselves as vampires,

503
00:36:43.400 --> 00:36:46.360
where rolls aliens, what they can
disguise themselves as Christopher Walkin. Christopher

504
00:36:46.400 --> 00:36:50.239
Walkin is the real alien. Well
that explains it now, I'm you know,

505
00:36:50.320 --> 00:36:52.599
that makes all the sense in the
world. Of course, Christopher Walkin

506
00:36:52.639 --> 00:36:54.639
is one of the aliens. You
guys know me, I'd love to pick

507
00:36:54.719 --> 00:36:59.280
up on symbolism and stuff. And
so when he is the magician, I'm

508
00:36:59.320 --> 00:37:04.320
like, Okay, this gives him
the only opportunity to have a conversation with

509
00:37:04.440 --> 00:37:08.079
the aliens, because the aliens don't
talk, you know, like he's constantly

510
00:37:08.760 --> 00:37:15.239
responding to them as if they're having
a conversation because of this whole metal rod

511
00:37:15.280 --> 00:37:19.079
that they're putting against his head,
and he can talk with them and all

512
00:37:19.119 --> 00:37:22.719
this. And then I'm like,
okay, well, as this, it's

513
00:37:22.719 --> 00:37:24.760
giving him the opportunity to have a
voice. It's his own voice, so

514
00:37:24.800 --> 00:37:30.760
he's having conversations with himself. And
then the magician thing for me is he's

515
00:37:30.800 --> 00:37:34.480
got the magic wand and that's basically
the metal thing that they put against this

516
00:37:34.639 --> 00:37:37.119
head. So I'm like, oh, okay, well that kind of makes

517
00:37:37.119 --> 00:37:38.840
sense, but at the same time, it doesn't make any sense at all,

518
00:37:39.039 --> 00:37:44.280
so fuck me right, go with
it. We're at the circus.

519
00:37:44.360 --> 00:37:46.599
I mean, it was literally like
to me no, we're you know,

520
00:37:46.679 --> 00:37:50.599
this is a circus act. It's
a clown show, you know, and

521
00:37:51.239 --> 00:37:53.400
I'm putting it on a show,
and it's as believable. It's all an

522
00:37:53.440 --> 00:37:58.880
illusion. The magician is real or
is it real? Is you know who's

523
00:37:58.960 --> 00:38:01.079
playing who? And all that?
I guess. I mean, I was

524
00:38:01.119 --> 00:38:05.239
literally like, okay, sure,
I'll go with it. I've gotten this

525
00:38:05.320 --> 00:38:12.280
far. I was smarter and could
give you the deep metaphysical take on magicians

526
00:38:12.840 --> 00:38:15.400
and what they all meant. But
I couldn't. It wasn't on screen,

527
00:38:15.599 --> 00:38:20.039
you know, they didn't. They
didn't help us at all. Mike,

528
00:38:20.079 --> 00:38:22.320
you're to your point. I mean, yeah, the the in the third

529
00:38:22.320 --> 00:38:27.519
act to have some kind of dialogue
where we attempt to find the words to

530
00:38:27.599 --> 00:38:31.079
explain what's going on, or we
try to sum this up in some coherent,

531
00:38:31.199 --> 00:38:36.199
semi intellectual way. I mean,
you know, it shows maybe an

532
00:38:36.280 --> 00:38:39.159
impulse toward that or to the need
to do that. But you do have

533
00:38:39.239 --> 00:38:42.719
these supporting characters. And this kind
of goes back to what you were saying

534
00:38:42.760 --> 00:38:45.639
about the Sun. It's like,
all right, so if the Sun is

535
00:38:45.679 --> 00:38:50.280
sort of having these experiences, if
the two visitors to the house in October

536
00:38:50.800 --> 00:38:54.159
have had, you know, at
least they saw the crazy lights outside and

537
00:38:54.440 --> 00:38:59.960
heard loud booming noises, you know
whatever. I forget what in the book

538
00:39:00.440 --> 00:39:05.800
exactly their experiences where I know that
Anne Whitley's wife had she went under hypnosis

539
00:39:05.800 --> 00:39:10.719
too, and she remembered some very
strange things about that night the sun I

540
00:39:10.760 --> 00:39:15.400
know, had a bunch of dreams
at least that seemed to tie in with

541
00:39:15.519 --> 00:39:20.960
things that Whitley says he actually experienced. And so there were these sort of

542
00:39:21.559 --> 00:39:24.960
they were all relatively I think,
relatively minor at least in that first book.

543
00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:28.480
You know, people who were coming
and sort of supporting what he was

544
00:39:28.519 --> 00:39:34.320
saying with these you know, not
confirmations, but kind of corroborations. And

545
00:39:34.360 --> 00:39:38.119
you do have all these other characters
and actors in the film who could have

546
00:39:38.280 --> 00:39:40.880
kind of, if you give them
a little more focus, could have maybe

547
00:39:40.920 --> 00:39:45.519
sort of rained in the story a
little bit, grounded it a little more,

548
00:39:45.599 --> 00:39:50.159
and then made us feel, as
viewers, like like it was a

549
00:39:50.280 --> 00:39:55.800
more understandable or relatable arc that you
know that the Walkin character is going through,

550
00:39:55.840 --> 00:39:59.679
but he just dwarfs them. I
mean, everybody kind of fades into

551
00:39:59.719 --> 00:40:04.519
the back ground when Walkin is doing
walking and it it ultimately I think doesn't

552
00:40:04.559 --> 00:40:09.239
really serve the narrative because then it
just sort of all falls apart with Christopher

553
00:40:09.239 --> 00:40:13.119
Walkin going, well, it's all
about me. I'm carrying this thing,

554
00:40:13.239 --> 00:40:15.360
so I've just really got to go
like balls out crazy at the end,

555
00:40:16.039 --> 00:40:22.280
it just doesn't resolve anything. There's
no resolution, and there's no resolution in

556
00:40:22.280 --> 00:40:24.400
the books either. I mean,
it's just a big open question. There's

557
00:40:24.440 --> 00:40:28.400
actually a thing that Whitley has taken
to saying in recent years, and it's

558
00:40:28.440 --> 00:40:30.960
in some of his books that I
actually, I really love is kind of

559
00:40:30.960 --> 00:40:36.719
a philosophy where he says, beliefs
are windows, questions are doors. He

560
00:40:36.800 --> 00:40:40.199
actually has kind of an anti belief
philosophy and who should be open minded about

561
00:40:40.239 --> 00:40:44.239
everything? And I like that,
you know, it's one of the things

562
00:40:44.280 --> 00:40:47.480
that I find kind of sympathetic about
him, about the way he approaches life.

563
00:40:47.480 --> 00:40:52.519
But you know, I mean,
why couldn't that be what they're talking

564
00:40:52.519 --> 00:40:54.559
about in the in the you know, the art museum or up on the

565
00:40:54.639 --> 00:41:00.719
roof or whatever. You know,
at least that's sort of a relatable human

566
00:41:00.599 --> 00:41:04.639
response, and instead kind of at
the end, all we end up with

567
00:41:04.800 --> 00:41:07.920
is, you know, well,
they gave you a gift, and you

568
00:41:07.960 --> 00:41:10.039
should do something with this. All
right, Let's go write a book and

569
00:41:10.119 --> 00:41:14.880
make a movie and tell people what
happened. And yet, you know,

570
00:41:14.960 --> 00:41:19.920
some of the decisions that went into
making the movie make it I think unrelatable

571
00:41:20.039 --> 00:41:23.519
in a way that sort of defeats
the whole purpose of telling that story,

572
00:41:23.519 --> 00:41:29.840
of getting that out there. Has
there been any talk of the remake or

573
00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:35.840
more faithful version, or expanding the
universe of all these books that he spent

574
00:41:36.000 --> 00:41:39.679
so much time and effort creating.
I've never heard of that. No,

575
00:41:40.440 --> 00:41:46.159
I don't. I don't. I
mean, other than with the Coming Superstorm

576
00:41:46.159 --> 00:41:51.639
that was turned into what is the
movie? Yeah, after Tomorrow, I

577
00:41:51.679 --> 00:41:57.800
mean really his other stuff since Communion, has anything else been adapted to the

578
00:41:57.840 --> 00:42:01.239
screen, Not that I'm aware of. I want to say there might have

579
00:42:01.360 --> 00:42:06.280
been something for like a sci fi
TV show or something, But yeah,

580
00:42:06.320 --> 00:42:07.960
I think you're right, and I'm
trying to remember what that was. But

581
00:42:08.920 --> 00:42:13.079
you know, I feel like there's
a little bit of you know, for

582
00:42:13.159 --> 00:42:15.880
better or worse, there's a little
bit of a stigma, you know,

583
00:42:15.920 --> 00:42:19.360
coming probably largely out of this this
film. That thing just haven't got I

584
00:42:19.599 --> 00:42:25.920
heard actually a rumor a few years
ago that somebody who is fairly well established

585
00:42:25.920 --> 00:42:30.639
as a as a filmmaker was trying
to put together a I think it was

586
00:42:30.679 --> 00:42:36.440
a mini series about Whitley's life,
you know, kind of an extended biography,

587
00:42:36.480 --> 00:42:38.960
And I don't know if it was
going to be sort of semi documentary

588
00:42:39.000 --> 00:42:43.440
format or how how they were going
to sort of address the fact that all

589
00:42:43.440 --> 00:42:47.079
of his work is this weird fusion
of what most people perceive as fiction,

590
00:42:47.559 --> 00:42:51.800
but that you know, Whitley,
you know, perceives entirely as fact,

591
00:42:52.480 --> 00:42:57.199
you know, although he acknowledges that
his imagination plays a huge role in his

592
00:42:57.280 --> 00:43:00.679
memories of experiences. I don't know
how that would be addressed, but I

593
00:43:00.719 --> 00:43:05.440
actually think that would be fascinating because
I think you always kind of have to

594
00:43:05.480 --> 00:43:09.599
look at the whole, you know, at his life story and what his

595
00:43:09.719 --> 00:43:14.400
creative process is and where he's coming
from and all of that. You know,

596
00:43:14.440 --> 00:43:15.679
it's a big project. Obviously,
it takes a lot of money to

597
00:43:15.719 --> 00:43:20.199
do something like that. So will
it ever happen? Is Whitley Streeber's name

598
00:43:20.199 --> 00:43:22.760
big enough to you know, secure
the financing to do something like that?

599
00:43:22.840 --> 00:43:25.400
I don't know. I would.
I would love to see it. I

600
00:43:25.440 --> 00:43:29.960
would be fascinated by something like that, but I don't know that I might

601
00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:32.840
not be completely in the minority there. So it's pretty funny. I was

602
00:43:32.840 --> 00:43:36.440
talking with one of my co workers
and I was like, oh, yeah,

603
00:43:36.440 --> 00:43:42.119
I'm interviewing this guy, and I
know she's very into cults and she

604
00:43:42.320 --> 00:43:47.320
loves cryptozoology. She goes to like
bigfoot conventions and stuff, and she's just

605
00:43:47.360 --> 00:43:50.360
like, oh yeah, I don't
believe any of this stuff, but I

606
00:43:50.480 --> 00:43:53.840
just am fascinated by the communities,
and I'm I'm right with her. Like

607
00:43:54.559 --> 00:43:59.960
So, the the TVD or Blue
ray comes with two commentaries. One is

608
00:44:00.079 --> 00:44:04.480
pretty much a straight ahead commentary with
Felipe Mora just telling stories, talking about

609
00:44:04.559 --> 00:44:07.800
how this movie is put together all
that. There's another commentary which I just

610
00:44:08.119 --> 00:44:13.239
loved, which was I can't remember
the gentleman's name, but he is some

611
00:44:13.280 --> 00:44:17.480
sort of UFO expert and it's him
and Maura talking with each other. And

612
00:44:19.159 --> 00:44:22.719
again, I don't know if Morre's
taking the piss or not, because it

613
00:44:22.760 --> 00:44:27.199
feels like he just keeps feeding this
other guy and it's like, no matter

614
00:44:27.280 --> 00:44:31.440
what he throws out, the guy
has a story. About it has facts

615
00:44:31.480 --> 00:44:35.880
and figures and well, of course
you know this was tied to this person

616
00:44:36.000 --> 00:44:38.760
and the army and blah blah blah. And it's like there's no conspiracy theory

617
00:44:38.920 --> 00:44:44.800
that Moura can talk about where this
guy isn't right there with it and just

618
00:44:44.880 --> 00:44:47.679
like so big into it and knows
all these things. I'm just like,

619
00:44:49.119 --> 00:44:52.159
are all of these like in this
guy's worldview? Is everything connected? Is

620
00:44:52.159 --> 00:44:57.639
it's just this big, you know, my sealed network of all these conspiracies

621
00:44:57.679 --> 00:45:00.679
and stuff. And I'm surprised that
Maura does and bring up Bigfoot in that

622
00:45:00.719 --> 00:45:05.519
commentary because he brings up so many
things, like I think there's even some

623
00:45:05.639 --> 00:45:10.719
JFK stuff in there. It's just
phenomenal to hear this guy just layer on

624
00:45:12.000 --> 00:45:16.239
the frankly the bullshit over and over. It just gets deeper and deeper and

625
00:45:16.280 --> 00:45:20.960
deeper, and I'm like, how
are you keeping a straight faithfully? I

626
00:45:20.960 --> 00:45:23.440
don't know how you can do it. I love that stuff. I will

627
00:45:23.480 --> 00:45:27.239
completely go down the rap. I
mean, I've read all of all of

628
00:45:27.280 --> 00:45:30.920
Whitley's books. I've read a lot
of you know, John Keel books,

629
00:45:31.000 --> 00:45:35.880
Keell's books. I love Philip K. Dick including his like you know,

630
00:45:36.039 --> 00:45:40.559
nine hundred paid page exsit Jesus when
he's just like obsessing over you know,

631
00:45:40.639 --> 00:45:45.119
everything and like wandering through alternate realities
and all this stuff. And I can

632
00:45:45.719 --> 00:45:52.000
so easily get sucked into that because
I am. I am a genre storytelling

633
00:45:52.000 --> 00:45:54.320
guy, so like what if that
whole what if question, you know,

634
00:45:54.440 --> 00:45:58.639
send me to the twilight Zone?
I am, I am, like,

635
00:45:58.719 --> 00:46:02.119
sign me up. But there is
also something off putting, and this is

636
00:46:02.440 --> 00:46:05.920
you know, I mean, I
mean at times, I think even Whitley

637
00:46:05.920 --> 00:46:07.360
Streeber, you know, goes into
this where it's off putting to me,

638
00:46:07.400 --> 00:46:12.199
where it's that the UFO community and
the constant references to well, this case

639
00:46:12.280 --> 00:46:19.159
or that case as evidence, trying
so hard to campaign for this this you

640
00:46:19.199 --> 00:46:24.400
know, this conspiracy. And I
mean that to me goes kind of against

641
00:46:24.440 --> 00:46:28.519
what I said earlier what I like
about Whitley Streeber, which is this thing

642
00:46:28.559 --> 00:46:31.559
of you know, but beliefs are
limiting. It's like, well, but

643
00:46:32.039 --> 00:46:36.400
you know, when you get that, when you get so deep into it

644
00:46:36.440 --> 00:46:38.960
that you're quoting scripture to people,
you know, whether it's religious scripture or

645
00:46:39.039 --> 00:46:45.559
UFO scripture, you've fallen into that
trap of believing and and you see this

646
00:46:45.639 --> 00:46:49.760
in Whitley's books where he'll like,
go, he'll dive in and he'll kind

647
00:46:49.760 --> 00:46:52.039
of get sucked in, and you're
just going, oh no, he's become

648
00:46:52.119 --> 00:46:55.119
like he's he's preaching now. But
then he'll but then he'll also he also

649
00:46:55.159 --> 00:46:59.480
has his amazing abilities to some to
then pull himself out and go but it's

650
00:46:59.519 --> 00:47:02.400
not that and keep exploring. And
that's why I found, that's why I

651
00:47:02.519 --> 00:47:07.679
keep reading him, because he's still
doing that. I used to be very

652
00:47:07.760 --> 00:47:12.480
much like that, really enjoyed conspiracy
theories. I would go to I went

653
00:47:12.480 --> 00:47:15.159
to the UFO Museum in Roswell,
and I was in the reading room when

654
00:47:15.159 --> 00:47:21.440
they're like taking testimony from somebody and
stuff. That all stopped in twenty seventeen,

655
00:47:21.599 --> 00:47:25.840
that all stopped, with all of
the insanity. I understand that completely.

656
00:47:27.039 --> 00:47:29.960
I spent that whole year reading a
lot of Philip K. Dick,

657
00:47:30.000 --> 00:47:31.920
because you know, Philip K.
Dick had this thing that he'd had this

658
00:47:32.119 --> 00:47:39.119
experience where he said, you know, I remember an alternate version of reality.

659
00:47:39.159 --> 00:47:43.239
I'm living in an alternate version of
reality, and it's and it changed

660
00:47:43.880 --> 00:47:47.280
with either either Watergate or Nixon's resignation
or something. It was like a political

661
00:47:47.480 --> 00:47:51.679
moment where he was like, there
was a there was a blip here and

662
00:47:51.719 --> 00:47:54.079
we got sidetracked into an alternate reality. And I read a lot of Philip

663
00:47:54.119 --> 00:47:57.440
K. Dick in twenty seventeen because
I was like, what the fuck is

664
00:47:57.480 --> 00:48:00.800
going on? We are living in
a science fiction novel? What just happened?

665
00:48:00.079 --> 00:48:04.079
And that was the and that was
like the only way I could explain

666
00:48:04.079 --> 00:48:07.159
it to myself. I had to
stop watching The Man in the High Tower

667
00:48:07.320 --> 00:48:09.239
because it was right during that time, and I was like, oh,

668
00:48:09.320 --> 00:48:12.599
yeah, you know, because I've
read the book. You know, I

669
00:48:12.599 --> 00:48:16.239
can't remember the what's the name of
the book? Something about inside of the

670
00:48:16.239 --> 00:48:21.119
Man in the High Tower. There's
the book that tells what the real world

671
00:48:21.400 --> 00:48:24.280
was the Grasshopper or something or other. Oh oh yeah, which is ironic

672
00:48:24.320 --> 00:48:29.159
because there's grasshoppers throughout this whole movie
with the masks and all this stuff.

673
00:48:29.199 --> 00:48:31.199
But yeah, I was just like, I can't do this because this is

674
00:48:31.239 --> 00:48:36.880
the world that we're living in now. The Nazis have one. But yeah,

675
00:48:37.239 --> 00:48:38.920
I just had to stay away from
from that stuff. But yeah,

676
00:48:39.039 --> 00:48:43.760
just to that people layer these things
and just keep building. I'm like,

677
00:48:43.800 --> 00:48:47.400
okay, at some point that and
it probably happened years ago that UFO community

678
00:48:47.800 --> 00:48:54.159
and that QAnon community are going to
join forces. And when JFK Junior is

679
00:48:54.159 --> 00:48:58.079
that who it is that they're waiting
for to come back, like obviously it's

680
00:48:58.119 --> 00:49:01.000
going to be on the mothership,
right, So it's yeah, it's why

681
00:49:01.039 --> 00:49:07.159
it hurts my heart to hear some
of the deepness that they go to and

682
00:49:07.199 --> 00:49:15.440
the need to justify everything. Whitley
Stribber is a tragic story, right because

683
00:49:15.480 --> 00:49:17.719
either and I don't know him.
You guys have met him or spoken to

684
00:49:17.760 --> 00:49:22.760
him, but just listening to us
the conversation, something happened to him.

685
00:49:23.280 --> 00:49:27.960
Something happened, you know, whether
it was a psychological break, whether he

686
00:49:28.119 --> 00:49:30.679
was abused, I don't know.
It sounds like he doesn't know. He's

687
00:49:30.719 --> 00:49:37.519
wrestling with some disassociative memory kind of
situation, and it took him down a

688
00:49:37.599 --> 00:49:43.159
rabbit hole of his life and a
a successful novelist men who maybe wasn't Stephen

689
00:49:43.239 --> 00:49:49.159
King but was really cranking away and
having a really successful career also got sidetracked

690
00:49:49.199 --> 00:49:52.519
as some of this stuff emerged from
his psyche and he's been wrestling with it

691
00:49:52.559 --> 00:49:58.079
ever since, and now he is
part of a niche community what we the

692
00:49:58.119 --> 00:50:02.800
rest of us mainstream folks consider a
niche community, and it's it has affected

693
00:50:02.880 --> 00:50:07.320
his life, that is his identity
as a member of that community. He

694
00:50:07.360 --> 00:50:10.719
still writes books. Obviously, he's
wrestling with his with his mind, body,

695
00:50:10.719 --> 00:50:15.159
and soul, and that's the beautiful
and kind of a sad story to

696
00:50:15.239 --> 00:50:19.639
me. Does that Does that hold
water to you guys who've read so much

697
00:50:19.679 --> 00:50:24.840
of his stuff? You're right in
saying that the sort of UFO community,

698
00:50:24.920 --> 00:50:29.960
especially maybe the you know, sort
of the community that spends a lot of

699
00:50:29.960 --> 00:50:36.119
time thinking about paranormal anything, is
his primary readership at this point. And

700
00:50:36.440 --> 00:50:39.480
I think that he writes to them
off. I mean, I think his

701
00:50:39.880 --> 00:50:45.039
latest book, Them is sort of
written directly to them, and I thought

702
00:50:45.039 --> 00:50:50.039
it was actually less interesting than some
of his other community books, because I

703
00:50:50.079 --> 00:50:53.079
think that when he personalizes the story
and he's making it about him and his

704
00:50:53.159 --> 00:50:59.320
journey and trying to figure things out, I find that really interesting. But

705
00:50:59.360 --> 00:51:06.599
then there are some books where he's
really tying his experience to other similar experiences

706
00:51:06.679 --> 00:51:10.480
with the paranormal or UFOs, and
so he sort of attaches it to these

707
00:51:10.519 --> 00:51:15.760
other people and I don't know that
that you know, always serves him well,

708
00:51:15.880 --> 00:51:19.400
or maybe ever serves him well,
except that you know, those people

709
00:51:19.440 --> 00:51:22.920
are validated by what he's saying,
and so he reads their books. But

710
00:51:22.360 --> 00:51:24.960
I mean they read his book.
But you know, I mean, I

711
00:51:25.280 --> 00:51:30.119
do kind of go back to,
you know, Mike's bigger point earlier.

712
00:51:30.239 --> 00:51:35.679
I mean, I do wonder,
like, what is the effect of spending

713
00:51:35.719 --> 00:51:38.360
so much time going down that rabbit
hole. I mean, I've said that

714
00:51:38.599 --> 00:51:42.360
I do it. I can be
certainly sucked in, you know, but

715
00:51:42.719 --> 00:51:45.000
at the end of the day,
you apply, you know, a healthy

716
00:51:45.000 --> 00:51:49.159
amount of critical thinking to these to
these things. And you know, keeping

717
00:51:49.159 --> 00:51:53.039
an open mind is one thing,
and and you know, throwing these names

718
00:51:53.079 --> 00:51:57.880
and dates out of people and preaching
the UFO stuff as scripture is a whole

719
00:51:57.880 --> 00:52:00.440
other thing. And what does that
do to people? Because I think,

720
00:52:01.079 --> 00:52:09.320
and there's something really interesting about a
creative personality, the power of the imagination

721
00:52:09.599 --> 00:52:15.159
to reshape reality, to shape our
reality, which which it does for all

722
00:52:15.199 --> 00:52:19.360
of us in different ways. But
it's also kind of scary, you know,

723
00:52:19.400 --> 00:52:24.119
the way that people's beliefs, especially
like a consensus belief in something that

724
00:52:24.360 --> 00:52:30.239
is hard to be objective about that
doesn't stand up to the scrutiny of critical

725
00:52:30.239 --> 00:52:34.920
thinking. You know what, what
does the extended exposure to that and being

726
00:52:34.960 --> 00:52:37.119
sort of in a community of people
who are convincing that's real. What does

727
00:52:37.199 --> 00:52:40.599
that do to us over time,
you know, to a larger group of

728
00:52:40.599 --> 00:52:44.400
people, to a culture, and
so you know, these these things I

729
00:52:44.400 --> 00:52:46.840
may not work for years on.
You know a lot of paranormal shows,

730
00:52:46.880 --> 00:52:51.480
on the True ghost story shows,
all this stuff, and I have come

731
00:52:51.519 --> 00:52:54.000
to really kind of wonder, like, what what is the effect? Because

732
00:52:54.679 --> 00:52:58.679
you know, I think there's there's
a there's a really positive side to it,

733
00:52:58.719 --> 00:53:00.880
and I think there's kind of an
aside to it. While I was

734
00:53:00.920 --> 00:53:06.000
putting this episode together, I was
thinking, a friend of mine told me

735
00:53:06.079 --> 00:53:08.800
this story years and years ago,
and I called him up today and I

736
00:53:08.800 --> 00:53:12.840
had him tell me the story again. I was glad I had remembered most

737
00:53:12.840 --> 00:53:15.480
of it. He was telling this
told me this story a long time ago

738
00:53:15.559 --> 00:53:20.679
that he used to torture his brother, which apparently is what brothers do to

739
00:53:20.760 --> 00:53:24.280
each other. And there was one
time where they had moved into a new

740
00:53:24.320 --> 00:53:30.480
house and my friend Eric goes into
this closet, into his brother's clouset.

741
00:53:30.559 --> 00:53:37.639
Brother's name is Michael, goes into
Michael's closet and he's waiting and waiting and

742
00:53:37.719 --> 00:53:42.599
waiting, and finally his brother comes
upstairs and he opens up the closet door

743
00:53:43.239 --> 00:53:45.760
and he's like putting away things,
and Eric's just trying not to laugh,

744
00:53:45.800 --> 00:53:50.679
and he's just standing there, steering
at his brother and just waiting for his

745
00:53:50.719 --> 00:53:54.079
brother to see him and freak out. And his brother's you know, putting

746
00:53:54.079 --> 00:53:58.719
stuff on hangers. Da da da
da da, and then just suddenly he

747
00:53:58.800 --> 00:54:06.360
goes white and collapses, and Eric
of course thinks this is you know,

748
00:54:06.440 --> 00:54:08.840
he's twelve years old or something.
Thinks this is the most hilarious thing in

749
00:54:08.880 --> 00:54:15.159
the entire world. And he goes
running downstairs and he can't speak because he's

750
00:54:15.239 --> 00:54:19.079
laughing so hard. He's just like, I think I killed Michael. They

751
00:54:19.119 --> 00:54:23.400
go upstairs, he and his parents
go upstairs, and at that time,

752
00:54:23.559 --> 00:54:28.519
like the brother Michael was starting to
wake up. And when Michael wakes up,

753
00:54:28.519 --> 00:54:32.199
he's just like there was a gigantic
eyeball in the closet and so he

754
00:54:32.239 --> 00:54:37.159
had like just focused on Eric's eye, didn't know anything, and was so

755
00:54:37.400 --> 00:54:43.440
completely scared that in his mind he
rewrote reality and basically became like you know,

756
00:54:43.559 --> 00:54:46.079
Mic from Monsters, Inc. Inside
of the closet, And I'm just

757
00:54:46.199 --> 00:54:50.000
I kept thinking about that because I'm
like, yeah, your brain does that.

758
00:54:50.119 --> 00:54:55.000
Your brain takes information it doesn't know
how to comprehend and makes new stories

759
00:54:55.039 --> 00:54:58.480
out of it. And I bet
you you to this day if you asked

760
00:54:58.559 --> 00:55:00.079
him, like put him under hip
so he'd be like, yeah, there's

761
00:55:00.079 --> 00:55:04.639
a fucking giant eyeball in my closet
when I was eight years old. Doesn't

762
00:55:04.639 --> 00:55:07.480
matter that it was his brother,
you know. But I just keep thinking

763
00:55:07.519 --> 00:55:09.840
about that, especially when it's like, do you keep handing us things in

764
00:55:09.880 --> 00:55:15.239
this movie like masks? You know
we were talking about masks before. Well,

765
00:55:15.280 --> 00:55:19.039
you got Christmas pageant in here where
all the kids are dressed up.

766
00:55:19.079 --> 00:55:22.800
You got Halloween party where people are
dressed up. It's kind of odd that

767
00:55:22.440 --> 00:55:28.039
Annie Strieber in this she comes in
dressed as a witch, but then when

768
00:55:28.079 --> 00:55:30.880
she's at the party, she's not
dressed as a witch. She looks almost

769
00:55:30.920 --> 00:55:32.480
more like Harlequin or something. And
I'm like, I don't know if it's

770
00:55:32.480 --> 00:55:36.159
a continuity thing or if we're supposed
to make something out of that, But

771
00:55:36.199 --> 00:55:39.239
I'm just like, everybody in this
movie is wearing a ton of I mean

772
00:55:39.800 --> 00:55:45.599
Whitley walking as Whitley, of all
people, is wearing the least mask because

773
00:55:45.599 --> 00:55:49.360
he just has that stupid elephant nose
on. And then you get that whole

774
00:55:49.360 --> 00:55:53.639
thing with him screaming and carrying on
about the girl who's wearing the praying mantis

775
00:55:53.760 --> 00:55:59.199
head, and you get that well
before he sees the woman on the bus

776
00:55:59.199 --> 00:56:01.880
with the praying man his head,
and then all of the praying mantis people

777
00:56:02.559 --> 00:56:06.760
there, which I for me,
that's the money shot of this film,

778
00:56:06.840 --> 00:56:10.679
all of those people wearing those pre
mantis masks staring at the camera. I

779
00:56:10.760 --> 00:56:14.599
love that shot. I think that's
fantastic. There are a lot of shots

780
00:56:14.599 --> 00:56:16.239
in this movie. I'm like,
oh, wow, that that's really cool.

781
00:56:16.280 --> 00:56:20.480
I'm glad that you did that.
But that's also not part of the

782
00:56:20.519 --> 00:56:22.599
Halloween sequence, is it? That's
later in the movie. So, I

783
00:56:22.599 --> 00:56:25.800
mean, that was one movie one
moment in the movie where I just said,

784
00:56:25.840 --> 00:56:29.679
what what are we spoken? Because
it's not something from the book.

785
00:56:29.840 --> 00:56:34.840
It doesn't it wasn't a real experience
that Whitley Risso are we supposed? Is

786
00:56:34.880 --> 00:56:40.199
it this moment that's added to the
narrative to make us assume that he's psychotic.

787
00:56:40.280 --> 00:56:43.760
I mean, I just I don't. I don't know why it's there,

788
00:56:43.960 --> 00:56:45.159
right, and the scare, Yeah, I mean, as you said,

789
00:56:45.239 --> 00:56:49.960
the classic story is is it is
it drugs? Is it a memory?

790
00:56:50.039 --> 00:56:52.719
Is it actually happening? You know, all the versions that they have

791
00:56:52.800 --> 00:56:57.239
to eliminate before you come to the
belief that it's actually happening, you know,

792
00:56:57.760 --> 00:57:00.599
or that it's all in the person's
mind or when ever it is.

793
00:57:00.280 --> 00:57:02.880
As we talk, and I keep
coming back and I'm sorry, you guys

794
00:57:02.880 --> 00:57:06.960
have read this stuff, forgive me. I'd never read his material. I

795
00:57:07.000 --> 00:57:09.360
should have, of course, if
I had been diligent, more diligent.

796
00:57:10.000 --> 00:57:15.559
Does he ever talk about disassociation or
abuse? Because we talked about the shining

797
00:57:15.039 --> 00:57:19.639
and his bizillarre treatment of his son, And I'm not saying he's abused his

798
00:57:19.679 --> 00:57:22.679
son at all. I don't think
he's playing that. I don't, but

799
00:57:22.760 --> 00:57:25.960
I do feel like there is a
version of this kind of disassociation. Well,

800
00:57:27.000 --> 00:57:30.119
you just talked about seeing an eyeball
when it was just your brother and

801
00:57:30.800 --> 00:57:37.199
recreating reality that you know, people
who have been in these experiences victimized in

802
00:57:37.239 --> 00:57:43.039
some ways come up with all kinds
of ways that for their subconscious, unconscious

803
00:57:43.159 --> 00:57:49.239
conscious minds to go God. Yeah, remember the Satanic panic and all of

804
00:57:49.280 --> 00:57:52.800
the kids who were being sacrificed on
the altar of Satan, and these huge

805
00:57:52.840 --> 00:57:59.519
sex orgies and all these things that
were all just mass hysteria manufactured memories.

806
00:57:59.719 --> 00:58:02.719
All this still, this craziness is
sort of where I keep coming back to

807
00:58:02.840 --> 00:58:08.039
as a possible explanation for what this
gentleman has been wrestling with for his whole

808
00:58:08.400 --> 00:58:12.280
life. It makes as much sense
as the fact that aliens have actually come

809
00:58:12.320 --> 00:58:15.599
to him over the course of his
whole life. Does he ever write about

810
00:58:15.639 --> 00:58:17.880
that? He does address that,
and it's in the later books, and

811
00:58:19.320 --> 00:58:22.239
I know he talks about there's one
of the books, I can't remember which

812
00:58:22.239 --> 00:58:24.159
one. He took a lot about
kind of the nature of memory and how

813
00:58:24.239 --> 00:58:28.840
memory works, and that if you
are if you have an experience, you're

814
00:58:28.880 --> 00:58:35.840
exposed to something that is that is
traumatizing, but it's an experience that's that

815
00:58:35.920 --> 00:58:38.800
you have no frame of reference for. You've never had an experience like that,

816
00:58:38.840 --> 00:58:42.400
You've never seen anything like that.
You've never seen anything like that in

817
00:58:42.440 --> 00:58:45.079
a movie. You know, you
just have No, it's something that's you

818
00:58:45.119 --> 00:58:49.440
can't put it in any box.
Your memory doesn't know what to do with

819
00:58:49.519 --> 00:58:52.519
it, doesn't know what it is, doesn't know how to process it.

820
00:58:52.599 --> 00:58:57.119
You know, it buries that experience, it hides that experience, or or

821
00:58:57.480 --> 00:59:00.039
it kind of puts a mask on
that experience, It puts us you know.

822
00:59:00.239 --> 00:59:04.800
He talks a lot about screen memories, the Freudian idea of screen memories,

823
00:59:04.960 --> 00:59:08.440
and certainly as the books go on. I mean there's a thing that's

824
00:59:08.480 --> 00:59:14.559
hinted at in the Communion book.
It's something that comes up in his hypnosis

825
00:59:14.599 --> 00:59:17.519
session, and I think trying to
remember how much it's there, if it's

826
00:59:17.559 --> 00:59:22.079
there at all in the in the
movie, almost a kind of a throw

827
00:59:22.119 --> 00:59:24.679
away, this idea that the visitors
came to him even as a child,

828
00:59:25.199 --> 00:59:28.880
and then you pass it on to
your kids. That comes up in that

829
00:59:28.920 --> 00:59:32.079
group's therapy session, as well as
I think it comes up a little bit

830
00:59:32.079 --> 00:59:37.320
before that. So he wrote an
entire book about that, about these memories

831
00:59:37.599 --> 00:59:43.679
that came back to him years later, about these sort of strange experiences he

832
00:59:43.760 --> 00:59:45.519
had as a child. Is a
book called The Secret School. You know

833
00:59:45.559 --> 00:59:50.880
that he was actually in some kind
of school taught by these aliens, and

834
00:59:50.920 --> 00:59:54.440
so when he saw them in nineteen
eighty five, he was he was actually

835
00:59:54.480 --> 00:59:58.559
remembering them, you know, that
this was something that had been with him

836
00:59:58.599 --> 01:00:01.960
all his life. I mean,
he next it to he grew up in

837
01:00:01.599 --> 01:00:07.519
in in Texas. He had a
uncle I believe it was actually in the

838
01:00:07.519 --> 01:00:10.639
military who was actually at Roswell,
which is you know, at least in

839
01:00:10.719 --> 01:00:15.679
terms of you know, publicly available
military record that's accurate, that's true.

840
01:00:15.760 --> 01:00:19.920
You know. So there's it's this
family connection and the idea of things being

841
01:00:20.119 --> 01:00:23.000
you know, passed on or being
in a family that was associated with with

842
01:00:23.159 --> 01:00:28.199
that. That there's some kind of
you know, trickle trickle down from there.

843
01:00:28.239 --> 01:00:31.440
But you know, he's certainly you
know, the whole question of childhood

844
01:00:31.480 --> 01:00:37.599
abuse or strange experience in childhood that
then is repressed, it becomes kind of

845
01:00:37.599 --> 01:00:39.679
a buried trauma. I mean,
that's more. That is a theme that

846
01:00:39.800 --> 01:00:44.320
comes into the later books, especially
the Secret School, and I think I

847
01:00:44.360 --> 01:00:50.199
think even I think there's even another
experience that's I can't remember which book.

848
01:00:50.840 --> 01:00:52.599
There's a book after that, I
think where he talks about another experience.

849
01:00:52.639 --> 01:00:57.840
It's even before the Secret School experience
that is doesn't deal with aliens at all,

850
01:00:57.880 --> 01:01:00.639
but does deal with being abused as
a child, I believe sexually abused

851
01:01:00.639 --> 01:01:06.039
as a child. There's a lot
there. You talked about that scene towards

852
01:01:06.079 --> 01:01:08.719
the end in the art gallery where
they're addressing each other, but they're really

853
01:01:08.719 --> 01:01:13.239
addressing the camera, and you get
that a lot in this movie. I

854
01:01:13.280 --> 01:01:19.519
forgot about when even the Christmas Pageants
starts, you get the little girl who's

855
01:01:19.559 --> 01:01:22.400
announcing things, and you get that, you know, real good close up

856
01:01:22.400 --> 01:01:27.400
of her. It's almost like he
was kind of presaging some of the Jonathan

857
01:01:27.440 --> 01:01:30.320
Demi close ups, you know,
where you're just addressing the camera. He

858
01:01:30.519 --> 01:01:34.960
keeps it more in focus in the
background. It's not that tightness that you

859
01:01:35.000 --> 01:01:37.679
get in things like Philadelphia. But
he has a lot of that, a

860
01:01:37.760 --> 01:01:43.840
lot a lot of addressing us but
addressing the camera type of thing, or

861
01:01:44.199 --> 01:01:47.800
sometimes it's addressing each other but you
don't even know that he's talking to somebody

862
01:01:47.880 --> 01:01:52.239
else, Like the walking character is
like talking to us, but then he's

863
01:01:52.280 --> 01:01:55.360
actually talking to an alien or talking
to somebody else, and you're like,

864
01:01:55.880 --> 01:02:00.519
okay, it really again. He
keeps us off balance a lot with this

865
01:02:00.559 --> 01:02:05.599
film, and there are moments when
Walkin looks right into the camera, he

866
01:02:05.639 --> 01:02:09.320
looks, he breaks the fourth wall
for sure to me and says, like,

867
01:02:09.800 --> 01:02:12.920
you know, do you you know
I'm looking at you? Or do

868
01:02:13.000 --> 01:02:15.559
you see what I'm seeing? Things
like this subtle. I didn't even pick

869
01:02:15.639 --> 01:02:19.159
up on it the first time,
but it's there two or three times,

870
01:02:19.360 --> 01:02:22.000
and maybe it was just they just
you know, he looked in the camera

871
01:02:22.039 --> 01:02:23.920
to say can we cut, and
they just left it in there. I

872
01:02:23.920 --> 01:02:28.880
don't know, but you're right,
he does play with the nature of reality,

873
01:02:29.079 --> 01:02:32.079
even the nature of the filmmaking reality. It ends at least three times.

874
01:02:32.079 --> 01:02:36.079
There's at least three endings to this
thing, right, there's the ending,

875
01:02:36.239 --> 01:02:37.400
then there's oh yeah, maybe that
works as an ending. Then there's

876
01:02:37.400 --> 01:02:40.039
the ending, and then there's the
actual ending, which is a terrible ending.

877
01:02:40.119 --> 01:02:45.320
I mean, there's the weirdest rap
of a movie. You know,

878
01:02:45.360 --> 01:02:47.960
it's bizarre, right, I don't
know, fascinating, Oh, you know,

879
01:02:49.000 --> 01:02:52.239
it's fascinating to talk about and try
to unpack because there really are some

880
01:02:52.440 --> 01:02:58.559
very very interesting ideas, talented people
wrestling with this stuff on a kind of

881
01:02:58.599 --> 01:03:00.039
budget. And you got to give
me more scares, and we need more

882
01:03:00.039 --> 01:03:05.639
spooky shit, and you know,
I think it's it's sort of a messy,

883
01:03:05.719 --> 01:03:08.719
messy movie. You get those weird
things like when his sun takes a

884
01:03:08.760 --> 01:03:14.679
polaroid picture and the flash goes off
and the whole movie just stops. It's

885
01:03:14.679 --> 01:03:17.159
a freeze frame right in the middle
of that flash. Like I had to

886
01:03:17.159 --> 01:03:21.679
go back and watch that two or
three times to say, was something wrong

887
01:03:21.719 --> 01:03:24.920
with my TV or the disk or
whatever? And no, it's like that

888
01:03:24.960 --> 01:03:29.719
on every single version I've seen.
The whole movie is a freeze frame when

889
01:03:29.760 --> 01:03:32.440
that flash goes off. And again
the bright light type of thing. It's

890
01:03:32.519 --> 01:03:36.440
unsettling, I mean, because you
don't know why it's there. Yeah,

891
01:03:36.440 --> 01:03:38.000
because then he takes the camera,
turns around, takes a picture of his

892
01:03:38.079 --> 01:03:43.400
son. Just a flash goes off
regular and you're talking about the whole idea

893
01:03:43.400 --> 01:03:46.199
of like the relationship with the sun
and stuff. And there's one part where

894
01:03:46.840 --> 01:03:52.719
Walking and the anti character are talking
to each other about the sun and the

895
01:03:52.760 --> 01:03:55.159
Sun's laying right there, and I'm
just like, when shod't you go out

896
01:03:55.199 --> 01:03:59.760
of the room to talk about this
stuff, because like, again, who

897
01:03:59.760 --> 01:04:03.039
knows what is filtering into this kid
sub conscious when you guys are just talking

898
01:04:03.079 --> 01:04:09.079
about him and the problems he's having
right next to the kid, and then

899
01:04:09.119 --> 01:04:12.360
you wonder why he's having these strange
dreams. Well, it could be you

900
01:04:12.360 --> 01:04:16.239
know, the big insects that are
hanging out at the cabin, the terrible

901
01:04:16.320 --> 01:04:20.519
t Rex posters that he's got.
I mean, just looking at the artwork

902
01:04:20.639 --> 01:04:25.960
in this movie, because I know
that Phelipe Moron loves art, and there's

903
01:04:26.199 --> 01:04:30.320
art everywhere in this you know.
I mentioned the wolf painting that he puts

904
01:04:30.400 --> 01:04:35.039
up, this very surrealist wolf painting. The hell even the clock that he's

905
01:04:35.039 --> 01:04:40.239
got is really wild, with the
three d arrows that are going around.

906
01:04:40.280 --> 01:04:44.000
But if you look, every single
wall has a piece of art on it.

907
01:04:44.000 --> 01:04:46.119
It would be interesting to just go
through this whole movie and just look

908
01:04:46.159 --> 01:04:50.079
at all the art and see if
that's telling a story into itself. I

909
01:04:50.079 --> 01:04:55.840
think you give him so much more
credit. So I wish I wish I

910
01:04:55.840 --> 01:04:57.960
could say, oh, yeah,
absolutely, I mean, you're right,

911
01:04:58.039 --> 01:05:00.000
the clock is great, and the
wolf. I was like, oh,

912
01:05:00.039 --> 01:05:02.079
he wrote wolf in he would have
a wolf picture. Yeah, I don't

913
01:05:02.119 --> 01:05:09.280
know. Philip Morris sounds like a
fascinating guy who had a ball making movies

914
01:05:09.280 --> 01:05:12.519
for as long as he did.
And you know, I mean, if

915
01:05:12.559 --> 01:05:16.199
you've seen any of the Return of
Captain Invincible, which really has to be

916
01:05:16.239 --> 01:05:23.440
seen to be disbelieved that's in anyone's
filmography, that that movie even exists is

917
01:05:23.719 --> 01:05:30.400
a gobsmacking wonder to behold. Christopher
Lee singing Alan Arkins two pay not singing

918
01:05:31.320 --> 01:05:35.840
It is a maze Burgers. I
think the guy who did the Room two

919
01:05:35.880 --> 01:05:40.400
thirty seven documentary should just do one
on communion. All right, We're going

920
01:05:40.480 --> 01:05:42.840
to take a break and play a
pair of interviews. First up, we'll

921
01:05:42.840 --> 01:05:45.880
hear from director Felipe Mora, and
after that you'll hear from author Whitley Strieber.

922
01:05:46.199 --> 01:05:49.480
And we'll be back with both of
those right after these brief messages.

923
01:05:50.519 --> 01:05:55.320
Hello, Projection Booth listeners, this
is Mark Bigley, the host of Wake

924
01:05:55.360 --> 01:06:00.400
Up Heavy recollections of horror. You
may remember me from Projection Booth episode odes

925
01:06:00.480 --> 01:06:04.960
on the Antenna, Crumbs and the
Brood, and Mike White himself has appeared

926
01:06:05.000 --> 01:06:10.519
on my show where we discussed Erase
your Head, Taxi Driver, the Evil

927
01:06:10.559 --> 01:06:14.920
Dead, and Shivers. Wake Up
Heavy is a show where I talk about

928
01:06:14.960 --> 01:06:18.480
movies that blew my mind as a
kid, things like phantasm. This morning

929
01:06:18.519 --> 01:06:25.679
Shuns are bullshit, tourist trap,
You're so pretty dead and buried, Welcome

930
01:06:25.719 --> 01:06:32.599
to and Halloween. Three. Other
guests have included genre film journalists Anya Stanley,

931
01:06:33.000 --> 01:06:38.360
Jerry Smith, Sam Panico, and
Simon FitzJohn. Every once in a

932
01:06:38.400 --> 01:06:41.639
while, I even convinced my own
daughter Cleo to join me. Hey,

933
01:06:41.960 --> 01:06:45.679
that's me usually though, It's just
me a Mike and my memories of some

934
01:06:45.840 --> 01:06:51.440
really wonderful horror films. So come
check us out Wakeupheavy dot com, SoundCloud

935
01:06:51.480 --> 01:06:57.000
dot com, slash, wake Up
Heavy, or your favorite podcast platform,

936
01:06:57.320 --> 01:07:16.599
and don't forget anything can happen.
And when you wake up Heavy, obviously

937
01:07:16.639 --> 01:07:19.800
I want to talk to you about
communion, but I was really hoping you

938
01:07:19.800 --> 01:07:23.639
could tell me a little bit more, just even how you got interested in

939
01:07:23.760 --> 01:07:28.360
movies and making movies. The brief
version is I grew up in Melbourne,

940
01:07:28.719 --> 01:07:32.880
in the city, and all the
cinemas were around us in the city,

941
01:07:33.039 --> 01:07:38.320
and that those were the days when
the studios owned the cinemas. So MGM

942
01:07:38.440 --> 01:07:42.079
had an MGM Cinema, Warner Brothers, Fox, they all had their own

943
01:07:42.079 --> 01:07:45.639
cinemas. So basically, as a
kid, I'd see everything and I just

944
01:07:45.760 --> 01:07:51.119
loved movies from that time on.
What particularly got my attention because I saw

945
01:07:51.199 --> 01:07:58.119
so many was really bad movies and
mistakes. For example, the Greatest Story

946
01:07:58.159 --> 01:08:04.159
Ever Told in sixty five mil,
projected in seven in mil. I noticed

947
01:08:04.199 --> 01:08:10.039
that during the sermon on the mount, an extra was looking at his watch,

948
01:08:10.719 --> 01:08:15.039
and that really intrigued me. So
I started looking for mistakes in movies

949
01:08:15.279 --> 01:08:19.319
continuity. So that's how I really, that's how I got involved technically in

950
01:08:19.399 --> 01:08:24.520
movies is by watching the mistakes.
Like any kit, I loved the movies.

951
01:08:24.560 --> 01:08:27.199
I love the Three Stooges. I
like Suit the Man, I liked

952
01:08:27.239 --> 01:08:30.399
all that stuff. And then I
got a bit more sophisticated in my taste

953
01:08:31.119 --> 01:08:35.680
as I got older, and I
remember my mother, actually, my mother

954
01:08:36.039 --> 01:08:42.439
took me to a film festival early
on and they were showing Jean Cocteau's Blood

955
01:08:42.439 --> 01:08:45.399
of a Poet, and I remember
being freaked out by that film because there's

956
01:08:45.439 --> 01:08:49.680
a scene where people are climbing on
the ceiling and that was a sort of

957
01:08:50.119 --> 01:08:55.199
traumatic thing for me, which got
me interested in film. So, look,

958
01:08:55.239 --> 01:08:59.079
there isn't one reason, many reasons. And then my dad was very

959
01:08:59.199 --> 01:09:02.560
encouraging and he bought me a eight
mil camera when I was very young and

960
01:09:02.600 --> 01:09:08.520
I started making my own songs and
then a sixteen mil camera. We still

961
01:09:08.560 --> 01:09:13.079
got those films. The national archives
in Australia have been and some of that

962
01:09:13.159 --> 01:09:16.079
are pretty funny. I did my
own version of West Side Story running up

963
01:09:16.079 --> 01:09:20.880
and down the backstreets of Melbourne.
So look, as I say, it's

964
01:09:20.880 --> 01:09:25.000
a long answer to all of that. But I just grew up with film

965
01:09:25.640 --> 01:09:30.840
now, started a film magazine,
took cinema papers in Australia, and then

966
01:09:30.880 --> 01:09:35.239
I made the first movie, first
Australia movie that got a quite a big

967
01:09:35.319 --> 01:09:41.039
release in the States, Mad Doc
Morgan with Dennis Hopper, and that sort

968
01:09:41.039 --> 01:09:44.960
of broke the ice for Ossie films. I'm proud of that fact. And

969
01:09:45.000 --> 01:09:47.199
then I went on from there and
I got a great review in the Los

970
01:09:47.199 --> 01:09:54.000
Angeles Times for Mad Dog Morgan.
They said the sick could signal the renaissance

971
01:09:54.039 --> 01:10:00.600
of Australian film. And in New
York it got trashed and the New toasted

972
01:10:00.680 --> 01:10:03.680
that everyone involved with this storm should
be locked up and the Keith Way.

973
01:10:04.439 --> 01:10:12.000
So I naturally gravitated to La where
the response was more encouraging. Gree this

974
01:10:12.159 --> 01:10:15.279
story ever told, I want to
say was sixty five and you were,

975
01:10:15.520 --> 01:10:19.600
what sixteen when you saw that?
Fifteen? Yeah, I was born in

976
01:10:19.680 --> 01:10:25.319
forty nine. Yeah, yeah,
in the film very early and you're making

977
01:10:25.359 --> 01:10:29.840
shorts even back then. I was, Yeah, I was. And there

978
01:10:29.880 --> 01:10:32.279
was a I don't know how you
described the store now, but it was

979
01:10:32.439 --> 01:10:36.199
a camera an old fashioned camera store, and they were selling all kinds of

980
01:10:36.239 --> 01:10:41.960
camera gear. This is in Melbourne. There was a box of old film

981
01:10:42.560 --> 01:10:47.960
which I bought and there was somehow
I managed to screen it and it turned

982
01:10:48.000 --> 01:10:56.960
out to be Australian training films for
identifying enemy aircraft in World War Two,

983
01:10:57.600 --> 01:11:00.720
and I think that that kind of
got me in the document ent. Well,

984
01:11:00.920 --> 01:11:04.880
no, that was really interesting.
So yes, I thought films have

985
01:11:05.039 --> 01:11:10.119
always been part of my life.
Dad has art been, because my mother

986
01:11:10.239 --> 01:11:13.960
was an artist and my dad was
an art dealer. There's a really little

987
01:11:14.000 --> 01:11:18.720
footnote to film history here, which
is my dad was going to study medicine

988
01:11:18.760 --> 01:11:27.880
in ninety thirty three in Berlin and
his landladies turned out to be Eric Romstroheim's

989
01:11:27.920 --> 01:11:31.319
sisters. And my dad told me
that told me how they would get letters

990
01:11:31.359 --> 01:11:35.359
from Hollywood and they'd show them to
my dad and say, look, this

991
01:11:35.439 --> 01:11:41.239
is Eric is doing so well.
Can you tell me a little bit about

992
01:11:41.279 --> 01:11:44.359
Trouble in Molopolis because I've been trying
to find that one that I've not been

993
01:11:44.399 --> 01:11:46.239
able to track it down. I
can send you a link for it.

994
01:11:46.239 --> 01:11:49.840
It hasn't been widely distributed at all, but I will. I'm going to

995
01:11:49.840 --> 01:11:55.199
put out a proper version that was
shot in thirty five mil Again. This

996
01:11:55.359 --> 01:11:59.960
is the brief version. My roommate
dicerned, I'm very good at name dropping,

997
01:12:00.079 --> 01:12:03.560
by the way, And I was
living at the time with Eric Clapton

998
01:12:03.680 --> 01:12:12.039
in London in nineteen seventy and we
were both film buffs. Eric particularly liked

999
01:12:12.439 --> 01:12:19.560
Japanese movies Kurosawa, and we lived
near a cinema in Kings Road, Chelsea.

1000
01:12:20.319 --> 01:12:26.680
But we talked about movies a lot. But anyway, when Eric did

1001
01:12:26.720 --> 01:12:30.640
the first cream tour in the United
States, he came back to London.

1002
01:12:30.640 --> 01:12:35.000
There was this huge success and he
got a phone call and he put the

1003
01:12:35.039 --> 01:12:43.520
phone down and he said, fuck, I'm rich. And then and this

1004
01:12:43.600 --> 01:12:47.279
all happened very quickly. And then
later, like an hour later, Eric

1005
01:12:47.319 --> 01:12:51.000
said to me, Hey, didn't
you want to make a movie? I

1006
01:12:51.039 --> 01:12:55.279
said yes, yeah, He said, how much would that cost, and

1007
01:12:55.359 --> 01:12:58.520
I said, I thought of the
biggest number I could. I said,

1008
01:12:58.560 --> 01:13:03.079
I'll about five thousand pounds, I
said, with confidence. And so he

1009
01:13:03.119 --> 01:13:05.399
said, okay, come on,
we've got to go see We'll go and

1010
01:13:05.439 --> 01:13:12.680
see Steigwood. That was his manager, Robert Stigwood. We marched into Steikwood's

1011
01:13:12.680 --> 01:13:17.800
office in Layfair. He was already
very successful because he'd had the represented the

1012
01:13:17.840 --> 01:13:24.640
Beaches. Eric said, Diggy Khalid
wants to make a movie. Give him

1013
01:13:24.640 --> 01:13:29.720
a check please, for five thousand
pounds, and Stigwood fed, wait a

1014
01:13:29.760 --> 01:13:33.680
minute, Eric, wait a minute, what's the deal. And Eric said,

1015
01:13:34.399 --> 01:13:38.720
to remember this is the sixties.
Eric said, there's no deal,

1016
01:13:40.119 --> 01:13:42.880
Steggy, there's no deal. He
wants to make a movie. Give him

1017
01:13:42.920 --> 01:13:46.159
the money. And then, grudge
grudgingly, Stigwood wrote out a check for

1018
01:13:46.199 --> 01:13:50.960
five thousand pounds. So that was
the birth of Choubling Monopolis, which was

1019
01:13:51.079 --> 01:13:58.039
shot him thirty five mill and I
got the film stock wards. I knew

1020
01:13:58.119 --> 01:14:02.119
Sandy Ligerson, the producer, and
he had just made Performance Start with Mick

1021
01:14:02.199 --> 01:14:09.079
Jagger, and in his office he
had the short ends from that shoot and

1022
01:14:09.279 --> 01:14:15.279
he gave me the short ends of
Performance thirty five mils film the Monopolis is

1023
01:14:15.319 --> 01:14:18.600
shot on the short ends of performance. How did you get your hands out

1024
01:14:18.680 --> 01:14:25.880
all of the footage for Swastika that
was a bit more conventional, In other

1025
01:14:25.920 --> 01:14:29.600
words, we had a proper budget
and so on and so forth. Sandy

1026
01:14:29.640 --> 01:14:34.880
Liberson was the producer with his then
partner David Putnam, but it was Liberson

1027
01:14:34.880 --> 01:14:42.479
who was mostly behind it, and
he had just brought the rights to Inside

1028
01:14:42.520 --> 01:14:47.720
the Third Reich, the memoirle by
Outlet Spear, and I was very interested

1029
01:14:47.840 --> 01:14:53.239
in Third Rich because of my family
background, and many of my family had

1030
01:14:53.279 --> 01:14:59.199
died unfortunately in World War Two.
But Beavers may Sandy. I said to

1031
01:14:59.239 --> 01:15:04.319
Sandy, O, could I film
a documentary about you making Inside the Third

1032
01:15:04.359 --> 01:15:08.720
Reich, which was going to be
a paramount picture at that time, And

1033
01:15:08.760 --> 01:15:12.520
he said yeah. In other words, the film of the film. The

1034
01:15:12.560 --> 01:15:16.239
Hollywood production fell apart at that point, but he said, keep going on

1035
01:15:16.359 --> 01:15:20.840
the film of the film. And
I'd already started researching and looking for film

1036
01:15:21.479 --> 01:15:28.720
with Lutz Becker, who had been
a film historian at the Slave School in

1037
01:15:29.119 --> 01:15:35.920
London. So we started collaborating and
we split up the huge story obviously,

1038
01:15:36.000 --> 01:15:41.720
all this World War two. We
split it up so Luke was going to

1039
01:15:41.720 --> 01:15:45.159
make a film about the rise of
Nazism and Hitler, and I was going

1040
01:15:45.199 --> 01:15:53.000
to make a film originally called the
Marxification of Germany, just showing how the

1041
01:15:53.119 --> 01:15:59.000
Nauchis took over every aspect of life
for Germany. And so that's what happened.

1042
01:15:59.800 --> 01:16:03.920
So I went to Germany with words
and we started going through hours and

1043
01:16:04.000 --> 01:16:09.720
hours of Datzi footage, which to
me it was astonishing. I just couldn't

1044
01:16:09.720 --> 01:16:15.000
believe all this stuff. We went
to a old Gestafo headquarters which was then

1045
01:16:15.359 --> 01:16:23.520
the Archives of Germany, their storing
film in dungeons, and so I went

1046
01:16:23.560 --> 01:16:27.760
through hours and hours of film and
that's how we found the stuff. I

1047
01:16:27.880 --> 01:16:33.880
was always looking for private footage fitbut
which we couldn't find except on one occasion.

1048
01:16:34.119 --> 01:16:40.000
Sandy had got into an introduction to
Albert Spear, who we went to

1049
01:16:40.039 --> 01:16:46.600
Albert Speer's home in Heidelberg and technical
notes of the Geeks the Germans throughout the

1050
01:16:46.640 --> 01:16:54.760
Third Reish. They're all Ovy fanatics. That they filmed in a gauge called

1051
01:16:54.840 --> 01:16:59.159
nine point five millimeter, which was
a gauge where the spokanole was in the

1052
01:16:59.199 --> 01:17:01.960
center of the frame between the on
the frame line. But anyway, Spear

1053
01:17:02.359 --> 01:17:09.039
showed us some of his home movies
and I was I was waiting for the

1054
01:17:09.039 --> 01:17:12.079
shot of Hitler, which which never
emerged, and I said to him,

1055
01:17:12.319 --> 01:17:15.720
didn't you film Hitler? As he
said, no, I didn't film Hitler.

1056
01:17:15.840 --> 01:17:19.560
He was lying. By the way, as it turned out, he

1057
01:17:19.720 --> 01:17:24.640
was protecting his children, because as
in Swastika, as it turns out,

1058
01:17:24.720 --> 01:17:29.079
Hitler's playing with kids and they're Aldert
Spear's kids. So I understand that he

1059
01:17:29.199 --> 01:17:31.319
was just protecting his family. But
he didn't. He wasn't straight with us

1060
01:17:31.359 --> 01:17:38.439
at all. But that went on
for some time and then the then it

1061
01:17:38.520 --> 01:17:42.479
turned out just like cutting the story
short because it is too long. But

1062
01:17:42.560 --> 01:17:46.880
the carried out that the Marine and
Signal Corps, which was part of the

1063
01:17:47.000 --> 01:17:53.199
US Army, had an intelligence unit
which was the first into Hitler's house at

1064
01:17:53.199 --> 01:17:58.239
the bird Core, and I had
seen a photo I think a Braun filming

1065
01:17:58.319 --> 01:18:04.279
Hitler with a sixteen Knol camera and
at one point I called up the Pentagon.

1066
01:18:05.000 --> 01:18:10.399
I just rang them up and said, filmmaker from Australia. There was

1067
01:18:10.439 --> 01:18:13.600
different times, there was no Parenoia
like there is now. They are very

1068
01:18:13.600 --> 01:18:17.640
friendly and I said did you capture
any film in Hitler's house? Because I

1069
01:18:17.720 --> 01:18:20.560
know you were the first in.
He said, I don't know, sir,

1070
01:18:20.600 --> 01:18:25.399
but we'll call you back. Three
months later. I do remember he

1071
01:18:25.479 --> 01:18:28.199
was a colonel called me back.
I was then in London, and he

1072
01:18:28.239 --> 01:18:33.039
said, mister Moore, regarding your
inquiry, I've located eight hands of sixteen

1073
01:18:33.039 --> 01:18:40.239
milimeter calor film captured in Eva Braun's
bedroom and her private garden. Is that

1074
01:18:40.279 --> 01:18:45.920
what you're looking for? I was
just amazing. And now every shot of

1075
01:18:45.960 --> 01:18:49.920
Fitley in the Endless shows on the
History Channel and other sources, they're all

1076
01:18:49.960 --> 01:18:55.800
showing that stuff that we located,
that color stuff that we located with that

1077
01:18:55.920 --> 01:19:00.960
phone call, and it was a
sensation when we showed. But no one

1078
01:19:00.960 --> 01:19:08.039
had seen Hitler in color, and
that's important because that the color aspect was

1079
01:19:08.079 --> 01:19:14.920
what made Swastika unique. The Pentagon
had released black and white footage from the

1080
01:19:14.960 --> 01:19:20.039
home movies in newsreels when the war
ended, and Lash magazine had published some

1081
01:19:20.479 --> 01:19:25.800
black and white photos from the home
movies that no one had ever seen the

1082
01:19:25.920 --> 01:19:30.199
color stuff, and it just made
Hitler very real, was that's the right

1083
01:19:30.279 --> 01:19:34.439
word. And that freaked people out
when the film was shown at can in

1084
01:19:34.520 --> 01:19:41.119
nineteen seventy three, and one of
the shots mains amazing shot really to me.

1085
01:19:41.800 --> 01:19:45.840
That shows Eva Braun with her camera
in the window behind Hitler and you

1086
01:19:45.960 --> 01:19:50.560
realize that it's just the two of
them on the terrors. Hitler's behaving as

1087
01:19:50.600 --> 01:19:55.720
if there's two Adren just two thousand
people there that there's not. There's just

1088
01:19:55.800 --> 01:20:00.319
his girlfriend. But anyway, that
caused the real stir and that still has

1089
01:20:01.039 --> 01:20:04.399
the whole point of swastik over.
The whole point I was trying to make

1090
01:20:04.520 --> 01:20:10.279
is that Hitler wasn't from Jupiter or
anything anywhere. He was a human being,

1091
01:20:10.800 --> 01:20:15.199
which made that is either worse or
better, depending on the point of

1092
01:20:15.279 --> 01:20:18.960
view. But if you didn't realize
that Hitler was human, you were not

1093
01:20:19.000 --> 01:20:23.239
going to see the next one coming. That was the point of showing him

1094
01:20:23.239 --> 01:20:29.199
playing with kids and things. That
issue is still controversial. People us say

1095
01:20:29.319 --> 01:20:30.920
why you showed it the playing with
kids. Well, the reason we did

1096
01:20:31.000 --> 01:20:35.399
is because Hitler did play with kids. He killed them as well. That's

1097
01:20:35.439 --> 01:20:41.239
another story. And that was only
four years after Molopolis and you were already

1098
01:20:41.560 --> 01:20:45.560
playing at con. That must have
been pretty astounding for you. It was

1099
01:20:46.000 --> 01:20:50.479
It's more astounding in retrospect. But
I was very young and I was just

1100
01:20:50.680 --> 01:20:56.720
charging forward, and I got lucky. I got lucky seeing the photo of

1101
01:20:57.359 --> 01:21:00.680
Actually there's a lot obviously a lot
of lucky. But the interesting thing to

1102
01:21:00.760 --> 01:21:05.520
me even now, and I recently
spoke to the guy who was head of

1103
01:21:05.560 --> 01:21:10.039
the National Archives at the time in
Washington. His name was William T.

1104
01:21:10.239 --> 01:21:14.920
Murphy. He was very helpful to
me. But the interesting thing is,

1105
01:21:15.760 --> 01:21:18.920
no one at art for the home
movies, no one had asked that question,

1106
01:21:19.079 --> 01:21:24.680
did you find any film in Hitler's
house? And that's a life lesson

1107
01:21:24.760 --> 01:21:28.199
for me. It's not the answer
that counts, it's the question. You

1108
01:21:28.319 --> 01:21:32.319
worked several times with Christopher Lee.
How was he to work with It's fantastic.

1109
01:21:32.880 --> 01:21:39.119
We bonded really actually on the same
subject matter we've been discussing because he

1110
01:21:39.199 --> 01:21:44.399
had been in intelligence in World War
Two. He greatly liked Swastika and he

1111
01:21:44.560 --> 01:21:47.319
liked the whole story surrounding it.
So we had a lot to talk about

1112
01:21:47.399 --> 01:21:54.920
because he knew more about World War
Two than most people. And I'm working

1113
01:21:54.960 --> 01:21:58.479
on a film about him now.
We're nearly done. It's a documentary,

1114
01:21:59.039 --> 01:22:03.800
but it's he's a fascinating character.
And his cousin was Ian Fleming, and

1115
01:22:04.520 --> 01:22:12.479
there are various various interviews with Fleming
where he says that James Bond was partly

1116
01:22:12.520 --> 01:22:16.079
based on what Christopher Lee told him
of his adventures. When I heard that,

1117
01:22:16.199 --> 01:22:21.000
I thought this is incredible. James
Bond was Dracula, and we just

1118
01:22:21.079 --> 01:22:27.840
got on and he was an amazing
fellow. He spoke many languages, and

1119
01:22:28.000 --> 01:22:32.760
he was a full on Narchi hater. He was. He'd been involved in

1120
01:22:33.840 --> 01:22:41.520
catching Narchis after the war as well, and he became macabre. But he

1121
01:22:41.600 --> 01:22:47.079
became very friendly with the official hangman
of Nuremberg, Albert Pierrepont, and he

1122
01:22:47.520 --> 01:22:53.680
Christopher claimed there was no reason why
he was bsing me, but he said

1123
01:22:53.720 --> 01:23:00.159
he did help in some hangings of
Nazis, including the ex acution of Ernst

1124
01:23:00.319 --> 01:23:08.039
Calton Brunner, who was the placement
of Ryan Hard Hydrich, who was the

1125
01:23:08.079 --> 01:23:12.439
only top Nachi assassinated in World War
two. Anyway, so we had a

1126
01:23:12.439 --> 01:23:16.279
lot to talk about. He was
incredible. Of just repeating myself now,

1127
01:23:16.640 --> 01:23:20.119
it is an incredible character. He
could sing Wagner operas, he knew the

1128
01:23:20.119 --> 01:23:26.159
operas. He could sing in German
and they say that one of the unfortunate

1129
01:23:26.199 --> 01:23:30.439
things that could happen to you,
issue were flying first class from la to

1130
01:23:30.520 --> 01:23:34.239
London, was to if someone asked
Christopher to sing, because then you would

1131
01:23:34.239 --> 01:23:41.039
get the whole need belonged a opera
and you trapped in first class. In

1132
01:23:41.560 --> 01:23:45.560
at least both Return of Captain and
Its Boy and Howling Too, he seems

1133
01:23:45.560 --> 01:23:48.159
to be just having such a good
time. It seems like he is,

1134
01:23:48.840 --> 01:23:53.000
let's say, in on the joke, especially with Howling Too, he just

1135
01:23:53.000 --> 01:23:58.840
seems so game for whatever you're having
him do. I think I couldn't have

1136
01:23:58.880 --> 01:24:02.479
put it better. He was very
game, and he had a fantastic sense

1137
01:24:02.520 --> 01:24:05.920
of humor, which, of course, if you didn't know him and you

1138
01:24:06.079 --> 01:24:12.239
just saw the Hammer Jacular movies,
you wouldn't understand that this was quite a

1139
01:24:12.239 --> 01:24:17.319
big joke to him. After what
he'd seen in the war and after the

1140
01:24:17.399 --> 01:24:23.760
war and being involved in executing Nazis
and stuff. All this so called horror

1141
01:24:23.880 --> 01:24:27.640
was just a joke to him.
Really. On the other hand, I

1142
01:24:27.680 --> 01:24:31.199
would put this note that because of
what he'd seen, he did have a

1143
01:24:31.279 --> 01:24:38.840
gravitas, which I believe sold those
Dracula movies and sold him as the greatest

1144
01:24:38.920 --> 01:24:45.520
Dracula because he that's something you can't
act, that he'd experienced real horror,

1145
01:24:45.000 --> 01:24:49.159
and I think that's there in his
performances. That's my private feeling about why

1146
01:24:50.199 --> 01:24:56.520
he will remain an horror icon.
But yes, his sense of humor,

1147
01:24:57.000 --> 01:25:01.800
particularly also in Captain Invincible, it
was very important. I knew that he

1148
01:25:01.840 --> 01:25:09.079
loved singing. I'd heard that story
about him singing Wagnert in First Glass.

1149
01:25:09.560 --> 01:25:12.399
I'd heard that story. So I
knew that he loved singing. And I

1150
01:25:12.479 --> 01:25:15.760
said, would you sing in in
Captain Inventive? Lo, I'd love to.

1151
01:25:16.479 --> 01:25:21.600
And so I think that's a great
number where he the great lyric All

1152
01:25:21.640 --> 01:25:27.479
the Drink that you blame did a
great song with the lyric of the song

1153
01:25:27.640 --> 01:25:33.159
is every drink in your cocktail book. And so Christopher, he did talk

1154
01:25:33.159 --> 01:25:39.119
about Gleefel and being game and he
loved doing that. It may be unfair,

1155
01:25:39.159 --> 01:25:42.680
but I think one of my favorite
films of yours is Howling three.

1156
01:25:42.960 --> 01:25:45.399
I just love that movie and I
love what you did with that series.

1157
01:25:45.560 --> 01:25:49.399
Obviously you're playing with the humor of
the situation and just that you made it

1158
01:25:49.520 --> 01:25:55.800
such an Australian film with the Marsupials
was just terrific. Thank you. The

1159
01:25:55.920 --> 01:26:00.199
origin of that is I don't want
to go back to the Captain Cook Discovering

1160
01:26:00.239 --> 01:26:05.960
Australia. But the origin of the
movie was, if you do a sequel,

1161
01:26:06.640 --> 01:26:11.600
you're damned. If you're a director, you're damned if you do,

1162
01:26:11.680 --> 01:26:15.720
and you're damned if you don't.
If you don't copy the original, then

1163
01:26:15.760 --> 01:26:17.479
all the fans of the original say, oh, you screwed it up.

1164
01:26:18.119 --> 01:26:21.960
And then if you did copy the
original, they say, oh, you

1165
01:26:23.079 --> 01:26:28.079
just copy the original. So it's
a thankless task. But I needed to

1166
01:26:28.119 --> 01:26:32.079
make a movie. And I remember
Arthur Ross, who was a friend of

1167
01:26:32.079 --> 01:26:35.920
mine who wrote the teature from the
Black Lagoon. Yeah, he said,

1168
01:26:35.920 --> 01:26:40.560
the only reason I made that movie
is my wife's need of the station wagon.

1169
01:26:41.159 --> 01:26:45.039
And I remembered that. When I
was offered Howling too, I remember

1170
01:26:45.079 --> 01:26:47.359
that story and I thought to help
it out, going to do this.

1171
01:26:48.000 --> 01:26:53.039
But then as we got into it, oh you're talking about Hawling three.

1172
01:26:53.239 --> 01:26:57.800
But as we got into it on
Howling two, what was really interesting about

1173
01:26:57.840 --> 01:27:00.600
that is we shot it behind the
Iron Curtain. That's a whole other adventure.

1174
01:27:01.199 --> 01:27:08.840
Howling three. I wanted to do
something original and I also thought Marsupial

1175
01:27:08.920 --> 01:27:14.199
werewolves is something that's never been done, and being loyal to my upbringing in

1176
01:27:14.239 --> 01:27:16.399
Australia, I thought, well,
I just had marsupial werewolves. Why not?

1177
01:27:17.199 --> 01:27:20.600
And then I gave the script to
the financiers and they said, hey,

1178
01:27:20.600 --> 01:27:25.760
Felippe, he's sure this is a
horror movie. I said, have

1179
01:27:25.840 --> 01:27:30.000
you ever seen a ma ofsupial birth? The fetus comes out of the female

1180
01:27:30.119 --> 01:27:33.239
and climbs up the stomach and goes
into the pa. They say, stop,

1181
01:27:33.279 --> 01:27:39.600
that's a horror movie. So that's
what that elaborate scene was about in

1182
01:27:39.640 --> 01:27:44.479
the in the horror movie in Hawling
three, and now it's got a real

1183
01:27:44.560 --> 01:27:50.239
following Howling three and look they made
And they offered me, Hollie four or

1184
01:27:50.319 --> 01:27:54.279
fives that I don't want to be. I don't do not want to be

1185
01:27:54.399 --> 01:27:57.720
mister were Walls. So I stopped
at three, but it went on to

1186
01:27:57.840 --> 01:28:03.720
eight. I think it's the only
series where I started this thing of making

1187
01:28:04.319 --> 01:28:10.359
a series where the next moves got
absolutely nothing to do with the previous one.

1188
01:28:10.760 --> 01:28:15.600
From what I understand, you knew
Whitley Streeper a long time before you

1189
01:28:15.640 --> 01:28:21.039
meet Communia. I did around the
time of Trouble in the Lotlus that story

1190
01:28:21.079 --> 01:28:26.319
I told you when I was with
Eric in London. Around that time,

1191
01:28:26.479 --> 01:28:31.079
I went to the London School of
Film Technique and I went there for a

1192
01:28:31.159 --> 01:28:34.439
day to see whether it was going
to be for me any good for me,

1193
01:28:35.239 --> 01:28:42.960
and I sat next to Whitley in
a lecture by Stanlea Donant, and

1194
01:28:43.760 --> 01:28:46.479
we became friends through that. I
do remember this was the time of the

1195
01:28:46.560 --> 01:28:53.640
Vietnam War and I was quite anti
war. I still am anti wool by

1196
01:28:53.680 --> 01:29:01.119
the way, But I remember asking
Stanley Dunnan make all these musical musicals,

1197
01:29:01.159 --> 01:29:05.680
and how can you make all of
these lighthearted films when there's a war going

1198
01:29:05.760 --> 01:29:12.560
on? Well, why don't you
address those issues? Typical young student question,

1199
01:29:12.720 --> 01:29:15.479
right. He had a great answer. It's always stuck with me.

1200
01:29:15.560 --> 01:29:18.720
He said, Look, there's nothing
wrong with making a film that makes people

1201
01:29:18.760 --> 01:29:24.319
happy, that has its own function. It doesn't have to be gut wrenching

1202
01:29:24.720 --> 01:29:29.279
a film. But if it's entertainment
and it's going to give people some happiness,

1203
01:29:29.319 --> 01:29:31.800
I think that's worthwhile. So I
never forgot that. But anyway,

1204
01:29:31.840 --> 01:29:38.119
I became friendly with Whitley and he
had a great such of humor, which

1205
01:29:38.159 --> 01:29:43.880
I was reminded of years later when
we made communion. But that's how that

1206
01:29:44.000 --> 01:29:47.399
happened. And then years later I
didn't know he became a best selling author.

1207
01:29:47.600 --> 01:29:53.000
Actually with all for them everything.
I was in New York and I

1208
01:29:53.119 --> 01:29:56.479
was in the in a bookstore and
I saw Whitley Streeter and I thought,

1209
01:29:56.479 --> 01:30:00.399
I wonder if that's the same guy
from the London, from London so called

1210
01:30:00.399 --> 01:30:01.960
the publishers. I said, I
think i'd just like to know. My

1211
01:30:02.039 --> 01:30:05.039
name is Felipe Moore. I met
this. I think I met Whitley in

1212
01:30:05.079 --> 01:30:12.359
London years ago. The next day
Whitley called me Whitley Jesus pretty incredible.

1213
01:30:12.760 --> 01:30:15.920
So we had lunch in New York
and I said, what are you writing

1214
01:30:16.000 --> 01:30:21.119
now? The best sellers are fantastic, congratulations and really said, well,

1215
01:30:21.119 --> 01:30:24.479
you'll just laugh at me if I
tell you what's happening to me. I

1216
01:30:24.479 --> 01:30:28.800
said, I won't laugh at you. And what are you doing? I

1217
01:30:28.840 --> 01:30:34.359
think I was abducted by the little
blue guy. And I did not laugh,

1218
01:30:34.439 --> 01:30:38.880
but it was hard enough to.
It was hard not to. I

1219
01:30:38.920 --> 01:30:42.079
said, what do you mean?
He said, dud. Then they they

1220
01:30:42.800 --> 01:30:47.279
they examined me, and there were
these other creatures and these brief breakdown of

1221
01:30:47.359 --> 01:30:51.399
what had happened to him. And
we were old friends from a long time

1222
01:30:51.439 --> 01:30:55.760
ago, and he said, what
do you think I should do? I

1223
01:30:55.800 --> 01:31:00.000
said, I think you do need
to see a psychiatrist, and and being

1224
01:31:00.000 --> 01:31:05.159
a smarter so I said, and
also get a publisher. And so he

1225
01:31:05.239 --> 01:31:10.079
did both, and he said he
told me he was doing both, and

1226
01:31:10.119 --> 01:31:15.239
I said, I'd have to see
the manuscriptive of the book when you'd finish

1227
01:31:15.319 --> 01:31:18.560
it. So he sent me the
manuscriptive communion when he had written the first

1228
01:31:18.600 --> 01:31:24.000
draft of it. And I thought
was obviously could make a great movie.

1229
01:31:24.640 --> 01:31:27.960
And I said to Whitley, let's
join and collaborate on this. You'd be

1230
01:31:28.000 --> 01:31:30.880
involved with me because it's a true
story, because I thought since this his

1231
01:31:31.000 --> 01:31:36.640
true story, it was important to
have him involved obviously. Then a surprising

1232
01:31:36.840 --> 01:31:43.119
thing was we'd have turned down by
every studio on the basis of I've never

1233
01:31:43.159 --> 01:31:46.359
heard this before in Hollywood. But
they turned it down basically because they said

1234
01:31:46.359 --> 01:31:49.399
they don't they didn't believe in it. They didn't believe it was true.

1235
01:31:50.079 --> 01:31:53.760
And I can't tell you how many
times I said, what do you mean

1236
01:31:53.760 --> 01:31:57.000
you didn't believe it? Did you
believe that Greats of the Lost Ark is

1237
01:31:57.039 --> 01:32:00.000
true? Did you believe that Donald
Duck is true? What's a true?

1238
01:32:00.000 --> 01:32:03.800
Got to do? What to do
with it? Anyway? Then the book

1239
01:32:03.840 --> 01:32:09.199
came out and went the number one
best Dolla, New York's best Dolla.

1240
01:32:09.960 --> 01:32:14.199
Now that made it feasible to raise
the money independently, which is what we

1241
01:32:14.239 --> 01:32:16.520
did. The movie comes out in
ebe nine. They made sure you're shooting

1242
01:32:16.560 --> 01:32:19.640
in eighty eight. How many years
before that are you connecting with him?

1243
01:32:20.239 --> 01:32:26.319
Not long? Maybe two years?
I was just guesstimating, Yeah, it

1244
01:32:26.439 --> 01:32:30.279
wasn't long before it all happened pretty
quickly, But yeah, it all happened

1245
01:32:30.279 --> 01:32:34.000
pretty quickly. But it was a
very tough film to make because he was

1246
01:32:34.760 --> 01:32:40.119
saying it was a true story.
So I didn't want him to turn on

1247
01:32:40.239 --> 01:32:42.920
me and say, oh, Philip's
screwed it up, but that's not what

1248
01:32:43.039 --> 01:32:47.279
happened. So I got him to
approve all the way down the line.

1249
01:32:47.359 --> 01:32:54.760
And the most controversial thing was the
anal probe. And I said to whether

1250
01:32:54.840 --> 01:32:58.279
you're sure you want me to put
this in the movie, because Witley,

1251
01:32:58.359 --> 01:33:00.439
this just got I wasn't trying to
be funny, this is going to follow

1252
01:33:00.479 --> 01:33:04.600
you around. If you say this
happened, he said, no, that's

1253
01:33:04.600 --> 01:33:12.039
what happened once the camera started rolling. How involved was were they? Whitley

1254
01:33:12.399 --> 01:33:18.000
saw all that we started off seeing, For example, the anal probe.

1255
01:33:18.560 --> 01:33:23.880
I got him to approve it cost
fifty thousand dollars to build that damn thing.

1256
01:33:24.479 --> 01:33:29.079
I got him to approve it that
that's what it was. He I

1257
01:33:29.119 --> 01:33:32.439
wanted him to prove it. We
went to the effects house and they brought

1258
01:33:32.479 --> 01:33:38.119
out the anal prov and Whitley had
brought his wife along and said, oh

1259
01:33:38.159 --> 01:33:41.680
my god, Whitley, you didn't
tell me it was that beat. And

1260
01:33:42.439 --> 01:33:45.479
anyway, I'll just jump to something
which I think is amusing on this.

1261
01:33:46.239 --> 01:33:51.600
When the film came out at the
time, the biggest publicity jump you could

1262
01:33:51.600 --> 01:33:57.000
get to be on the Johnny Carson
Show. And so we got Whitley on

1263
01:33:57.039 --> 01:34:00.399
the Johnny Carson Show. And I'm
thinking it's Johnny and asks him about the

1264
01:34:00.520 --> 01:34:05.199
anal probe. My career is over. People are just going to be laughing.

1265
01:34:05.800 --> 01:34:10.520
And anyway, Whitley is on the
show. Johnny Carson says, here's

1266
01:34:10.520 --> 01:34:14.960
whitley'stree. You're best selling author of
the Wolfburn and other books, and Whitley,

1267
01:34:15.000 --> 01:34:18.279
I understand the aliens gave you an
anal probe. I thought, oh

1268
01:34:18.359 --> 01:34:25.079
my god. And Whitley says,
Johnny, it was terrible. It was

1269
01:34:25.199 --> 01:34:30.760
terrible. And you could see Johnny
Carson's face change at the sincerity. And

1270
01:34:30.520 --> 01:34:35.439
he said, what was it like
working with Christopher Walken? Yeah, so

1271
01:34:35.520 --> 01:34:42.359
a lot of adventures. The book
was taken very seriously by the intelligence,

1272
01:34:42.760 --> 01:34:47.000
militant intelligence Pentagon. I say that
because I was on a flight from I

1273
01:34:47.039 --> 01:34:51.319
was on a flight from San Antonio
to Los Angeles after the film came out,

1274
01:34:51.359 --> 01:34:56.880
and after seeing Whitley, I was
meeting with Whitley, and I was

1275
01:34:56.920 --> 01:35:01.439
followed onto the plane by a guy
who looked like Robert re for Cia movie.

1276
01:35:01.920 --> 01:35:05.840
And he sat down next to me, pre booked seats back flight,

1277
01:35:06.479 --> 01:35:13.039
and he started talking to me and
he said, oh, what were you

1278
01:35:13.079 --> 01:35:15.960
doing in San Antonio? And I
said, I was meeting Whitley Streeper,

1279
01:35:15.079 --> 01:35:20.319
my collaborator. Blah blah blah.
The guy says, commun you know,

1280
01:35:20.760 --> 01:35:26.279
that's the best film ever made about
alien abduction. And I thought, that's

1281
01:35:26.319 --> 01:35:30.800
just that's a strange thing to say. And then and then he said,

1282
01:35:30.880 --> 01:35:34.239
yeah, so how long have you
known mister Streether And I said, look,

1283
01:35:34.279 --> 01:35:36.600
I hape, you don't mind me
asking, but you were a journalist,

1284
01:35:38.039 --> 01:35:42.920
because the way he was asking was
sounded like a journalist. And he

1285
01:35:42.960 --> 01:35:45.399
said, no, sir, and
he opened his jacket and there's a big

1286
01:35:45.439 --> 01:35:54.000
badge defense in collegence agency with an
eagle. And I was taken aback.

1287
01:35:54.039 --> 01:35:57.720
I didn't know what to say,
so I blurred it at all. I

1288
01:35:57.720 --> 01:36:00.479
didn't know you guys had badges.
He said, oh, yes, we

1289
01:36:00.560 --> 01:36:05.800
have badgers. And then he said, have you met any aliens? I

1290
01:36:05.960 --> 01:36:11.760
no, sir, that's getting creepy, man, I know I happened.

1291
01:36:11.760 --> 01:36:15.720
He said, has mister Streeedam met
any alien? I said, I don't

1292
01:36:15.720 --> 01:36:17.399
know, but I believe he thinks
he has. It's in the book.

1293
01:36:17.920 --> 01:36:23.560
And so it seemed to me in
retrospect, and even at the time that

1294
01:36:23.640 --> 01:36:27.840
he was trying to find out whether
it was a hoax, but it did

1295
01:36:27.880 --> 01:36:32.920
bring home to me that this was
a matter that was being taken very seriously

1296
01:36:33.279 --> 01:36:40.720
by intelligent people. And just last
week we had these hearings in Congress,

1297
01:36:41.079 --> 01:36:47.079
some of them in secret about UFOs
now called UAPs for reasons unknown. But

1298
01:36:47.479 --> 01:36:53.479
that's just last week there's always stuff
about. If you've been following the news,

1299
01:36:53.720 --> 01:36:59.159
there are these whistleblowers saying that we
have recovered craft and we're doing reverse

1300
01:36:59.239 --> 01:37:02.239
engineering, and there's a whole field
of study on all of this. But

1301
01:37:02.359 --> 01:37:05.800
at the time we made the film, it was getting a lot of attention.

1302
01:37:06.520 --> 01:37:12.199
But the attention on the issue has
never really stopped. I'm sure you

1303
01:37:12.279 --> 01:37:15.800
have met very many interesting people that
want to talk to you about this movie.

1304
01:37:16.279 --> 01:37:20.359
Absolutely, I have. Just this
morning, I was just looking at

1305
01:37:19.800 --> 01:37:26.600
an article in our scientific magazine on
the probability. He was a statistician.

1306
01:37:26.640 --> 01:37:31.079
I think it was on the probability
of intelligent life in the universe. Basically,

1307
01:37:31.720 --> 01:37:38.960
the probability is zero that there isn't
life out there. The question is

1308
01:37:40.279 --> 01:37:45.039
where is it and has it been
here? Personally, I think if the

1309
01:37:45.119 --> 01:37:48.680
universe is infinite, which they say
the universe is infinite, which is a

1310
01:37:48.680 --> 01:37:53.920
hard thing to get your head around
because we're just humans, little brands.

1311
01:37:54.520 --> 01:37:59.079
But if in fact it is infinite, it's impossible that there's no other intelligent

1312
01:37:59.119 --> 01:38:01.640
life in the universe, because if
the universe is infinite, it means that

1313
01:38:01.680 --> 01:38:06.720
everything you can ever think of has
occurs, is occurring, will occur is

1314
01:38:06.800 --> 01:38:12.399
going to occur again. I don't
think there's any doubt about the intelligent life.

1315
01:38:13.199 --> 01:38:19.680
Just taking it scientifically on the basis
of statistics and combinations and permutations and

1316
01:38:19.720 --> 01:38:24.479
all those statistical things, I think
it's impossible. I think that the question

1317
01:38:24.640 --> 01:38:30.840
is whether they've ever come here.
And I've been discussing this with friends lately.

1318
01:38:30.920 --> 01:38:35.600
And if you consider that we have
gadgets running around on Mars as you

1319
01:38:35.680 --> 01:38:42.279
and are speaking now, we have
gadgets on Mars taking pictures right now.

1320
01:38:42.920 --> 01:38:46.359
If college life has existed, I
think it's very possible. They're being probes

1321
01:38:47.119 --> 01:38:53.479
the expression after what I just said, But why wouldn't there have been probes

1322
01:38:53.800 --> 01:39:00.159
to Earth which solves the problem of
distance and time that were diship some kind

1323
01:39:00.199 --> 01:39:05.479
of mechanical thing from intelligent last sumwhere
else in the universe. It's no problem

1324
01:39:05.520 --> 01:39:09.800
if it took him one hundred years
to get here. Commute me what it

1325
01:39:09.880 --> 01:39:14.600
was like working with Penny Perry and
doing the casting for this. She was

1326
01:39:14.680 --> 01:39:18.199
great, She was terristic. Oh. I find casting the most difficult but

1327
01:39:18.279 --> 01:39:24.479
the most offential part of filmmaking.
And I find it very difficult because there's

1328
01:39:24.560 --> 01:39:29.359
always more than one actor who's perfect
to the role, and it's always heartbreaking

1329
01:39:29.439 --> 01:39:34.520
to turn people down, and it
can get to a coin toss with Christopher

1330
01:39:34.560 --> 01:39:43.000
Walken really came through the agency ICM
at the time. It was Sue Mangus

1331
01:39:43.640 --> 01:39:50.439
who I spoke to and Christopher.
I cast him for the following reason that

1332
01:39:51.239 --> 01:39:57.199
this movie is about a writer,
and a writer is not an action star.

1333
01:39:58.880 --> 01:40:02.359
Writers don't do in it except thinking
write, So that was I thought,

1334
01:40:02.399 --> 01:40:06.560
that's going to be very difficult to
find someone who's engaging, but I

1335
01:40:06.680 --> 01:40:14.359
thought Christopher is very engaging for his
faith. Samuel Fuller said the human face

1336
01:40:14.600 --> 01:40:19.640
is the greatest landscape of all and
I used that quote to describe why I

1337
01:40:19.800 --> 01:40:25.039
cast Christopher in this movie. His
face is the whole landscape in itself.

1338
01:40:25.920 --> 01:40:30.439
Then I met Christopher, who,
by the way, didn't buy into any

1339
01:40:30.479 --> 01:40:35.479
of the stuff. He was quite
practical, but he could certainly act it.

1340
01:40:35.640 --> 01:40:42.399
Back to Petty Perry, she's just
a first class casting person. I

1341
01:40:42.439 --> 01:40:45.760
did meet a lot of actors and
ended up with that cast, which I'm

1342
01:40:45.840 --> 01:40:51.119
very proud of that Lindsey Krause is
excellent. I didn't know it's not telling

1343
01:40:51.199 --> 01:40:55.720
tales out of school really because I
think she mentioned it, but at the

1344
01:40:55.760 --> 01:41:00.720
time we made the movie, she
was breaking up with her husband, her

1345
01:41:00.760 --> 01:41:06.159
then husband, David Mammott, and
so some of her performance is about the

1346
01:41:06.199 --> 01:41:11.560
insecurity with those scenes when she's yelling
at Christopher about are you telling me the

1347
01:41:11.600 --> 01:41:15.960
truth? What's going on? Do
you have a lover or that was sadly

1348
01:41:15.159 --> 01:41:20.560
part of her She was experienced experiencing
a part of that, I think,

1349
01:41:21.239 --> 01:41:28.720
which gave the film some incredible realism. Actually Whitley couldn't appreciate. I think

1350
01:41:28.720 --> 01:41:31.239
he does now, but I haven't
spoken to hum but I must hear it.

1351
01:41:31.640 --> 01:41:39.520
But he was a bit alarmed how
Christopher Walken was portraying him. And

1352
01:41:40.600 --> 01:41:45.199
I said to Whitley, which I
believe, I said to Christopher is an

1353
01:41:45.279 --> 01:41:48.279
artist, this is not a documentary, and you have to let Christopher do

1354
01:41:48.359 --> 01:41:57.119
his own interpretation of what our film
Strieber is like. And Whitley did accept

1355
01:41:57.119 --> 01:42:01.800
that. So that was very difficult
trading real people. They Whitley elected not

1356
01:42:01.880 --> 01:42:09.479
to show up on Jet because he
was getting discombobulated watching Christopher at these scenes.

1357
01:42:09.520 --> 01:42:15.840
Job anyway, just as a footnote, I read recently that I guess

1358
01:42:15.880 --> 01:42:24.000
it was South Park based their first
episode. Inspite that phrase again the anal

1359
01:42:24.079 --> 01:42:29.960
probe and communion, it became a
sort of iconic thing. I don't want

1360
01:42:29.960 --> 01:42:33.119
that to be my epitaph. By
the way, walking there are times where

1361
01:42:33.119 --> 01:42:40.319
he just seems so unhinged, and
I've spoken with Missus Streeper before and he's

1362
01:42:40.359 --> 01:42:44.319
never struck me as that. So
I was just curious, like how his

1363
01:42:44.439 --> 01:42:47.439
performance came about, because it is
great. It is just so out there.

1364
01:42:48.039 --> 01:42:56.479
If you have encountered aliens and if
you've been through that experience, I

1365
01:42:56.680 --> 01:43:00.880
honestly I would say it would unhinge
you. Was my rationale as the director

1366
01:43:00.920 --> 01:43:05.439
of the movie. I thought,
anything goes because if that's if what's happened

1367
01:43:05.479 --> 01:43:09.680
to you is one of the most
unique things that's ever happened to a human

1368
01:43:09.720 --> 01:43:15.359
being. We're not built to meet
super intelligent alien beings from another species,

1369
01:43:15.439 --> 01:43:21.800
so what would that do to you? So I basically encouraged Christopher to go

1370
01:43:21.960 --> 01:43:28.680
for it. Christopher's dad is dad
was German. Wait a minute, his

1371
01:43:28.840 --> 01:43:31.600
dad is German, one of the
parents was German, and my father was

1372
01:43:31.680 --> 01:43:39.319
German. And while we were joking
around between takes, I started talking like

1373
01:43:39.399 --> 01:43:42.399
this is a German accent, which
I got from my father. I could

1374
01:43:42.479 --> 01:43:47.279
speak to German excent lexus and Christopher
said, Hey, could you can you

1375
01:43:47.319 --> 01:43:53.359
direct me in that voice? I
said sure. So of course the crew

1376
01:43:53.439 --> 01:43:57.079
thought I was Knaps, but I
kept saying I did direct him for a

1377
01:43:57.119 --> 01:44:00.560
while. Okay, Kristopher, just
next scene, you'll move all you sit

1378
01:44:00.600 --> 01:44:03.720
down's theirs aliens come in? Then
you run over here. Anyway, he

1379
01:44:03.760 --> 01:44:10.199
loved it, but the rational for
his performance, in my mind as the

1380
01:44:10.239 --> 01:44:16.000
director, was that it would unhinge
you this experience. It just would.

1381
01:44:16.640 --> 01:44:21.680
I thought it was fantastic, and
I also I am a great believer in

1382
01:44:21.760 --> 01:44:28.119
letting an actor do their thing.
This wasn't a TV, this wasn't episodic

1383
01:44:28.159 --> 01:44:31.760
TV. Or we didn't have anyone
over our shoulder saying, oh, you've

1384
01:44:31.880 --> 01:44:38.119
changed the script. This was a
more creative enterprise. Obviously, not to

1385
01:44:38.119 --> 01:44:41.439
get too far into the minitia,
but I'm so curious how were some of

1386
01:44:41.439 --> 01:44:44.720
the alien effects done? Because he
had the two different types, and I

1387
01:44:44.720 --> 01:44:48.520
imagine you handled them completely differently.
There were little people in the blue suit,

1388
01:44:49.319 --> 01:44:57.159
and then the other alien were they
were basically puppets. And then then

1389
01:44:57.199 --> 01:45:00.880
again that became controversial. Pick people
didn't understand that they were supposed to look

1390
01:45:00.960 --> 01:45:05.199
like puppets the people are used to. This is pre cgi by the way,

1391
01:45:05.720 --> 01:45:11.359
But I had discussed with Whitley because
he was saying that it was all

1392
01:45:11.479 --> 01:45:15.359
very weird, and so I said
to him that could they have been puppets?

1393
01:45:15.960 --> 01:45:21.600
There are robots And the answer is
yes, including the one that which

1394
01:45:21.600 --> 01:45:28.600
he did describe in detail of what
I call the alcazeltser Man, that dreamlike

1395
01:45:28.720 --> 01:45:34.199
figure and all that's very I find
that all very interesting because certainly in my

1396
01:45:34.319 --> 01:45:39.760
life in some dreams, figures in
your dreams and they're not quite inhuman,

1397
01:45:40.359 --> 01:45:45.840
they're not quite they're humanoid. That's
a common thing in dreams. Was Whitley

1398
01:45:45.920 --> 01:45:50.000
dreaming, that's that's another level to
this movie. Did he dream the whole

1399
01:45:50.039 --> 01:45:57.680
thing? And that's why I put
in that scene or there where he's putting

1400
01:45:57.760 --> 01:46:02.159
masks on. In other words,
the aliens have somehow masked themselves. And

1401
01:46:03.000 --> 01:46:06.760
I don't know whether logic is the
right word to use here, but in

1402
01:46:06.800 --> 01:46:13.520
the event these intelligent beings are here
on earth in some way, I can't

1403
01:46:13.920 --> 01:46:19.680
imagine that they would be in a
form that we would recognize immediately. It

1404
01:46:19.760 --> 01:46:25.880
just doesn't make sense. All this
is, including us, has evolved over

1405
01:46:25.960 --> 01:46:30.640
millions of years. There's no way
at these alien beings, if they exist,

1406
01:46:30.359 --> 01:46:35.000
and statistically they do, there's no
way they'd look like us. It'd

1407
01:46:35.039 --> 01:46:40.479
be weird. There'd be a strange
version of it. That was my rationale

1408
01:46:41.000 --> 01:46:45.359
for the aliens. The special effects
guy was very good and there was a

1409
01:46:45.560 --> 01:46:50.880
wonder misunderstanding I had with him was
when I had the idea of showing the

1410
01:46:50.960 --> 01:46:58.119
different versions of the aliens. I
said to the production maner said, I'll

1411
01:46:57.840 --> 01:47:04.000
tell the effects department bring all the
aliens to the set and so we can

1412
01:47:04.039 --> 01:47:11.479
show all the aliens different forms.
And unfortunately that got lost in translation,

1413
01:47:11.600 --> 01:47:15.640
and the effects guy thought that I'd
fired him and we couldn't find him,

1414
01:47:15.880 --> 01:47:20.079
but he was I couldn't fire He
was distressed. He thought he'd been fired,

1415
01:47:20.079 --> 01:47:25.520
but he hadn't been at all.
Anyway, there was not a mainstream

1416
01:47:26.000 --> 01:47:30.880
movie in the conventional sense. It
wasn't a Marble comic this one. Were

1417
01:47:30.880 --> 01:47:34.359
there a lot of scenes that you
shot that didn't end up being in the

1418
01:47:34.399 --> 01:47:39.600
film. No that there's a lot
of footage of the alien. There's one

1419
01:47:39.680 --> 01:47:45.520
DVD which has outtakes of those floating
Aliens, which I thought was interesting,

1420
01:47:45.640 --> 01:47:54.439
so we put that in. There's
them outtake of a crisp pofing around and

1421
01:47:54.760 --> 01:48:00.279
making joke and but no, there's
no not a lot of that would cut

1422
01:48:00.279 --> 01:48:06.640
out if any other than the US
government really apparently liking the film. How

1423
01:48:06.720 --> 01:48:12.000
was it received when it came out? Some great reviews and some transit it.

1424
01:48:12.720 --> 01:48:16.199
That's all My movies polarize. I
don't know why. I'm not trying

1425
01:48:16.199 --> 01:48:21.239
to do it. I have no
idea, but they polarized A Mad Dog

1426
01:48:21.279 --> 01:48:26.359
Morgan with Dennis Hopper, as I
mentioned. The LA Times said this marks

1427
01:48:26.399 --> 01:48:30.880
arenasm for the Australian film and The
New York Post said everyone involved should be

1428
01:48:30.880 --> 01:48:36.119
locked up. My film's polarized.
I really don't know why. But anyway,

1429
01:48:36.319 --> 01:48:41.640
that same thing happened with Chamuleion.
That's still controversial, but Communi's not

1430
01:48:41.720 --> 01:48:47.840
a satire that people don't understand satire
and also surrealism is a difficult thing for

1431
01:48:48.279 --> 01:48:54.880
people to understand. I think people
didn't realize that the I tried to make

1432
01:48:54.920 --> 01:49:01.000
it clear that the aliens like we've
betrayed them. When Christopher picks a mask

1433
01:49:01.119 --> 01:49:04.720
up and puts the mask in front
of his face. I thought that would

1434
01:49:04.720 --> 01:49:09.920
explain that the audience said, yeah, they're supposed to look like that because

1435
01:49:09.960 --> 01:49:14.600
they we don't know what they really
look like. And there's a scene where

1436
01:49:15.199 --> 01:49:20.800
the alien Christopher pulls off the bottom
of his face and Christopher says, no,

1437
01:49:20.960 --> 01:49:25.920
that's not it either. So I
thought that would be enough to explain

1438
01:49:26.000 --> 01:49:29.359
what I was doing. But some
people didn't get it at all and just

1439
01:49:29.399 --> 01:49:32.920
thought it was bad effects that's par
for the course. You got was Wastika.

1440
01:49:33.000 --> 01:49:38.159
That was pop polarizing as well,
even a film like Sniden Prejudice.

1441
01:49:38.199 --> 01:49:44.439
I don't imagine that everyone universally loved
that film. No no, but I'll

1442
01:49:44.479 --> 01:49:47.439
tell you who did. He's not
with it anymore. F Vsteiny terrific film

1443
01:49:47.520 --> 01:49:54.720
critic here. He really liked it. Swastika was the most extreme reaction from

1444
01:49:54.760 --> 01:49:59.800
an audience that people started fighting actually
in camp, and the lights went up

1445
01:49:59.800 --> 01:50:03.880
and guy came out in a headwaiters
bow tie and said, ladies and gentleman,

1446
01:50:03.960 --> 01:50:08.239
please, this is not a beer
hare. This is the can Film

1447
01:50:08.279 --> 01:50:12.640
Festival. Please take your seats.
And then again this happened to me before.

1448
01:50:12.840 --> 01:50:15.720
Once more, I thought this is
the end of my career, and

1449
01:50:15.960 --> 01:50:18.680
I took off. I ran to
the exit. I thought, I'm getting

1450
01:50:18.680 --> 01:50:23.800
mad at here and I felt a
hand on my back and it was Pi

1451
01:50:24.000 --> 01:50:27.960
Rision, famous French PR guy,
and he said what are you doing?

1452
01:50:28.039 --> 01:50:30.720
What are you doing? I said, I'm going to the airport. My

1453
01:50:30.760 --> 01:50:36.000
career is over. He said,
no, this is a fantastique scandal fiasco

1454
01:50:36.119 --> 01:50:40.680
at the can festival. You are
This will make you, This is made

1455
01:50:40.720 --> 01:50:45.399
your career. Don't you understand?
This is incredible? And then I heard

1456
01:50:45.399 --> 01:50:50.359
on the laud speaker philied Moore will
give a press conference in rooms such and

1457
01:50:50.439 --> 01:50:56.920
such and so then there was a
riotous press conference. But I'll tell you

1458
01:50:56.920 --> 01:51:01.920
it really did like Swastika. Actually
an interesting James Baldwin was at the screening

1459
01:51:02.560 --> 01:51:09.119
and he really liked it. And
there also distinguished people because it was a

1460
01:51:09.199 --> 01:51:15.600
Cancil festival was even then prestigious,
and Lawrence Durrell and so on, and

1461
01:51:15.800 --> 01:51:20.399
Robert Hughes from Time magazine stood up
at the press conference and said, this

1462
01:51:20.560 --> 01:51:26.760
is the best movie that's being made
about the boutsy thing and so on.

1463
01:51:27.399 --> 01:51:30.760
I don't understand the polarization thing.
I guess it's because people are polarized.

1464
01:51:30.920 --> 01:51:38.279
Look at our society at the moment. I guess it's tart of freedom.

1465
01:51:38.600 --> 01:51:45.000
Part of free thinking is we can
disagree assisterously. Show business is more complicated

1466
01:51:45.039 --> 01:51:48.880
because you're supposed to make everyone.
You're supposed to appeal to everyone, which

1467
01:51:48.920 --> 01:51:54.760
is that's just a very difficult thing
to do. Unfortunately, I think most

1468
01:51:54.800 --> 01:52:00.239
studio movies are white bread now.
They are made by committee. You make

1469
01:52:00.279 --> 01:52:03.399
a horse by committee, you get
a camel. Isn't that what the old

1470
01:52:03.479 --> 01:52:10.039
saying is a lot of camel's out
there. You worked so many times with

1471
01:52:10.159 --> 01:52:14.560
Brian James. What was he like? Fantastic? He's what I would call

1472
01:52:15.239 --> 01:52:18.720
a working actor. He would do
anything. When I say anything, he

1473
01:52:18.840 --> 01:52:23.720
was up for anything. He was
game. To use their expression to describe

1474
01:52:23.760 --> 01:52:28.199
Christopher Lee. He loved working,
he loved acting. He was very experienced.

1475
01:52:28.239 --> 01:52:32.960
He done all sorts of things.
I can't remember the hal Ashby movie

1476
01:52:33.000 --> 01:52:36.640
I first saw him a forgot the
title of it. But he was a

1477
01:52:36.760 --> 01:52:42.279
very good friend of mine, and
he'd really died tragically. It was too

1478
01:52:42.319 --> 01:52:45.479
young. He was way too young. He had a lot of great performances

1479
01:52:45.960 --> 01:52:50.079
left in him. But he was
a friend of heartbreaking when he passed away.

1480
01:52:50.760 --> 01:52:57.359
He'd been in a car accident and
in his recovery they'd given him more

1481
01:52:57.399 --> 01:53:01.880
themee and as can hal as can
have happened, tragically, people get addicted,

1482
01:53:02.439 --> 01:53:10.239
so there are quite a few people
were addicted to painkillers because of accidents.

1483
01:53:10.840 --> 01:53:15.760
He's terrific and it's not and prejudice. It's just the theical. That's

1484
01:53:15.800 --> 01:53:20.039
another one with just an amazing cast
to it. Just every actor is just

1485
01:53:20.079 --> 01:53:26.920
giving their all and everybody is bringing
such talent to the people. The casting

1486
01:53:27.000 --> 01:53:30.880
person on that was a some uncle, Felicia Fadana, and she, I

1487
01:53:30.960 --> 01:53:35.840
must say, did a superb job
on that one. She just pulled it

1488
01:53:35.840 --> 01:53:41.840
out, pulled out a roster of
wonderful actors. All the actors knew this

1489
01:53:41.960 --> 01:53:45.760
was a special movie because it was
unconventional, and they knew it was funny,

1490
01:53:45.760 --> 01:53:49.720
but they knew it was serious.
So they the expression you used,

1491
01:53:49.720 --> 01:53:55.920
they were really gay, they're all
And we shot that in eleven days.

1492
01:53:56.239 --> 01:54:00.079
It was an unbelievable way. That
had to be done quickly because because of

1493
01:54:00.079 --> 01:54:05.680
the budget. It was just tough
doing any It's tough to make any movie

1494
01:54:05.840 --> 01:54:13.640
on serious subjects, and any non
formulaic movie is very hard to get funded

1495
01:54:14.159 --> 01:54:17.159
that's interesting. You've got that movie
where a man thinks that he's ad Alf

1496
01:54:17.239 --> 01:54:21.840
Hitler, But then you also have
I believe either I think, did you

1497
01:54:21.880 --> 01:54:25.399
announce it or are you still working
out the man we thought he was Sellboard

1498
01:54:25.479 --> 01:54:30.880
or Dolly we're here still working on
it with shots On says yeah, now

1499
01:54:30.960 --> 01:54:33.800
that's an interesting here though I never
thought of it. Thank you for mentioning

1500
01:54:33.840 --> 01:54:39.760
that. I'll think about that.
A lot of your themes are Nazism.

1501
01:54:40.399 --> 01:54:44.319
You made the film Three Days in
Auschwitz, and but then you also have

1502
01:54:44.439 --> 01:54:48.359
a lot of art and modern art, and even in Studyed Prejudice, I

1503
01:54:48.439 --> 01:54:53.199
want to say that there was trying
to remember who played Pablo Picasso is another

1504
01:54:53.399 --> 01:54:57.279
really great actor as well. Play
around with the both of those things.

1505
01:54:57.760 --> 01:55:01.760
Bick Fleet, we've played the Cats, which was funny. Well, Hollywood

1506
01:55:01.800 --> 01:55:06.800
does not specifically Hollywood, but even
movies out of Europe. When when it's

1507
01:55:06.840 --> 01:55:13.399
a real historical character and they're saying
it's the real character like Churchill, we

1508
01:55:13.560 --> 01:55:16.279
know what the real Churchill looked like
and it doesn't matter how good the actor

1509
01:55:16.479 --> 01:55:21.840
is, it's not Churchill. So
for me, as when I'm writing these

1510
01:55:21.880 --> 01:55:27.760
things, that that's how this idea
came about of doing somebody thinks he's hit

1511
01:55:27.920 --> 01:55:31.279
and doing someoney thinks he's Daly,
because then you can there's more freedom.

1512
01:55:31.399 --> 01:55:36.840
I'm not saying that you can examine
all the characteristics of that person, but

1513
01:55:38.000 --> 01:55:43.880
not saying this is a doppelganger.
This is not a caricature. Actually it

1514
01:55:44.039 --> 01:55:47.479
is a caricature. She can explore
the issues of the personality of the person,

1515
01:55:48.279 --> 01:55:53.359
I think with some more credibility if
you're not saying that it's exactly the

1516
01:55:53.399 --> 01:55:57.560
person. So that's how I got
to the man it thinks he's Daly and

1517
01:55:57.640 --> 01:56:00.079
the man it thinks he's Hitler.
Did you say that the chrispher Lee film

1518
01:56:00.119 --> 01:56:03.560
that you're still working on that or
is that out? It's not out.

1519
01:56:03.880 --> 01:56:11.079
It's thought. Various incarnations were stopped
initially by the pandemic. I was going

1520
01:56:11.119 --> 01:56:17.319
to go to Prague and revisit the
locations. The Christopher and I are in

1521
01:56:17.359 --> 01:56:24.199
Prague together for hailing too, and
he took me to locations there where he

1522
01:56:25.039 --> 01:56:29.439
for example, the church where the
Partisans were killed by the Gestapo. Eventually,

1523
01:56:30.039 --> 01:56:35.920
when they assassinated Ryan pard Hydrate in
Prague and Christopher was involved in that,

1524
01:56:36.239 --> 01:56:40.359
he wanted to go there with me. He was peering up, he

1525
01:56:40.399 --> 01:56:45.600
was crying. When we went to
the monument, there a well plaque where

1526
01:56:45.600 --> 01:56:48.840
these people died. And unfortunately then
we had then had the pandemic, and

1527
01:56:48.840 --> 01:56:54.640
then Christopher passed and so on.
Then I found that I had in a

1528
01:56:54.640 --> 01:57:02.159
preliminary scout of Prague for this.
I'd filmed the the location that most of

1529
01:57:02.199 --> 01:57:08.000
them actually in preparation to work with
Christopher. So I've got the location.

1530
01:57:08.199 --> 01:57:13.279
So that's we just had to reconfigure
the film on how to do it.

1531
01:57:13.960 --> 01:57:18.359
So that's all very interesting, I
think. So we're still in the middle

1532
01:57:18.359 --> 01:57:23.119
of it. I've got the luxury
of not being a big corporation behind this

1533
01:57:23.319 --> 01:57:29.960
movie yet, so I've got the
luxury of not having hard schedules. And

1534
01:57:30.000 --> 01:57:35.600
I say that because it's a luxury
because if you find something that's worth going

1535
01:57:35.640 --> 01:57:40.199
down a little known track, I
can do it. I have my own

1536
01:57:41.000 --> 01:57:44.680
navigator on this so anyway, at
some point you have to stop. So

1537
01:57:45.119 --> 01:57:47.079
we're getting to the point where we're
stopping. Now. Another thing that happened

1538
01:57:47.079 --> 01:57:55.479
on the Christopher Elite project was when
I found that Ian Fleming had been his

1539
01:57:55.600 --> 01:58:00.000
cousin. And that's not I thought
that it's not generally known, but James

1540
01:58:00.359 --> 01:58:02.720
is partly based on Christopher Lee.
That's just child of Lord. This is

1541
01:58:02.760 --> 01:58:08.920
really worth examining. Then I was
talking to his widow, Gita. Unfortunately

1542
01:58:08.960 --> 01:58:15.000
then she passed away. But there's
a tremendous amount of material on Christopher and

1543
01:58:15.079 --> 01:58:19.119
just going through it all, at
some point you have to stop. It's

1544
01:58:19.199 --> 01:58:24.399
like a painting. At some point
you have to stop. There have been

1545
01:58:24.520 --> 01:58:29.479
years where you have released many films
and it feels like you are always working

1546
01:58:29.520 --> 01:58:33.159
on things. How many projects do
you have going like right now? When

1547
01:58:33.159 --> 01:58:38.119
you say going, I'd say seriously, sicks, I'd say seriously six.

1548
01:58:38.680 --> 01:58:42.560
But again I say it's a luxury. It is a luxury. I started

1549
01:58:42.600 --> 01:58:47.079
out as a painter. I'm still
a painter, illustrator, graphics, and

1550
01:58:47.319 --> 01:58:54.560
in a way I approach these films
in a non industrial the non industrial model,

1551
01:58:55.119 --> 01:59:00.279
the industrial model of filmmaking in many
ways I think constricts created people.

1552
01:59:00.600 --> 01:59:04.800
You need it, you need it, obviously, you need to bang out

1553
01:59:04.880 --> 01:59:11.239
product. But I say that because
I can follow things that come up as

1554
01:59:11.279 --> 01:59:15.359
we're in the pre production and production
process. One thing that's helped me a

1555
01:59:15.399 --> 01:59:20.079
lot, by the way, is
digital technology, because it is now much

1556
01:59:20.159 --> 01:59:26.000
cheaper, ironically to make a film
than ever before. You can even make

1557
01:59:26.119 --> 01:59:30.920
it, can make a movie on
your iPhone, so that's an incredible freedom.

1558
01:59:30.479 --> 01:59:36.000
Getting distribution, of course, is
another matter, so the financial astec

1559
01:59:36.960 --> 01:59:45.479
becomes a marketing priority. But I
think for young filmmakers, young people starting

1560
01:59:45.520 --> 01:59:50.840
out now, that's incredibly lucky that
you can just go out and shoot a

1561
01:59:50.880 --> 01:59:59.279
film, literally, and that's I
encourage the people. How do you get

1562
01:59:59.279 --> 02:00:02.239
into the move? I said,
go to your local best buy or whatever

1563
02:00:02.279 --> 02:00:10.359
you write aid even get the cheapest
camera digital camera you can find. They're

1564
02:00:10.399 --> 02:00:15.079
all good now basically, and start
shooting a story with your girlfriend or boyfriend,

1565
02:00:15.159 --> 02:00:18.560
as the case may be. So
there's a lot of freedom. I

1566
02:00:18.560 --> 02:00:24.359
don't want to sound slippid about it, because I seriously think that's the way

1567
02:00:24.399 --> 02:00:27.760
to learn how to make a movie
is go out and shoot one, which

1568
02:00:27.840 --> 02:00:31.279
you can now do. Mister Moura, thank you so much for your time.

1569
02:00:31.359 --> 02:00:33.560
This has been so great talking with
you, and I really hope we

1570
02:00:33.560 --> 02:00:39.439
can do it again sometime. I'd
be delighted. I'd be delighted, and

1571
02:00:39.520 --> 02:00:44.079
thank you very much for your interest
in my movies, and thank you for

1572
02:00:44.319 --> 02:00:50.000
pointing out something I didn't really realize. The man who thought he was Daly

1573
02:00:50.560 --> 02:00:55.239
and the man who thought he was
Hitler, so this could be an ongoing

1574
02:00:55.279 --> 02:00:58.640
series. The man who thought he
was Jesus. Thank you very much,

1575
02:00:58.800 --> 02:01:42.399
right, thank you. Can you
tell me a little bit of where your

1576
02:01:42.399 --> 02:01:47.439
career was at before the events that
took place. My career after the Wolfing

1577
02:01:47.520 --> 02:01:51.680
and the Hunger had its ups and
downs. Then I wrote a series of

1578
02:01:53.439 --> 02:01:57.960
sort of foreign novels that did not
do well. They did okay, not

1579
02:01:58.119 --> 02:02:01.359
well, not like The Wolfing in
the Hunger. And then I published war

1580
02:02:01.439 --> 02:02:06.920
Day, which did very well and
Listen. And then I had published a

1581
02:02:06.960 --> 02:02:12.319
book called Nature's End, which didn't
do as well as War Day. I

1582
02:02:12.439 --> 02:02:17.039
was definitely doing well enough to survive. We were doing fine. I wouldn't

1583
02:02:17.079 --> 02:02:23.439
say that I was making millions.
I wasn't. But there was no likelihood

1584
02:02:23.439 --> 02:02:28.520
of fader and ceasing to be a
writer. That was quite clear. And

1585
02:02:29.119 --> 02:02:32.720
the sort of came into my life
unexpectedly, and in terms of my writing

1586
02:02:32.760 --> 02:02:39.119
career was both harmful and help in
that it was helpful, and I ended

1587
02:02:39.199 --> 02:02:43.840
up with a huge international bestseller and
like anything I'd ever had before from a

1588
02:02:44.239 --> 02:02:48.560
writing standpoint, but harmful because of
the subject matter and the fact that it

1589
02:02:48.640 --> 02:02:55.920
made a lot of people think I
was unstable and the average person who read

1590
02:02:55.920 --> 02:03:00.520
the book because the cover, the
face on the cover red I did them

1591
02:03:00.600 --> 02:03:03.880
of something that had happened to that, meaning that millions of people must have

1592
02:03:03.920 --> 02:03:09.800
had this experience and just assumed it
was some kind of a dream until they

1593
02:03:09.840 --> 02:03:13.279
saw that. But the people who
didn't have the experience, which seemed to

1594
02:03:13.359 --> 02:03:17.479
be concentrated in the sciences and the
intellectual community, no, they didn't.

1595
02:03:18.159 --> 02:03:23.880
You do it. And that's where
it stood, and where it stands now

1596
02:03:24.079 --> 02:03:30.199
is I'm doing fine. I published
myself independently through my own company and I'm

1597
02:03:30.239 --> 02:03:36.359
quite successful at it, and stopped
with the regular publishers because the need to

1598
02:03:36.399 --> 02:03:43.239
get these books out and there was
a lot of They're just so slow.

1599
02:03:43.920 --> 02:03:46.800
You sell a book to a regular
publisher, it takes a year or maybe

1600
02:03:46.800 --> 02:03:51.399
more, or it shows up and
there's no time. There is no time.

1601
02:03:53.079 --> 02:03:57.560
I'm really under the gun here,
and unfortunately, the self publishing business

1602
02:03:57.600 --> 02:04:01.079
has been very successful. Yeah,
you talked about the risk of being made

1603
02:04:01.119 --> 02:04:04.640
to look unstable, and I'm curious
what was the thought process as far as

1604
02:04:05.000 --> 02:04:10.079
the writing of Communion and the publishing
of it, was thereever any hesitation.

1605
02:04:10.880 --> 02:04:16.359
No. Unfortunately, I'm glad in
many ways there wasn't any hesitation because I

1606
02:04:16.439 --> 02:04:21.720
thought, and thought my wife that
it was an absolutely fascinating story, the

1607
02:04:21.840 --> 02:04:27.800
wonderful story, and we thought people
would just take that at face value.

1608
02:04:27.840 --> 02:04:31.279
The book doesn't make any claims about
what happened. Couch is a series of

1609
02:04:31.359 --> 02:04:35.840
questions and descriptions of what I remembered, which is where I stand to this

1610
02:04:36.000 --> 02:04:40.880
day. I've never made a claim
about it because I can't. But the

1611
02:04:40.920 --> 02:04:44.520
only claim I can make is that
I do have this strange little object in

1612
02:04:44.560 --> 02:04:47.600
my ear, but that's been the
attempt to remove. It is on video.

1613
02:04:47.880 --> 02:04:54.399
It's a fact that is there.
I can describe how it came there,

1614
02:04:54.439 --> 02:04:57.520
but I can't tell you that's how
it happened, because I can only

1615
02:04:57.560 --> 02:05:01.079
tell you what I remember. But
that didn't don't matter. They took it.

1616
02:05:01.439 --> 02:05:08.960
First of all, the great majority
of people who attacked me over the

1617
02:05:09.000 --> 02:05:13.439
book didn't read the book. They
just assumed it was a book of claiming

1618
02:05:13.479 --> 02:05:17.119
alien abduction. They did. Therefore, I end up debating people about something

1619
02:05:17.119 --> 02:05:21.960
that I hadn't claimed and I would
say again and again I never said that,

1620
02:05:23.439 --> 02:05:27.640
and that would make them furious.
How soon after the book comes out,

1621
02:05:28.279 --> 02:05:32.880
are you talking with Felipe Mora and
getting the right soul for the movie?

1622
02:05:33.600 --> 02:05:38.880
The right soul? That's quite a
complied. No one ever paid me

1623
02:05:38.960 --> 02:05:43.319
for the movie rights. They didn't
pay. They said they would pay,

1624
02:05:43.600 --> 02:05:46.800
but they did not pay. And
then the movie came out. I guess

1625
02:05:46.800 --> 02:05:50.600
it was sometime in nineteen eighty eight. I began speaking with Felipe Mora because

1626
02:05:51.199 --> 02:05:57.279
something had gone wrong in Hollywood with
this book. I was it should have

1627
02:05:57.359 --> 02:06:03.239
been a major feature for a big
company. I was only allowed to show

1628
02:06:03.279 --> 02:06:08.920
it to one production company. I
was only given one pitch, and that

1629
02:06:09.079 --> 02:06:15.720
was to paramount to the chief head
of production there, who was already fired.

1630
02:06:15.960 --> 02:06:17.399
And he knew it. In other
words, he was leaving in a

1631
02:06:17.399 --> 02:06:24.880
couple of weeks and no one else
would see it. An assistant from my

1632
02:06:25.000 --> 02:06:29.600
agency, not the agent himself,
told me that they had been asked.

1633
02:06:29.800 --> 02:06:34.079
The agent had been visited by people
claiming to be FBI agents, the same

1634
02:06:34.079 --> 02:06:39.319
thing that happened with one of my
doctors and some of my friends. These

1635
02:06:39.359 --> 02:06:44.119
people would visit them and say go
easy, don't do this. And the

1636
02:06:44.159 --> 02:06:47.039
doctor they wanted my medical records from
the doctor, he wouldn't give them to

1637
02:06:47.119 --> 02:06:53.079
him because it was against the law. And they wouldn't show him any credentials,

1638
02:06:53.640 --> 02:06:57.119
so you know, and he called
me it and the nurse said,

1639
02:06:57.199 --> 02:07:00.000
why doctor wants to talk to you
and to him and he said that these

1640
02:07:00.000 --> 02:07:04.720
people had come in they wouldn't identify
themselves. And so that's saying that the

1641
02:07:04.880 --> 02:07:11.279
people in Hollywood were very intimidated.
The result, I ended up doing an

1642
02:07:11.319 --> 02:07:15.439
independent production and mister Mora never had
enough money to make the film as well

1643
02:07:15.479 --> 02:07:19.079
as it should have been made.
He did a pretty good job with what

1644
02:07:19.159 --> 02:07:23.880
he had, but I was never
paid for my I was paid for my

1645
02:07:24.000 --> 02:07:27.119
script, was I remember the writers
bill, They had to do that,

1646
02:07:27.680 --> 02:07:30.560
But I wasn't paid the underlying money
for the book. They just didn't pay

1647
02:07:30.600 --> 02:07:35.279
me. They in my opinion,
it was a front. Oh was that

1648
02:07:35.359 --> 02:07:39.399
adapting your own book? Had you
done that? At that point? I

1649
02:07:39.439 --> 02:07:45.039
had adapted the Wolfing and parts of
that survived in the movie, bits and

1650
02:07:45.039 --> 02:07:51.000
pieces of the script. But Michael
Wadley, the director, wanted some changes,

1651
02:07:51.720 --> 02:07:59.079
and he wanted to bring in Indians
into this story and Native Americans and

1652
02:08:00.119 --> 02:08:03.479
a cool idea, frankly, and
it does work well in the movie.

1653
02:08:03.560 --> 02:08:07.199
So that was only I only with
bits and pieces of that, not enough

1654
02:08:07.239 --> 02:08:15.960
for me to get a credit.
And then the Communion movie, there are

1655
02:08:15.960 --> 02:08:22.239
a lot of changes, basically the
domestic scenes, the family life in the

1656
02:08:22.279 --> 02:08:26.399
movie or from my script, but
all of the things about the it's all

1657
02:08:26.479 --> 02:08:33.800
fiction, basically the some of the
close encounter experiences reminiscence, but dancing and

1658
02:08:33.840 --> 02:08:37.079
stuff that goes on, forget it. I can't dance a step. I'm

1659
02:08:37.119 --> 02:08:41.399
not Christopher Walton by any means,
and I don't use I don't have big

1660
02:08:41.479 --> 02:08:46.439
cameras on me all the time or
anything. And he created a character the

1661
02:08:46.520 --> 02:08:50.680
characters of work of fiction. That
must have been a little surreal writing yourself

1662
02:08:50.760 --> 02:08:56.039
as your main character and the script. I had Anne to help me,

1663
02:08:56.520 --> 02:09:01.159
and she knew me as a character
very well. She and I teamed up

1664
02:09:01.239 --> 02:09:05.960
together on that, but they didn't
use that character very much. The only

1665
02:09:05.680 --> 02:09:11.800
scene in the film that survives,
it's a scene from light that I remember,

1666
02:09:11.039 --> 02:09:16.640
there may be others, is the
one where she comes in dressed as

1667
02:09:16.640 --> 02:09:20.119
a witch and I'm supposed to get
dressed for HALLI waited, and she says,

1668
02:09:20.159 --> 02:09:24.039
get dressed. That's what was like
in my life, where I was

1669
02:09:24.079 --> 02:09:31.159
always coming up from behind on schedules
and stuff, and now that I don't

1670
02:09:31.239 --> 02:09:33.119
have her with me anymore, I'm
coming up from behind on schedules. Even

1671
02:09:33.119 --> 02:09:37.560
morally. There's no one to say
anything. Were you involved in the casting

1672
02:09:37.600 --> 02:09:43.439
process at all? Oh? Not
really, I didn't make any recommendations.

1673
02:09:43.039 --> 02:09:46.840
Ultimately, how did you feel that
the cast was? How close to real

1674
02:09:46.880 --> 02:09:52.199
life are these folks? Christopher Walken
is kookier in the movie than I am,

1675
02:09:52.359 --> 02:09:58.119
actually straight laced and ordinary, and
I'm not at all. I'm not

1676
02:09:58.239 --> 02:10:05.079
at all. I'm just a break
quiet person in daily life. Lindsay Krause

1677
02:10:05.279 --> 02:10:13.520
portrayed Anne somewhat like Anne is,
but doesn't communicate the vibrancy of Anne's personality

1678
02:10:13.600 --> 02:10:22.039
and her control of our life.
She was really the boss, and Lindsay

1679
02:10:22.239 --> 02:10:26.319
was the wife of David Mammont,
who was definitely not like me. I'm

1680
02:10:26.359 --> 02:10:31.199
a person's perfectly capable of being comfortable
being told what to do and where to

1681
02:10:31.239 --> 02:10:35.960
go. In fact, it's belief
to me. But I don't think Dave

1682
02:10:35.159 --> 02:10:41.560
Hemmant was like that, And so
Lindsay she's acting and you can see it.

1683
02:10:43.119 --> 02:10:46.960
She's not in the character really,
and Christopher is in his own character.

1684
02:10:48.039 --> 02:10:50.840
He invented that character. Yeah,
I was very surprised to see the

1685
02:10:50.840 --> 02:10:56.279
way that he is portraying quote unquote
you, just because we have talked before.

1686
02:10:56.319 --> 02:11:00.319
And I'm just like, I don't
think that mister Streeber's a switchy and

1687
02:11:01.159 --> 02:11:05.880
unhinged, not at all. No. I think they wanted to make it

1688
02:11:05.920 --> 02:11:09.000
into a comedy. And thought that
too. And she said, we're going

1689
02:11:09.079 --> 02:11:13.199
out there and we're going to stay
there. We're going to be there every

1690
02:11:13.319 --> 02:11:18.239
single day on that set. Otherwise
what's going to happen is they're going to

1691
02:11:18.359 --> 02:11:24.319
mock you withly. She said that
after listening into a phone call between me

1692
02:11:24.359 --> 02:11:28.479
and Christopher Wall and I didn't even
pick it up. And she said,

1693
02:11:28.720 --> 02:11:31.720
he thinks you're a joke. I
said, what do you mean. He

1694
02:11:31.800 --> 02:11:35.680
sounded serious. She said, he's
an actor. I saw right through it.

1695
02:11:35.119 --> 02:11:39.000
He thinks you're a joke. And
then she said, we're going and

1696
02:11:39.039 --> 02:11:43.279
we did. We came out here
and we made the production runt us a

1697
02:11:43.279 --> 02:11:46.279
little house, and we stayed here
and we were on the set every single

1698
02:11:46.359 --> 02:11:50.520
day. And if we hadn't been
I think it's exactly what would happened.

1699
02:11:50.560 --> 02:11:54.239
I think been made into a comedy. Yeah, what was that experience like

1700
02:11:54.279 --> 02:11:58.560
for you? Being on set every
day? Hideous? The whole thing was

1701
02:11:58.640 --> 02:12:05.159
just appalling that not getting paid,
not getting the money for the book,

1702
02:12:05.199 --> 02:12:09.680
which was so essential to our lives. Eventually, because of that, we

1703
02:12:09.720 --> 02:12:13.960
went bankrupt and lost everything. So
we lost the cabin, we lost everything,

1704
02:12:13.000 --> 02:12:16.880
We lost our entire life because we
had expected that money and it was

1705
02:12:16.920 --> 02:12:20.520
a lot of money, and it
never came. They never paid us.

1706
02:12:22.000 --> 02:12:28.319
It's just such a hard thing to
talk about. Can we change objects perfect

1707
02:12:28.640 --> 02:12:33.079
and not a problem? You have
written several books regarding your experience then and

1708
02:12:33.119 --> 02:12:37.680
then subsequently do you continue to have
experiences? Is that why I continue to

1709
02:12:37.680 --> 02:12:41.399
write? Or do you just dwell
on this because it was such a major

1710
02:12:41.439 --> 02:12:45.920
incident in your life. No,
I'm engaged with this. I went for

1711
02:12:46.039 --> 02:12:52.560
it after the experience, after I
realized that there was something real going on.

1712
02:12:52.399 --> 02:12:56.800
Annie and I disgusted and what should
we do. It was a terrible

1713
02:12:58.279 --> 02:13:03.880
experience that night and led to some
equally horrible things that happened later, But

1714
02:13:03.439 --> 02:13:09.279
at the same time, it was
one of the most unique human experiences anyone's

1715
02:13:09.319 --> 02:13:13.439
ever head. You can't turn away
from a thing like that, you can't

1716
02:13:13.439 --> 02:13:18.760
play games with It was real and
I don't know what they are, who

1717
02:13:18.800 --> 02:13:24.359
they are to this day, but
they are. And I decided and decided

1718
02:13:24.439 --> 02:13:28.319
afterwards we would try to re engage
with him, and I started going out

1719
02:13:28.359 --> 02:13:31.800
into the woods in the night,
and at first I thought we would both

1720
02:13:31.840 --> 02:13:35.439
go out, and she said,
wait a minute, quickly, I have

1721
02:13:35.520 --> 02:13:39.760
a little seven year old way here
in the house. I'm certainly not leaving

1722
02:13:39.760 --> 02:13:45.359
the house with him alone asleep.
You go out anyway, it's your thing.

1723
02:13:45.399 --> 02:13:48.560
You're the one who had the experience, and so off I went into

1724
02:13:48.600 --> 02:13:54.960
the woods night after night for years, and they came back into my life,

1725
02:13:54.439 --> 02:14:00.960
and it has been a very mixed
bag. It's been very informative and

1726
02:14:01.039 --> 02:14:05.960
extraordinary. And I wrote two follow
on books, Transformation and Breakthrough, about

1727
02:14:07.000 --> 02:14:11.319
the continuing experience in the eighties and
the end of the early nineties, which

1728
02:14:11.359 --> 02:14:18.760
is very intense, and then a
long period of why escence occurred and I

1729
02:14:18.840 --> 02:14:22.359
didn't have them in my life for
a very long time, and then Annie

1730
02:14:22.399 --> 02:14:30.399
passed away and things changed very strongly, and it's so complex. She said,

1731
02:14:31.159 --> 02:14:35.239
back in back, when she was
reading the letters. There were thousands

1732
02:14:35.319 --> 02:14:41.159
upon thousands of letters, and she
would read them all. She'd open them

1733
02:14:41.159 --> 02:14:45.760
and read them. Anne was a
very quick study. She was the most

1734
02:14:45.800 --> 02:14:50.479
intelligent human being I've ever known.
I'm not dumb, but she was smarter

1735
02:14:50.600 --> 02:14:58.399
than me. She had a macro
ability to see things on a very large

1736
02:14:58.439 --> 02:15:03.119
scale, which is something that not
many people, not even many very bright

1737
02:15:03.199 --> 02:15:07.359
people have, And that was why
she said. When the letters started to

1738
02:15:07.439 --> 02:15:11.000
pour in, and I mean poor
and mailmen were coming and bringing them,

1739
02:15:11.399 --> 02:15:16.760
just dumping heaps of letters on our
living room floor, and they all had

1740
02:15:16.840 --> 02:15:20.840
return addresses on them, and I
thought, these people are pouring their hearts

1741
02:15:20.840 --> 02:15:26.520
out. When I read a few
of them telling me all kinds of extraordinarily

1742
02:15:26.760 --> 02:15:28.920
private things, I said, and
what are we going to do with these

1743
02:15:30.000 --> 02:15:33.439
letters? Because obviously we couldn't just
throw them out, and I wouldn't want

1744
02:15:33.439 --> 02:15:35.479
to do that anyway. But they
were overwhelming, the mass of them,

1745
02:15:35.880 --> 02:15:39.439
and she said, we're going to
read them. I said, I can't

1746
02:15:39.479 --> 02:15:41.479
read these. Look at how many. There's thousands right here, and this

1747
02:15:41.560 --> 02:15:46.880
is just three days. She said, I can't, And she did.

1748
02:15:46.039 --> 02:15:50.960
Boy, she hired a secretary.
She read them all them, and she

1749
02:15:50.039 --> 02:15:54.640
would put aside the ones that were
just this happened to me, and wow,

1750
02:15:54.800 --> 02:15:58.479
I'm so glad to see the book
or what an incredible story. But

1751
02:15:58.520 --> 02:16:05.039
the ones were the more complex story
she kept, and she kept them and

1752
02:16:05.079 --> 02:16:11.439
they're now in a university archivey of
Rice University. They're precious because their first

1753
02:16:11.520 --> 02:16:16.640
contact, that's first contact right there
at that right there in those letters,

1754
02:16:16.640 --> 02:16:20.359
and people may scorn it, and
they may look down their noses at it

1755
02:16:20.399 --> 02:16:24.800
if they've got PhDs, but because
they think to themselves, it didn't happen

1756
02:16:24.880 --> 02:16:31.800
to me and I'm so accomplished.
Perhaps it didn't happen to you because you're

1757
02:16:31.840 --> 02:16:37.319
sol there was no room in you
for this. So the letters were there.

1758
02:16:37.559 --> 02:16:43.040
And then she passes on in twenty
fifteen and proceeds to return in a

1759
02:16:43.120 --> 02:16:50.360
ways that are undnial, and I
write a book about that, called the

1760
02:16:50.399 --> 02:16:56.200
Afterlife Revolution. Because she had been
planning her return from January of twenty fifteen

1761
02:16:56.959 --> 02:17:03.879
and died in August of twenty fifteen. By the end of September of twenty

1762
02:17:03.920 --> 02:17:09.399
fifteen, it was obvious that she
was back, and she did it very

1763
02:17:09.559 --> 02:17:15.040
cleverly by going to friends, not
to me, and telling them to call

1764
02:17:15.079 --> 02:17:20.600
me at moments that I was just
in desperate Greek, because you're married to

1765
02:17:20.680 --> 02:17:24.239
someone like that, a huge personality, and you're devastated. When they died,

1766
02:17:24.600 --> 02:17:28.600
it's like half of me, or
more than half of me, had

1767
02:17:28.639 --> 02:17:33.559
gone. And she once was given
an Indian name by a Sioue chief on

1768
02:17:33.600 --> 02:17:37.479
the Pine Rid reservation. He said, your Indian name is three quarters fifty.

1769
02:17:39.239 --> 02:17:41.959
He said why three quarters, she
says, because you're three quarters of

1770
02:17:43.000 --> 02:17:46.760
everything that's happening between you and Whitley. I said, what's my Indian name?

1771
02:17:46.799 --> 02:17:52.399
And he said, you don't have
one yet. And that's the truth.

1772
02:17:52.440 --> 02:17:56.959
That's why her picture's back there,
because she didn't. In those days,

1773
02:17:56.000 --> 02:18:01.920
the UFA movement was mostly guys,
and they have a room for Anne.

1774
02:18:01.440 --> 02:18:05.360
So she was in the background.
And in the publishing world, I

1775
02:18:05.479 --> 02:18:09.239
was the writer and I was the
guy, and so everyone wanted me and

1776
02:18:09.360 --> 02:18:13.520
not Ann. But it was Anne
who was doing everything, Anne who was

1777
02:18:13.600 --> 02:18:20.040
making Anne thought the word communion was
important and she created this. She created

1778
02:18:20.079 --> 02:18:24.040
contact and did But they don't like
that. They don't like that. They

1779
02:18:24.079 --> 02:18:31.840
wanted to be Carl Sagan or some
high and official that announced. It creates

1780
02:18:31.879 --> 02:18:37.280
contact. Not a humble woman,
but from a humble marriage with a little

1781
02:18:37.559 --> 02:18:43.120
nobody writer. I'm not a literary
lion of any kind. I'm just an

1782
02:18:43.760 --> 02:18:50.000
B grade writer. But here we
are. Nevertheless, they liked the little

1783
02:18:50.040 --> 02:18:54.399
guy. Frankly, you talked about
people not having room. I suppose you

1784
02:18:54.479 --> 02:19:00.840
think you had the room for this. Two very smart people, very tight

1785
02:19:00.959 --> 02:19:05.799
team. We could hold each other
up under pressure. I've had lots of

1786
02:19:05.840 --> 02:19:09.280
experience as a child. We think
Anne might have too, because she has

1787
02:19:09.280 --> 02:19:16.040
these vast areas in her childhood of
just missing time, no memory whatsoever.

1788
02:19:16.559 --> 02:19:20.799
But it was a very traumatic child
which her mother committed suicide when she was

1789
02:19:20.840 --> 02:19:26.959
seven, and Anne founder and that
that is a major thing. I used

1790
02:19:26.959 --> 02:19:30.159
to hold her in the night and
say, honey, you're not an orphan

1791
02:19:30.239 --> 02:19:35.799
anymore. Weird together, we're not
an orphan anymore. She's a beautiful person.

1792
02:19:37.319 --> 02:19:41.120
Anyway, They chose us also because
I think we'd do it. I

1793
02:19:41.959 --> 02:19:48.559
must have seen he's a good storyteller. He's innocent enough and crazy enough to

1794
02:19:48.600 --> 02:19:52.159
actually do this crazy thing. And
they were right. But I did it,

1795
02:19:52.319 --> 02:19:56.959
and I've done it, and I've
taken this to a level with my

1796
02:19:58.120 --> 02:20:01.559
more recent books, like a New
World and especially Than You and Them,

1797
02:20:01.520 --> 02:20:07.239
that has never been taken to before
by anybody. And I'm working on a

1798
02:20:07.239 --> 02:20:11.440
book now that they'll take it another
step forward, to leap forward. Actually

1799
02:20:11.879 --> 02:20:16.079
we're going to understand this. And
there's a courtier of people in the scientific

1800
02:20:16.120 --> 02:20:22.040
community, the government and the academic
community who do respect me and do work

1801
02:20:22.079 --> 02:20:26.879
with me. And that's been very
helpful. So it's not like it used

1802
02:20:26.920 --> 02:20:31.200
to be. But I was treated
as scum of the earth by such people.

1803
02:20:31.680 --> 02:20:33.479
Now there's, as I say,
there's this cotier of people. It's

1804
02:20:33.479 --> 02:20:37.600
small, but it's there, and
they're very A lot of them are very

1805
02:20:37.639 --> 02:20:45.200
distinguished. Jeffrey Kraepel is extremely distinguished
religious professor of religious Studies, wrote a

1806
02:20:45.200 --> 02:20:50.520
book with me, Supernatural, wrote
a book with me, lessa Kinda,

1807
02:20:50.600 --> 02:20:58.399
Walsh Passolca, Gary Nolan, Christopher
Green, asth hal Pudah, Jack Valet.

1808
02:21:00.040 --> 02:21:03.559
They were all good friends and respect
me and my work, and they're

1809
02:21:03.600 --> 02:21:09.920
powerful people. So that's a big
change. When did that tide start to

1810
02:21:09.959 --> 02:21:15.319
shift when Jacques Vallet, The tide
never shifted. Jacques was on side from

1811
02:21:15.360 --> 02:21:20.719
the very beginning. Jacques read Communion
and became my friend. He is a

1812
02:21:20.879 --> 02:21:26.799
very brilliant and astute man, and
he saw what it was and what it

1813
02:21:26.920 --> 02:21:33.639
wasn't and thought that it was a
very intelligent approach to this situation. That

1814
02:21:33.799 --> 02:21:39.360
was the first. And then Hal
Pudolph came along, and Al and I

1815
02:21:39.399 --> 02:21:43.280
have now been friends for more than
Jack, for more than thirty years,

1816
02:21:43.520 --> 02:21:48.479
and Hal is deeply engaged in this. He's an insider, frank. So

1817
02:21:48.600 --> 02:21:54.479
those are the first. But it
began to really thaw when Jeff Chrit sent

1818
02:21:54.559 --> 02:21:58.680
me an email saying he was interested
in my work and what I like.

1819
02:22:00.079 --> 02:22:03.719
Willing to talk to him? Then
I looked up his curriculum Viti. I

1820
02:22:03.799 --> 02:22:07.479
thought, would I be willing to
talk to him? Oh? Yes,

1821
02:22:07.120 --> 02:22:11.840
he's the real deal. He was
at the time. He had a wonderful,

1822
02:22:11.920 --> 02:22:16.680
distinguished career in his field and was
one of the leaders in the field.

1823
02:22:16.239 --> 02:22:20.879
And I prove him. I also
met another great professor of religious studies,

1824
02:22:20.920 --> 02:22:24.639
Dinah Walsh. But Soopa, who's
become a close friend as well.

1825
02:22:26.440 --> 02:22:30.559
It's the thlowing out a little bit. But then you have the head of

1826
02:22:30.760 --> 02:22:35.600
Arrow, who is called on the
carpet basically by David Grush in the Congressional

1827
02:22:35.639 --> 02:22:43.000
hearing and said frankly that he's not
being straight. Now. He's out on

1828
02:22:43.040 --> 02:22:48.200
the hustings saying he never saw a
thing and it was all it's all a

1829
02:22:48.239 --> 02:22:52.360
bunch of huey. And he's got
a big article now in Scientific American saying

1830
02:22:52.440 --> 02:22:56.840
that this guy does. I'm hopefully
going to remember his name, but it's

1831
02:22:56.879 --> 02:23:01.200
not coming to me. He was
the head of Arrow and he was one

1832
02:23:01.239 --> 02:23:07.200
of the ones that David Grush went
to under the Whistleblower Act, and basically

1833
02:23:07.719 --> 02:23:13.639
he just ignored Grush because it seems
to Crush, and I think I agree

1834
02:23:13.639 --> 02:23:18.280
with him that Arrow was there to
track people who wanted to tell the truth.

1835
02:23:18.319 --> 02:23:22.760
It wasn't there to do what it
was supposed to do at all,

1836
02:23:22.159 --> 02:23:28.040
and it was to find out who
wanted to spill the beans and go after

1837
02:23:28.120 --> 02:23:33.440
them. That's my opinion. It
feels like that happens fairly often. People

1838
02:23:33.479 --> 02:23:37.959
come out, they say that they
experience something, and then they retract.

1839
02:23:37.000 --> 02:23:41.799
That is that pretty power For the
course. David Grush is not retracted a

1840
02:23:41.920 --> 02:23:48.319
word, and sometimes I don't see
that too much. I can't offhand think

1841
02:23:48.360 --> 02:23:54.959
of any cases where that happened.
There may be some but mostly lately especially,

1842
02:23:56.639 --> 02:24:01.799
people have been sticking to their guns. And the Arrow guy was he

1843
02:24:01.959 --> 02:24:05.879
was there to like a fly paper. He was there to trap people.

1844
02:24:05.920 --> 02:24:09.559
I think I think that, as
I say, I think that's what the

1845
02:24:09.559 --> 02:24:13.959
purpose of Arrow was. I don't
think. I don't see any anyone else

1846
02:24:13.479 --> 02:24:18.799
within the government using the viscile blow
or a direction anymore. And it's too

1847
02:24:18.879 --> 02:24:22.879
bad too, because I'm sure there
must be people who want to do that.

1848
02:24:22.399 --> 02:24:28.559
But there's something deeper wrong here.
Nothing could be kept this secret this

1849
02:24:28.799 --> 02:24:37.399
long if there wasn't some larger level
of suppression going on. And I think

1850
02:24:37.440 --> 02:24:43.159
it comes down to the visitors and
their ability to maneuverate in this context,

1851
02:24:43.280 --> 02:24:46.319
and how they do it. I
don't know, but I think they do

1852
02:24:46.440 --> 02:24:52.920
it. So that's all I can
say. I've asked people like how but

1853
02:24:54.319 --> 02:25:00.319
Hell doesn't have direct contact. Jim
Semivan had direct contact with him, very

1854
02:25:00.360 --> 02:25:07.680
briefly. But I don't know why
the secrecy is held with such veracity,

1855
02:25:07.319 --> 02:25:15.040
because right now the Defense Department has
weathered a major effort to break this secrecy

1856
02:25:15.520 --> 02:25:24.840
and successfully. The Humor Amendment has
been defanged. It doesn't have any real

1857
02:25:24.399 --> 02:25:28.959
power anymore. It's not going to
do a thing, and the Defense Department

1858
02:25:30.120 --> 02:25:35.840
is just it's beyond. It seems
to me that there's something more than government

1859
02:25:35.959 --> 02:25:43.120
involved. There's some other level of
control. Whether it's an unseen, very

1860
02:25:43.319 --> 02:25:48.959
powerful level of human control or the
visitors themselves, I don't know. And

1861
02:25:50.040 --> 02:25:52.639
if it's the visitors themselves, then
there God knows how they're doing it.

1862
02:25:54.040 --> 02:25:58.159
They're capable a lot of things that
would really surprise you. He talked about

1863
02:25:58.399 --> 02:26:03.040
two types of visitors, and and
I'm curious, how many others have you

1864
02:26:03.159 --> 02:26:07.040
experienced her? Was it just those
two groups? No, I can tell

1865
02:26:07.079 --> 02:26:13.399
you precisely. It's not something you
forget. Grays and some of them shorter

1866
02:26:13.520 --> 02:26:18.280
and some of them taller, the
little the dark blue figures who seem to

1867
02:26:18.319 --> 02:26:22.840
be working with them that sometimes are
in brown by the way, other people

1868
02:26:22.879 --> 02:26:26.319
see them in brown, but they're
basically workers of some sort. I have

1869
02:26:26.600 --> 02:26:33.280
seen the tall blonde people and one
of their children who was the tall blonde

1870
02:26:33.319 --> 02:26:43.040
six year old. And I have
seen one that looked surprisingly like a praying

1871
02:26:43.120 --> 02:26:48.440
madness I won. And I have
seen some that had an Asian kind of

1872
02:26:48.559 --> 02:26:52.920
cast to them and look more human. Those are the ones that I could

1873
02:26:52.920 --> 02:26:58.079
identify as non human. But I
have also been in the context of some

1874
02:26:58.239 --> 02:27:03.959
that looked humand but I don't think
they were. And I think that when

1875
02:27:03.959 --> 02:27:07.520
we get to we circle back to
this, how this whole thing is being

1876
02:27:07.520 --> 02:27:13.000
controlled of the Department of Defense,
that could be how there could be people

1877
02:27:13.000 --> 02:27:16.559
in there who will learn what they've
seen. And I'll tell you a story

1878
02:27:16.559 --> 02:27:22.479
about that. Years ago, I
was the legal counsel for the Defense Select

1879
02:27:22.520 --> 02:27:26.559
Committee on Intelligence was asking me a
lot of questions because I had written a

1880
02:27:26.559 --> 02:27:30.639
book called Majestic and there I can
figure out where I got the information that

1881
02:27:30.920 --> 02:27:35.159
chance in any case, because a
lot of the information dubtails with what really

1882
02:27:35.200 --> 02:27:39.360
happened. Simple I got it from
my uncle and from General Arthur Exon,

1883
02:27:39.360 --> 02:27:43.520
who were involved in the Roswell incident, and they told me a lot of

1884
02:27:43.520 --> 02:27:48.799
stuff about it after they read Communion, So it's pretty straightforward. The Senate

1885
02:27:48.840 --> 02:27:54.159
Committee wasn't willing to believe it was
that simple, but it was any case.

1886
02:27:54.639 --> 02:28:01.120
At that time, there was this. I was told that their main

1887
02:28:01.719 --> 02:28:07.959
fear was people who appeared to be
human who were actually allied with the they

1888
02:28:09.000 --> 02:28:13.680
called the aliens and work in the
government. That could be a big deal.

1889
02:28:13.959 --> 02:28:18.760
They could be running the secrecy from
the inside, and we don't even

1890
02:28:18.879 --> 02:28:24.159
know that they're not human or that
they are something else. Do they primarily

1891
02:28:24.879 --> 02:28:33.559
communicate telepathically or can they actually communicate
verbalake the ones I'm with can't communicate,

1892
02:28:33.639 --> 02:28:41.000
for they can't. I've heard one
or two words. I once heard have

1893
02:28:41.200 --> 02:28:46.559
joy and thought that was the most
important thing that anyone could ever say.

1894
02:28:46.799 --> 02:28:52.440
And then once I was in the
middle of the communion tour, I was

1895
02:28:52.479 --> 02:28:56.680
struggling because it came on me unexpectedly. I didn't expect it to be like

1896
02:28:56.760 --> 02:29:03.000
it it was, and I was
having a sort of ongoing riot in my

1897
02:29:03.159 --> 02:29:07.280
life. And I asked that should
never bothered, asked the Grays. At

1898
02:29:07.319 --> 02:29:11.360
that time. I could sit with
them. I could sit, I could

1899
02:29:11.440 --> 02:29:16.239
go into a meditative state, and
I could ask questions. And I'm not

1900
02:29:16.920 --> 02:29:22.440
a channeler, so they would try
to telepathically communicate, but I didn't.

1901
02:29:22.319 --> 02:29:26.440
I just ignored it because who knows
it's in my imagination or not. And

1902
02:29:28.159 --> 02:29:33.639
they finally three of them showed up, and they all spoke, and it

1903
02:29:33.799 --> 02:29:35.719
sounded to me like it was coming
in my ears, but it might not

1904
02:29:35.799 --> 02:29:41.079
have been. They all said something
simultaneously when I had asked the question,

1905
02:29:41.200 --> 02:29:46.319
how am I doing? They all
said something different if I couldn't understand the

1906
02:29:46.399 --> 02:29:52.479
single word of it, and then
they disappeared. So so that's how the

1907
02:29:52.520 --> 02:29:56.520
physical part of it, there's not
much speech. But I think if there

1908
02:29:56.559 --> 02:30:03.079
are people who are either connected to
them or are them, or are perhaps

1909
02:30:03.280 --> 02:30:07.680
it's a huge universe. Maybe there's
another planet with people on it who are

1910
02:30:07.719 --> 02:30:11.840
already alive with them in some way, and they're coming here. These people

1911
02:30:11.280 --> 02:30:16.239
can talk, obviously, or they
couldn't. How are they going to handle

1912
02:30:16.319 --> 02:30:18.319
being in the government, because that's
all you do in the government's talk.

1913
02:30:20.319 --> 02:30:24.079
Yeah, so it's probably a mixed
bag. But I don't think the little

1914
02:30:24.120 --> 02:30:33.879
gray people talk and the dark blue
ones they can talk. And Suri I

1915
02:30:33.040 --> 02:30:37.680
was with an aunt at the country
house in Texas where I used to see

1916
02:30:37.719 --> 02:30:43.600
him a lot when I was a
boy, and we were together there,

1917
02:30:43.639 --> 02:30:46.440
just the two of us, and
I was working on a New World at

1918
02:30:46.440 --> 02:30:50.079
the time, so We're coming up
to the house every night. They'd stand

1919
02:30:50.120 --> 02:30:54.959
on the porch outside and communicate with
me mentally as we worked on the book.

1920
02:30:54.559 --> 02:31:00.360
So they're there, they come up
and I'm sitting in the living rooms

1921
02:31:00.479 --> 02:31:03.280
the big bedroom that she's in.
The master bedroom is above that, and

1922
02:31:05.440 --> 02:31:09.239
she's up there and suddenly I hear
her say, quickly, is that you?

1923
02:31:09.920 --> 02:31:13.159
And I say, no, it's
not. What are you talking about?

1924
02:31:13.479 --> 02:31:16.639
He said, You're not out on
the porch. There's a sleeping porch

1925
02:31:18.280 --> 02:31:20.799
just beside her room and flow the
ceiling windows where he could walk in and

1926
02:31:20.840 --> 02:31:26.959
out. And I said, no, I'm downstairs in the living room.

1927
02:31:26.440 --> 02:31:33.600
And what had happened was she'd heard
this shuffling on the porch one of because

1928
02:31:33.799 --> 02:31:39.040
they when they're not made to walk
in this world, they shuffle along.

1929
02:31:39.719 --> 02:31:46.479
And then she heard this voice say, why aren't you ast It was them,

1930
02:31:46.200 --> 02:31:52.799
And the next afternoon she had a
heart attack because she's very stressful to

1931
02:31:52.840 --> 02:31:56.120
be near them. You really have
to get used to it. It's not

1932
02:31:56.319 --> 02:32:01.479
something that's easy. When Jeff Kreipel
spent a night in the same room with

1933
02:32:01.559 --> 02:32:07.040
me at the Escellent Institute in Northern
California, they showed up, and one

1934
02:32:07.079 --> 02:32:13.440
of them showed up, and he
experienced it like he heard his own voice

1935
02:32:13.479 --> 02:32:18.319
from somewhere deep within him go,
oh my God. And he heard what

1936
02:32:18.559 --> 02:32:24.879
sounded to him like crashing glass,
like the whole world was collapsing. And

1937
02:32:24.200 --> 02:32:30.319
the reason for this is that they
have a different relationship to time and we

1938
02:32:30.440 --> 02:32:35.600
are in the moment, and this
is critical to human light. Everything for

1939
02:32:35.840 --> 02:32:41.239
us is always new. When you
draw close to them, you begin to

1940
02:32:41.280 --> 02:32:50.319
see the head and your soul has
bargained for this light in a constant state

1941
02:32:50.360 --> 02:32:54.159
of the new, because that's how
we gain energy. That's why we're here,

1942
02:32:54.760 --> 02:33:01.079
why we put ourselves into this situation
where we will live and suffer and

1943
02:33:01.159 --> 02:33:05.639
struggle and really find ourselves. And
suddenly to have that taken from you,

1944
02:33:07.200 --> 02:33:11.719
it's terrifule beyond words. You have
to get used to back that it's not

1945
02:33:11.760 --> 02:33:15.959
going to be taken from you.
It all only feels like that. And

1946
02:33:16.040 --> 02:33:18.479
once you're used to that, it's
easy to be around them. But it's

1947
02:33:18.520 --> 02:33:20.879
not so easy for someone who's not
expecting it. So that's why the heart

1948
02:33:20.879 --> 02:33:24.040
attack, and that's why Jeff was
so devastated. Well unless the last time

1949
02:33:24.040 --> 02:33:31.040
he hadn't experience that, he had
a visitation of physical visitation, probably about

1950
02:33:31.280 --> 02:33:35.120
a year ago. Probably. I
do most of it. I work with

1951
02:33:35.159 --> 02:33:41.319
them lots at night at three o'clock
in the morning, and it's mental,

1952
02:33:41.559 --> 02:33:46.200
but it's very organized because the implant
is there, and it's very organized.

1953
02:33:46.239 --> 02:33:50.399
It's not like channeling at all.
I'm not going to take instructions from anyone.

1954
02:33:50.040 --> 02:33:54.239
It's a give and take. It's
like working. It's like working with

1955
02:33:54.319 --> 02:33:58.000
a committee on the book. Basically, it's what it's like. And that's

1956
02:33:58.040 --> 02:34:03.479
been like that since New World and
then first the first one was Afterlife Revolution

1957
02:34:03.639 --> 02:34:07.159
and a New World and them,
and now this new book is all being

1958
02:34:07.440 --> 02:34:13.760
done that way. And Anne is
in a spiritual state and non physical state

1959
02:34:13.000 --> 02:34:18.040
partly, and she is very much
a participant as well. Do you ever

1960
02:34:18.120 --> 02:34:22.040
get into disagreements about the direction of
a book or how things should be written?

1961
02:34:22.520 --> 02:34:28.639
Oh, yes, certainly do.
There's lots of disagreements in a New

1962
02:34:28.680 --> 02:34:33.399
World. I wanted to put in
some material about these terrible murders that took

1963
02:34:33.440 --> 02:34:43.040
place in Brooklyn in the early two
thousands, and there were seventeen cases I

1964
02:34:43.120 --> 02:34:50.719
know about where people were mutilated like
cattle and they were then they were taken

1965
02:34:50.840 --> 02:34:54.120
off the streets. They were street
people. They were not. They never

1966
02:34:54.159 --> 02:35:00.319
took anyone with any connections whoever was
doing this. They were taken off the

1967
02:35:00.360 --> 02:35:05.239
street. They were mutilated, then
drowned in the ocean. Taken down so

1968
02:35:05.719 --> 02:35:13.120
deep their lungs collapsed, and then
put back where they had been taken from

1969
02:35:13.159 --> 02:35:16.399
where they had been taken in the
first place. Now you think that if

1970
02:35:16.479 --> 02:35:20.879
someone wanted to do that. And
I explained in the book why this was

1971
02:35:20.920 --> 02:35:22.520
done and what was being done,
and I'm not going to go into it

1972
02:35:22.520 --> 02:35:28.920
now because it's too complicated. Just
suffice to say that over a lifetime,

1973
02:35:28.040 --> 02:35:35.879
we build up a lot of experience
that can be almost like food to someone

1974
02:35:35.920 --> 02:35:41.639
else. And these were people who
had been judged to be indifferent to their

1975
02:35:41.680 --> 02:35:46.440
own value. They didn't care about
themselves, and therefore, as far as

1976
02:35:46.520 --> 02:35:52.959
the brigands who took them were concerned, they were fair game. Turned out

1977
02:35:52.079 --> 02:35:56.120
not to be the case. It's
not happening anymore. I don't think it

1978
02:35:56.120 --> 02:36:00.719
will happen again. But when we
were working on that, they were really

1979
02:36:00.799 --> 02:36:07.360
iffy about putting that in and because
it made it look bad. I'm not

1980
02:36:07.440 --> 02:36:11.200
making you look bad. Whoever did
that, it's making you look bad,

1981
02:36:11.719 --> 02:36:16.079
and therefore goes in. And so
we went back and forth and finally they

1982
02:36:16.680 --> 02:36:22.959
agreed to it going in there.
And I'm hoping that it's part of why

1983
02:36:22.000 --> 02:36:26.399
that's not happening anymore, and I
hope it's not happening because worries music could

1984
02:36:26.399 --> 02:36:30.120
be happening in the third world all
the time and we would never know.

1985
02:36:30.680 --> 02:36:33.399
And if they finally get smart and
don't bring them back, there's a there's

1986
02:36:33.440 --> 02:36:37.120
a very dark side to this.
It's not all sweetness and light, but

1987
02:36:37.239 --> 02:36:43.360
it can be very informative. And
I wouldn't trade my life with them to

1988
02:36:43.440 --> 02:36:48.280
the world. I think it's an
extraordinary to have them in my life.

1989
02:36:48.799 --> 02:36:52.159
They're just like us. Some of
them are good, some of them are

1990
02:36:52.159 --> 02:36:54.399
bad, and a lot of them
are just there. Do they tend to

1991
02:36:54.399 --> 02:36:58.159
fall in groups as far as there
are bad ones and good ones? Or

1992
02:36:58.239 --> 02:37:01.879
is it just individual just like you
and me. I think that's a good

1993
02:37:01.959 --> 02:37:07.239
question, and it's really very much
of a living question in my own mind.

1994
02:37:07.920 --> 02:37:13.520
I think that there are groups that
have and I suspect they think of

1995
02:37:13.559 --> 02:37:18.719
them as criminals who do this.
I do not think it's something they want

1996
02:37:18.879 --> 02:37:24.920
or approve of at a higher level
in their world. I think that they

1997
02:37:26.719 --> 02:37:30.959
draw the line. And the reason
I think that is that they do that

1998
02:37:31.040 --> 02:37:35.559
with cattle, and it's for food, not for the kind of food we

1999
02:37:35.559 --> 02:37:41.360
eat, but seal for food.
And they chose cattle because we do it

2000
02:37:41.399 --> 02:37:45.879
with cattle. In other words,
must be okay to use cattle as a

2001
02:37:45.879 --> 02:37:50.079
food source because we use cattle as
a foods. But someone who wants the

2002
02:37:50.280 --> 02:37:56.159
much richer content of a human soul, No, I don't think so,

2003
02:37:56.799 --> 02:38:00.959
And I think that there's I don't
think that they want that happen. I

2004
02:38:00.959 --> 02:38:05.760
don't think they want people to tear
out that part of a human being and

2005
02:38:05.159 --> 02:38:09.200
abuse it. You talked about this
self publishing, and I'm curious. Is

2006
02:38:09.239 --> 02:38:13.559
the best place for people to get
your books at your website? Unknown country?

2007
02:38:13.120 --> 02:38:16.600
No, the best place is Amazon. Get my books on Amazon,

2008
02:38:16.719 --> 02:38:22.680
and you can get them on Barnes
and Noble. You can get the audiobook

2009
02:38:22.719 --> 02:38:28.319
on audible dot com. Everything The
Communion, A New World, Afterlife,

2010
02:38:28.360 --> 02:38:35.840
Revolution and them are all on audio
and on Kindle and in hardcover and softcover.

2011
02:38:35.879 --> 02:38:41.440
And I make beautiful books. The
hardcovers especially are very beautiful. And

2012
02:38:41.639 --> 02:38:48.200
on my website you can get signed
copies and we chip very fronky. Are

2013
02:38:48.200 --> 02:38:50.680
you still doing your podcast? I
have been doing. This is my twenty

2014
02:38:50.760 --> 02:38:56.120
fifth year of doing Dreamland. I've
been doing Dreamland every week for twenty five

2015
02:38:56.200 --> 02:39:00.959
years, and I do it right
now on Dreamland. Is available on every

2016
02:39:01.639 --> 02:39:07.319
podcast app there is, and you
can watch it on YouTube, although not

2017
02:39:07.399 --> 02:39:11.239
many people do. Mostly people listen
to it, and it's not about one

2018
02:39:11.280 --> 02:39:13.479
hundred thousand listeners. Mister Streeber,
thank you so much to this. I

2019
02:39:13.600 --> 02:39:18.200
was such a pleasure talking with you. Thank you. I'm very grateful that

2020
02:39:18.239 --> 02:39:43.959
people will listen to me and that
you listen to me. All Right,

2021
02:39:43.040 --> 02:39:46.280
we are back and we are talking
about Communion and Joe. You've already talked

2022
02:39:46.280 --> 02:39:50.520
a little bit about these post Communion
of books, but did you bread in

2023
02:39:50.600 --> 02:39:54.719
the notes that there was supposed to
be a sequel to this movie. There

2024
02:39:54.799 --> 02:39:58.239
was some talk and I think this
was in an interview with Philip Moore where

2025
02:39:58.280 --> 02:40:03.799
he he talked about turning Transformation into
a movie, which was the follow up

2026
02:40:03.840 --> 02:40:07.879
book to Communion. You know,
I think I think that idea died pretty

2027
02:40:07.959 --> 02:40:11.040
quickly when Communion came out, and
you know, it was a disaster at

2028
02:40:11.079 --> 02:40:16.600
the box office, so there there
was no discussion there. But apparently there

2029
02:40:16.639 --> 02:40:20.200
should be a biography of Christopher Walkin, and there's amazingly there's not. But

2030
02:40:20.239 --> 02:40:22.959
there is a book that I read
years ago called Christopher Walkin a to Z.

2031
02:40:24.079 --> 02:40:30.479
That's just like a compilation of crazy
anecdotes about Christopher Walkin. And one

2032
02:40:30.520 --> 02:40:35.719
of the anecdotes was that was in
there was about how if they turned Transformation

2033
02:40:37.159 --> 02:40:41.399
into a movie, they were going
to recast the role of Whitley Strieber,

2034
02:40:43.159 --> 02:40:45.920
it wasn't going to be Christopher Walkin. And they had two There are two

2035
02:40:45.959 --> 02:40:50.120
people named in this book, and
I'm just going to throw these out there

2036
02:40:50.280 --> 02:40:52.520
and get your reaction. The first
one makes sense to me, and it's

2037
02:40:52.600 --> 02:41:00.280
Rick moranis. The second one is
televangelist Jim Baker. Now, a book

2038
02:41:00.319 --> 02:41:03.399
like Christopher Walkin eight is the I
don't know quite how seriously to take that.

2039
02:41:03.600 --> 02:41:07.920
I'm giving my source because who knows. But I thought that was a

2040
02:41:07.959 --> 02:41:13.440
fun, a fun little anecdote.
Well, do either of them look enough

2041
02:41:13.520 --> 02:41:18.159
like Whitley Strieber to make that work? I buy the Rick Moranus. At

2042
02:41:18.159 --> 02:41:22.040
that time, I could see moranis
doing it. He doesn't come with all

2043
02:41:22.079 --> 02:41:24.959
that baggage. Yes, you're probably
waiting for him to start talking about all

2044
02:41:26.000 --> 02:41:30.200
the Gozarians or those kind of things. Like I could see him playing this

2045
02:41:30.280 --> 02:41:35.520
kind of more mild mannered person and
somebody more internal. You know, it

2046
02:41:35.559 --> 02:41:39.440
feels like there's a lot of stuff
going on inside of Walkins's brain, but

2047
02:41:39.520 --> 02:41:43.280
at the same time, he's expressing
every single thought that comes through his brain

2048
02:41:43.319 --> 02:41:46.559
in this movie, whereas I could
see Miranus playing a little closer to the

2049
02:41:46.639 --> 02:41:52.440
vest and you're feeling more sympathy for
him being this put upon guy who is

2050
02:41:52.520 --> 02:41:58.959
getting he's played by these visions or
visitations. Have you heard the story about

2051
02:42:00.000 --> 02:42:05.319
about how Walkin was cast in in
Communion Philip and Whitley when they when they

2052
02:42:05.319 --> 02:42:09.799
were putting their company together, they
originally were going to make War Day,

2053
02:42:11.479 --> 02:42:16.040
which probably other than The Wolfen and
the Hunger, was Whitley's biggest book at

2054
02:42:16.040 --> 02:42:20.399
that at that point, his biggest
success and and you know, I know

2055
02:42:20.440 --> 02:42:22.600
that one was on the bestseller list. It was a big deal. And

2056
02:42:22.920 --> 02:42:24.360
so they were going to turn that
into a movie. And then I think

2057
02:42:24.399 --> 02:42:28.360
while they were discussing turning that into
a movie, you know, Whitley told

2058
02:42:28.680 --> 02:42:33.399
Philip about this experience that he'd had
the abduction experience before he'd even written Communion,

2059
02:42:33.440 --> 02:42:39.520
and they had a certain point shifted
over. But Christopher Walkin was going

2060
02:42:39.600 --> 02:42:43.319
to be in War Day. They
were talking about him talking to him about

2061
02:42:43.319 --> 02:42:46.399
being in War Day, and he
you know, I don't I don't know

2062
02:42:46.719 --> 02:42:48.840
who. I mean. I assume
he was going to play one of the

2063
02:42:48.840 --> 02:42:52.319
two leads, well, basically the
two lead characters in war Day, because

2064
02:42:52.360 --> 02:43:01.520
it's this weird kind of pseudo documentary
book about posts nuclear attack, you know,

2065
02:43:01.559 --> 02:43:05.079
sort of a post apocalyptic world.
You know, the two main characters

2066
02:43:05.120 --> 02:43:07.440
are the authors. You know,
they use their own names. They put

2067
02:43:07.520 --> 02:43:11.200
themselves in the book as characters,
so you have you know, Whitley and

2068
02:43:11.239 --> 02:43:16.879
his co author are the characters.
So was Christopher walk in you know,

2069
02:43:16.920 --> 02:43:20.159
when he was going to do War
Day, he was still going to be

2070
02:43:20.200 --> 02:43:22.959
playing Whitley Strieber. I mean,
maybe that's how that happened. Too bad

2071
02:43:24.079 --> 02:43:28.280
they didn't make that movie. I
guess I'm glad I made this movie because

2072
02:43:28.399 --> 02:43:31.639
we're having a ball talking about it. But I'd love to see Christopher walking

2073
02:43:31.680 --> 02:43:37.079
in a movie called war Day.
What was odd? You mentioned the Prophecy

2074
02:43:37.159 --> 02:43:41.639
movies, and I remember that,
and I was getting that mixed up the

2075
02:43:41.680 --> 02:43:46.239
first Prophecy movie. I was getting
that mixed up with Fire in the Sky.

2076
02:43:46.680 --> 02:43:50.079
Do you guys remember that one?
Yeah? And it was like Travis

2077
02:43:50.120 --> 02:43:54.079
Walton. Yeah, it was like
the this was a really hot time,

2078
02:43:54.479 --> 02:43:56.200
which is so weird for me to
say, this was a hot time for

2079
02:43:56.319 --> 02:44:01.159
aliens and alien abductions. This was
the same year at the McPherson tape came

2080
02:44:01.159 --> 02:44:07.159
out. This was a few years
before Firing the Sky, as I mentioned,

2081
02:44:07.239 --> 02:44:11.239
and the Arrival, the one with
Charlie Sheen, not the one with

2082
02:44:11.760 --> 02:44:16.200
the Denise Villeneu film. And then
it was also right around the time that

2083
02:44:16.239 --> 02:44:20.479
the whole alien autopsy tape came out, which was such a sensation, Like

2084
02:44:20.520 --> 02:44:24.879
I remember going over to her friend's
house and him having a VHS of this

2085
02:44:24.000 --> 02:44:28.840
and just like, oh, let's
watch the alien autopsy tape. And I

2086
02:44:28.840 --> 02:44:31.840
think, wasn't Jonathan freaks? Didn't
he host that? If what you were

2087
02:44:31.840 --> 02:44:37.079
about to see is real, it's
the most startling film footage in history.

2088
02:44:37.120 --> 02:44:41.920
Although we remained skeptical, some experts
believe this is authentic footage of an alien

2089
02:44:41.959 --> 02:44:45.719
life, for real or not.
We must warn you this appears to be

2090
02:44:45.920 --> 02:44:48.479
an actual autopsy and some of the
footage you will see in the next hour

2091
02:44:48.559 --> 02:44:52.479
is very gruesome. Stay with us
as we put the question to you,

2092
02:44:54.440 --> 02:45:01.959
alien autopsy fact or fiction? I
only vaguely that as part of the whole

2093
02:45:01.159 --> 02:45:07.120
kind of X Files nineties experience,
you know, he was at the same

2094
02:45:07.239 --> 02:45:09.719
time, right, Yeah, I
mean I think Whitley really because he got

2095
02:45:09.760 --> 02:45:15.280
just raked over the coles after after
Communion, and he he sort of disappeared

2096
02:45:15.280 --> 02:45:16.040
for a while. I mean,
he went back and wrote, you know,

2097
02:45:16.079 --> 02:45:22.959
a few non alien novels in the
early nineties and and just kind of

2098
02:45:22.959 --> 02:45:26.520
said I'm not I'm not talking about
this anymore. And then eventually by the

2099
02:45:26.559 --> 02:45:28.200
mid nineties, you know, came
back and wrote another book. And I'm

2100
02:45:28.239 --> 02:45:31.639
sure that that that, you know, on some level, was because the

2101
02:45:31.760 --> 02:45:37.239
X Files just took over the culture. Well that was this the same you

2102
02:45:37.239 --> 02:45:41.920
know genre, right, and that
was all over it. Yeah, all

2103
02:45:41.000 --> 02:45:43.840
right, We're gonna take another break
and play a preview for next week's show.

2104
02:45:48.159 --> 02:46:03.920
Ye some look at the signore I
again to put up got don't come

2105
02:46:03.959 --> 02:46:43.920
in your cutters? Still more it
move it, more on it. I

2106
02:46:45.000 --> 02:47:03.760
guess a rooster you book my friendly. That's right. We are kicking off

2107
02:47:03.840 --> 02:47:07.639
a month of discussing Japanese films with
a look at our one hundred. Until

2108
02:47:07.719 --> 02:47:11.040
then, I want to thank this
week's co host, Joe and Jonathan.

2109
02:47:11.280 --> 02:47:13.879
So, Jonathan, what is going
on in your world? Sir? Programming

2110
02:47:15.200 --> 02:47:22.479
Escape from Tribeca again the visceral psychotronic
sidebar that we are having a ball with.

2111
02:47:22.879 --> 02:47:28.719
We just booked the confirmed the twentieth
anniversary of Saw with the talent's going

2112
02:47:28.799 --> 02:47:31.719
to come out and present that live
on stage. Going to be amazing show.

2113
02:47:33.040 --> 02:47:37.040
We're trying to get Pam Greer to
do the fiftieth anniversary of Foxy Brown,

2114
02:47:37.479 --> 02:47:41.799
seventieth birthday of Godzilla, and other
incredible films new and old. We

2115
02:47:41.920 --> 02:47:46.520
hope if you're in New York,
guys and listeners, if you're in New

2116
02:47:46.600 --> 02:47:50.280
York City June fifth through the sixteenth, please come to Tribeca Festival. Check

2117
02:47:50.360 --> 02:47:54.799
it out. Escape from Tribeca.
It's going to be amazing, very cool.

2118
02:47:54.879 --> 02:47:56.159
And Joe, what's happening with you? Well, Actually, in the

2119
02:47:56.239 --> 02:48:01.719
next few months, I have three
different books that I've worked on in some

2120
02:48:01.000 --> 02:48:05.680
capacity that are that are coming out. One of them is a is an

2121
02:48:05.680 --> 02:48:11.079
autobiography written by my friend Bruce Jail
Rubin, who I know you've had on

2122
02:48:11.120 --> 02:48:15.840
the shows. He's great and he's
he's written a book called It's Only a

2123
02:48:15.920 --> 02:48:18.840
Movie that is his story and I
helped him out a little bit with that,

2124
02:48:20.079 --> 02:48:24.239
and that's going to be coming out
from Sticking Place Books, and the

2125
02:48:24.319 --> 02:48:31.760
same publisher is putting out a book
of three unproduced screenplays by Bruce from the

2126
02:48:31.799 --> 02:48:37.319
early I think the first one is
written in sixty eight or sixty nine,

2127
02:48:37.440 --> 02:48:39.559
maybe it's right after two thousand and
one, I know. And now then

2128
02:48:39.840 --> 02:48:45.079
the third one was like eighty four
eighty five, so kind of spanning that

2129
02:48:45.520 --> 02:48:50.520
part of his his career and they're
actually really really great scripts that should have

2130
02:48:50.559 --> 02:48:54.840
been made. And then the third
thing that I've been working as it's been

2131
02:48:54.959 --> 02:48:58.799
kind of my pet project for four
years, and that is a very in

2132
02:49:00.000 --> 02:49:05.479
depth biography of Wes Craven called The
Soul of West Craven. And I've done

2133
02:49:05.559 --> 02:49:11.000
well over one hundred interviews and looked
at a lot of rare manuscripts that nobody

2134
02:49:11.079 --> 02:49:16.200
knows about by him, and that
will be coming out from Harker Press in

2135
02:49:16.200 --> 02:49:18.079
the next few months. Well,
thank you so much guys for being on

2136
02:49:18.159 --> 02:49:20.399
the show. Thanks to everybody for
listening. If you want to hear more

2137
02:49:20.440 --> 02:49:22.680
of me shooting off my mouth,
check out some of the other shows that

2138
02:49:22.719 --> 02:49:28.000
I work on. They're all available
at weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially guitar

2139
02:49:28.120 --> 02:49:31.840
Patreon community. If you want to
join the community, visit patreon dot com

2140
02:49:31.959 --> 02:49:35.200
slash Projection Booth. Every donation we
get helps some projection booth take over the

2141
02:49:35.239 --> 02:49:43.120
world. Moove up this morning with
ladin line and then real lad, it

2142
02:49:43.280 --> 02:49:48.280
will still dark outside. It was
a light coming down from the sky.

2143
02:49:50.120 --> 02:49:56.799
I don't know who. Ooh,
it must be those strangers that come every

2144
02:49:58.040 --> 02:50:05.120
nine, those saucership flies, good
people up tied deeply green footprints that blew

2145
02:50:05.319 --> 02:50:13.440
in the dark. I hope they
get along all right. Hey, mister

2146
02:50:13.639 --> 02:50:20.639
spaceman, won't you please take me
along? I won't do anything long?

2147
02:50:20.479 --> 02:50:28.319
Hey, mister spaceman, won't you
please save me alone? Before you arrive?

2148
02:50:30.319 --> 02:50:35.559
Woke up this morning, I was
feeling quite weird that flies in my

2149
02:50:35.879 --> 02:50:41.840
bear, My toothpaste was smeared over
my window. They'd written my name,

2150
02:50:43.319 --> 02:50:52.319
said so long you'll see you again. Pay, mister spaceman. Won't you

2151
02:50:52.479 --> 02:50:58.879
please take me along? I won't
do anything loud? Pay mister spaceman.

2152
02:51:00.879 --> 02:51:26.600
Won't you please make me along for
a ride? Hey, mister spaceman,

2153
02:51:26.520 --> 02:51:35.479
won't you please save me alone?
I'll do anything long Hey, mister spaceman,

2154
02:51:35.399 --> 02:51:39.559
won't you please save me? Along
for a ride.