March 5, 2026 • 48 mins
In “Presidents' Club,” recent headlines about Obama and Trump circling the alien/UFO question become a launchpad—not for breaking-news punditry, but for what Sound, Light & Frequency does best: following the secret thread between Washington and Hollywood. Bryce and Brent start with Obama’s very movie-ready riff about aliens, Area 51, and the possibility of a conspiracy “hiding it from the president of the United States”—and then immediately ask the real question: who knows more about UFOs, the presidents, or the screenwriters?
From there, the episode dives straight into the ultimate “president meets ET” portal film: Independence Day—where President Whitmore isn’t read in at all, until his Secretary of Defense leans in with the immortal understatement: “Mr. President, that may not be entirely accurate.”
Along the way, you’ll hear how the Pentagon almost cooperated with the movie—right up until two forbidden words showed up in the script: Area 51. And yes, Bryce and Brent relive the goosebump factor of Whitmore’s speech (“we will not go quietly into that night…”)—because if Disclosure ever goes public, that’s the kind of voice you’d want at the microphone.
Then it gets delightfully weird in the best way: the guys trace “Area 51 on screen” back to Spielberg’s Raiders coda (Hangar 51!), recreate the behind-the-scenes story of Independence Day being screened at the White House (yes, that White House blowing up…while Bill Clinton watches with a bowl of popcorn), and bounce through other presidential-ET pop culture detours like Mars Attacks! and its dark punchline politics.
Finally, “Presidents' Club” widens the lens to the real-world presidential UFO hall of fame—Carter, Ford, Reagan, and more—plus the uncomfortable takeaway that the Commander-in-Chief may not be “read in” the way the public assumes.
Bryce also shares a taste of what a presidential disclosure statement might actually sound like (from his work with Richard Dolan), before Brent tees up a chilling next-episode thread: a Reagan-era insider who claimed he had a higher clearance level than the President—and what that suggests about how secrets stay secret.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Initially, the Pentagon wanted to get involved. They loved the script.
They were going to cooperate. They loved the idea of
fighter jets and heroism and showing American firepower. What they
didn't like was the fact that we were going inside
Area fifty one.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Those two little words that can never be said if
you're the Pentagon. In fact, they asked for Area fifty
one to be expunged from the script, and Roland Emerick,
the director, he refused, and so as a consequence, the
Pentagon did not work with the producers of Independent State.
(00:55):
I'm Bryce's Able. Have you ever wondered if there's a
secret connection between Hollywood and US?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I'm Brent Friedman, and you're listening to sound, Light and Frequency.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Who actually knows more about the UFO UAP issue. Real
presidents are the ones we see in films and on TV.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Maybe the answer is the screenwriters who write those president's speeches.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Okay, so we don't actually have to cover this like
a breaking news story, because that's not the kind of
podcast we are. But I do want to read this
Obama quote because it sets up something pretty cool. This
is what Obama said in total, they're real, but I
haven't seen them. They're not being kept at Area fifty one.
There's no underground facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy and
(01:51):
they hid it from the President of the United States,
which man, that's a movie.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Absolutely, it's very meta if you think about it. But
I want to seize on something very interesting because I
didn't know this. I learned this when we were doing
some research for this episode. Do you know what the
first instance of seeing Area fifty one on film was?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
That's interesting because we know the first instance in history
was obviously George Knapp first started talking about it the
George Nap the Reporter in Las Vegas, and that's early
eighty kind of thing. I guess the question really is
when did Hollywood take us inside Area fifty one? I
bet I'm blank? And what do you got?
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Are you sitting down if I am Indiana Jones and
Raiders of the Lost Dark. And here's the thing. Remember
the big warehouse at the end that's called in the
movie in the lore Hangar fifty one, that was supposed
to be Area fifty one.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
That's where the secrets are being kept Area fifty one.
That's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Were all the reverse engineering so I just think it's
funny that Obama brings it up right as this way
of saying, oh, well, that's all ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I love that example, though, because first we got Nap
breaking the story, but then we got Spielberg picking it
up immediately and putting it in at the end of
his movie and all of that. But we'll say it
leads us to another place because it reminds me of
a famous US president who actually did visit Area fifty
one and he saw a lot more than he was expecting.
(03:17):
And of course that one had to be in a movie,
we think. So why don't you read the log line
and see if our audience can figure out what movie
we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
All right, let me do the honors. When colossal alien
spacecraft arrive and launch a global attack, a US president,
a brash fighter pilot, and a brilliant scientist race to
unite humanity and mount a last ditch counter strike to
save Earth from annihilation.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Great log line, And just to give another hint, they
could have mentioned the Jewish dad, the poll dancing girlfriend,
and the drunken crop duster, who all played their roles
in saving humanity too, But that's too much for a
log line. We are talking about, of course, Independent Day,
which is celebrating its thirtieth year anniversary as we do
(04:05):
this podcast. That's right. It was on the fourth of
July weekend back in nineteen ninety six Independence Day first
came to our theaters. And to put this in perspective,
that kind of strikes close to home for us. It's
a trilogy of events. So you got Independence Day at
the same time Dark Skies, our show was in production,
was going to go on the air in September, and frankly,
(04:28):
I think just a week or so around when Independence
Day came out, so did Mars Attacks. So it was
a big time for movies about presidents trying to deal
with alien contact.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
There was something in the air back then. So interestingly
we know what the plot is, and I'm guessing most
people have seen Independence Day. I remember that being one
of the loudest audiences I've ever experienced, screaming and hooting
and hollering, and I remember that moment when Will Smith
punched the a it had knocked him out. It got
a standing ovation. It was probably one of the most
(05:04):
exciting movie experiences I've ever had. But getting to the
movie itself, we have a president played by Bill Pullman.
I believe his name was Thomas J. Whitmore, Yes, sir,
And unlike our presidents in the real world, who seemed
to know a little bit about aliens, Thomas J. Whitmore
knew nothing. He was not read in. He had not
been briefed in any way, shape or form. And his
(05:27):
disclosure or how he was disclosed too, was aliens invading
the earth and blowing up his home, the White House.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
That's one way to disclose things. I mean that pretty
well puts it out on the front page as long
as we're gonna have about classic things. Though. Just remember
I had forgotten exactly how it started, and I was
really happy to see it again. And it starts with
that wonderful thing where this gigantic mothership is casting a
shadow on the moon right over where Aldren and Armstrong
(05:54):
had been walking in nineteen sixty nine. It's one of
the greatest moments. And another great moment is the one
that this pertains to, which is your president Whitmore. He
hasn't been disclosed to that somebody's talking about aliens. He goes, well, no,
that's not happening. And you know he's putting down the concept,
and his secretary of Defense leans over and says, uh,
(06:17):
mister President, that's not entirely accurate. And I just remember
in the theater I watched it with people just thought
that was a hoot, because I think they believe. What
I took it to mean is most of the people
in that audience actually thought presidents don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
I think it's probably fifty to fifty. You have some
people that are convinced that the presidents know and they're
withholding from us, and then you have some that believe, no,
the president doesn't know anything. I also think that it's
interesting imagine one of our presidents being disclosed to in
that way in the middle of an alien invasion and
having to be told, we haven't told you anything. But
(06:54):
I think President Whitmore is quite aspirational because he does
not focus or dwell on the fact that they kept
everything from him, in the same way that Obama mused
there might be a big conspiracy in this movie, there
was a big conspiracy to keep everything from him, but
he doesn't hold that against anyone. And the ultimately when
he gives his speech at Whatnot at the end, it's
(07:15):
all about unity, right, It's all. He goes positive, he
goes take kicks the high road instead of.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
The low road. In order to do this show, I pondered,
what makes President Whitmore such a great president and why
do we wish he was in charge right now and
so he could disclose aliens? And I think it's because
the capabilities he brings to the job are's. He's very
flexible as new information comes to light. I mean, he
doesn't stick with an old position. He moves on with
(07:40):
the facts. He's certainly willing to get tough and kick
ass if he needs to. He gets that sometimes the
stakes are literally existential, like survival, and they supersede politics.
Because again, it was thirty years ago. I saw it
for the first time. I took my son to see it,
and I think I've seen it once or twice in between,
but that was a long time ago, and I saw
(08:00):
it just for this thing. A couple of things jumped
out at me. First of all, there's a character in
a Tim kellerher who is in all the Command Center scenes.
And Tim was our lead member of the Hive in
Dark Skies. Tim was a major character in our TV series,
and he's there in the film a lot doesn't have
a lot to say, but he's in a lot of scenes.
(08:22):
The other thing for this podcast is I never really
put it together, but the aliens are communicating with frequencies.
The whole thing Goldblim is talking about is these frequencies
and that kind of thing, which I thought was interesting.
Another thing that pertains to some of the things that
we've been talking about in our episodes is that Will
Smith is a pilot, but who does he work for
(08:43):
the US Navy? So there again we got the Navy
coming into play. But the one that really really stood
out to me was there are grays in this It
doesn't seem like it because the alien you mentioned that
Will Smith punches out is a big, hulking thing that
he has to drag through the desert. But it turns
out that these littler grays are inside that big hulking alien,
(09:07):
and the big hulking alien is really comes to some
kind of biological suit that's constructed around them, which means,
if you think about it, their grays and independence they
were the aggressors, but in our series Dark Skies, they
weren't the aggressors. They were the victims. So you know,
everybody's got a new take on grays, and if anything,
(09:28):
the fact that people keep thinking about it and trying
to come up with ways to understand what a gray
is given the sparse nature of the facts right now,
is that there's a lot of different opinions. We had one,
they had one, and other people have had other opinions since.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, that was one of the most interesting things to
me was how they represented the aliens. They had the
best of all worlds, and that movie was a crowd pleaser,
and that's why initially the Pentagon wanted to get involved.
They loved the script. They were going to cooperate. They
loved the idea of fighter jets and heroism and showing
American firepower. What they didn't like was the fact that
(10:02):
we were going inside Area fifty one.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Those two little words that can never be said if
you're the Pentagon. In fact, they asked for Area fifty
one to be expunged from the script, and Roland Emerik,
the director, he refused, and so as a consequence, the
Pentagon did not work with the producers of Independence Day. Instead,
(10:25):
those same producers Emeric and Dean Devlin and the others
they rented jets, they painted new markings on them. They
orchestrated entire battle scenes with the best effects that they
could get at the time. And here's the interesting thing, Brent,
if you listen to the interviews that Emeric and Devlin gave,
they said later that losing the Pentagon cooperation actually freed
(10:46):
them to make a better film. So it cuts both ways.
And that story, frankly, has been repeated a few times
where the Pentagon has been interested in working on a film,
but then they get to read the script, they hear
about the film, they gone, yeah, I think that could
be really good because our guys will look good. And
then there's something a little too euphological in it. And
then the plug gets pulled and the guys make the
(11:07):
movie anyway. And like I said, there's more than a
few instances of that, right.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Well, think about it. If you're Devlin and Emeriic, you've
been getting notes from the studio and then you finally
get greenlit. The last thing you want is more notes
from the government or the military. It's like, we just
want to make our movie right.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
And they had to overcome certain things too, because right
now we take it as an article of faith it's
called Independence Day, but that's not original. That's what it
originally was supposed to be called Independence Day. But twentieth
century Fox and Warner Brothers had some kind of I
don't even want to get into it. They were fighting
about the title. And the various titles that were suggested
(11:44):
for this film were Invasion, which is kind of generic,
Sky on Fire which kind of got reused later in
Fire in the Sky for the Travis Walton case. And
the one that the Fox execs really loved and came
very close to being the title of this film was Doomsday,
so pretty negative and tough one. But the thing is
(12:06):
Devlin and Emeric said, nope, Independence Day is the heart
and soul of this movie. I find this so interesting.
In order to make their point, apparently they were already
in production when this title stuff was going on, and
so they shot the Bill Pullman scene, which is kind
of a classic where he gets in his own fighter
jet the president and a fighter jet runs off and
(12:27):
takes care of business, and they moved it up so
that everybody could see it, and they were pretty well right,
because when the execs saw the dailies, they said, okay,
all right, it's Independence Day, and then they ended up
negotiating with Warner Brothers and now it's Independence Day and
on IMBB. So there you go. Let's talk president's speech though,
because we're talking about real presidents too, and we're talking
(12:50):
about the real UFOUAP issue and how people would even
talk about it, right, So it is interesting do you
think about how would Obama handle disclosure? How would Trump
handle disclosure? Sure, how would any of our presidents have
handled it in the past, But we've got a different president.
But there's always a story behind the story. And that's
what I find so interesting about doing this show with you. Okay,
(13:11):
the speech that's so famous is that the president Whitmore
used to be a jet fighter pilot. So frankly, it's
very similar to George Bush, who flew a jet and
during Iraq he landed on a carrier and the famous
Mission Accomplished sign was behind him. The scene that we're
talking about there was more akin to right after nine
(13:32):
to eleven Bush went down to visit the site and
he grabbed that megaphone and he sort of spoke to
the rage that Americans were feeling at that time. And
that's kind of what Whitmore captured but it's five years earlier. Okay,
this is the speech that Whitmore gives. Remember he comes
in and he says, all right, aircraft are going to
be joining others from around the world. It's going to
(13:54):
be the greatest aerial battle in the history of mankind.
And we can't be consumed by our petty difference. All
that stuff. And it's all great. In fact, it never
had to be rewritten or revised or anything. But then
this is the part that everybody remembers. This is what
he says. He goes, perhaps it's fate that today is
the fourth of July, and you will once again be
(14:14):
fighting for our freedom, not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution,
but from annihilation. We're fighting for our right to live,
to exist. And should we win, the day, the fourth
of July will no longer be known as an American holiday,
but as the day when the world declared in one voice.
And this is the part where people were screaming in
(14:34):
the theaters. I'm pretty sure he goes, we will not
go quietly into that night. We will not vanish without
a fight. We're going to live on. We're going to survive.
Today we celebrate Independence Day, I'm sorry I got a
little carried away there, but that's what he said, and
(14:55):
browsing it fired everybody up, and you think that's probably
the kind of present that you need for what's about
to go down, possibly in the next decade, when somebody's
gonna step forward and say, Okay, guys, this is what's
really going on.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
We should be so lucky to have a president.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Sure should. And here's an image for everybody from behind
the scenes. Use your imagination. We remember Bill Pullman giving
that speech. They went to Ethan Hawk first to play
the president. So imagine Ethan Hawk giving that speech. And
guess what. He didn't like the movie. He didn't like
the script. He was driving along, I think in the
somewhere in the desert, and he threw the script out
(15:33):
of his car under the road because he thought it
was so bad. So, by the way, if anybody ever
picked up that script, you could probably get a fortune
for it on eBay.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Anyway, I was just going to say, that is a
collector's item. Look, it was a fantastic script, and it
was a fantastic movie and an even better speech. One
of the other interesting things about this movie was, wasn't
it screened at the White House.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Oh yeah, what do we know about that? Well, we
know a little bit. During our research for this thing,
we actually turned up an interview between and Bill Pullman
and Roland Emerick and Dean Devlin where they talked about
that thing. And I'm a little nervous to do this
since I just got carried away on the Bill Pullman
speech and that was a little much even for me,
So my apologies, folks, But we found that interview and Bren,
(16:16):
I think we should do a little dramatic interp.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Here if you're up for it. Well, here's the thing.
You went all out on the Whitmore speech, boy did.
I am going to make good use of my college degree,
which I have not used since I went to UCLA
as a theater major of THEATA major and I've done
nothing with that since. So this is my chance. I
am going to play the roles of Roland Emerick, a
(16:39):
German director, and Bill Pullman, who most of you know
is a very stately but laconic actor. Bryce will be
playing the role of Dean Devlin writer.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Very happy to play Dean. He made a really great
film and it's been great anyway, Okay, I'm Dean Devlin,
and with this we'll wrap up this first section, all right.
It starts with Dean and He's says, we were in
the middle of doing a press junket in New York
for the movie. The phone is ringing in my room.
I pick it up and they said, could you hold
for the White House? I said what? And they said,
(17:11):
the President would like to screen the movie tonight.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
All of a sudden, we are standing in the middle
of the White House and Bill Clinton is chatting us up.
They have the worst screening room that ever. It's a
form of bowling alley, a little postmark of a screen.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
I'm loving this, by the way. Okay, in the front
row is Hillary and Bill, and Bill has the largest
tub of popcorn I've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
All three of us were in the back row standing
up because we were too nervous to even take a seat.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
So Clinton waves to Roland to come down and sit
next to him.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Roland was so decisive. I'm German, I can't go. I thought, well,
that's weak. You're the director and Dean, he wrote the speech.
He said, no, no, I'm too nervous. So by default
I said, now, okay, I'll serve the cause Bill had
to sit next to the President, right in front of
the Clinton sandwiched all in. It was a little nerve racking.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Remember in Amadaeus at the end of the opera, it's
silent until the king claps his hands, and then everybody claps.
It was like that for every single joke of the movie.
No one wanted to laugh at a joke until they
heard Bill laugh.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
The first big destruction scene starts with blowing up the
White House. In test screenings, a lot of people left
after and then they immediately come running back in. They
didn't pee earlier because they were so into the movie.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
When we got to the moment the White House blows up,
Roland and I are looking at each other and we're
going we're in the White House watching it blow up.
It was bizarre.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
And then who runs out? Bill Clinton. One minute later
he comes back, shaking his hands dry. Dte and I
looked at each other and nearly started laughing. It was amazing.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
I know, we haven't solved the UFO mystery here, Brent.
That was kind of weird and fun. So anyway, folks,
we're going to take a little break here, We're going
to come back, and we got some cool stuff to
talk about. Well brow. We started by explaining a little
bit about Independence Day, and I think we both enjoyed
(19:17):
watching the film and watching it again, so there was that.
We also started though, talking about the real Barack Obama
talking about aliens. But in doing the research for this episode,
something that turned up that was kind of intriguing is
there's already been a very euphological movie and Barack Obama
is one of the characters in it. I mean, it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
I yeah, this came out of left field for me.
We're talking about The Eleventh Green in case you didn't
guess it, and we both watched it for the first time.
I literally had not heard of it, and I think
we both had fairly different opinions of it. I think
probably I'll get my opinion out of the way first
so that you can actually do the film some justice.
(19:58):
I thought it was interesting, lots of great ideas. I
just and it's probably just because we do a lot
of work in video games. It just felt very slow
to me. It was an effort to get through to
the end.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Okay, I'm not going to let you paint me in
the corner raft to defend this thing as being a
great film, but it did hold my interest because of
how extraordinarily euphological it was. I mean, if you want
to watch a film that literally has scenes where Barack
Obama and Dwight Eisenhower and some Nordic are meeting on
the astral plane to discuss the nature of the universe,
(20:32):
I mean, this is the film for you, guys. I mean,
this thing is pretty amazing. It has three different presidents
in it. Tom Connolly plays jfk. Leith m Burke plays Obama,
George Gerds plays Ike Eisenhower, and there's a lot of
scenes with these people. But the essence of the thing, though,
let me as long as we're talking about log lines,
(20:52):
just remember this. This is what it's about. The Eleventh
Green is about a guy named Jeremy Rudd played by
Campbell Scott, who a lot of people knows. He's done
a lot of work in indie films, and yeah, it
was pretty good. And he's this investigative journalist and he's
working on a story about advanced aerospace technology that might
(21:13):
even be related to reverse engineering UFOs. So I mean
it starts as deeply euphologically as you're going to get.
And he's been a strange from his father, who is
a spook of long reputation who's been living in Palm Springs,
who has just died. And so this dude, who is
deep into this, probably because it's a family trait, heads
(21:35):
on out to Palm Springs to settle the estate and
he ends up working with a woman who was his
father's assistant who turns out to be I guess she's
in the intel community. Okay, listen, I agree. There's no
action per se in this thing. It's a big talkie thing,
but they probably made it for a dollar and a half,
you know, so they got a lot of stuff in it.
(21:57):
So if you can separate out the action well production
value of the whole thing from what they talk about,
what would you say about what they're talking about in
this thing?
Speaker 1 (22:05):
There was a lot of interesting things to talk about.
I found when they started colliding different time periods and
going on to astral planes interesting conceptually, but I didn't
feel like it explained anything for me in terms of
or bringing a new understanding to me of what's going
on behind the scenes. It was a lot of interesting
(22:26):
film techniques and storytelling techniques, but I don't know that
I had a great takeaway. What was your takeaway?
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Well, my first, my largest takeaway was, damn this guy,
Leith Burke sure plays a great Barack Obama. And if
I'm not mistaken, he's actually been cast as Barack Obama
once or twice after this because he was so good
at it. That was my first takeaway. But from the
euphological point of view, it is kind of interesting because
I believe the writer director is Christopher Munch, and Munch
(22:56):
obviously knows his whether it's history or speculation, and he
certainly knows a lot about it. The idea of reverse
engineering is certainly laid out clearly, the idea that this
has been a generational long struggle with this secrecy, and
that the secrecy has involved presidents going back to Eisenhower
who may have started the secrecy, to the Obama at
(23:18):
the time, who's caught in the middle of it and
realizes this is not sustainable. You can't continue to have
this kind of secret forever. And ever he really wants
to come clean about it, and then in the end
he can't quite figure out how to get that job done.
So I found that interesting because you know, those are
things that you and I have talked about a lot
(23:40):
and a lot of people. If you go to X
right now and look at people talking about the UFO
UAP issue, these are things that are very active right now,
right now that people are talking about it. But the
main thing that I liked, and again not trying to
defend it as being the best film I've ever seen,
it's not Godfather, but it's the Eleventh. But what it
(24:01):
really is is it's a meditation. If you look at
it from that point of view, it's almost worth watching
because it's a meditation. I think on belief and power
and what truth actually means when governments and people have
incentives to curate reality, to take what's really going on
and sort of spin it to their best effect. And
(24:24):
I think that's what God under my skin watching it
is I started to think about it. Wasn't that I
wasn't thinking about the movie. I was thinking about the
idea in the movie that you know, obviously it's kind
of strange to see Eisenhower and Obama having scenes together
with a Nordic I mean, yeah, that's strange, but the
things that they're talking about seemed very reasonable to me.
(24:45):
That's all I say about it. And maybe that's all
we should say about it.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Last thing I say I will say is that I
agree with you the film had the energy level of
a meditation.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
So let's move on. So yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Think that as you're going to find in sound, light,
and frequency, oftentimes roads lead us right back to Dark Skies,
and I think the eleventh Green now following that logic
of an alternate history, clashing characters from different time periods,
talking about the behind the scenes conspiracy and is it sustainable. Well,
(25:19):
our TV show Dark Skies had all of those elements,
and it had a very important president at the center
of the storyline like some of the other movies we've
been talking about. So let's jump back into Dark Skies
for a moment, and for anyone that maybe didn't get
the full picture in our first episode, let's do a
little housekeeping and bring people up to speed.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I agree with you, Brent. I feel like the one
thing I want to make clear is we've almost told
people more about other films than our own project here,
and since Dark Skies with the approach by the guy
from the Office of Naval Intelligence that we talked about
in our first episode, is kind of a through line
for us and yet we haven't actually explained to people
what it was. So in this short as possible and
(26:01):
clearest way, I would just like to say this. Dark
Skies was an NBC series produced in nineteen ninety six
into nineteen ninety seven. There were twenty hours of it
produced Brent You and I created that show, and the
concept was pretty simple. It took place in the nineteen
sixties in Washington, DC, and our main character was John Longard,
(26:23):
who comes to learn in our two hour pilot that
aliens walk among us and that there is a secret
government group that's keeping it from the public, and so
in order to try to protect humanity, this character Loan Guard,
ends up joining Majestic twelve and ends up being recruited
into the very conspiracy that he despises. Is that about accurate?
(26:47):
From your point of view?
Speaker 1 (26:48):
It's very accurate. That's actually a fantastic recap. Interestingly, just
while we're on this topic, I get asked this often
when people say, oh, what have you worked on? And
I say, oh, well, one of the shows I created
was Dark sky And they said, oh, you mean that
movie with Kerrie Russell. Oh, just so people understand, there
is a movie that came out in I think it
was twenty thirteen called Dark Skies about Aliens and UFOs
(27:12):
starring Kerry Russell. That is not the NBC show that
we created.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Correct, And I'm going to say about all I want
to say about this, but I have to tell this story.
When we first heard this was being made, a show
called Dark Skies about alien abductions, which frankly is what
our television series was called and was about, it kind
of rubbed me the wrong way. So I got in
touch with the people at Sony who have the rights
(27:37):
to Dark Skies, and I said, can't you just go
to these other producers and tell them that we have
a show called Dark Skies that was about alien abductions
and would you please pick another title? Because I thought
that Sony would want to protect their IP, their intellectual property.
And you know what I got told, Brent, Do you
even remember that? I don't know if you're right, don't.
I have no recollection of it. Okay. I got told
(27:58):
by the people at Sony that they would not do that.
And the reason they would not do that is they
didn't want to confront the producer, who was Harvey Weinstein.
Oh Weinstein was the Uber producer. They thought he was
so powerful they didn't want to take him on. And
so because Weinstein at that point was so powerful. There
is a movie out called the name of our TV
(28:20):
series that's about alien abductions. I'm not going to say
any more about that, Brent. I'm kind of done with that.
But all I would say to people are three words
except no imitations. Let's movie go. Well.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Look, I would forgive Sony for that decision if they
actually had the show available to watch right now. This
is one of the other problems that we're already encountering,
which is people are saying, hey, this is so cool
this Dark Sky show. I'm sorry I missed it. Where
can I see it? And so now we're stuck in
this gray area where we don't control the rights. The
(28:55):
show is owned by Sony, it was put out on DVD.
There are no more in print. You can probably buy
some used ones somewhere on the internet. But it's also
doesn't have a current streaming deal. So when people are
now asking us, well, when can I go see this
show that you're talking about, be not any place to
point them.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
But I will say the one thing if you go
to sound, lightfrequency, dot com you'll see that there is
a petition for people to sign if they want to
suggest to the people who are the rights holders of
the original darks Guys TV series, if you want to
put your name to it. Those names will be forwarded
to the guys who have the rights and maybe they'll
(29:33):
try to sell it to a streamer. That would be lovely.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Well, the nice thing is is that these petitions for
fans to get things either renewed or reinstated or re released.
These have worked in the past, So I think if
we can get a critical mass of names and give
this petition some teeth, who knows what Sony will do anyway,
check out the website.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Yeah, So coming.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Back to we talked to once about one of the
tools of screenwriting being the inciting incident. Well, another one
we have is transitions. Right, how do you take a
storyline that's heading in one direction and then suddenly change
gears and go in a completely different direction. Well that's
where we're at. We're at a transition moment here, and
this one is going to be a little bit jarring
(30:15):
because we're going to go from Dark Skies, which was
a very kind of serious and intense alien invasion story
to a very silly even outrageous invasion story called Mars Attacks.
And here's what the commonalities are. In Dark Skies, we
had JFK who was planning to disclose to the country
(30:37):
about the UFOs and then ends up getting killed, right
kind of a downer in the end of our pilot.
In Mars Attacks, the President played by Jack Nicholson also
dies trying to not address the country but actually cut
a deal with the Martians, who then decide they don't
like it and they kill him unceremoniously. And so the
(30:57):
best thing about that the President in Mars Attacks that
I will say is it's Jack Nicholson. It may not
be his finest performance, but when he's talking to these aliens,
he does a riff on the Rodney King line, the
very famous Rodney King line from the La Riots, which
is he looks at these Martians and he says, why
can't we all just get along? And they all kind
(31:17):
of look at each other. One of the aliens looks
like it has a tear coming on his face, and
then they kill him.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
They kill him. That was pretty much the best part
of the movie for me. I think the thing that
people may remember about marsh Attacks. I didn't particularly like it.
It's Tim Burton, and I know he's got a lot
of fans. It's sort of like in More of the Worlds,
the Martians are killed by amiebas I guess, or parametium
or some things, some virus or something microbiotic organism. Yeah,
(31:42):
and that's what kills these Martian invaders. These Martian Invaders
get killed by something that's pretty crazy. There is a
song that was popular, I guess going back to the
nineteen fifties, calls Indian Love Call by Slim Whitman, and
whenever it gets played, it kills the Martians. And all
I can say people, if you want to just have
a real crazy experience, go to your music provider right
(32:06):
now and look up Slim Whitman singing Indian Love Call
after our show and listening to that. That'll put you
in a different plane of existence.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I think, and imagine while it's playing that you're visualizing
little Martians exploding like popcorn kernels in hot o ail.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Which I think. The thing about Mars attacks that we
should just lay out there is there's nothing real about
Mars attacks. There's no lessons to be learned. About it.
It just came out at the same time as Independence
Day and Dark Skies in the summer of ninety six,
when everybody was talking about aliens, and as we've discussed
Beforetime Magazine was writing articles about aliens at that very moment,
(32:42):
and it was because of all that stuff. But I'll
tell you, Brent, the one thing that makes me happy
that we talked about it right now is the way
we kind of do this show is one thing leads
to another, which leads to another, so that one leads
me to say, Jack Nicholson h Jack Nicholson as the
president in an alien movie. Well, what I'm about to
talk about is not about presidents, but it is about
(33:04):
Jack Nicholson, and it is about UFOs because I think
what's been forgotten in film history is that inn Easy Rider,
which was released in nineteen sixty nine. There is a
great UFO scene, I mean, just a freaking great scene
that for my money, what it is is so much
better than entire the entire Mars Attacks movie or whatever.
(33:24):
It's Jack Nicholson sitting around a campfire in the desert
with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, right, and he's talking
about UFOs. And it's because apparently there was someone during
the production who sort of put this in their head.
But the Jack Nicholson UFO speech again, you could either
go watch Easy Rider or again if you went to
(33:47):
the Stellar YouTube site, we have just the clip of it,
but here's a little taste of it. Nicholson is smoking
a joint in a nineteen sixty nine movie and he
says when somebody was talking about seeing a flying saucer,
he goes, that was a UFO. I can't do, Jack Nicholson,
I'm not even going to try. That was a UFO
beaman back at you. Me and Eric Kaisman was down
(34:08):
in Mexico two weeks ago we saw forty of them
flying in formation. They got bases all over the world.
Now you know, they've been coming here since nineteen forty
six when the scientists first started bouncing radar beams off
the moon, and they've been living and working among us
in mass quantities ever since. The government knows all about them,
and that's sort of the bit of it. But then
(34:29):
I believe it's Hopper says, well, if they're so smart,
you know, why don't they reveal themselves? Nicholson says, why
don't they reveal themselves is because if they did, it
would cause general panic. It would cause a tremendous shock
to our antiquated systems. And I've used that a little
speech over the year, sprint. Whenever I've had to deliver
a speech at a UFO convention or something, I trot
(34:52):
out that clip because most people don't remember it. They
may have seen it, they've forgotten it, And it's just
his last two lines really do explain why people are
afraid of disclosure. They're afraid that it would cause tremendous
shock to our antiquated systems. Just like you said, it's
a very well written speech in a classic movie. So
(35:13):
that speech actually was written by Terry Southern, and he
wrote a letter in nineteen seventy that was featured in
the New York Times, and I think it gives some
really interesting insight into that speech. A curious story attaches
the woman we employed to type the script had just
come from Washington, d c. Where she'd been an active
member of a saucer cult founded by the late Adamski,
(35:35):
whose disciples claimed to be in touch with Venusians. Well anyway,
during an occasional creative lull, that is, when she wasn't typing,
we were treated to monologues about how the Venusians were
already among us in various guises for the purpose of
general surveillance, but mainly to cool us out in the
(35:56):
nuclear holocaust department. Her attitude towards their presence was one
of such total conviction and her enthusiasm so fervent that
I had a very appealing effect. I recorded several of
these soliloquies, had a transcript made of the tape, and
gave it to Hopper along with the script before he
went on location where the sequence in question was filmed.
(36:19):
That's so interesting. I love that kind of behind the
scenes stuff because what that means how it was so random.
If they hadn't hired that person to type that script,
UFOs wouldn't have been in it.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Okay, well, look, we just took a wild ride through
Hollywood through some very unpredictable string of movies, from The
Eleventh Green to Dark Skies to Mars Attacks to Easy Writer. Yeah,
you go, figure, let's go back to the real world
for a moment where we can kind of I think
what we should do is also take a look at
some other presidents besides Trump and Obama in the real world,
(36:52):
who might have had encounters with UFOs, Because there's some
pretty interesting stories. It's become a real parlor game, frankly,
in the ufology business to talk about what presidents were
briefed and which ones weren't. And while there's consensus about some,
(37:14):
obviously Truman and Eisenhower would have to have known about
what was going on, there's questions about JFK and Johnson.
People think Nixon was briefed, they think Ford, maybe not.
Reagan seems like he was briefed. Then of course there's
George Herbert Walker Bush or Bush Senior, who most people
think knew a whole lot about UFOs because he had
(37:35):
also been the head of the CIA and there are
stories about him, so maybe he was on the inside.
That leaves us to Clinton. Clinton tried to find out
about UFOs and jfkse and his pal Webster Hubble to
go look into it, and Webster came back after three
months and said, nobody's going to tell me anything, sir.
So Clinton felt like he had been frozen out, even
(37:57):
though I had a lot of interest in it, which
takes us to Bush Junior. Well, it's not clear if
George Bush Junior actually cared about UFOs, but it seems
very obvious that his vice president Dick Cheney did. In
the last year, there's been a lot of people talking
about how Cheney was actually in charge of the crash
(38:19):
retrieval program, possibly up to his death in twenty five.
So all of that. Of course, then we go to
Obama and Trump and we've already dealt with them.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
So there we are.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
We go back because you left out a pretty interesting
president in j Carter. Oh yeah, I did leave out.
So this story out of this story was touching to me.
It was kid Jimmy Carter being a president when I
was growing up. At any rate, he promised in his
nineteen seventy six campaign to release all the files, all
the UFF files, and he tried to get NASA to investigate,
(38:53):
and they turned him down. And those are the facts.
But here's a very interesting story that comes from ex
NASA researcher named Ed Harris that when Carter finally did
get some files just for his eyes only, he cried
at the resolute desk. Right, it's I mean, think about that.
Jimmy Carter, this amazing humanitarian, was so bowled over by
(39:17):
what he read that it brought him to tears. In
nineteen seventy six and nineteen eighty, both candidates of the
major parties were big on UFOs. In nineteen seventy six,
it was Jimmy Carter against Gerald Ford. Carter had seen
a UFO in nineteen sixty nine with multiple other witnesses
while he was campaigning for governor of Georgia, and gerald
(39:41):
Ford represented the district where Jay Allen Heinek in the
sixties had started talking about swamp gas, and gerald Ford
himself had demanded concretional hearings on UFOs. So that happened
in seventy six. Now in nineteen eighty you had President
Carter standing for a reelection, and as we said, the
guy had seen a UFO and he was running against
(40:02):
Ronald Reagan and Brent. Ronald Reagan had seen a UFO.
He'd seen UFOs twice in nineteen fifty on pch not
far from where I live. Reagan apparently saw a UFO.
He came to a party, he started talking about it.
And you know how we know about this is Lucille
Ball wrote about Reagan's UFO siding in her book and
(40:23):
so that's where we hear about it. And then in
nineteen seventy four, Ronald Reagan was in a Cessna aircraft
and they saw a UFO extended, and Reagan, instead of
saying that freaks me out, let's get out of here,
said follow it. So he had his pilot follow this
UFO in seventy four. So what I find interesting is
in nineteen eighty you had two presidential candidates, both people
(40:48):
who became presidents of the United States, and they'd both
seen a UFO. Pretty amazing, Why didn't that lead to disclosure?
And also, if we're just going to talk about media
for a second, why is it that you could have
these two candidates in seventy six who had public UFO beliefs.
Carter said publicly he'd seen a UFO. Ford said publicly
(41:08):
he wanted congressional investigations. And then in eighty both of
them had seen it, and yet out of six presidential
debates that were held, one question, one single question about it.
So I just wanted to put that little factoid out
there for us to consider. So interestingly, on the topic
of Reagan, he spoke about the alien threat at the
(41:30):
United Nations in his September twenty first, nineteen eighty seven
address to the forty second General Assembly, Reagan suggested that
the hypothetical alien threat from outside this world could actually
unite humanity and make all of the global differences we
have quickly vanished. So he had a very optimistic take
(41:51):
on this whole thing.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Yeah, so listen, there's a history of presidents involved with
the UFO topic, for real and on screen. We've talked
about a lot of them. There are others, but listen,
we could. We'd have a ten hour show if we
talked about all of them.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
I'm going to just throw out some names because I
know that one of the fun things about our show
that we're already hearing is that people are saying, Oh,
I never knew about this. I've got to go check
it out. So if you're interested in presidents and aliens,
there's a couple other TV series that have touched on
this topic, like the event Falling Sky's American Horror Story
did a cool episode called Death Valley about it.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Now.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
The last thing that I want to talk about, though,
is now we're going to do a different kind of transition.
We're not going to go back and forth between real
Life and Hollywood. We're going to actually shift over to
publishing because I think most people listening to this, or
a lot of people listening to this, know that you
were involved in a book about disclosure and written by
or co written with Richard Dolan, your co host on
(42:50):
Need to Know, and you actually imagined and wrote out
a script that the president would say to disclose to
the public. You want to share that with.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
I don't know if I want to. I haven't read
it out loud ever, but here is the book. It
was called ad After Disclosure. It's kind of interesting because
we wrote it in twenty ten and it was published
in a different form in twenty twelve, so it's over
a decade old. And when we wrote it, it was
before the Alizondo moment sort of ushered in the new
age of ufology where we are literally having slow drip
(43:22):
disclosure right now. I guess you would have to argue,
but when Dolan and I were first thinking about it,
we thought it might be an event of some kind,
some kind of mass public siding, and then the president
we were thinking of presidential disclosure. We didn't write the
whole speech. I just looked it up today, but here's
what we had the President saying. He says, after consultation
(43:43):
with key members of our defense and intelligence community, including
the officials accompanying me here at the podium, it has
been made clear to me that there is persuasive evidence
that the Earth has been and is currently being interacted
with by one or more intelligent non human space species.
Despite the issues that disclosure of this fact now obviously raises,
(44:04):
I do believe that the people of the United States
and the people of the Earth have a right to know.
Through my executive authority, I am closing the nation's banks
for a period of one week and ordering the closure
of the stock market until further notice, and then it
went on. But I think what our take was when
we were writing the book that everything that would happen
after disclosure is something that's already happened in another form,
(44:27):
Like the bank holiday is something that FDR declared during
the depression, and closing the stock market is something that
we did after nine to eleven. So these things are
things that could happen again. So thanks for bringing that up.
It's an interesting topic to put your brain on. So
I guess as we get to the end here, we're
just saying a lot of people have tried to figure
(44:49):
out their way through what we're living through in terms
of a disclosure moment by trying to see it through
the eyes of the president. I've certainly done it in
the past. As you just pointed out, thank you, it's
a presidential disclosure.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
I just can't quit you well said, Well, I'm going
to end this by bringing everything back to ground zero
with a little teas and some insight from the person
who disclosed to me. That's going to be coming up
in the next episode, and we've mentioned it before. We're
going to go fully into the past and I'm going
to recount all of that. But something I want to
(45:23):
say that's very relevant to this episode is that in
the meeting with this person whose name was John Harrington,
he was working in the Reagan administration. That's all I'll
say for now. One of the things he told me
was that he had a higher clearance level than the
president President Reagan. And if you think about that, well,
first of all, when he said that that it blew
(45:44):
my mind. But now think about it, even in today's terms,
the powers that be entrusted the truth about UAP to
somebody who wasn't the president right, and that the president
apparently didn't know. Now, again, this was Night one, and
maybe the protocol has changed since then. But I also
(46:04):
get the feeling that maybe the protocol is still holds
and that Obama and Trump are telling the truth. They
don't really know completely if aliens are real, and maybe
that is how the legacy program protects itself by hiding
the truth from those in the spotlight, like a president
who can legitimately claim something very important plausible deniability.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Many of the whistleblowers who have been speaking recently seem
to be saying the same thing. You hear this over
and over from them, which is the president is looked
at as a temporary employee. He's there for four years
or eight years, and then he's gone. And so, yeah,
you're going to trust the most incredible secret in the
(46:48):
history of mankind to attempt Hell no, right, right? You
want the continuity that goes with a person who's going
to be there tomorrow and the next ding, and who's
going to hand off the reins of authority on this
secret and how to keep it to other people who
also know how to keep it. So yeah, possibly you
are one hundred percent right there that presidents know maybe
(47:09):
a little, but not enough to get themselves in real trouble.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
So given all of that, I'm left with a question,
and that is that, even if a president personally wants
the truth, as many presidents seem to have claimed, how
does it make you feel to know that they are
just like the other eight billion of us on this
planet that may or may not be teeming with aliens
(47:34):
and UFOs.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
I don't know if I feel good about that. Sound
Light and Frequency is an iHeart podcast produced by Stellar Productions.
It's executive produced by Nick Johnson and for Stellar Jackie's Abel.
Our show's music was written by Anna Stump and Hamilton
Lighthauser and Your hosts and executive producers are Bryce Abel,
That's Me and Brent Friedman. Watch the Guys
Initially, the Pentagon wanted to get involved. They loved the script.
They were going to cooperate. They loved the idea of
fighter jets and heroism and showing American firepower. What they
didn't like was the fact that we were going inside
Area fifty one.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Those two little words that can never be said if
you're the Pentagon. In fact, they asked for Area fifty
one to be expunged from the script, and Roland Emerick,
the director, he refused, and so as a consequence, the
Pentagon did not work with the producers of Independent State.
(00:55):
I'm Bryce's Able. Have you ever wondered if there's a
secret connection between Hollywood and US?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I'm Brent Friedman, and you're listening to sound, Light and Frequency.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Who actually knows more about the UFO UAP issue. Real
presidents are the ones we see in films and on TV.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Maybe the answer is the screenwriters who write those president's speeches.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Okay, so we don't actually have to cover this like
a breaking news story, because that's not the kind of
podcast we are. But I do want to read this
Obama quote because it sets up something pretty cool. This
is what Obama said in total, they're real, but I
haven't seen them. They're not being kept at Area fifty one.
There's no underground facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy and
(01:51):
they hid it from the President of the United States,
which man, that's a movie.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Absolutely, it's very meta if you think about it. But
I want to seize on something very interesting because I
didn't know this. I learned this when we were doing
some research for this episode. Do you know what the
first instance of seeing Area fifty one on film was?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
That's interesting because we know the first instance in history
was obviously George Knapp first started talking about it the
George Nap the Reporter in Las Vegas, and that's early
eighty kind of thing. I guess the question really is
when did Hollywood take us inside Area fifty one? I
bet I'm blank? And what do you got?
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Are you sitting down if I am Indiana Jones and
Raiders of the Lost Dark. And here's the thing. Remember
the big warehouse at the end that's called in the
movie in the lore Hangar fifty one, that was supposed
to be Area fifty one.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
That's where the secrets are being kept Area fifty one.
That's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Were all the reverse engineering so I just think it's
funny that Obama brings it up right as this way
of saying, oh, well, that's all ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I love that example, though, because first we got Nap
breaking the story, but then we got Spielberg picking it
up immediately and putting it in at the end of
his movie and all of that. But we'll say it
leads us to another place because it reminds me of
a famous US president who actually did visit Area fifty
one and he saw a lot more than he was expecting.
(03:17):
And of course that one had to be in a movie,
we think. So why don't you read the log line
and see if our audience can figure out what movie
we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
All right, let me do the honors. When colossal alien
spacecraft arrive and launch a global attack, a US president,
a brash fighter pilot, and a brilliant scientist race to
unite humanity and mount a last ditch counter strike to
save Earth from annihilation.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Great log line, And just to give another hint, they
could have mentioned the Jewish dad, the poll dancing girlfriend,
and the drunken crop duster, who all played their roles
in saving humanity too, But that's too much for a
log line. We are talking about, of course, Independent Day,
which is celebrating its thirtieth year anniversary as we do
(04:05):
this podcast. That's right. It was on the fourth of
July weekend back in nineteen ninety six Independence Day first
came to our theaters. And to put this in perspective,
that kind of strikes close to home for us. It's
a trilogy of events. So you got Independence Day at
the same time Dark Skies, our show was in production,
was going to go on the air in September, and frankly,
(04:28):
I think just a week or so around when Independence
Day came out, so did Mars Attacks. So it was
a big time for movies about presidents trying to deal
with alien contact.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
There was something in the air back then. So interestingly
we know what the plot is, and I'm guessing most
people have seen Independence Day. I remember that being one
of the loudest audiences I've ever experienced, screaming and hooting
and hollering, and I remember that moment when Will Smith
punched the a it had knocked him out. It got
a standing ovation. It was probably one of the most
(05:04):
exciting movie experiences I've ever had. But getting to the
movie itself, we have a president played by Bill Pullman.
I believe his name was Thomas J. Whitmore, Yes, sir,
And unlike our presidents in the real world, who seemed
to know a little bit about aliens, Thomas J. Whitmore
knew nothing. He was not read in. He had not
been briefed in any way, shape or form. And his
(05:27):
disclosure or how he was disclosed too, was aliens invading
the earth and blowing up his home, the White House.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
That's one way to disclose things. I mean that pretty
well puts it out on the front page as long
as we're gonna have about classic things. Though. Just remember
I had forgotten exactly how it started, and I was
really happy to see it again. And it starts with
that wonderful thing where this gigantic mothership is casting a
shadow on the moon right over where Aldren and Armstrong
(05:54):
had been walking in nineteen sixty nine. It's one of
the greatest moments. And another great moment is the one
that this pertains to, which is your president Whitmore. He
hasn't been disclosed to that somebody's talking about aliens. He goes, well, no,
that's not happening. And you know he's putting down the concept,
and his secretary of Defense leans over and says, uh,
(06:17):
mister President, that's not entirely accurate. And I just remember
in the theater I watched it with people just thought
that was a hoot, because I think they believe. What
I took it to mean is most of the people
in that audience actually thought presidents don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
I think it's probably fifty to fifty. You have some
people that are convinced that the presidents know and they're
withholding from us, and then you have some that believe, no,
the president doesn't know anything. I also think that it's
interesting imagine one of our presidents being disclosed to in
that way in the middle of an alien invasion and
having to be told, we haven't told you anything. But
(06:54):
I think President Whitmore is quite aspirational because he does
not focus or dwell on the fact that they kept
everything from him, in the same way that Obama mused
there might be a big conspiracy in this movie, there
was a big conspiracy to keep everything from him, but
he doesn't hold that against anyone. And the ultimately when
he gives his speech at Whatnot at the end, it's
(07:15):
all about unity, right, It's all. He goes positive, he
goes take kicks the high road instead of.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
The low road. In order to do this show, I pondered,
what makes President Whitmore such a great president and why
do we wish he was in charge right now and
so he could disclose aliens? And I think it's because
the capabilities he brings to the job are's. He's very
flexible as new information comes to light. I mean, he
doesn't stick with an old position. He moves on with
(07:40):
the facts. He's certainly willing to get tough and kick
ass if he needs to. He gets that sometimes the
stakes are literally existential, like survival, and they supersede politics.
Because again, it was thirty years ago. I saw it
for the first time. I took my son to see it,
and I think I've seen it once or twice in between,
but that was a long time ago, and I saw
(08:00):
it just for this thing. A couple of things jumped
out at me. First of all, there's a character in
a Tim kellerher who is in all the Command Center scenes.
And Tim was our lead member of the Hive in
Dark Skies. Tim was a major character in our TV series,
and he's there in the film a lot doesn't have
a lot to say, but he's in a lot of scenes.
(08:22):
The other thing for this podcast is I never really
put it together, but the aliens are communicating with frequencies.
The whole thing Goldblim is talking about is these frequencies
and that kind of thing, which I thought was interesting.
Another thing that pertains to some of the things that
we've been talking about in our episodes is that Will
Smith is a pilot, but who does he work for
(08:43):
the US Navy? So there again we got the Navy
coming into play. But the one that really really stood
out to me was there are grays in this It
doesn't seem like it because the alien you mentioned that
Will Smith punches out is a big, hulking thing that
he has to drag through the desert. But it turns
out that these littler grays are inside that big hulking alien,
(09:07):
and the big hulking alien is really comes to some
kind of biological suit that's constructed around them, which means,
if you think about it, their grays and independence they
were the aggressors, but in our series Dark Skies, they
weren't the aggressors. They were the victims. So you know,
everybody's got a new take on grays, and if anything,
(09:28):
the fact that people keep thinking about it and trying
to come up with ways to understand what a gray
is given the sparse nature of the facts right now,
is that there's a lot of different opinions. We had one,
they had one, and other people have had other opinions since.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, that was one of the most interesting things to
me was how they represented the aliens. They had the
best of all worlds, and that movie was a crowd pleaser,
and that's why initially the Pentagon wanted to get involved.
They loved the script. They were going to cooperate. They
loved the idea of fighter jets and heroism and showing
American firepower. What they didn't like was the fact that
(10:02):
we were going inside Area fifty one.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Those two little words that can never be said if
you're the Pentagon. In fact, they asked for Area fifty
one to be expunged from the script, and Roland Emerik,
the director, he refused, and so as a consequence, the
Pentagon did not work with the producers of Independence Day. Instead,
(10:25):
those same producers Emeric and Dean Devlin and the others
they rented jets, they painted new markings on them. They
orchestrated entire battle scenes with the best effects that they
could get at the time. And here's the interesting thing, Brent,
if you listen to the interviews that Emeric and Devlin gave,
they said later that losing the Pentagon cooperation actually freed
(10:46):
them to make a better film. So it cuts both ways.
And that story, frankly, has been repeated a few times
where the Pentagon has been interested in working on a film,
but then they get to read the script, they hear
about the film, they gone, yeah, I think that could
be really good because our guys will look good. And
then there's something a little too euphological in it. And
then the plug gets pulled and the guys make the
(11:07):
movie anyway. And like I said, there's more than a
few instances of that, right.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Well, think about it. If you're Devlin and Emeriic, you've
been getting notes from the studio and then you finally
get greenlit. The last thing you want is more notes
from the government or the military. It's like, we just
want to make our movie right.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
And they had to overcome certain things too, because right
now we take it as an article of faith it's
called Independence Day, but that's not original. That's what it
originally was supposed to be called Independence Day. But twentieth
century Fox and Warner Brothers had some kind of I
don't even want to get into it. They were fighting
about the title. And the various titles that were suggested
(11:44):
for this film were Invasion, which is kind of generic,
Sky on Fire which kind of got reused later in
Fire in the Sky for the Travis Walton case. And
the one that the Fox execs really loved and came
very close to being the title of this film was Doomsday,
so pretty negative and tough one. But the thing is
(12:06):
Devlin and Emeric said, nope, Independence Day is the heart
and soul of this movie. I find this so interesting.
In order to make their point, apparently they were already
in production when this title stuff was going on, and
so they shot the Bill Pullman scene, which is kind
of a classic where he gets in his own fighter
jet the president and a fighter jet runs off and
(12:27):
takes care of business, and they moved it up so
that everybody could see it, and they were pretty well right,
because when the execs saw the dailies, they said, okay,
all right, it's Independence Day, and then they ended up
negotiating with Warner Brothers and now it's Independence Day and
on IMBB. So there you go. Let's talk president's speech though,
because we're talking about real presidents too, and we're talking
(12:50):
about the real UFOUAP issue and how people would even
talk about it, right, So it is interesting do you
think about how would Obama handle disclosure? How would Trump
handle disclosure? Sure, how would any of our presidents have
handled it in the past, But we've got a different president.
But there's always a story behind the story. And that's
what I find so interesting about doing this show with you. Okay,
(13:11):
the speech that's so famous is that the president Whitmore
used to be a jet fighter pilot. So frankly, it's
very similar to George Bush, who flew a jet and
during Iraq he landed on a carrier and the famous
Mission Accomplished sign was behind him. The scene that we're
talking about there was more akin to right after nine
(13:32):
to eleven Bush went down to visit the site and
he grabbed that megaphone and he sort of spoke to
the rage that Americans were feeling at that time. And
that's kind of what Whitmore captured but it's five years earlier. Okay,
this is the speech that Whitmore gives. Remember he comes
in and he says, all right, aircraft are going to
be joining others from around the world. It's going to
(13:54):
be the greatest aerial battle in the history of mankind.
And we can't be consumed by our petty difference. All
that stuff. And it's all great. In fact, it never
had to be rewritten or revised or anything. But then
this is the part that everybody remembers. This is what
he says. He goes, perhaps it's fate that today is
the fourth of July, and you will once again be
(14:14):
fighting for our freedom, not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution,
but from annihilation. We're fighting for our right to live,
to exist. And should we win, the day, the fourth
of July will no longer be known as an American holiday,
but as the day when the world declared in one voice.
And this is the part where people were screaming in
(14:34):
the theaters. I'm pretty sure he goes, we will not
go quietly into that night. We will not vanish without
a fight. We're going to live on. We're going to survive.
Today we celebrate Independence Day, I'm sorry I got a
little carried away there, but that's what he said, and
(14:55):
browsing it fired everybody up, and you think that's probably
the kind of present that you need for what's about
to go down, possibly in the next decade, when somebody's
gonna step forward and say, Okay, guys, this is what's
really going on.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
We should be so lucky to have a president.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Sure should. And here's an image for everybody from behind
the scenes. Use your imagination. We remember Bill Pullman giving
that speech. They went to Ethan Hawk first to play
the president. So imagine Ethan Hawk giving that speech. And
guess what. He didn't like the movie. He didn't like
the script. He was driving along, I think in the
somewhere in the desert, and he threw the script out
(15:33):
of his car under the road because he thought it
was so bad. So, by the way, if anybody ever
picked up that script, you could probably get a fortune
for it on eBay.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Anyway, I was just going to say, that is a
collector's item. Look, it was a fantastic script, and it
was a fantastic movie and an even better speech. One
of the other interesting things about this movie was, wasn't
it screened at the White House.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Oh yeah, what do we know about that? Well, we
know a little bit. During our research for this thing,
we actually turned up an interview between and Bill Pullman
and Roland Emerick and Dean Devlin where they talked about
that thing. And I'm a little nervous to do this
since I just got carried away on the Bill Pullman
speech and that was a little much even for me,
So my apologies, folks, But we found that interview and Bren,
(16:16):
I think we should do a little dramatic interp.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Here if you're up for it. Well, here's the thing.
You went all out on the Whitmore speech, boy did.
I am going to make good use of my college degree,
which I have not used since I went to UCLA
as a theater major of THEATA major and I've done
nothing with that since. So this is my chance. I
am going to play the roles of Roland Emerick, a
(16:39):
German director, and Bill Pullman, who most of you know
is a very stately but laconic actor. Bryce will be
playing the role of Dean Devlin writer.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Very happy to play Dean. He made a really great
film and it's been great anyway, Okay, I'm Dean Devlin,
and with this we'll wrap up this first section, all right.
It starts with Dean and He's says, we were in
the middle of doing a press junket in New York
for the movie. The phone is ringing in my room.
I pick it up and they said, could you hold
for the White House? I said what? And they said,
(17:11):
the President would like to screen the movie tonight.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
All of a sudden, we are standing in the middle
of the White House and Bill Clinton is chatting us up.
They have the worst screening room that ever. It's a
form of bowling alley, a little postmark of a screen.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
I'm loving this, by the way. Okay, in the front
row is Hillary and Bill, and Bill has the largest
tub of popcorn I've ever seen.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
All three of us were in the back row standing
up because we were too nervous to even take a seat.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
So Clinton waves to Roland to come down and sit
next to him.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Roland was so decisive. I'm German, I can't go. I thought, well,
that's weak. You're the director and Dean, he wrote the speech.
He said, no, no, I'm too nervous. So by default
I said, now, okay, I'll serve the cause Bill had
to sit next to the President, right in front of
the Clinton sandwiched all in. It was a little nerve racking.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Remember in Amadaeus at the end of the opera, it's
silent until the king claps his hands, and then everybody claps.
It was like that for every single joke of the movie.
No one wanted to laugh at a joke until they
heard Bill laugh.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
The first big destruction scene starts with blowing up the
White House. In test screenings, a lot of people left
after and then they immediately come running back in. They
didn't pee earlier because they were so into the movie.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
When we got to the moment the White House blows up,
Roland and I are looking at each other and we're
going we're in the White House watching it blow up.
It was bizarre.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
And then who runs out? Bill Clinton. One minute later
he comes back, shaking his hands dry. Dte and I
looked at each other and nearly started laughing. It was amazing.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
I know, we haven't solved the UFO mystery here, Brent.
That was kind of weird and fun. So anyway, folks,
we're going to take a little break here, We're going
to come back, and we got some cool stuff to
talk about. Well brow. We started by explaining a little
bit about Independence Day, and I think we both enjoyed
(19:17):
watching the film and watching it again, so there was that.
We also started though, talking about the real Barack Obama
talking about aliens. But in doing the research for this episode,
something that turned up that was kind of intriguing is
there's already been a very euphological movie and Barack Obama
is one of the characters in it. I mean, it's amazing.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
I yeah, this came out of left field for me.
We're talking about The Eleventh Green in case you didn't
guess it, and we both watched it for the first time.
I literally had not heard of it, and I think
we both had fairly different opinions of it. I think
probably I'll get my opinion out of the way first
so that you can actually do the film some justice.
(19:58):
I thought it was interesting, lots of great ideas. I
just and it's probably just because we do a lot
of work in video games. It just felt very slow
to me. It was an effort to get through to
the end.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Okay, I'm not going to let you paint me in
the corner raft to defend this thing as being a
great film, but it did hold my interest because of
how extraordinarily euphological it was. I mean, if you want
to watch a film that literally has scenes where Barack
Obama and Dwight Eisenhower and some Nordic are meeting on
the astral plane to discuss the nature of the universe,
(20:32):
I mean, this is the film for you, guys. I mean,
this thing is pretty amazing. It has three different presidents
in it. Tom Connolly plays jfk. Leith m Burke plays Obama,
George Gerds plays Ike Eisenhower, and there's a lot of
scenes with these people. But the essence of the thing, though,
let me as long as we're talking about log lines,
(20:52):
just remember this. This is what it's about. The Eleventh
Green is about a guy named Jeremy Rudd played by
Campbell Scott, who a lot of people knows. He's done
a lot of work in indie films, and yeah, it
was pretty good. And he's this investigative journalist and he's
working on a story about advanced aerospace technology that might
(21:13):
even be related to reverse engineering UFOs. So I mean
it starts as deeply euphologically as you're going to get.
And he's been a strange from his father, who is
a spook of long reputation who's been living in Palm Springs,
who has just died. And so this dude, who is
deep into this, probably because it's a family trait, heads
(21:35):
on out to Palm Springs to settle the estate and
he ends up working with a woman who was his
father's assistant who turns out to be I guess she's
in the intel community. Okay, listen, I agree. There's no
action per se in this thing. It's a big talkie thing,
but they probably made it for a dollar and a half,
you know, so they got a lot of stuff in it.
(21:57):
So if you can separate out the action well production
value of the whole thing from what they talk about,
what would you say about what they're talking about in
this thing?
Speaker 1 (22:05):
There was a lot of interesting things to talk about.
I found when they started colliding different time periods and
going on to astral planes interesting conceptually, but I didn't
feel like it explained anything for me in terms of
or bringing a new understanding to me of what's going
on behind the scenes. It was a lot of interesting
(22:26):
film techniques and storytelling techniques, but I don't know that
I had a great takeaway. What was your takeaway?
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Well, my first, my largest takeaway was, damn this guy,
Leith Burke sure plays a great Barack Obama. And if
I'm not mistaken, he's actually been cast as Barack Obama
once or twice after this because he was so good
at it. That was my first takeaway. But from the
euphological point of view, it is kind of interesting because
I believe the writer director is Christopher Munch, and Munch
(22:56):
obviously knows his whether it's history or speculation, and he
certainly knows a lot about it. The idea of reverse
engineering is certainly laid out clearly, the idea that this
has been a generational long struggle with this secrecy, and
that the secrecy has involved presidents going back to Eisenhower
who may have started the secrecy, to the Obama at
(23:18):
the time, who's caught in the middle of it and
realizes this is not sustainable. You can't continue to have
this kind of secret forever. And ever he really wants
to come clean about it, and then in the end
he can't quite figure out how to get that job done.
So I found that interesting because you know, those are
things that you and I have talked about a lot
(23:40):
and a lot of people. If you go to X
right now and look at people talking about the UFO
UAP issue, these are things that are very active right now,
right now that people are talking about it. But the
main thing that I liked, and again not trying to
defend it as being the best film I've ever seen,
it's not Godfather, but it's the Eleventh. But what it
(24:01):
really is is it's a meditation. If you look at
it from that point of view, it's almost worth watching
because it's a meditation. I think on belief and power
and what truth actually means when governments and people have
incentives to curate reality, to take what's really going on
and sort of spin it to their best effect. And
(24:24):
I think that's what God under my skin watching it
is I started to think about it. Wasn't that I
wasn't thinking about the movie. I was thinking about the
idea in the movie that you know, obviously it's kind
of strange to see Eisenhower and Obama having scenes together
with a Nordic I mean, yeah, that's strange, but the
things that they're talking about seemed very reasonable to me.
(24:45):
That's all I say about it. And maybe that's all
we should say about it.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Last thing I say I will say is that I
agree with you the film had the energy level of
a meditation.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
So let's move on. So yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Think that as you're going to find in sound, light,
and frequency, oftentimes roads lead us right back to Dark Skies,
and I think the eleventh Green now following that logic
of an alternate history, clashing characters from different time periods,
talking about the behind the scenes conspiracy and is it sustainable. Well,
(25:19):
our TV show Dark Skies had all of those elements,
and it had a very important president at the center
of the storyline like some of the other movies we've
been talking about. So let's jump back into Dark Skies
for a moment, and for anyone that maybe didn't get
the full picture in our first episode, let's do a
little housekeeping and bring people up to speed.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I agree with you, Brent. I feel like the one
thing I want to make clear is we've almost told
people more about other films than our own project here,
and since Dark Skies with the approach by the guy
from the Office of Naval Intelligence that we talked about
in our first episode, is kind of a through line
for us and yet we haven't actually explained to people
what it was. So in this short as possible and
(26:01):
clearest way, I would just like to say this. Dark
Skies was an NBC series produced in nineteen ninety six
into nineteen ninety seven. There were twenty hours of it
produced Brent You and I created that show, and the
concept was pretty simple. It took place in the nineteen
sixties in Washington, DC, and our main character was John Longard,
(26:23):
who comes to learn in our two hour pilot that
aliens walk among us and that there is a secret
government group that's keeping it from the public, and so
in order to try to protect humanity, this character Loan Guard,
ends up joining Majestic twelve and ends up being recruited
into the very conspiracy that he despises. Is that about accurate?
(26:47):
From your point of view?
Speaker 1 (26:48):
It's very accurate. That's actually a fantastic recap. Interestingly, just
while we're on this topic, I get asked this often
when people say, oh, what have you worked on? And
I say, oh, well, one of the shows I created
was Dark sky And they said, oh, you mean that
movie with Kerrie Russell. Oh, just so people understand, there
is a movie that came out in I think it
was twenty thirteen called Dark Skies about Aliens and UFOs
(27:12):
starring Kerry Russell. That is not the NBC show that
we created.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Correct, And I'm going to say about all I want
to say about this, but I have to tell this story.
When we first heard this was being made, a show
called Dark Skies about alien abductions, which frankly is what
our television series was called and was about, it kind
of rubbed me the wrong way. So I got in
touch with the people at Sony who have the rights
(27:37):
to Dark Skies, and I said, can't you just go
to these other producers and tell them that we have
a show called Dark Skies that was about alien abductions
and would you please pick another title? Because I thought
that Sony would want to protect their IP, their intellectual property.
And you know what I got told, Brent, Do you
even remember that? I don't know if you're right, don't.
I have no recollection of it. Okay. I got told
(27:58):
by the people at Sony that they would not do that.
And the reason they would not do that is they
didn't want to confront the producer, who was Harvey Weinstein.
Oh Weinstein was the Uber producer. They thought he was
so powerful they didn't want to take him on. And
so because Weinstein at that point was so powerful. There
is a movie out called the name of our TV
(28:20):
series that's about alien abductions. I'm not going to say
any more about that, Brent. I'm kind of done with that.
But all I would say to people are three words
except no imitations. Let's movie go. Well.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Look, I would forgive Sony for that decision if they
actually had the show available to watch right now. This
is one of the other problems that we're already encountering,
which is people are saying, hey, this is so cool
this Dark Sky show. I'm sorry I missed it. Where
can I see it? And so now we're stuck in
this gray area where we don't control the rights. The
(28:55):
show is owned by Sony, it was put out on DVD.
There are no more in print. You can probably buy
some used ones somewhere on the internet. But it's also
doesn't have a current streaming deal. So when people are
now asking us, well, when can I go see this
show that you're talking about, be not any place to
point them.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
But I will say the one thing if you go
to sound, lightfrequency, dot com you'll see that there is
a petition for people to sign if they want to
suggest to the people who are the rights holders of
the original darks Guys TV series, if you want to
put your name to it. Those names will be forwarded
to the guys who have the rights and maybe they'll
(29:33):
try to sell it to a streamer. That would be lovely.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Well, the nice thing is is that these petitions for
fans to get things either renewed or reinstated or re released.
These have worked in the past, So I think if
we can get a critical mass of names and give
this petition some teeth, who knows what Sony will do anyway,
check out the website.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Yeah, So coming.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Back to we talked to once about one of the
tools of screenwriting being the inciting incident. Well, another one
we have is transitions. Right, how do you take a
storyline that's heading in one direction and then suddenly change
gears and go in a completely different direction. Well that's
where we're at. We're at a transition moment here, and
this one is going to be a little bit jarring
(30:15):
because we're going to go from Dark Skies, which was
a very kind of serious and intense alien invasion story
to a very silly even outrageous invasion story called Mars Attacks.
And here's what the commonalities are. In Dark Skies, we
had JFK who was planning to disclose to the country
(30:37):
about the UFOs and then ends up getting killed, right
kind of a downer in the end of our pilot.
In Mars Attacks, the President played by Jack Nicholson also
dies trying to not address the country but actually cut
a deal with the Martians, who then decide they don't
like it and they kill him unceremoniously. And so the
(30:57):
best thing about that the President in Mars Attacks that
I will say is it's Jack Nicholson. It may not
be his finest performance, but when he's talking to these aliens,
he does a riff on the Rodney King line, the
very famous Rodney King line from the La Riots, which
is he looks at these Martians and he says, why
can't we all just get along? And they all kind
(31:17):
of look at each other. One of the aliens looks
like it has a tear coming on his face, and
then they kill him.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
They kill him. That was pretty much the best part
of the movie for me. I think the thing that
people may remember about marsh Attacks. I didn't particularly like it.
It's Tim Burton, and I know he's got a lot
of fans. It's sort of like in More of the Worlds,
the Martians are killed by amiebas I guess, or parametium
or some things, some virus or something microbiotic organism. Yeah,
(31:42):
and that's what kills these Martian invaders. These Martian Invaders
get killed by something that's pretty crazy. There is a
song that was popular, I guess going back to the
nineteen fifties, calls Indian Love Call by Slim Whitman, and
whenever it gets played, it kills the Martians. And all
I can say people, if you want to just have
a real crazy experience, go to your music provider right
(32:06):
now and look up Slim Whitman singing Indian Love Call
after our show and listening to that. That'll put you
in a different plane of existence.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
I think, and imagine while it's playing that you're visualizing
little Martians exploding like popcorn kernels in hot o ail.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Which I think. The thing about Mars attacks that we
should just lay out there is there's nothing real about
Mars attacks. There's no lessons to be learned. About it.
It just came out at the same time as Independence
Day and Dark Skies in the summer of ninety six,
when everybody was talking about aliens, and as we've discussed
Beforetime Magazine was writing articles about aliens at that very moment,
(32:42):
and it was because of all that stuff. But I'll
tell you, Brent, the one thing that makes me happy
that we talked about it right now is the way
we kind of do this show is one thing leads
to another, which leads to another, so that one leads
me to say, Jack Nicholson h Jack Nicholson as the
president in an alien movie. Well, what I'm about to
talk about is not about presidents, but it is about
(33:04):
Jack Nicholson, and it is about UFOs because I think
what's been forgotten in film history is that inn Easy Rider,
which was released in nineteen sixty nine. There is a
great UFO scene, I mean, just a freaking great scene
that for my money, what it is is so much
better than entire the entire Mars Attacks movie or whatever.
(33:24):
It's Jack Nicholson sitting around a campfire in the desert
with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, right, and he's talking
about UFOs. And it's because apparently there was someone during
the production who sort of put this in their head.
But the Jack Nicholson UFO speech again, you could either
go watch Easy Rider or again if you went to
(33:47):
the Stellar YouTube site, we have just the clip of it,
but here's a little taste of it. Nicholson is smoking
a joint in a nineteen sixty nine movie and he
says when somebody was talking about seeing a flying saucer,
he goes, that was a UFO. I can't do, Jack Nicholson,
I'm not even going to try. That was a UFO
beaman back at you. Me and Eric Kaisman was down
(34:08):
in Mexico two weeks ago we saw forty of them
flying in formation. They got bases all over the world.
Now you know, they've been coming here since nineteen forty
six when the scientists first started bouncing radar beams off
the moon, and they've been living and working among us
in mass quantities ever since. The government knows all about them,
and that's sort of the bit of it. But then
(34:29):
I believe it's Hopper says, well, if they're so smart,
you know, why don't they reveal themselves? Nicholson says, why
don't they reveal themselves is because if they did, it
would cause general panic. It would cause a tremendous shock
to our antiquated systems. And I've used that a little
speech over the year, sprint. Whenever I've had to deliver
a speech at a UFO convention or something, I trot
(34:52):
out that clip because most people don't remember it. They
may have seen it, they've forgotten it, And it's just
his last two lines really do explain why people are
afraid of disclosure. They're afraid that it would cause tremendous
shock to our antiquated systems. Just like you said, it's
a very well written speech in a classic movie. So
(35:13):
that speech actually was written by Terry Southern, and he
wrote a letter in nineteen seventy that was featured in
the New York Times, and I think it gives some
really interesting insight into that speech. A curious story attaches
the woman we employed to type the script had just
come from Washington, d c. Where she'd been an active
member of a saucer cult founded by the late Adamski,
(35:35):
whose disciples claimed to be in touch with Venusians. Well anyway,
during an occasional creative lull, that is, when she wasn't typing,
we were treated to monologues about how the Venusians were
already among us in various guises for the purpose of
general surveillance, but mainly to cool us out in the
(35:56):
nuclear holocaust department. Her attitude towards their presence was one
of such total conviction and her enthusiasm so fervent that
I had a very appealing effect. I recorded several of
these soliloquies, had a transcript made of the tape, and
gave it to Hopper along with the script before he
went on location where the sequence in question was filmed.
(36:19):
That's so interesting. I love that kind of behind the
scenes stuff because what that means how it was so random.
If they hadn't hired that person to type that script,
UFOs wouldn't have been in it.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Okay, well, look, we just took a wild ride through
Hollywood through some very unpredictable string of movies, from The
Eleventh Green to Dark Skies to Mars Attacks to Easy Writer. Yeah,
you go, figure, let's go back to the real world
for a moment where we can kind of I think
what we should do is also take a look at
some other presidents besides Trump and Obama in the real world,
(36:52):
who might have had encounters with UFOs, Because there's some
pretty interesting stories. It's become a real parlor game, frankly,
in the ufology business to talk about what presidents were
briefed and which ones weren't. And while there's consensus about some,
(37:14):
obviously Truman and Eisenhower would have to have known about
what was going on, there's questions about JFK and Johnson.
People think Nixon was briefed, they think Ford, maybe not.
Reagan seems like he was briefed. Then of course there's
George Herbert Walker Bush or Bush Senior, who most people
think knew a whole lot about UFOs because he had
(37:35):
also been the head of the CIA and there are
stories about him, so maybe he was on the inside.
That leaves us to Clinton. Clinton tried to find out
about UFOs and jfkse and his pal Webster Hubble to
go look into it, and Webster came back after three
months and said, nobody's going to tell me anything, sir.
So Clinton felt like he had been frozen out, even
(37:57):
though I had a lot of interest in it, which
takes us to Bush Junior. Well, it's not clear if
George Bush Junior actually cared about UFOs, but it seems
very obvious that his vice president Dick Cheney did. In
the last year, there's been a lot of people talking
about how Cheney was actually in charge of the crash
(38:19):
retrieval program, possibly up to his death in twenty five.
So all of that. Of course, then we go to
Obama and Trump and we've already dealt with them.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
So there we are.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
We go back because you left out a pretty interesting
president in j Carter. Oh yeah, I did leave out.
So this story out of this story was touching to me.
It was kid Jimmy Carter being a president when I
was growing up. At any rate, he promised in his
nineteen seventy six campaign to release all the files, all
the UFF files, and he tried to get NASA to investigate,
(38:53):
and they turned him down. And those are the facts.
But here's a very interesting story that comes from ex
NASA researcher named Ed Harris that when Carter finally did
get some files just for his eyes only, he cried
at the resolute desk. Right, it's I mean, think about that.
Jimmy Carter, this amazing humanitarian, was so bowled over by
(39:17):
what he read that it brought him to tears. In
nineteen seventy six and nineteen eighty, both candidates of the
major parties were big on UFOs. In nineteen seventy six,
it was Jimmy Carter against Gerald Ford. Carter had seen
a UFO in nineteen sixty nine with multiple other witnesses
while he was campaigning for governor of Georgia, and gerald
(39:41):
Ford represented the district where Jay Allen Heinek in the
sixties had started talking about swamp gas, and gerald Ford
himself had demanded concretional hearings on UFOs. So that happened
in seventy six. Now in nineteen eighty you had President
Carter standing for a reelection, and as we said, the
guy had seen a UFO and he was running against
(40:02):
Ronald Reagan and Brent. Ronald Reagan had seen a UFO.
He'd seen UFOs twice in nineteen fifty on pch not
far from where I live. Reagan apparently saw a UFO.
He came to a party, he started talking about it.
And you know how we know about this is Lucille
Ball wrote about Reagan's UFO siding in her book and
(40:23):
so that's where we hear about it. And then in
nineteen seventy four, Ronald Reagan was in a Cessna aircraft
and they saw a UFO extended, and Reagan, instead of
saying that freaks me out, let's get out of here,
said follow it. So he had his pilot follow this
UFO in seventy four. So what I find interesting is
in nineteen eighty you had two presidential candidates, both people
(40:48):
who became presidents of the United States, and they'd both
seen a UFO. Pretty amazing, Why didn't that lead to disclosure?
And also, if we're just going to talk about media
for a second, why is it that you could have
these two candidates in seventy six who had public UFO beliefs.
Carter said publicly he'd seen a UFO. Ford said publicly
(41:08):
he wanted congressional investigations. And then in eighty both of
them had seen it, and yet out of six presidential
debates that were held, one question, one single question about it.
So I just wanted to put that little factoid out
there for us to consider. So interestingly, on the topic
of Reagan, he spoke about the alien threat at the
(41:30):
United Nations in his September twenty first, nineteen eighty seven
address to the forty second General Assembly, Reagan suggested that
the hypothetical alien threat from outside this world could actually
unite humanity and make all of the global differences we
have quickly vanished. So he had a very optimistic take
(41:51):
on this whole thing.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Yeah, so listen, there's a history of presidents involved with
the UFO topic, for real and on screen. We've talked
about a lot of them. There are others, but listen,
we could. We'd have a ten hour show if we
talked about all of them.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
I'm going to just throw out some names because I
know that one of the fun things about our show
that we're already hearing is that people are saying, Oh,
I never knew about this. I've got to go check
it out. So if you're interested in presidents and aliens,
there's a couple other TV series that have touched on
this topic, like the event Falling Sky's American Horror Story
did a cool episode called Death Valley about it.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Now.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
The last thing that I want to talk about, though,
is now we're going to do a different kind of transition.
We're not going to go back and forth between real
Life and Hollywood. We're going to actually shift over to
publishing because I think most people listening to this, or
a lot of people listening to this, know that you
were involved in a book about disclosure and written by
or co written with Richard Dolan, your co host on
(42:50):
Need to Know, and you actually imagined and wrote out
a script that the president would say to disclose to
the public. You want to share that with.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
I don't know if I want to. I haven't read
it out loud ever, but here is the book. It
was called ad After Disclosure. It's kind of interesting because
we wrote it in twenty ten and it was published
in a different form in twenty twelve, so it's over
a decade old. And when we wrote it, it was
before the Alizondo moment sort of ushered in the new
age of ufology where we are literally having slow drip
(43:22):
disclosure right now. I guess you would have to argue,
but when Dolan and I were first thinking about it,
we thought it might be an event of some kind,
some kind of mass public siding, and then the president
we were thinking of presidential disclosure. We didn't write the
whole speech. I just looked it up today, but here's
what we had the President saying. He says, after consultation
(43:43):
with key members of our defense and intelligence community, including
the officials accompanying me here at the podium, it has
been made clear to me that there is persuasive evidence
that the Earth has been and is currently being interacted
with by one or more intelligent non human space species.
Despite the issues that disclosure of this fact now obviously raises,
(44:04):
I do believe that the people of the United States
and the people of the Earth have a right to know.
Through my executive authority, I am closing the nation's banks
for a period of one week and ordering the closure
of the stock market until further notice, and then it
went on. But I think what our take was when
we were writing the book that everything that would happen
after disclosure is something that's already happened in another form,
(44:27):
Like the bank holiday is something that FDR declared during
the depression, and closing the stock market is something that
we did after nine to eleven. So these things are
things that could happen again. So thanks for bringing that up.
It's an interesting topic to put your brain on. So
I guess as we get to the end here, we're
just saying a lot of people have tried to figure
(44:49):
out their way through what we're living through in terms
of a disclosure moment by trying to see it through
the eyes of the president. I've certainly done it in
the past. As you just pointed out, thank you, it's
a presidential disclosure.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
I just can't quit you well said, Well, I'm going
to end this by bringing everything back to ground zero
with a little teas and some insight from the person
who disclosed to me. That's going to be coming up
in the next episode, and we've mentioned it before. We're
going to go fully into the past and I'm going
to recount all of that. But something I want to
(45:23):
say that's very relevant to this episode is that in
the meeting with this person whose name was John Harrington,
he was working in the Reagan administration. That's all I'll
say for now. One of the things he told me
was that he had a higher clearance level than the
president President Reagan. And if you think about that, well,
first of all, when he said that that it blew
(45:44):
my mind. But now think about it, even in today's terms,
the powers that be entrusted the truth about UAP to
somebody who wasn't the president right, and that the president
apparently didn't know. Now, again, this was Night one, and
maybe the protocol has changed since then. But I also
(46:04):
get the feeling that maybe the protocol is still holds
and that Obama and Trump are telling the truth. They
don't really know completely if aliens are real, and maybe
that is how the legacy program protects itself by hiding
the truth from those in the spotlight, like a president
who can legitimately claim something very important plausible deniability.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Many of the whistleblowers who have been speaking recently seem
to be saying the same thing. You hear this over
and over from them, which is the president is looked
at as a temporary employee. He's there for four years
or eight years, and then he's gone. And so, yeah,
you're going to trust the most incredible secret in the
(46:48):
history of mankind to attempt Hell no, right, right? You
want the continuity that goes with a person who's going
to be there tomorrow and the next ding, and who's
going to hand off the reins of authority on this
secret and how to keep it to other people who
also know how to keep it. So yeah, possibly you
are one hundred percent right there that presidents know maybe
(47:09):
a little, but not enough to get themselves in real trouble.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
So given all of that, I'm left with a question,
and that is that, even if a president personally wants
the truth, as many presidents seem to have claimed, how
does it make you feel to know that they are
just like the other eight billion of us on this
planet that may or may not be teeming with aliens
(47:34):
and UFOs.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
I don't know if I feel good about that. Sound
Light and Frequency is an iHeart podcast produced by Stellar Productions.
It's executive produced by Nick Johnson and for Stellar Jackie's Abel.
Our show's music was written by Anna Stump and Hamilton
Lighthauser and Your hosts and executive producers are Bryce Abel,
That's Me and Brent Friedman. Watch the Guys
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