September 16, 2016 • 37 mins
For nearly half a century people around the world have believed the moon landing was faked. If that were true, how could people possibly perpetrate such a massive hoax? Join Ben, Matt and Noel as they interview Matt Johnson about his newest film Operation Avalanche.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Throw UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
(00:20):
name is Nolan. And then this is stuff they don't
want you to know, and it just always thank you
so much for tuning in. You know, we've been doing
a lot of interviews recently, guys, Yeah, we have. I'm
enjoying the space. I guess. We wonder how you guys
feel about it, the space of interviews and interview space.
(00:41):
I gotta say, haven't. I've been enjoying it too, especially
when we get to learn new things and talk to
interesting individuals. Right. Yeah. So in previous episodes, we spoke
with the author Brian Tooey about sports conspiracies. Today we
are interviewing alow named Matt Johnson, who is the director, writer,
(01:03):
and star of a film coming out today. As if
you're listening to this the day it comes out, uh,
today September six, as we record this episode. Yes, it's
called Operation Avalanche, and it's it's very difficult for me
to describe everything that this movie encompasses. Because it's a
(01:25):
movie about making a movie with people using their real names.
But it's complete fiction. It's incredible. Right here, here are
the facts. On July TwixT nine, the course of human
history fundamentally changed when Neil Armstrong became the first man
to set foot upon the Moon, and then Buzz Aldrin
(01:46):
did it a couple of minutes afterwards, right, and once
once these people went there that one time on the
Apollo eleven mission. Than the official story is that there
were five more missions, so total of six Apollo missions
with two astronauts making contact on the surface each time,
for a total of twelve people on the moon. And
(02:08):
then we stopped going to the moon. Right, Yeah, then
we stopped going to the moon. So I want to
ask you guys. Operation Avalanche is about how a moon
landing could have been hoaxed. So I want to ask
you guys, and we want to ask you audience members
to let us know what what do you guys think?
Do you guys think somebody faked the moon landing? I
(02:30):
hope it was Stanley Kubrick. According to the latest polls
that I could find on this, roughly seven percent of
the American voting public believes that the moon landing was hoaxed. However,
that belief in a hoaxed moon landing is pretty popular
in other countries as well, so it's it's more common there. Well,
we're gonna just hop into our interview with Matt right now,
(02:54):
and then uh, we'll come back at the end and
see if our see if anybody has had their opinion. Swade,
what do you think? Yeah? I love that idea. Uh.
Quick note, Noel, you were not with us for this interviews,
but you're here with us now through the magic of
time travel audio. Time traveling audio. We have an actual
time machine here in the house stuff works offices that
(03:16):
we only use in cases of emergencies like this because
it operates on blood and blood magic. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I getta put the magic after and quick caveat at
the top here there are spoilers inside of this interview,
so listen with caution and go see the movie. And
here we go, ladies and gentlemen, we are here with
(03:42):
Matt Johnson, the director, co writer and star of Operation Avalanche.
So Matt, we have to know man what lad you guys,
specifically you and your co writer down this moon landing
rabbit hole? Well, When we first started, the plan was
just to make another fake documentary about some great historical
(04:07):
moment um, because we had such success of our first film,
The Dirties, and we really really really really like that
formal approach of sort of the oriole fake documentary by
neophite filmmakers like that that was just so interesting. Um.
And as we started looking at different moments in history
to kind of do this about, it just became so
(04:29):
obvious so quickly that the moon Landing, if it was faked,
is like the most incredible movie ever made. And so
if you're trying to make a story about people making movies,
then why not have them make the greatest movie ever
seen that nobody actually knows the movie? Um, and it's
(04:50):
it was almost as soon as it was mentioned, oh
let's do the fake moon landing, like that was it.
Then we were good, Like we just knew and and
oddly enough, just that idea was so powerful that it
it gave us energy to just keep going and going
and going and going when when we thought this is
this is ridiculous, Oh man, we can we can certainly
(05:11):
relate with that drive that you get when there's some
kind of mystery like that out there that it just
kind of hangs there in front of you like a carrot.
We we definitely understand that in our line of work. Yeah,
and it's so it's so clever for it to, uh,
for it to take that documentary format about the you know,
when you say it this way, Matt, it's it really
(05:33):
is the greatest movie ever made if the moon landings
are faked. And it's strange in the course of our research. Uh,
it's strange how this story has captivated people for nearly
half a century now and and and we have to
ask just to get get this uh elephant or lunar
rover in the room out of the way real quick. Uh.
(05:55):
Why do you think some people, some people believe that
the Apollo eleven moon landing was fake? I can tell you. Um.
I think one of the major reasons that that conspiracy
endures the way that many others are a bit more
laughable and are not nearly as popular, is because of
(06:15):
its innocence and the fact that there really are Although
there were some steaks to the Apollo mission, and it
was very important at a certain time, nowadays it almost
doesn't matter if they did go to the moon or
they didn't geo politically, like, there's no, it's not like
saying I believe that nine eleven was anast that job,
or saying and committing the fact that JFK was in
(06:37):
was assassinated, Like those have real consequences if they're true,
where they're not true, whereas the moon landing being faked
is just so goofy and it's just so it's almost
I mean, as you see in our film, like it's
just a great story if if that's true, like if
they didn't go to the moon and they faked it,
then that's a really amazing story. And it's not the
(06:58):
social cost for and you believe it is not quite
as high as saying, you know, you think George Bush
had something to do with the not eleven attacks, Like
you just you just don't pay the same price for
believing it. And it's more fun to believe. Um. Not
me personally, I do not think the moon landing was fake.
That all. Nobody on my team does, not even a
little bit um. But that's actually one of the reasons
(07:19):
why we wanted to make the movie was because we thought,
how wicked would it be if we can make a
movie that is convincing enough to make people think the
moon landing was faked, even though that's not what we believe.
Like that was just such an amazing like trick and
an amazing challenge for us um um. But I guess
(07:40):
those two ideas are not really that related. But as
I said, that's why I think it enfus and what
people believe it. Also it comes from a very American
sort of cowboy notion of I know better than my government,
which is something very very popular. Right the government is
lying to me that everything I'm being told is fake.
I think I think that also played into a big time.
(08:00):
I think you're going to see more people in this
coming election cycle talking about this type of mass government lying,
mass government conspiracies that you ever have ever. Yeah, I
absolutely agree with that. I think that's a I think
that is a fair and accurate prediction. Uh. One thing
(08:21):
that we discussed that we really enjoyed about the film
when we were watching it is the biggest question for
any um, anybody applying critical thinking to that kind of
conspiracy theory is how could thousands and thousands of people
keep a secret like this if it did happen for
so long? And Uh, we Matt Frederick here, maybe you
(08:46):
can talk a little bit about this from our discussions
and uh what we thought was so clever about how
the film handles this. Oh yeah, absolutely. This is the
point that we've grappled with when discussing this conspiracy in particular.
And Dude, when you give your c I a presentation
and you're explaining how you're going to make the whole
(09:06):
thing happen, and there's only a handful of people that
are going to have to be involved, including the astronauts,
I was just going, oh wow, I've never had someone
pose it in that way. Um, that you wouldn't have
to have mission control involved, like you only have to
convince the astronauts to to read the scripts. That was
(09:26):
our biggest challenge. I was trying to figure out how
to make that part of the conspiracy believable because nowhere
where we looked online even were people who are really
into this conspiracy had an effective answer for that. Um.
And so coming up with that and figuring out how
like a like a junior guy in the CIA would
be able to pull something like that off was one
(09:47):
of our big achievements. Like we were really really happy
with that, and I mean although it seems insane, it
does have a lot of credibility to it. Um as
I said, like, we we spent a lot of time
at napp uh and it was important to us that
what Matt says the CIA is actually true. So speaking
of NASA, let's talk about the Johnson Space Center. Uh,
(10:10):
it looks like you're filming inside that facility and it
looks like you're interviewing people. Is that was that really
happening or is that on set? No? No, that's all real.
We we I mean, I was a grad student in
Toronto at the time, and we we contacted NASA and
said that we were making a documentary for school about
(10:30):
the nineteen sixties, And we went down from Canada and
spent about a week there and we shot most of
the movie that you see at NASA in actual I mean,
we we we we we digitally turned into the Man
State uh Space Center, which it was at that time,
but we shot the whole thing in Galveston's all that
stuff and those are real NASA staff. They really have
(10:51):
the jobs that they say that they have. Like, that's
all completely real. That's insane. Yeah, that's that's Uh, that's
fascinating and that also, this isn't even a question but
more of a lead in. I want to commend you
on the pitch perfect visual tone it is. It is
(11:11):
exactly of the time, which I thought, I thought was fascinating,
and some earlier interviews you have talked a little bit
about the process of that filming. But while we're on
the subject of film itself, we have to ask why
do you think Stanley Kubrick is so important to the
context of this conspiracy. I think there's two really big
reasons why Stanley Kubrick is such a big deal when
(11:32):
it comes to conspiracies in general, but also the moon
landing conspiracy. The first one is he was insanely reclusive.
He was people already knew him as a secret keeper,
as an unbelievably secretive guy. He famously burned his two
thousand one sets once they finished shooting because he didn't
want people to have access to them like he did.
He had behavior that did make sense from a certain
(11:55):
point of view, but could be twisted in such a
way where you could go, Okay, this guy's operating at
a different level than the way people are imagine that
he does. And to the tour reputation that he had.
Um of pouring so much work into the things that
he did, I think allowed people to again think that
(12:16):
he could do the impossible. Like when new Stanley COOPERCK
movies were coming out of that time, they were always
pushing the boundaries technically of what could be done, um
in a way that no other filmmakers were nearly as
famous for doing. So. It just I think those two
elements came together very well to make him a central
figure in the in the moon Landing conspiracy. I mean,
and it didn't hurt that he was making two thousand
(12:38):
one at the exact same time. Yeah, and then he
burned the set. I mean, come on, who incidents? Are
you exactly exactly? Well, okay, so just let's continue on
the Cooper line here. Let's talk about Room two seven
and the Shining. We watched Room Truth at the seven
at tiff I think it was out in twenty eleven.
(13:01):
I'm not I'm not sure we saw it, but but
we went back to that a couple of times when
we were writing this Scoop movie. Um, just because it
wasn't the first time I've heard that theory, but it
was definitely the most eloquent combination of elements um that
I've never seen. I love that film awesome. Did you
also watch Capricorn one? Josh Bols and I had seen
Capricorn one well before that, mostly because it's such a
(13:24):
funny movie. But uh, but yeah, yeah, we we we
also watched. In fact, there's a lot of dialogue UM
in Operation Avalanche that's just straight uplifted from Capricorn one
if you look closely like we we tried to do
a lot of U writing references to that movie. Yeah,
I was going to call the momages there, some of
the visual shots too, of watching the moon landing on
(13:48):
the television's outside on the street. I mean, it's beautiful,
man it. I was seeing pictures of it as I'm
watching your film, was just going, oh, this is great man. No,
that takes us to another question or so. The movie
was shot in fourteen, but somehow you managed to interview
(14:08):
James E. Webb, who died as the research indicates in
and get an autograph from Stanley Kubrick, who died in
How how did the film achieve this? You know, it's
funny here the first person who's asking me about that
James Webb stuff, and uh and Yeah, that was something
we're really proud about it. But everybody just focuses on
(14:29):
the Kubrick I mean, obviously those are done with digital effects,
but um, the complexity with which we had to treat them,
because talking about extremely old celluloyd that were then putting
digital effects on and trying to combine the two together
made it almost impossible. But the genius who did it
(14:50):
as a guy named Tristan Zarafa, who is our VFX
supervisor and who made um, who made both those sequences
happen mostly from photographs the James Web stuff, and when
he retires as well. Um, it's uh, it was it
was news news footage that we got and then did
a ton of manipulation too to get me interacting with
(15:12):
those people, the family Kubrick piece. It was like six
months of work, and in fact, there's a whole article
in in this Moss movie Maker magazine about exactly how
we did it. But um, but that was the most
challenging thing on the film by far from a technical
point of view. I mean that was because again Kubrick
was was a recluse and he didn't let people film him,
(15:34):
especially during making two one, so we had no footage
to do that forest come trick on, so we had
to make it out of photographs and that was I mean,
Tristan like killed himself doing that. But but I mean
we're all unbelievably droud. I mean, Stanley Kubrick literally is
alive and walking and talking in in our movie. Just
(15:56):
so you know, and just for a little context, Ben
and I also make a video show where we had
at archival footage a lot and when when those scenes
come up, it just hit us really hard seeing the
amount of work that was going on screen. So let's
(16:17):
just let's keep on the technological advances in film production,
video production. UM, do you ever worry that if you
guys can achieve this kind of stuff? Uh, do you
worry that maybe the CIA or NASA could be working
on something similar to Operations Zipper? Right now? Well, I mean,
(16:38):
as I said originally with why I think this, uh,
this conspiracy had endured, Um, I actually don't think there's
enough of a reason for NASA to be lying to
the public at any level. Um. And and I can
tell you the reason why. And and actually I learned
this while I was at NASA, and I'm not sure, like, um,
(17:02):
what your take is on things like you know, NASA
hiding aliens or NASA hiding technology or any of these
types of things. But this explains things in a really
interesting way to me that made me go, oh, Okay,
there's no way NASA's hiding things, and it's there. It's
that NASA is unbelievably underfunded. They are They're they're literally
closing departments like every year, year over year. They're losing money,
(17:25):
um and and they're losing jobs, and it's because they
have a lot of trouble asking the government who funds
for more money. And in the nineties, I don't remember it,
but there was some kind of an alien scare or
like you know, in the news people are saying, oh wait,
there's some evidence that maybe there's some aliens, and NASA
wanted to investigate it, and the government gave them something
(17:48):
like a hundred million dollars, like they gave them so
much money just to check out this like traudulent news
story or like just this idea that maybe there was
alien life. And so the notion that NASA would be
in intentionally hiding things that they discover is so is
so suicidal, Like they would never ever do that because
if they found anything, any evidence of anything at all,
(18:11):
they would be the first people to go to the
New York Times and say, look what we found, just
because they need money, and they'd be so happy to
get funding because they discovered something good. Um. But ask
your question about like video technology and maybe the CIA
using it to like you know, fake you know wars
and like the kind of like wag the dog stuff. Um. Sure,
(18:33):
it seems like these days the governments don't need video
evidence to create, you know, environments with which to go
to war. I mean, there was no you know, smoking
gun like like the like it's like the weapons of
map destruction during the Iraq War. It's like, I don't
think that the c I need the CIA needs to
manufacture video evidence in the way that you would have
(18:55):
to if you're trying to take the moon lighting. I
think they have a lot simpler, more rudimentary ways to
fool people into doing stupid stuff. Right. Yeah, I'm with
you on that, when Matt, because the I think one
of the troubling things that constructs the I guess the
primordial soup from which some of these kind of conspiracies
(19:18):
birth is an environment of rampant distrust and in in
many ways a well earned distrust of some government agencies.
But the CIA and NASA are very, very, very different entities,
as most of our listeners know, Um yeah, yeah, and uh,
(19:41):
one thing, that one thing that got us, uh, our
audience and uh Matt, Matt, and our costol and myself,
all of us are fascinated by learning about the various
clandestine or underground operations by the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
And there are numerous CIA operations referenced in the film,
(20:03):
but Operation Avalanche is not one of them. So what's
the significance of the title there, Well, you know that
it's that bleeds into a whole other project that that
I'm making right now, which is a television series. And
I mean, for me to explain this, I mean you're
gonna think I'm insane, But we we titled the movie
(20:24):
Operation Avalanche one because I mean it was basically Matt
naming his own mission and thinking that that's a cool name.
But more importantly, that plays into a television series that
I'm making right now for Vice. Oh yeah, that's uh,
if if I'm correct, is that Nirvana the band in
the show the band the show? Yes, yeah, that's correct.
And in and in one of the episodes of Nirvana
(20:45):
the Band, the show, which is just a comedy series,
um My, me and my best friends sneak a movie
into Sundance called Operation Avalanche. And it was just very
important that the movie be called Operation Avalanche. And again,
I know that sounds insane, but but oh man, the
reason that it was named exactly exactly that we're excited
to see it and to check it out because we're
(21:06):
huge comedy fans as well. Uh So we've explored some
of the we've explored some of the genesis or the
origin story for what became Operation Avalanche, and we just
found out a really cool, uh meta cognitive twist on it.
Um we we also, in the course of looking into
(21:28):
the ideas of moon landings being faked. Uh we also
ran into a question that a lot of people have asked,
and for me personally, it's up there with the same question,
like in order of importance, it's up that it's as
important as the question about how thousands of people could
keep a secret, and Operation Avalanche answers that. So with
(21:52):
such grace and elegance, my next question would be something
that a lot of our listeners have asked us, which
is the following If if people did indeed land on
the Moon, then why did they stop going? Why were
there only the six missions with two astronauts on the
surface each time. Well, I mean that ties into exactly
(22:13):
what I was talking about before when it comes to
NASA and their funding, and that's that they were only
getting money because there was such a national interest in
going on that mission. There was a like the all
of America was tuned in to see America beat the
Russian space program. That's what everybody wanted. But then once
(22:33):
it was done, like nobody cared about the scientific ramifications
of that mission. To them, it was just a race.
And as soon as we've won I shouldn't say week,
I'm Canadian, but as soon as NASA had one, then
all of a sudden, the public interest vanished. And in fact,
I mean this is a famous story which I'm sure
you've heard before this, but like Apollo twelve, people were
(22:55):
calling into their television providers to complain that the live
broadcast of Apollo twelve was interrupting I love Lucy reruns,
so like people were so disinterested after they had landed
once that just the government saw absolutely no real like,
why would you be funding this multi billion dollar program
(23:18):
when when the public is I mean, it's not getting
you elected, it's not getting votes, it's not drawing eyeballs.
People just didn't care. Um. And that's why all of
a sudden emissions were seized because one I mean, if
you talk to NASA scientists, they have a very different opinion.
In fact, one of the cool things that I learned
when I was at Gallaston is that because they only
(23:39):
did those six missions, they actually didn't learn nearly as
much as they wanted to because, as one of them
told me, the Moon it's actually very variegated. It's an
extremely variegated surface. So they landed one specific spot, but
it's not uniform at all. They wanted to go all
around the Moon and find all like there's tons of
stuff up there that they don't know what it is.
(24:01):
But they had to stop. Now what the scientific applications
of having a perfect geo map of the Moon would be,
I don't know, um, But but they had to stop
because public interest died. It had nothing to do with
you know, like some conspiracy or like oh yeah, we
can't keep this lie up anymore. In no way it was.
It was completely because the public had zero interest. And
(24:24):
I'm telling you you're gonna see this again, um in
the next I mean twenty years, as we start to
look at Mars and other planets. As soon as the
national interest tilts towards uh, what's that terraforming other planets
or or or or or interplanetary travel, you will see
a resurgence of funding and these missions. And it's it's
(24:46):
always about public eyeballs. What what does the voter want
to have happened? It's very rarely led by science. Well,
you know, now we're seeing private interest in going back
to the Moon because of the of the helium three
intent on the Moon and trying to be able to
mind that in other minerals. So yeah, I mean, I'd
be interested to see how that kind of changes in
(25:07):
the next ten twenty years. It's quite possible that the
future of the future of our galactic exploration will be
driven by commercial interests, similar to the way that you know,
the Dutch East India company partnered up with its government
at the time to create a super powerful corporate interest.
(25:31):
And is it going to be good? Is it going
to be evil? Fruits? Right? Will we will we be
alive to find out? How quick will the timeline go?
You know, I'm sorry, I'm I'm at this point. I'm
just expounding on this because I believe wholeheartedly that, um,
the compelling interest for space exploration, for any sustained exploration,
(25:57):
is going to have to be commercial. At the point, Yeah,
we've lost We've lost that love man for exploration as
a public. So jumping back into operations that occur within
this film, there there are two points in the movie
where Operation Northwoods is mentioned. And a lot of people
(26:18):
who who who end up watching your movie may miss
some of the contexts with this or some of the
meta stuff you're playing with their um. But explain to
us what the context of Operation Northwoods is in the film. Sure,
Northwoods is a is a c I A UH mission
that went on I think from fifty nine forwards, UM,
(26:43):
and it was just recently be classified I think with
the last five years, maybe the last seven years it
was be classified UM and it was just another one
of those crazy, like you cannot believe it's happening CIA
missions from the nineteen sixties, which was specifically that they
were going to fake. They didn't call them terrorist attacks,
(27:03):
but they were going to fake terrorist attacks as though
they were done by the Cubans, and they were going
to use this to drum up support for an invasion
of Cuba. And Northwoods was a huge blanket operation that
and I mean, I'm not like a strollar on this stuff.
This is basically just what I learned from the research
for this movie I was making. But uh, within Operation
(27:24):
Northwoods were a whole bunch of other minor operations and
one of the ones that we referenced in our movie
was either Operation Dirty Trick or maybe Operation drop Kick.
I don't know which one it was, but it was crazy.
And if the idea was with mission with missiles based
out of Cuba, they were going to shoot down John
Glenn's rocket if something technically went wrong, so if I mean,
(27:49):
god knows how how furious they were, but I mean,
it's all in the mission. So if that first you know,
circles first man in space blockets from NASA went up
and had any kind of technical malfunction, the CIA was
going to intentionally shoot it down with missiles coming out
of Russia story out of Cuba, and blame it on
(28:09):
the Soviets, which is just like insane, but but really
set the stage well for a for why they would
want to fake the movement, and it helps our movie
quite a bit. Okay, now, I don't, man, I feel
like we're giving away spoilers like crazy for this, but
we'll we'll tell people about the spoilers in the beginning.
(28:30):
Basically see the movie then listen to this. Um. But Okay,
there's an action that you that you your character Matt Johnson,
the guy the agent, uh takes after cutting together all
of the documentary footage that you guys have shot throughout
the course of the movie, both of them, um, where
(28:52):
you bury a reel And I think, if I remember incorrectly,
there are a couple of different reels that you bury,
but one of them, uh, one of them is the
movie itself. And it just makes me think, you do
you think somewhere out there there's a reel of film
buried that has I don't know, another shot from the
(29:14):
Grassy Knoll or maybe the actual moon landing set. I mean,
I would love to think that. I mean, I think
the fact is that type of self reflexive making documentaries
about yourself and filming what you're doing was not in
the zeit gifts during that time in such a way
(29:35):
where somebody would think, oh, this is important. I don't
think people like, let's say that there was a conspiracy
to kill JFK and the people who were involved in that.
I thought it was important enough that they've documented, and
that just seems like such a stretch. Um, I wish
there wasn't be amazing. I mean there's yeah, there's such
(29:56):
a such an awesome like cashe to oh I just
found this. I think there's a there's a movie, what's
the movie with Nicholas Cage where he finds the photographs
at the very end. But it must be the rock.
It must be the rock because he dealing with that
m I six agent. Yeah. Um, so like that that
(30:17):
that's so pulpy and so exciting that Uh, I hope
it's true. But I think Acam's Razors says, uh, there's
there's there's no way it'd be. It would be too crazy.
It would be it would be too crazy to essentially
incriminate oneself in that regard, right, unless you had a
very good reason, which which Matt has in in Operation Avalanche,
(30:40):
like he's doing it basically as a safety net. It's
almost an insurance policy. I can't imagine somebody doing that
from the inside without really really really having a reason
to do it. Um. Also, I mean I can tell
you from experience that burying film canisters like that that's
selling Lloyd would not laugh. It would be completely stripped,
(31:02):
would be it would be stripped because in order to
damage a lot of the frames of Operation Avalanche, like
our movie, we did bury them. And we wouldn't leave
things buried for more than sixteen hours before before the
asseton was completely eroded. So, oh wow, we're getting we're
getting some inside looks in here. Uh. We do want
(31:24):
our listeners to know that you can check this movie
out for yourself today the day this podcast comes out.
That's right, Operation Avalanche is in a theater near you, uh,
starting September six, two thousand and sixteen. Uh. And Matt,
we want to thank you so much for your time today.
(31:45):
And this is uh, this is an astonishing look at
I guess it's almost a UM, it's a terrifyingly possible
explanation for a moon landing hoax that is ultimately seemingly impossible.
It's just you guys were way too successful with convincing me,
(32:06):
at least personally. Yeah, yeah, and uh we think we
we we want to commend you on a job well
done and we hope that everybody checks out this film.
Before we before we end today's episode, we wanted to
give the last word to you. Is there is there
anything that you would like to add about Operation Avalanche
(32:27):
or say directly to people who are also fascinated by
the idea that the moon landing was faked? Yeah, and
I think what's the What I'd like to say is
that I don't believe the moon landing was faked, but
it's very clear that like an environment of lives existed
(32:48):
in the United States during the nineteen sixties which they
used to manipulate the public at large. And just because
the moon landing like wasn't by the CIA, doesn't mean
that there weren't dozens and dozens and dozens of instances
in which institutions like the CIA heavily manipulated the truth
(33:10):
to change the policies of the United States too with
their citizens. So um, so, I mean, hopefully people are
getting that from this movie without necessarily needing to believe
in the conspiracy um. But but we're happy with it
either way. At some level, it's just sort of a
cool story. Matt, thank you again so much. And listeners
(33:33):
do check out, uh, do check out the upcoming Operation
Avalanche at the theater near you September six, the day
this comes out. So if you're listening to this the
day it comes out, then hopefully you're already on your
way to the theater driving there now. So pretty interesting stuff.
(33:56):
What do you think. I loved that interview. I could
talk to Matt Johnson for a long time because he
was very open about not believing himself personally in the
moon landing conspiracy. But he was also able to construct
a film that convinced me of something that I've never
been convinced of, which is that you wouldn't need, you know,
(34:18):
thousands and thousands of people in on the conspiracy. You
would just need a select few. That's something that we
try to do, where we try to look at both
sides of an issue and be respectful to those that
you know, might believe differently than we ourselves do from
time to time. Certainly absolutely so. Also, I I still
don't think we have maybe the best answer to why
(34:43):
the moon landings or moon lunar missions stopped the idea
that it would be a funding issue seems pretty compelling,
and I enjoyed Matt Johnson's prediction that the same thing
will occur with manned Mars missions. Yeah, as soon as
the zeitgeist kind of leaves and moves on to something else,
(35:04):
then it'll be difficult to get taxpayers to say, yeah,
let's give a good portion of our taxes to this.
And we want to know what you think, listeners, given
some of the stuff we outlines here, do you believe
two paraphrase R A M. Do you believe they put
a man on the moon or do you believe that
this is all some elaborate wag the dog hoax? And
(35:26):
if so, why we've all checked out room to thirty
seven in this room, Nola, Matt, and I, and we've
all delved into the Stanley Kubrick side the theory of it.
So we would like to hear from you. And if
you think that the moon landing did occur, but occurred
perhaps under different circumstances, maybe some other group got their first,
(35:50):
or maybe moon landings continued in secret, we'd love to
hear more details about those theories. Kuber burned his set.
I mean, come on, guys, he burned his set. I know.
It's like, hey, you can't. Nobody else will be able
to use this stuff. It will only live in the celluloid.
Now my film these sets, but still I don't know, guys.
(36:11):
And you can also check out some of our earlier
video episodes on Lunar conspiracies, as well as a video
will have coming out that addresses the one oh one,
the introduction to the belief that the moon landing was hoaxed. Yeah,
it really focuses on the Apollo eleven mission itself. And guys,
you know where you can find us If you want
(36:32):
to go dig deep, dive down that rabbit hole into
our back catalog, you can find every podcast we've ever
recorded at stuff they don't want you to know dot
Com or if you are more into you know, using
a Spotify or a stitcher or an iTunes made me
go do that. But do us a solid if there's
a way, leave us some kind words. It helps people
(36:53):
discover the show and helps the algorithm push us out
to more potential listeners, and also, you know, make it's
a little less likely to get fired. Absolutely. You can
also find us on Twitter and Facebook, where we conspiracy Stuff.
You can check out our Instagram where we are Conspiracy
Stuff Show. And if you don't want to do any
of that stuff and you just want to write some
words down and then send them our way, write an
(37:15):
email to conspiracy at how stuff works dot com. And
we don't say this often, but we do have a
physical address, and if you would like to send us
snail mail, shoot us an email for that address,
Throw UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
(00:20):
name is Nolan. And then this is stuff they don't
want you to know, and it just always thank you
so much for tuning in. You know, we've been doing
a lot of interviews recently, guys, Yeah, we have. I'm
enjoying the space. I guess. We wonder how you guys
feel about it, the space of interviews and interview space.
(00:41):
I gotta say, haven't. I've been enjoying it too, especially
when we get to learn new things and talk to
interesting individuals. Right. Yeah. So in previous episodes, we spoke
with the author Brian Tooey about sports conspiracies. Today we
are interviewing alow named Matt Johnson, who is the director, writer,
(01:03):
and star of a film coming out today. As if
you're listening to this the day it comes out, uh,
today September six, as we record this episode. Yes, it's
called Operation Avalanche, and it's it's very difficult for me
to describe everything that this movie encompasses. Because it's a
(01:25):
movie about making a movie with people using their real names.
But it's complete fiction. It's incredible. Right here, here are
the facts. On July TwixT nine, the course of human
history fundamentally changed when Neil Armstrong became the first man
to set foot upon the Moon, and then Buzz Aldrin
(01:46):
did it a couple of minutes afterwards, right, and once
once these people went there that one time on the
Apollo eleven mission. Than the official story is that there
were five more missions, so total of six Apollo missions
with two astronauts making contact on the surface each time,
for a total of twelve people on the moon. And
(02:08):
then we stopped going to the moon. Right, Yeah, then
we stopped going to the moon. So I want to
ask you guys. Operation Avalanche is about how a moon
landing could have been hoaxed. So I want to ask
you guys, and we want to ask you audience members
to let us know what what do you guys think?
Do you guys think somebody faked the moon landing? I
(02:30):
hope it was Stanley Kubrick. According to the latest polls
that I could find on this, roughly seven percent of
the American voting public believes that the moon landing was hoaxed. However,
that belief in a hoaxed moon landing is pretty popular
in other countries as well, so it's it's more common there. Well,
we're gonna just hop into our interview with Matt right now,
(02:54):
and then uh, we'll come back at the end and
see if our see if anybody has had their opinion. Swade,
what do you think? Yeah? I love that idea. Uh.
Quick note, Noel, you were not with us for this interviews,
but you're here with us now through the magic of
time travel audio. Time traveling audio. We have an actual
time machine here in the house stuff works offices that
(03:16):
we only use in cases of emergencies like this because
it operates on blood and blood magic. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I getta put the magic after and quick caveat at
the top here there are spoilers inside of this interview,
so listen with caution and go see the movie. And
here we go, ladies and gentlemen, we are here with
(03:42):
Matt Johnson, the director, co writer and star of Operation Avalanche.
So Matt, we have to know man what lad you guys,
specifically you and your co writer down this moon landing
rabbit hole? Well, When we first started, the plan was
just to make another fake documentary about some great historical
(04:07):
moment um, because we had such success of our first film,
The Dirties, and we really really really really like that
formal approach of sort of the oriole fake documentary by
neophite filmmakers like that that was just so interesting. Um.
And as we started looking at different moments in history
to kind of do this about, it just became so
(04:29):
obvious so quickly that the moon Landing, if it was faked,
is like the most incredible movie ever made. And so
if you're trying to make a story about people making movies,
then why not have them make the greatest movie ever
seen that nobody actually knows the movie? Um, and it's
(04:50):
it was almost as soon as it was mentioned, oh
let's do the fake moon landing, like that was it.
Then we were good, Like we just knew and and
oddly enough, just that idea was so powerful that it
it gave us energy to just keep going and going
and going and going when when we thought this is
this is ridiculous, Oh man, we can we can certainly
(05:11):
relate with that drive that you get when there's some
kind of mystery like that out there that it just
kind of hangs there in front of you like a carrot.
We we definitely understand that in our line of work. Yeah,
and it's so it's so clever for it to, uh,
for it to take that documentary format about the you know,
when you say it this way, Matt, it's it really
(05:33):
is the greatest movie ever made if the moon landings
are faked. And it's strange in the course of our research. Uh,
it's strange how this story has captivated people for nearly
half a century now and and and we have to
ask just to get get this uh elephant or lunar
rover in the room out of the way real quick. Uh.
(05:55):
Why do you think some people, some people believe that
the Apollo eleven moon landing was fake? I can tell you. Um.
I think one of the major reasons that that conspiracy
endures the way that many others are a bit more
laughable and are not nearly as popular, is because of
(06:15):
its innocence and the fact that there really are Although
there were some steaks to the Apollo mission, and it
was very important at a certain time, nowadays it almost
doesn't matter if they did go to the moon or
they didn't geo politically, like, there's no, it's not like
saying I believe that nine eleven was anast that job,
or saying and committing the fact that JFK was in
(06:37):
was assassinated, Like those have real consequences if they're true,
where they're not true, whereas the moon landing being faked
is just so goofy and it's just so it's almost
I mean, as you see in our film, like it's
just a great story if if that's true, like if
they didn't go to the moon and they faked it,
then that's a really amazing story. And it's not the
(06:58):
social cost for and you believe it is not quite
as high as saying, you know, you think George Bush
had something to do with the not eleven attacks, Like
you just you just don't pay the same price for
believing it. And it's more fun to believe. Um. Not
me personally, I do not think the moon landing was fake.
That all. Nobody on my team does, not even a
little bit um. But that's actually one of the reasons
(07:19):
why we wanted to make the movie was because we thought,
how wicked would it be if we can make a
movie that is convincing enough to make people think the
moon landing was faked, even though that's not what we believe.
Like that was just such an amazing like trick and
an amazing challenge for us um um. But I guess
(07:40):
those two ideas are not really that related. But as
I said, that's why I think it enfus and what
people believe it. Also it comes from a very American
sort of cowboy notion of I know better than my government,
which is something very very popular. Right the government is
lying to me that everything I'm being told is fake.
I think I think that also played into a big time.
(08:00):
I think you're going to see more people in this
coming election cycle talking about this type of mass government lying,
mass government conspiracies that you ever have ever. Yeah, I
absolutely agree with that. I think that's a I think
that is a fair and accurate prediction. Uh. One thing
(08:21):
that we discussed that we really enjoyed about the film
when we were watching it is the biggest question for
any um, anybody applying critical thinking to that kind of
conspiracy theory is how could thousands and thousands of people
keep a secret like this if it did happen for
so long? And Uh, we Matt Frederick here, maybe you
(08:46):
can talk a little bit about this from our discussions
and uh what we thought was so clever about how
the film handles this. Oh yeah, absolutely. This is the
point that we've grappled with when discussing this conspiracy in particular.
And Dude, when you give your c I a presentation
and you're explaining how you're going to make the whole
(09:06):
thing happen, and there's only a handful of people that
are going to have to be involved, including the astronauts,
I was just going, oh wow, I've never had someone
pose it in that way. Um, that you wouldn't have
to have mission control involved, like you only have to
convince the astronauts to to read the scripts. That was
(09:26):
our biggest challenge. I was trying to figure out how
to make that part of the conspiracy believable because nowhere
where we looked online even were people who are really
into this conspiracy had an effective answer for that. Um.
And so coming up with that and figuring out how
like a like a junior guy in the CIA would
be able to pull something like that off was one
(09:47):
of our big achievements. Like we were really really happy
with that, and I mean although it seems insane, it
does have a lot of credibility to it. Um as
I said, like, we we spent a lot of time
at napp uh and it was important to us that
what Matt says the CIA is actually true. So speaking
of NASA, let's talk about the Johnson Space Center. Uh,
(10:10):
it looks like you're filming inside that facility and it
looks like you're interviewing people. Is that was that really
happening or is that on set? No? No, that's all real.
We we I mean, I was a grad student in
Toronto at the time, and we we contacted NASA and
said that we were making a documentary for school about
(10:30):
the nineteen sixties, And we went down from Canada and
spent about a week there and we shot most of
the movie that you see at NASA in actual I mean,
we we we we we digitally turned into the Man
State uh Space Center, which it was at that time,
but we shot the whole thing in Galveston's all that
stuff and those are real NASA staff. They really have
(10:51):
the jobs that they say that they have. Like, that's
all completely real. That's insane. Yeah, that's that's Uh, that's
fascinating and that also, this isn't even a question but
more of a lead in. I want to commend you
on the pitch perfect visual tone it is. It is
(11:11):
exactly of the time, which I thought, I thought was fascinating,
and some earlier interviews you have talked a little bit
about the process of that filming. But while we're on
the subject of film itself, we have to ask why
do you think Stanley Kubrick is so important to the
context of this conspiracy. I think there's two really big
reasons why Stanley Kubrick is such a big deal when
(11:32):
it comes to conspiracies in general, but also the moon
landing conspiracy. The first one is he was insanely reclusive.
He was people already knew him as a secret keeper,
as an unbelievably secretive guy. He famously burned his two
thousand one sets once they finished shooting because he didn't
want people to have access to them like he did.
He had behavior that did make sense from a certain
(11:55):
point of view, but could be twisted in such a
way where you could go, Okay, this guy's operating at
a different level than the way people are imagine that
he does. And to the tour reputation that he had.
Um of pouring so much work into the things that
he did, I think allowed people to again think that
(12:16):
he could do the impossible. Like when new Stanley COOPERCK
movies were coming out of that time, they were always
pushing the boundaries technically of what could be done, um
in a way that no other filmmakers were nearly as
famous for doing. So. It just I think those two
elements came together very well to make him a central
figure in the in the moon Landing conspiracy. I mean,
and it didn't hurt that he was making two thousand
(12:38):
one at the exact same time. Yeah, and then he
burned the set. I mean, come on, who incidents? Are
you exactly exactly? Well, okay, so just let's continue on
the Cooper line here. Let's talk about Room two seven
and the Shining. We watched Room Truth at the seven
at tiff I think it was out in twenty eleven.
(13:01):
I'm not I'm not sure we saw it, but but
we went back to that a couple of times when
we were writing this Scoop movie. Um, just because it
wasn't the first time I've heard that theory, but it
was definitely the most eloquent combination of elements um that
I've never seen. I love that film awesome. Did you
also watch Capricorn one? Josh Bols and I had seen
Capricorn one well before that, mostly because it's such a
(13:24):
funny movie. But uh, but yeah, yeah, we we we
also watched. In fact, there's a lot of dialogue UM
in Operation Avalanche that's just straight uplifted from Capricorn one
if you look closely like we we tried to do
a lot of U writing references to that movie. Yeah,
I was going to call the momages there, some of
the visual shots too, of watching the moon landing on
(13:48):
the television's outside on the street. I mean, it's beautiful,
man it. I was seeing pictures of it as I'm
watching your film, was just going, oh, this is great man. No,
that takes us to another question or so. The movie
was shot in fourteen, but somehow you managed to interview
(14:08):
James E. Webb, who died as the research indicates in
and get an autograph from Stanley Kubrick, who died in
How how did the film achieve this? You know, it's
funny here the first person who's asking me about that
James Webb stuff, and uh and Yeah, that was something
we're really proud about it. But everybody just focuses on
(14:29):
the Kubrick I mean, obviously those are done with digital effects,
but um, the complexity with which we had to treat them,
because talking about extremely old celluloyd that were then putting
digital effects on and trying to combine the two together
made it almost impossible. But the genius who did it
(14:50):
as a guy named Tristan Zarafa, who is our VFX
supervisor and who made um, who made both those sequences
happen mostly from photographs the James Web stuff, and when
he retires as well. Um, it's uh, it was it
was news news footage that we got and then did
a ton of manipulation too to get me interacting with
(15:12):
those people, the family Kubrick piece. It was like six
months of work, and in fact, there's a whole article
in in this Moss movie Maker magazine about exactly how
we did it. But um, but that was the most
challenging thing on the film by far from a technical
point of view. I mean that was because again Kubrick
was was a recluse and he didn't let people film him,
(15:34):
especially during making two one, so we had no footage
to do that forest come trick on, so we had
to make it out of photographs and that was I mean,
Tristan like killed himself doing that. But but I mean
we're all unbelievably droud. I mean, Stanley Kubrick literally is
alive and walking and talking in in our movie. Just
(15:56):
so you know, and just for a little context, Ben
and I also make a video show where we had
at archival footage a lot and when when those scenes
come up, it just hit us really hard seeing the
amount of work that was going on screen. So let's
(16:17):
just let's keep on the technological advances in film production,
video production. UM, do you ever worry that if you
guys can achieve this kind of stuff? Uh, do you
worry that maybe the CIA or NASA could be working
on something similar to Operations Zipper? Right now? Well, I mean,
(16:38):
as I said originally with why I think this, uh,
this conspiracy had endured, Um, I actually don't think there's
enough of a reason for NASA to be lying to
the public at any level. Um. And and I can
tell you the reason why. And and actually I learned
this while I was at NASA, and I'm not sure, like, um,
(17:02):
what your take is on things like you know, NASA
hiding aliens or NASA hiding technology or any of these
types of things. But this explains things in a really
interesting way to me that made me go, oh, Okay,
there's no way NASA's hiding things, and it's there. It's
that NASA is unbelievably underfunded. They are They're they're literally
closing departments like every year, year over year. They're losing money,
(17:25):
um and and they're losing jobs, and it's because they
have a lot of trouble asking the government who funds
for more money. And in the nineties, I don't remember it,
but there was some kind of an alien scare or
like you know, in the news people are saying, oh wait,
there's some evidence that maybe there's some aliens, and NASA
wanted to investigate it, and the government gave them something
(17:48):
like a hundred million dollars, like they gave them so
much money just to check out this like traudulent news
story or like just this idea that maybe there was
alien life. And so the notion that NASA would be
in intentionally hiding things that they discover is so is
so suicidal, Like they would never ever do that because
if they found anything, any evidence of anything at all,
(18:11):
they would be the first people to go to the
New York Times and say, look what we found, just
because they need money, and they'd be so happy to
get funding because they discovered something good. Um. But ask
your question about like video technology and maybe the CIA
using it to like you know, fake you know wars
and like the kind of like wag the dog stuff. Um. Sure,
(18:33):
it seems like these days the governments don't need video
evidence to create, you know, environments with which to go
to war. I mean, there was no you know, smoking
gun like like the like it's like the weapons of
map destruction during the Iraq War. It's like, I don't
think that the c I need the CIA needs to
manufacture video evidence in the way that you would have
(18:55):
to if you're trying to take the moon lighting. I
think they have a lot simpler, more rudimentary ways to
fool people into doing stupid stuff. Right. Yeah, I'm with
you on that, when Matt, because the I think one
of the troubling things that constructs the I guess the
primordial soup from which some of these kind of conspiracies
(19:18):
birth is an environment of rampant distrust and in in
many ways a well earned distrust of some government agencies.
But the CIA and NASA are very, very, very different entities,
as most of our listeners know, Um yeah, yeah, and uh,
(19:41):
one thing, that one thing that got us, uh, our
audience and uh Matt, Matt, and our costol and myself,
all of us are fascinated by learning about the various
clandestine or underground operations by the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
And there are numerous CIA operations referenced in the film,
(20:03):
but Operation Avalanche is not one of them. So what's
the significance of the title there, Well, you know that
it's that bleeds into a whole other project that that
I'm making right now, which is a television series. And
I mean, for me to explain this, I mean you're
gonna think I'm insane, But we we titled the movie
(20:24):
Operation Avalanche one because I mean it was basically Matt
naming his own mission and thinking that that's a cool name.
But more importantly, that plays into a television series that
I'm making right now for Vice. Oh yeah, that's uh,
if if I'm correct, is that Nirvana the band in
the show the band the show? Yes, yeah, that's correct.
And in and in one of the episodes of Nirvana
(20:45):
the Band, the show, which is just a comedy series,
um My, me and my best friends sneak a movie
into Sundance called Operation Avalanche. And it was just very
important that the movie be called Operation Avalanche. And again,
I know that sounds insane, but but oh man, the
reason that it was named exactly exactly that we're excited
to see it and to check it out because we're
(21:06):
huge comedy fans as well. Uh So we've explored some
of the we've explored some of the genesis or the
origin story for what became Operation Avalanche, and we just
found out a really cool, uh meta cognitive twist on it.
Um we we also, in the course of looking into
(21:28):
the ideas of moon landings being faked. Uh we also
ran into a question that a lot of people have asked,
and for me personally, it's up there with the same question,
like in order of importance, it's up that it's as
important as the question about how thousands of people could
keep a secret, and Operation Avalanche answers that. So with
(21:52):
such grace and elegance, my next question would be something
that a lot of our listeners have asked us, which
is the following If if people did indeed land on
the Moon, then why did they stop going? Why were
there only the six missions with two astronauts on the
surface each time. Well, I mean that ties into exactly
(22:13):
what I was talking about before when it comes to
NASA and their funding, and that's that they were only
getting money because there was such a national interest in
going on that mission. There was a like the all
of America was tuned in to see America beat the
Russian space program. That's what everybody wanted. But then once
(22:33):
it was done, like nobody cared about the scientific ramifications
of that mission. To them, it was just a race.
And as soon as we've won I shouldn't say week,
I'm Canadian, but as soon as NASA had one, then
all of a sudden, the public interest vanished. And in fact,
I mean this is a famous story which I'm sure
you've heard before this, but like Apollo twelve, people were
(22:55):
calling into their television providers to complain that the live
broadcast of Apollo twelve was interrupting I love Lucy reruns,
so like people were so disinterested after they had landed
once that just the government saw absolutely no real like,
why would you be funding this multi billion dollar program
(23:18):
when when the public is I mean, it's not getting
you elected, it's not getting votes, it's not drawing eyeballs.
People just didn't care. Um. And that's why all of
a sudden emissions were seized because one I mean, if
you talk to NASA scientists, they have a very different opinion.
In fact, one of the cool things that I learned
when I was at Gallaston is that because they only
(23:39):
did those six missions, they actually didn't learn nearly as
much as they wanted to because, as one of them
told me, the Moon it's actually very variegated. It's an
extremely variegated surface. So they landed one specific spot, but
it's not uniform at all. They wanted to go all
around the Moon and find all like there's tons of
stuff up there that they don't know what it is.
(24:01):
But they had to stop. Now what the scientific applications
of having a perfect geo map of the Moon would be,
I don't know, um, But but they had to stop
because public interest died. It had nothing to do with
you know, like some conspiracy or like oh yeah, we
can't keep this lie up anymore. In no way it was.
It was completely because the public had zero interest. And
(24:24):
I'm telling you you're gonna see this again, um in
the next I mean twenty years, as we start to
look at Mars and other planets. As soon as the
national interest tilts towards uh, what's that terraforming other planets
or or or or or interplanetary travel, you will see
a resurgence of funding and these missions. And it's it's
(24:46):
always about public eyeballs. What what does the voter want
to have happened? It's very rarely led by science. Well,
you know, now we're seeing private interest in going back
to the Moon because of the of the helium three
intent on the Moon and trying to be able to
mind that in other minerals. So yeah, I mean, I'd
be interested to see how that kind of changes in
(25:07):
the next ten twenty years. It's quite possible that the
future of the future of our galactic exploration will be
driven by commercial interests, similar to the way that you know,
the Dutch East India company partnered up with its government
at the time to create a super powerful corporate interest.
(25:31):
And is it going to be good? Is it going
to be evil? Fruits? Right? Will we will we be
alive to find out? How quick will the timeline go?
You know, I'm sorry, I'm I'm at this point. I'm
just expounding on this because I believe wholeheartedly that, um,
the compelling interest for space exploration, for any sustained exploration,
(25:57):
is going to have to be commercial. At the point, Yeah,
we've lost We've lost that love man for exploration as
a public. So jumping back into operations that occur within
this film, there there are two points in the movie
where Operation Northwoods is mentioned. And a lot of people
(26:18):
who who who end up watching your movie may miss
some of the contexts with this or some of the
meta stuff you're playing with their um. But explain to
us what the context of Operation Northwoods is in the film. Sure,
Northwoods is a is a c I A UH mission
that went on I think from fifty nine forwards, UM,
(26:43):
and it was just recently be classified I think with
the last five years, maybe the last seven years it
was be classified UM and it was just another one
of those crazy, like you cannot believe it's happening CIA
missions from the nineteen sixties, which was specifically that they
were going to fake. They didn't call them terrorist attacks,
(27:03):
but they were going to fake terrorist attacks as though
they were done by the Cubans, and they were going
to use this to drum up support for an invasion
of Cuba. And Northwoods was a huge blanket operation that
and I mean, I'm not like a strollar on this stuff.
This is basically just what I learned from the research
for this movie I was making. But uh, within Operation
(27:24):
Northwoods were a whole bunch of other minor operations and
one of the ones that we referenced in our movie
was either Operation Dirty Trick or maybe Operation drop Kick.
I don't know which one it was, but it was crazy.
And if the idea was with mission with missiles based
out of Cuba, they were going to shoot down John
Glenn's rocket if something technically went wrong, so if I mean,
(27:49):
god knows how how furious they were, but I mean,
it's all in the mission. So if that first you know,
circles first man in space blockets from NASA went up
and had any kind of technical malfunction, the CIA was
going to intentionally shoot it down with missiles coming out
of Russia story out of Cuba, and blame it on
(28:09):
the Soviets, which is just like insane, but but really
set the stage well for a for why they would
want to fake the movement, and it helps our movie
quite a bit. Okay, now, I don't, man, I feel
like we're giving away spoilers like crazy for this, but
we'll we'll tell people about the spoilers in the beginning.
(28:30):
Basically see the movie then listen to this. Um. But Okay,
there's an action that you that you your character Matt Johnson,
the guy the agent, uh takes after cutting together all
of the documentary footage that you guys have shot throughout
the course of the movie, both of them, um, where
(28:52):
you bury a reel And I think, if I remember incorrectly,
there are a couple of different reels that you bury,
but one of them, uh, one of them is the
movie itself. And it just makes me think, you do
you think somewhere out there there's a reel of film
buried that has I don't know, another shot from the
(29:14):
Grassy Knoll or maybe the actual moon landing set. I mean,
I would love to think that. I mean, I think
the fact is that type of self reflexive making documentaries
about yourself and filming what you're doing was not in
the zeit gifts during that time in such a way
(29:35):
where somebody would think, oh, this is important. I don't
think people like, let's say that there was a conspiracy
to kill JFK and the people who were involved in that.
I thought it was important enough that they've documented, and
that just seems like such a stretch. Um, I wish
there wasn't be amazing. I mean there's yeah, there's such
(29:56):
a such an awesome like cashe to oh I just
found this. I think there's a there's a movie, what's
the movie with Nicholas Cage where he finds the photographs
at the very end. But it must be the rock.
It must be the rock because he dealing with that
m I six agent. Yeah. Um, so like that that
(30:17):
that's so pulpy and so exciting that Uh, I hope
it's true. But I think Acam's Razors says, uh, there's
there's there's no way it'd be. It would be too crazy.
It would be it would be too crazy to essentially
incriminate oneself in that regard, right, unless you had a
very good reason, which which Matt has in in Operation Avalanche,
(30:40):
like he's doing it basically as a safety net. It's
almost an insurance policy. I can't imagine somebody doing that
from the inside without really really really having a reason
to do it. Um. Also, I mean I can tell
you from experience that burying film canisters like that that's
selling Lloyd would not laugh. It would be completely stripped,
(31:02):
would be it would be stripped because in order to
damage a lot of the frames of Operation Avalanche, like
our movie, we did bury them. And we wouldn't leave
things buried for more than sixteen hours before before the
asseton was completely eroded. So, oh wow, we're getting we're
getting some inside looks in here. Uh. We do want
(31:24):
our listeners to know that you can check this movie
out for yourself today the day this podcast comes out.
That's right, Operation Avalanche is in a theater near you, uh,
starting September six, two thousand and sixteen. Uh. And Matt,
we want to thank you so much for your time today.
(31:45):
And this is uh, this is an astonishing look at
I guess it's almost a UM, it's a terrifyingly possible
explanation for a moon landing hoax that is ultimately seemingly impossible.
It's just you guys were way too successful with convincing me,
(32:06):
at least personally. Yeah, yeah, and uh we think we
we we want to commend you on a job well
done and we hope that everybody checks out this film.
Before we before we end today's episode, we wanted to
give the last word to you. Is there is there
anything that you would like to add about Operation Avalanche
(32:27):
or say directly to people who are also fascinated by
the idea that the moon landing was faked? Yeah, and
I think what's the What I'd like to say is
that I don't believe the moon landing was faked, but
it's very clear that like an environment of lives existed
(32:48):
in the United States during the nineteen sixties which they
used to manipulate the public at large. And just because
the moon landing like wasn't by the CIA, doesn't mean
that there weren't dozens and dozens and dozens of instances
in which institutions like the CIA heavily manipulated the truth
(33:10):
to change the policies of the United States too with
their citizens. So um, so, I mean, hopefully people are
getting that from this movie without necessarily needing to believe
in the conspiracy um. But but we're happy with it
either way. At some level, it's just sort of a
cool story. Matt, thank you again so much. And listeners
(33:33):
do check out, uh, do check out the upcoming Operation
Avalanche at the theater near you September six, the day
this comes out. So if you're listening to this the
day it comes out, then hopefully you're already on your
way to the theater driving there now. So pretty interesting stuff.
(33:56):
What do you think. I loved that interview. I could
talk to Matt Johnson for a long time because he
was very open about not believing himself personally in the
moon landing conspiracy. But he was also able to construct
a film that convinced me of something that I've never
been convinced of, which is that you wouldn't need, you know,
(34:18):
thousands and thousands of people in on the conspiracy. You
would just need a select few. That's something that we
try to do, where we try to look at both
sides of an issue and be respectful to those that
you know, might believe differently than we ourselves do from
time to time. Certainly absolutely so. Also, I I still
don't think we have maybe the best answer to why
(34:43):
the moon landings or moon lunar missions stopped the idea
that it would be a funding issue seems pretty compelling,
and I enjoyed Matt Johnson's prediction that the same thing
will occur with manned Mars missions. Yeah, as soon as
the zeitgeist kind of leaves and moves on to something else,
(35:04):
then it'll be difficult to get taxpayers to say, yeah,
let's give a good portion of our taxes to this.
And we want to know what you think, listeners, given
some of the stuff we outlines here, do you believe
two paraphrase R A M. Do you believe they put
a man on the moon or do you believe that
this is all some elaborate wag the dog hoax? And
(35:26):
if so, why we've all checked out room to thirty
seven in this room, Nola, Matt, and I, and we've
all delved into the Stanley Kubrick side the theory of it.
So we would like to hear from you. And if
you think that the moon landing did occur, but occurred
perhaps under different circumstances, maybe some other group got their first,
(35:50):
or maybe moon landings continued in secret, we'd love to
hear more details about those theories. Kuber burned his set.
I mean, come on, guys, he burned his set. I know.
It's like, hey, you can't. Nobody else will be able
to use this stuff. It will only live in the celluloid.
Now my film these sets, but still I don't know, guys.
(36:11):
And you can also check out some of our earlier
video episodes on Lunar conspiracies, as well as a video
will have coming out that addresses the one oh one,
the introduction to the belief that the moon landing was hoaxed. Yeah,
it really focuses on the Apollo eleven mission itself. And guys,
you know where you can find us If you want
(36:32):
to go dig deep, dive down that rabbit hole into
our back catalog, you can find every podcast we've ever
recorded at stuff they don't want you to know dot
Com or if you are more into you know, using
a Spotify or a stitcher or an iTunes made me
go do that. But do us a solid if there's
a way, leave us some kind words. It helps people
(36:53):
discover the show and helps the algorithm push us out
to more potential listeners, and also, you know, make it's
a little less likely to get fired. Absolutely. You can
also find us on Twitter and Facebook, where we conspiracy Stuff.
You can check out our Instagram where we are Conspiracy
Stuff Show. And if you don't want to do any
of that stuff and you just want to write some
words down and then send them our way, write an
(37:15):
email to conspiracy at how stuff works dot com. And
we don't say this often, but we do have a
physical address, and if you would like to send us
snail mail, shoot us an email for that address,
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Show Links
RSSStoreAboutLive ShowsPopular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com