Could the walls of the coverup be coming down soon?
2/4/2000
Flying Saucers over Hollywood! by filmmaker Paul Davids offers a rare glimpse into the great Hollywood UFO films.
Well, the January-long Golden Globe Award hoopla has come to an end, after hype of Y2K dimensions! And now that it's behind us, I have to note what a DRY year 1999 was, as far as important films that advance the cause of human consciousness on matters of humankind's connection with other cosmic cultures.
Think of it -- the most popular astronaut depicted in a drama this year was BUZZ LIGHTYEAR! Jar-Jar Binks arrived with a thud and bombed like a dud. STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE didn't even get a nomination for Best Musical Score, and the toys are still sitting on the shelves. So, unfortunately, in 1999, at least according to the Golden Globe Awards presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press, Hollywood's great contribution to exposing the alien presence appears to have been the little aliens in TOY STORY 2, who keep repeating ad nauseum "YOU SAVED OUR LIFE, WE ARE ETERNALLY GRATEFUL!" Unless you want to count the aliens in the farcical "film-within-a-film" send-up called "CHUBBY RAIN," the funny monsterpiece produced by Steve Martin in his role as a producer named Bowfinger in a comedy entitled -- you guessed it! -- BOWFINGER.
On Saturday January 22, the night before the Sunday Golden Globe Awards, my hovercraft swooped over Hollywood Boulevard and crossed into Beverly Hills, landing at the new location of Spago's, restaurant of the stars and colossal Hollywood parties. Ah, nostalgia. It was five years ago, in 1995, when my film, "ROSWELL," starring Kyle MacLachlan, Martin Sheen and Dwight Yoakam, was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Television Motion Picture. I remember the hoopla, the red carpet, the mob, the film clips, the tuxedo that was too tight because it got smaller or I got larger, and the cold chicken dinner. But most of all I remember losing to an HBO film about the burning of the Brazilian rain forests. Screw 'em.
After turning my hovercraft over to valet parking, I sauntered into Spago in my blue blazer with the gold buttons. Universal Pictures had taken over the restaurant for its pre-Golden Globe party, and I hob-nobbed with the muckety-mucks. The main filmmakers being honored that night were those affiliated with Universal's nominated films, such as THE MAN ON THE MOON. (As we all now know, Jim Carrey nabbed the Best Actor in a Comedy Golden Globe.) I chatted it up with Hugh Grant, who hoped that NOTTING HILL would get the big nod. (It didn't. But I LOVED the film, one of the most entertaining of 1999). And I recalled that there WERE some outer space references in Notting Hill: Remember the interview Hugh Grant had with Julia Roberts, when he pretended to be a reporter from HORSE AND HOUND magazine? (In NOTTING HILL, Hugh Grant didn't realize that the film he was interviewing Julia about was filmed entirely in outer space -- a good reason for it not to have any horses and/or hounds.)
Making my rounds around Spago, I of course paid tribute to Reuben "HURRICANE" Carter, to HURRICANE producer/writer Armyan Bernstein, and to Denzel Washington, who has never done a space or alien-related film that I can recall. (Avoiding space, he nevertheless performed marvelously UNDERWATER, in the submarine classic, CRIMSON TIDE.) The closest Armyan Bernstein has come to outer space (that I can recall) has been his close encounter with Harrison "Han Solo" Ford in his film, AIR FORCE ONE, which also featured one of our ROSWELL film stars in the cast: Xander Berkeley, who played the villain. Of course, Armyan's familiarity with the freeways of Hell transcends his roadmap knowledge of the galactic cosmos: He also brought us Arnold Schwarzenegger in END OF DAYS.
I didn't come across the filmmakers of Universal's tremendous family film, OCTOBER SKY, the 1999 picture that recalled the days when becoming a rocket engineer and joining the staff of NASA was one of the sweetest of dreams of American childhood. The closest I came to finding anyone even to TALK to about recovered alien technology and ET contact was Michael Shamberg, who was there in connection with Jersey Films' entry, THE MAN IN THE MOON, along with Danny de Vito. Of course, we know there are no actual moon-walks in THE MAN ON THE MOON, since it's a figurative expression describing comic Andy Kaufman, who rarely touched his feet on terra firma. We should remember, though, that Michael Shamberg produced a very forward-thinking science-fiction epic a few years ago titled GATTACA. As you may recall, GATTACA dealt with genetic manipulation of the human race -- an entire race of subservient people had been genetically created, resulting in a very rigid caste system that the hero tried to unravel. The subject of GATTACA is certainly dear to the hearts of all of AlienZoo's website guests, since so many UFO theorists speculate that genetic manipulation of the human species is a high priority of some of our alien visitors.
No matter how long I cruised around Spago, it was obvious I wasn't going to find other X-FILES or ROSWELL fans, so I next flew my hovercraft over to the Mondrian Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. The Mondrian, with its art deco style and vast outdoor patio with fabulous night-time view of Los Angeles, is a favorite gathering place of both successful and wannabe film moguls. The occasion at The Mondrian was the pre-Golden Globe party hosted by TALK MAGAZINE. TALK is an acquisition of MIRAMAX Films, and is thus now part of the Disney family. Thus, I was in TOY STORY 2 country, and MIRAMAX had a number of entries in the Golden Globes sweepstakes, also, including THE CIDER HOUSE RULES.
As I looked around for someone I could have a decent discussion with about the UFO conspiracy, I stumbled upon Peter Fonda, son of the late great Henry Fonda. (As fate proved the next night, Peter won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in a Television Motion Picture or Series for his role in a Showtime film, leaving also-nominated Haley Joel Osment out in the cold, talking to corpses with his SIXTH SENSE.) Peter and I chatted it up about EASY RIDER (I'm a friend of the editor who cut that film, Donn Cambern) and I also recalled one of his very early efforts, titled THE TRIP -- back in the days of the PSYCHEDELIC REVOLUTION. But Peter had no particular interest in discussing the finer details of UFO conspiracies, so I kept wandering through the crowd until I ran into Michael Eisner, CEO of the Walt Disney Company, who was at the party as a host. Bingo!
As one of the highest-paid CEOs in America (in spite of the fact that he wasn't paid a bonus for 1999), Michael Eisner, in a mysterious way, should be something of a hero to those who seek disclosure on UFOs and the end of the UFO Cosmic Watergate Coverup. The reason? A couple of years ago, timed with the opening of an alien ride at the Disney World in Orlando, Disney released a one-hour UFO documentary called ALIEN ENCOUNTER, which KNOCKED THE SOCKS OFF the UFO-phobic Establishment. In the television documentary, Eisner appeared as host, surrounded by "soldiers" in front of a hangar. He declared that a lot of people think that UFOs are real, that the government knows a LOT about visitors from space and has ET bodies on ice. The show itself went MUCH farther than Michael Eisner's opening statement. It stated (as if with "inside" knowledge) that the concealment of UFO facts and information would soon come to an end, and data about our ET visitors would come pouring out of Washington like an open flood-gate. The program went on to explain reasons for the all the secrecy through the years, and how there was a hot-line during the Cold War between Washington and the Soviet Union, to ensure that World War III wouldn.t accidentally be set off by mistaking visiting alien UFOs for nuclear missiles!
The ALIEN ENCOUNTERS documentary was never shown on prime time. As a matter of fact, it appears to have been a sort of "test," to check on the reaction of TV viewers to such information. As far as we can tell, it only showed in a few U.S. cities and at VERY weird times on odd channels. You may have accidentally tuned it in at 2 a.m. somewhere, or 6 a.m. somewhere else. Once it was shown, it vanished like lightning. It aroused a LOT of expectations among UFO researchers. Could the walls of the coverup be coming down soon? How was it possible to think otherwise, when the Disney CEO was introducing a show that said rather unambiguously that it would happen? It's a fair bet that ACCIDENTS of this sort do not happen among Fortune 500 companies in America, and CEOs of America's biggest companies do not bandy about controversial words lightly.
After that production, every ufologist in America who believed there was a government coverup could rightly claim, to some extent, that it appeared that Michael Eisner and the Walt Disney Company were on "their side".
So there I was, face to face with Michael Eisner, and I asked him if he really BELIEVED the information that was contained in ALIEN ENCOUNTER. I wanted to pin him down. He smiled a big smile and shrugged a big shrug. Tossing out his hands, he said to me in a very crisp and clear voice, "I don't know". And soon he vanished into the throng. I had my answer. Namely, that I wasn't going to get an answer.
However, it got me thinking. That one-hour program on the UFO coverup was certainly not the only Disney addition to space-faring revelations. This spring, however, we'll be seeing MISSION TO MARS from Touchstone, a Walt Disney Company. That film is expected to consider the possibility that there is life on Mars much more advanced than the 4 billion year-old bacteria fossil that NASA has touted recently. It will consider the thesis that Ray Bradbury put forth so many years ago in his book (which was then a mini-series), THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES -- that "we ARE the Martians." That is, that there was a connection between the ancient past of the human race and life on Mars. Should we consider this yet another TRIAL BALLOON from the folks at Disney to test public reaction to a big, bold, paradigm-shifting concept? But perhaps even more bold (yet infinitely more SUBTLE) is the message in what may be one more TRIAL BALLOON from the company that's been testing the waters of close encounter revelations. Take a look at Disney's FANTASIA 2000.
The big surprise in the IMAX film FANTASIA 2000 is the sequence about the whales. Those whales are LEVITATED into the sky in a BRIGHT BLUE BEAM OF LIGHT that comes from the skies. Weightless whales? Blue beams of light that surround a huge biological creature and erase gravity like a pea being sucked up a straw? What's the point?
For those of you who have studied the UFO literature, you'll note that one of the often-recurring themes of the abduction scenario is that a BRIGHT BLUE BEAM OF LIGHT comes down from a hovering spacecraft and LEVITATES someone. Consider the Philip Krapf book, THE CONTACT HAS BEGUN. Consider THE GULF BREEZE SIGHTINGS book. Consider Travis Walton's FIRE IN THE SKY (THE TRAVIS WALTON EXPERIENCE). Budd Hopkins's WITNESSED deals with a case in which there a blue beam from the alien spaceship that levitated an abductee from a New York Apartment building. A comprehensive study of the UFO literature would probably reveal DOZENS of cases like these.
Suppose you are the Walt Disney Company. You're the company that has always had the best interests of children at heart. You have taken the children of the world by the hand, time and time again, to entertain them and teach them the lessons of life, helping parents nurture them toward adulthood and growing up. What better way to very gently acclimate the next generation of kids to the idea that alien abductions are a "normal" part of life, than to show them whales being levitated by a bright blue beam from above, in FANTASIA 2000? Why, if a blue beam from the sky could levitate a whale, how easy would it be to take a PERSON into the sky? And how gentle it looked, how sweet, it was like a beautiful dance in the heavens.
There have been scads of ads in recent years from major companies, using UFOs, gray aliens, and abductions as themes. Is the sequence from FANTASIA another example of how America's Fortune 500 companies are preparing for the end of the UFO coverup and trying to shift the reality paradigm of the NEXT generation? Or is this just pure fantasy -- and any reading into it of hidden meanings nothing but an exercise in wishful thinking? I bet two hundred Monopoly dollars on the former, rather than the latter. How about YOU?
For our next spin in a hovercraft over Hollywood Boulevard, log on next Friday for another installment of FLYING SAUCERS OVER HOLLYWOOD!