Flying a hovercraft over HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD - the street of fantasy and dreams - hoping to stumble over THE TRUTH is a very challenging task.
1/28/2000
Flying Saucers over Hollywood! by filmmaker Paul Davids offers a rare glimpse into the great Hollywood UFO films.
Flying a hovercraft over HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD -- the street of fantasy and dreams -- hoping to stumble over THE TRUTH is a very challenging task. JOE FIRMAGE, founder and former CEO of USWeb, stumbled over THE TRUTH when an otherworldly entity visited him in his own bedroom. Firmage declared he wanted to go into space so badly that he "would die for the privilege." Voila - THE TRUTH -- or part of it -- was unveiled to him, and he quit his multi-billion dollar corporation to devote his life to telling the world that UFOs exist, and that their technology will shape the future of humanity. But flying my personal hovercraft over Hollywood Boulevard, trying to find THE TRUTH, is a bit like a thirsty producer trying to find a bottle of Perrier in the desert. Truth is scarce in Tinseltown, but once in awhile, a great UFO feature film or TV program surfaces to spread a consciousness-raising message to the world.
Speaking of looking for a bottle of Perrier in the desert. . .the desert is where I was a couple of weekends ago, in Palm Springs, home of the NORTEL NETWORKS PALM SPRINGS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL. If I didn`t know better, I`d have thought I was in Cannes, with the steady stream of famous directors and stars.
It wasn`t Fear and Loathing in Palm Springs. It was more like Fantasy and Levitation. The event I attended had around 2,000 people in tuxedoes, an awards dinner honoring a whole bunch of Hollywood`s Illuminati, including Annette Bening, star of the upcoming alien feature, "What Planet Are You From?" She was introduced by Gary Shandling, who plays the very human alien visitor in that soon-to-be-released movie.
Also at the receiving end of an award was the writer/director from India, M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN, who was introduced by none other than the boy with that old black magic, SIXTH SENSE star Haley Joel Osment. Shyamalan picked up the Sonny Bono Visionary Award. (You should see their version of the Oscar statues - definitely alien-inspired with a head shaped like a Gray with two antennas). The UFO debunkers often claim (mistakenly, I believe) that most of us who are tuned into ufology have flown over the cuckoo`s nest more than a few times in our lives. Coincidentally, the event also honored the great director of the Jack Nicholson film based on the Ken Kesey book, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO`S NEST. Milos Forman, who hails from Czechoslovakia, also directed the recent Jim Carrey film, THE MAN ON THE MOON, and he was honored with the Director`s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Regarding feeling as if you were flying over the cuckoo`s nest--Back in 1987, my paradigm shifted in a nanosecond when a domed disc maneuvered above my Los Angeles home in broad 4 p.m. daylight. With my two kids as fellow witnesses, I had a CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE FIRST KIND. That unforgettable experience was what led me to plunge head-first into the world of ufology, and within a few years I had collected about 500 ufology books (the good, the bad and the swamp gas).
Although the UFO incident did get under my skin, I don`t think that the flying saucer that picked MY house to visit left any alien implants -- unless it was a brain program for photographic memory of UFO books, which I am now inexplicably able to swallow whole in just a few hours. (Now don`t get me wrong, by swallow whole I don't mean I BELIEVE everything, only that I digest the pages.) BURP!
So here we are, 13 years after my sighting that denuded my previous skeptical, non-believer paradigm. And here we are, now 7 years after the premiere of ROSWELL the movie, on Showtime, a film I nurtured each exciting step of the way from a 17-page outline to one of the most-watched cable movies of all time -- a film that stirred up a hornet's nest around the world. And in Washington D.C., as a riled-up Congressman (the late Steven Schiff of New Mexico) saw it and pressed forward with his official investigation of the Roswell Incident. We are also umpteen UFO conferences later (I was at the very FIRST International UFO Congress with Jim Dilettoso). And we are now hundreds of Hollywood premieres later, a good many of which I have attended. And after all that buzz, after that very long and winding road, as I started out to tell you in the beginning, I found myself in Palm Springs at the Nortel Networks Palm Springs International Film Festival, staring at the man sitting next to me at the big round dinner table. I stared, and then I stared some more.
Don`t get me wrong, it wasn`t "that" kind of stare. Besides, he`s in his 80s, and I`m a happily married man. But I couldn`t keep my eyes off him because I knew I recognized him as the star of the greatest alien invasion film of the 1950`s. It was GENE BARRY, also known as Dr. Forrester.
Is there any person or alien reading this who hasn't seen George Pal`s THE WAR OF THE WORLDS? If so, repent at once. Teleport yourself to your nearest video store, snatch a copy, and be mesmerized as those creepy TRIANGULAR-SHAPED UFOs lay waste to every major building in the world, starting with Los Angeles`s City Hall. (Strange, as I flew by in my hovercraft the other day, I`m sure I noticed that City Hall is still there.)
For those of you who think INDEPENDENCE DAY was the epitome of alien invasion, just remember, George Pal thought of it first. (And before him, Orson Welles, who did the WAR OF THE WORLDS radio version that spooked the whole world in 1938, and before him, H. G. Wells, who wrote the book!) Have you ever wondered how George Pal could have foreseen, in the early 1950s, that in the year 2000 A.D. flying saucers shaped like TRIANGLES would be all the rage, from New York's Hudson Valley to Belgium -- and now in Illinois, where recently police offers in four separate towns reported a low-flying triangle (some said "arrowhead"-shaped) the size of a football field, two stories tall.
Anyway, there was Gene Barry, who saved us when the Martians came in the 1950s. He saved the whole world as he held beautiful Anne Robinson in his arms! He convinced the army to try the A-bomb on the Martian war machines, and when that didn't work, he figured out that the smallest living thing upon the earth -- bacteria -- could defeat the alien enemy where nuclear power failed. He is much older now, yes. About 45 years older. His hair is white, his voice is gruff, and there are lines on his face that overshadow the aging gleam in his eye. But I could look at that face and still hear him say, as he did on the silver screen long ago, that the red-hot flying object that just crashed just outside of town was no meteor.
Talk about an understatement. No, it was not a meteor, that was for sure. It was the beginning of wonder for an entire generation. It was a message from our own future. Some day, flying saucers would become very important to us all. Not just as fiction, but as what now appears to be a long-guarded secret of our nation. A secret which has begun to see the light of day at AlienZoo and other Web sites across the land.
Ever wonder where we got the idea, in our film, ROSWELL, to have the surviving alien's body suddenly change color to a very pale hue when it dies? Why, from WAR OF THE WORLDS, of course. Put your five-fingered hand (if you HAVE five fingers on your hand) around your girlfriend`s shoulder when you watch the climax of WAR OF THE WORLDS. You`ll see that three-fingered alien hand SLOWLY, HALTINGLY poke out of the underbelly of the crashed saucer, inching along until suddenly it expires and changes color to a very pale hue.
That Sunday night, at the Palm Springs Film Festival, Gene Barry wanted to talk about anything in his career except WAR OF THE WORLDS. He pointed out that he did more shows than you could count after that picture, and he doesn't understand why people still shout DR. FORRESTER when they see him. He tried to dismiss WAR OF THE WORLDS as "just another picture." But I said NO, NO, NO, NO! I asked him: "Would you call REAR WINDOW just another Hitchcock picture? The incredibly suspenseful REAR WINDOW starring Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly will live forever. (Note to AlienZoo visitors -- Universal Pictures has just RESTORED REAR WINDOW and it will soon be re-released -- so don`t miss it.) Anyway, I said to Gene, WAR OF THE WORLDS is similarly a Hollywood suspense classic that will live forever. I respectfully pointed out that the two other 1950s flying saucer pictures that tried to compete with Gene Barry's space invasion masterpiece (Howard Hawks`s THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD and Ray Harryhausen`s EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS) were memorable, but both in black and white and not nearly as ambitious, from a production standpoint.
I got Gene Barry so enthused thinking about WAR OF THE WORLDS that we resolved to go see it together when it soon plays at a Cinematheque retrospective at the Egyptian Theater in Los Angeles. He made it clear I will have to drive over to his place and abduct him into my car to make him go.
What else has Mars got in store for us in the near future, after the terrific beating the planet took in the tongue-in-cheek feature, MARS ATTACKS?
Get ready for the huge-budget MISSION TO MARS (M2M) from Touchstone Pictures opening March 10. And don`t be surprised to see the Face on Mars (or "a" face on Mars) that`s been long buried in sand. Suddenly, it`s uncovered and revealed during a Mars-quake. Don`t be surprised to see the astronauts go inside to discover--well, we can all wait until March, can`t we? And then MISSION TO MARS will be followed in the early summer by RED PLANET from Warner Brothers. What`s next? A major feature about NASA cover-ups and the Face on Mars, spearheaded by Face on Mars conspiracy theorist Richard C. Hoagland (www.enterprisemission.com)? Anything can happen. Stay tuned. And stay online with Zookeeper and FLYING SAUCERS OVER HOLLYWOOD!