Understanding the Alien Perspective w/the original Found Footage Filmmaker | Richard Dolan Show

Greetings and welcome to the Richard Dolan Show where every week we fight the good fight. My guest today is Dean Eliato. He's a filmmaker, a storyteller, and depending on who you ask, he might be the original godfather of found footage horror. Before the Blair Witch Project was even a glimmer in anyone's camcorder, Dean had already taken audiences on a terrifying alien abduction ride with his now infamous 1989 film UFO Abduction. That project was so convincing it actually accidentally launched a wave of conspiracy theories and late night TV specials. Yeah. Um, however, I really would like to talk about his uh current he's got part one and part two of something called the alien perspective. Part two just came out and we will be showing that trailer a little later. Dean is a guy with great stories. He's very funny. He's got a deep curiosity about the unknown. I think you're going to enjoy this one. Dean, welcome to the program. Richard, thank you for having me. So, we just met for the first time last week at contact in the desert and um it was a lot of fun and I thought we we have to talk some more in the future. It just was too enjoyable. It was too interesting and I thought people would I think people would really like to hear what you have to say about uh this and a lot of other sub subjects as well. Maybe we'll get into all of those. Right on. Yeah. So um so before we get into any of the uh the details about your current project which is quite interesting I would like to ask you like what what what brought you to the subject of UFOs? Um are you are you in the UFO community? Are you are you like hands are arms length with the UFO community? Uh where do you see yourself and what's your whole take on this subject in general? Okay, Richard, that's very private uh what you're asking and uh this is I I do know you and I feel like I'm connected with you and we've got the SCTV thing going that people don't even know about this. So, we connected I don't even know if people realize like I am I am a Second City television fanatic guilty as charged and we talked about this and you too like we we can roll with SCTV trivia. So, that's that's just a thing. Yeah, there's a whole science thing there and it transcends the phenomenon. People should know this. This is much deeper than that. Um, so, uh, let's see to answer your question. Yeah, it it has always been there for me. Um, I guess the best way to to kick it off is to talk about divorce because when my parents divorced, um, it was a strange arrangement where my mother took my brothers, my I haven't got older and younger. I'm the messed up middle child. And I stayed with my father for three years who was a teacher and he was trying to get tenure and so we were moving constantly. But there was this one apartment that we were in where every night, you know, I miss miss my brothers and my mother and I would look out at the stars and I would get solace there because in my brain I thought there's got to be another maybe species out there and maybe there's a little boy who's going through the same thing that I am. Seriously. Seriously. Wow. Okay. So, it was it was almost this um thing that was calling to me and pacifying me and it it definitely made me feel like whatever I was going through was trivial and so it kind of fed me gave me strength. And then um I would say you know I'm watching In Search of I'm I'm seeing um Chariots of the Gods in the theater. I was into the Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, of course, Loch Ness Monster, who I'd like to do a little bragging. I got my daughter to believe that the Lochness Monster was real. Um, longer than the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. She may still even believe that there could be something there. There there are some people who do believe the Loch Ness monster is real. So, there you go. We don't know. I haven't really given that one too much coitation, but you never know. You never know. So, um, and then and then Spielberg shows up and I remember seeing Star Wars and because I'm a very visual person, which makes sense for my vocation, I had to watch a movie four times just to track what the story was about. Now, this is a story that is as complicated as The Wizard of Oz, you know. You talking about Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Yeah, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. You've got to, you know, rescue the princess and take down the bad guys. Wait, was it Star Wars or Close Encounters? Star Wars. That was my first gateway to sci-fi. And so, um, it seems like a nonsequerator, but it ties in. So, I see this film and I'm like, "Oh my god, this is what cinema can be and and it's sci-fi and it's aliens." Um, even Luke Skywalker, they don't get that. He is an alien. It starts out in a galaxy far, far away. So, um, so maybe he was a Nordic. Who knows? He's got blonde hair. He could have been a Nordic. There you go. So then six months later drops Close Encounters of the Third Kind and that was a whole new version of sci-fi. Same year I had my chronology all off. Yeah, that's right. Star Wars was first. Yeah. Came out around my uh birthday uh like third fourth week of uh of uh May and then December boom drops Close Encounters. And at first I'm like well hold on I'm a Star Wars fan. I don't don't challenge my sci-fi here, but I'm watching the film and know very little about it. Um, and then all of a sudden I'm experiencing something that isn't a movie. I'm experiencing a spiritual journey, an awakening, uh, an awe that that just took it next level. Again, I just want to say, yeah, for people who have not seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I mean, this is a movie that's almost 50 years old now, it's still a classic movie, and I I do think like that's that's one that people in the who are interested in UAP or UFOs, it's worth rewatching. It still a great movie. It It really is. And the thing is, um God, I don't want to do any spoilers, but I I love the movie so much. It's kind of like a benchmark for me when I'm making movies. Can I create awe? Can I have, you know, like originally Spielberg was looking at Alpuccino who turned it down. He talked to Steve McQueen. Steve McQueen. Are you serious? I had no idea. I swear to God. Yeah. Steve McQueen. He met with him in this bar and uh where Steve broke up a fight, of course, a bar fight. That's Steve McQueen. And um he said, "I love your script." And Spielberg is like, "Awesome. I'm going to work with these Steve McQueen. I could have totally been into Close Encounters with Steve McQueen. I could have completely been on board with that. Oh, yeah. Nothing against Richard Drifus. Was that him? Yeah. No, Steve McQueen. He's the guy. Yeah. So, here's what happened. So, he goes, "I love the project, but I can't do it." And he goes, "Why schedule? We'll move the schedule." And he's like, "No, no, no. It says here in the script that there is a part here where he cries." And he goes, "Yes." And he goes, "I don't cry. That's not something I do." And he goes, "Okay, well, I'll rewrite it." Of course, Steve McQueen, I'll rewrite it for you. He goes, "No, that scene is the reason why I love this character so much. I would never want to rob this film, your film, of that." So, he was a pass all this time. And by the way, he's working on Close Encounters while he's shooting Jaws, which went on for like 14 months, something ridiculous. So, Richard Drifus hears about the script and he says, "Let me read and he's reading it and he says I want to play Roy Ner and he goes no no no it's you know this is I envision a different character and as you may know the original character was someone who worked for the government and was part of a disinformation campaign that was going to discredit the UFO community and then he witnesses something and it changed and that was like the very first draft I'm going into the weeds here so what happens is he keeps hammering him he'll walk by and he'll say Jack Nicholson um is the wrong guy or Pacino doesn't have a sense of humor and he's just sabotaging every actor that he that's Yeah. Oh wow. So finally he walks by and uh Richard Drif is you know again hammers again I'm your guy. I'm a guy and he goes all right all right because Drifus said this he goes he's a child. This character still has his child innocence. None of the actors were seeing that and Spielberg couldn't argue with that. And so that's how Richard Drifus came into and he he did a great job. So taking nothing away Peter Pan syndrome. Yeah. Yeah. It would have all right that very interesting. So that was kind of your benchmark and your inspiration. So that's what kind of launched you into this subject I guess. Yeah. That that really cemented it for me. And then um I'm now starting and I'm seeing Martin Scorsesei films and you know Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, all that stuff and and so that's kind of there. But there's something that is transcendental with Spielberg movies. And then ET comes out. Yep. And I'm the middle child just like Elliot. I'm the nerdy kid that dreams of UFOs and is into all that stuff. My mother, single mother when I moved back with my brothers, was raising us. It was the same age when I moved back that Elliot was and dreaming of the stars. And so here was a movie that said, you know, I'm going to take your life and instead of it feeling broken, I'm going to celebrate it and I'm going to partner you up with this with this phenomenon. And I came home and I literally said to my mother, I go, I'm a filmmaker. And that was, wow. Wow. You know, it's so amazing. We all get into this field in a different way. Like for me, it wasn't through movies at all. I watched those movies. I was not a fan of ET the movie. Got to say, it wasn't my thing. Although I remembered the I don't know if anyone remembers this, but the first scene where the the kid is he's at the refrigerator and he's humming a tune and the tune was Elvis Costello's accidents will happen which I caught at the time because I was big Elvis Costello fan but I thought what a what a neat little thing to I'm sure this was Spielberg's idea or someone's idea to get that tune in there but uh I ET was like it didn't really do it for me but um but then again I'm not a guy who got into film making like you appreciated it in a different way. Yeah. And uh so that's very interesting. So you Yeah. We all have our path. We all have our path in Yeah. And and it was kind of this you know a piece here piece anytime. I mean if we reverse engineer how you got into this I'm sure there was like little clues little nudges along the way that lead you here. And if you're really ignoring your life and you're not living in the moment, then that goes by and that that'll be a missed opportunity. But I was grabbing it left and right and going, "Oh my god." Yeah. Very interesting. So it was like um there was this artistic element of of the filmmaker in you that was drawn to it, but I'm sure there was just this natural curiosity like the grandness of the cosmos and the desire to connect with other people. Like you're thinking when you were a kid, is there another is there another kid out there like me? So that's all very uh that's really kind of interesting. I I don't know if I've ever spoken to anyone who actually explained their interest in this subject in quite that way. No, I've I've killed all of them and so it's just me now. It's just you and um so I I'm the last remaining. I'm patient zero. Um, yeah. I mean, it's it's interesting because, um, as much as I'll have moments where I'm drifting away and I'm doing other films and and into other films and stuff and I've shot westerns and stuff, I always come back to this and and so I I do remember the thing that really pushed me over that that cuz you know, you'll get burnt and I heard you you were on Danny Jones. It was a great interview. Oh my god. If people haven't seen it, go see the Danny Jones. Oh, very robust interview. And you were saying how at night time now you need to go, okay, I need a little break from this. And whereas you would just keep grinding and grinding till, you know, 2 a.m. in the morning. And so, yeah. And I've certainly over the seven years I'm making these docs, I've had moments where like a year and a half ago, I went and I did this dark uh supernatural horror comedy, a straight feature with actors and everything just to kind of take a little break and then come back, which is good with a new hopefully new perspective. But the thing that pulled me back next level was Communion, the book. Yeah. That which did for so many people, right? Which did for so many people. Yeah. That scared the hell out of me more than any Stephen King novel. Yeah. Um and I listened and we talked about this. I listened to the Rody McDow. Um which is really hard to get his narration, the reading of it. I had no idea that Rody McDow even narrated that. And uh and then we we looked at it. This is last week I guess. And it's like only available on compact disc, something like that. Oh yeah. Cassette or maybe a track tape. I don't know. Not a track, but it was like it's ridiculously expensive, too, I think. Yeah. And and so listening to that was just um and then reading the book after it because that was in a bridge version. um just set me off and I'm like, "Oh my god, how do I as a filmmaker, how do I translate this for an audience?" And I couldn't think of anything. And in the meantime, I'm getting close to 25 years old. I'm 24 years old. And all of my idols, Spielberg, Scorsese, Orson Wells, all of these guys, Copa, they had all made their first film by 25. And for so for some reason, I thought if I don't do that, I'm literally going to evaporate into the ether. And so I I I wanted to do something and a buddy of mine says, "Hey, I'll fund your your first film." And I'm like, "Awesome. How much, you know, can you do you have which you know?" And he says, "Well, I got 6,500 bucks." And I laughed and said, because back then it was only 16 millimeter and 35 millimeter. Well, that's way too expensive format. It wasn't DSLR. You know, the video cameras. We're in the late 80s here now. Mid 80s. Late 80s. We're 88. We're 88 here. Yeah. And um and so I kind of blow them off and I'm shooting with a buddy of mine doing wedding videos and stuff like that. And then I hit on the idea of what if we have this be a family a pedestrian family situation where there's like a birthday party and it's a house that's in the hills home that's in the hills and then something really jacked up happens and then we keep the camera running the horning the whole time and it'll be operated by a young kid you know 16 years old who just got this new camera. So that was the setup and I thought that's great because I can put the audience in first person literally, you know, right there, insert them into it. This was like never done by in the mid late 80s. I don't know of any any uh treatments that were quite like that. No. No. There's there's some people had said cannibal holocaust. That's the first that's not a found footage film. That's a straight film and then they cut to footage that they said that was recovered. That's not found footage. And so, um, there was no reference regardless whether it's the first or not. There was no reference. And so, you know, I I thought part of me was going, "Well, I guess this is just a gimmick to get me to tick that box." Then there was a buddy of mine who said, "You're an idiot. This is really, really cool. This is, you know, going to be fun and it's going to get out there." And then that became a whole other uh nightmare when um we actually got it distributed, but the distribution warehouse burned to the ground and I lost my main master, my artwork. Yeah. But meanwhile, you shot this this uh video that I don't know how long it was even, but it was basically a found footage style uh video of an alien encounter, right? Yeah. 66 minutes of uh these guys go out to investigate this blackout and they see a ship and aliens and then uh pretty much one by one they're they're abducted and it's all caught on uh on tape and um and then someone the next level to this was um and where all the conspiracy and the uh infamy well wait you're going past too much good stuff here just describe a little bit please how like who played you had aliens in this how did that whole thing happened and h how did you get it to look and how did you like choreograph it or how did you make it how did you make this happen? Well, first of all, it's no day in the park to work with um alien agents. They're really obnoxious. Um very demanding. Um that's a whole other thing. Um, so I ripped off Spielberg in the sense that I went and got, um, eight, nine year old girls to play the aliens. Um, because their bodies are slight androgynous, which is what has been described. And so, um, I gave my effects guy, I said, "Look, I got 750 bucks. you need to build a UFO out in the forest and you need to come up with the masks and and hands and everything for um for this um film. And luckily I found someone who said, "Yeah, no problem. We're doing it." Yeah. And so he literally we went out to the um to the location a couple days beforehand and he's got his VW bus and he's unloading um sheetwood and foam core and he's putting this thing together and it looks like a Christmas tree. It's got this, you know, 2x4s for the foundation. Then he's got layer after layer and it starts out small, then it gets bigger in the middle and then goes up. So, it ends up kind of like which is was the goal was the the UFO the egg-shaped craft that that like Spielberg had which look like kind of an ornament. I just really gravitated towards that design. And so we staple gun this whole thing together and I'm going this is going to look like crap. This is going to be like, you know, Ed wood. But we tape all the seams and everything and at night time it is a UFO. We're only doing one side. It literally comes alive. And the the funny part was that the girls so the you know the the eyes are always black, right? They've got to be black. Well, so we do that. We give them these black lenses and we cut little pin holes so they can see. Well, the pin holes work great in the workshop during the day. At night time, these little girls are bumping into each other. They're bumping into the ship. It was it was a comedy routine. And so finally, they were begging, "Can we please, you know, see a little?" So I had to um scrape out that so you know so we could see. But um they crushed it. They did a great job and they had certain cues where they had to come up and they had to turn at the right time and first we reveal one then we reveal the second one and then from another direction comes the third one. So all this was choreographed and because um not just cuz I'm trying you know when you're young you're a control freak about everything but I knew this character. I've had been that nerdy teenager who was into this stuff. And so I played um Michael Vanhees. So I'm playing the uh the young kid and um with a new camera. And so it was all improvised. I hired improv actors and and the reason that that was very beneficial for me to play Michael was that if I or whenever I needed to cue the the the the cast that it was time to go to the next scene, I would say some like, you know, word that would be what's that, you know, or leading them there. And also I Yeah. And then for the crew, I had a headset on and so was, you know, uh I guess drumming helps you get that coordination, but I would have to turn and say, um, all right, cue the light, you know, cue the back door, cue Alien 2, and while I'm still operating. So, it was a bit of a a juggling act, but you know, you're 24, you don't know any better. It's just like, no. So, you you pulled it off. uh you create this short video and uh just could you tell us the rest of the story because I do want to get to your current work. We haven't forgotten about it, but this is just too good to leave aside. No, absolutely. So, so we make this thing and um and then we're So, I'm from the Bay Area, San Francisco. So, we do a road trip to Los Angeles to sell the movie and we are showing them this trailer that we've cut and it it goes over like a lead balloon. Um, it it just everyone was like, "What the hell is this?" I had this woman who was the head of this big big distribution company and she stopped at midway and said, "What the f is this?" And we said, "Well, that's our trailer." And she said, 'You guys need to leave right now and never ever come back here unless you have a real movie. Wow. And so we're thinking because we don't know that this is just a fail. In fact, I had showed the film to the casting director who cast our movie and she watched it and she said, "This is this is awful." And I thought she was joking. And so she's like, "People are talking over each other. It's handheld. You can't really see anything. It's dark." And um and I said, "Well, that's all by design, but again, it was it's it's good to be ahead of your time. It's not good to be a decade ahead of your time." Right. Exactly. Yeah. So, we think we fail, we get home, and then the last person we happen to meet with, he calls and says, "So, we doing this or what?" And so, I'm like, "Let's let's do it." So, the last distributor we we spoke to took on the project and he was a bit of a character. He he shows me the first mockup artwork and it says um fantastic awe inspiring Rolling Stone magazine. Uh something else New York Times. And I go, "Wait, how did you get them to review?" And he goes, "Kid, I didn't get them to review anything. I just put that up there." And I go, "Stop. We're not doing that." And he goes, "All right, all right. I'll change it." So he changes it to Rolling Bone magazine. Dude, this was so ghetto. Yeah. So, so and I'm like, but gorilla marketing. Yeah. So, at least it's getting out there and that's it. And so, um, uh, I thought, you know, when the lottery it's it's going to get there. So, then I I call the check in a month later and I go, "Hey, how are the sales going?" He goes, "Uh, it's flames." And, you know, um, on fire and I'm I'm like, "Awesome. How many units?" And he goes, "No, no, no. It literally went up in flames." I go, 'What do you mean?' He says, 'The warehouse um that we have all of our master tapes burned to the ground and and all your artwork is gone. And I'm not saying this, but you know, sometimes people fires happen intentionally or unintentionally for insurance reasons. Who knows? Anyway, this was a victim of the fire and I thought, well, that's it. That's the universe saying, you know, there's your 15 minutes of fame. Move on, kid. make a real movie. So, I go about my my life and I think that's it, you know. And then I get that phone call uh from this character named Shawn David Morton. And yes, Shawn David Morton. I have known Shawn David Morton. Yeah, I I have Yes, I've spent time with Shawn David Morton. That's a whole other story for another time. Right. So he says um hey uh we're trying to track down this um footage that was found. First time I heard that term. And I go, "Um, what footage?" And he goes, "Well, it's a family that gets abducted by extraterrestrials." And I said, "Well, it wasn't found. We made it." And he goes, "Do you know what has been happening to your film? Do you know what's going on with it?" And I said, "Dude, who the hell are you?" I'm Sean David Morton. I just came back from the International UFO Congress Convention where it was shown without credits and it's believed to be the real thing and Lieutenant Colonel Don Wear claimed it was authentic and UFO researcher Tom Dongo uh he was the one that that it was given to he was the one that that inserted it unintentionally into the uh the UFO community. What year are we dealing with here at this point? 90 93. Yeah. Okay. early maybe. Yeah. 1929, 93, early 90s, right? And um and so I'm, you know, of course I'm laughing because I'm like that that's the strangest thing I've ever heard. I didn't even know that could happen. So someone apparently um got a copy like some advanced screeners, I guess, went out to some mom and pop video stores. Someone grabbed it, edited off the credits, and then just sent it in there. So Wow. I Yeah. And so he said, um, and I said, "Well, that's that's a funny story, but you know, people should know that it's not real." And he says, "Well, three shows want you to come on, uh, there and show footage of it." And I go, "Oh, seriously? What shows?" He goes, "Unsolved Mysteries, um, hard copy and a show called Encounters for Fox." And and I said, "Well, I guess Unsolved Mysteries is out." And Sean says, "Well, not necessarily." And I said, "No, Sean, I'm pretty sure it's called unsolved and not solved mysteries." Um, and then so we considered hard hard copy, but ultimately the Fox Show Encounters, they said that we will give you a little bumper of where people can get your video and we'll do six and a half minutes where hard copy was only going to do four. So that was negotiated. So I went on national TV and I debunked my own film. Yeah. And and I thought again that again that's my 15 minutes of fame. Time to move on. Is this your is this film available for people to see anywhere? Like are there links? Yes. Yeah. We'll we'll put one below. Sure. So people can see it. Yeah. It's on Blu-ray and it is like I mean I've loaded up with like two commentaries and and it had its uh anniversary which I I'll briefly talk about later but um and then I think you can also get it on on Amazon. But anyway, so I think that's it. And then I'm working on the Steven J. Kel crime series and the head writer says to me, "Uh, I heard about your movie." And I'm like, "Yeah." He says, "I want to see it." And I go, "No, because it's not the slick Spielberg, you know, um, Scorsesei vibe that I'm trying to, you know, um, emulate as a filmmaker. This is all, again, this is before Blair Witch." And he said to me, "Shut up and show me the movie." I show it to him. He calls me back the next day and says, "I can get us a TV movie deal with this." And I said, "Yeah, okay, Paul. I tell you what, I'll take a story by credit. I'm going to direct it. You and I will produce it together. Bye-bye." So, he calls me back a few hours later. We have a meeting at Dick Clark Productions next week. So, we walk into Dick Clark Productions, Neil Sterns, the head of um the movie made for TV movie department. We greet him. Paul, this is Dean. Shake hands. We go right to the VCR and we put in the 6 and a half minute encounter segment. Neil laughs his ass off and he shakes her hand and says, "You have a deal." We walk out of there and I turn to Paul and I go, "Did that do I'm confused. Did that result in a in an actual TV movie deal?" And he goes, "Yeah." He says, "That's not normal." So don't think that's normal. That that never happens. I've never sold anything in the room. So, it's at UPN is interested and then it goes to Showtime and then it gets into turnaround which is when they take too long because business affairs is screwing around and so UPN calls back and says, "Is it still available? We're about to do our our first roll out of TV movies and we want yours to be the flagship one." And so again, I'm thinking, "Oh my god, won the lottery." And so we make a deal with UPN and my budget now is 1.25 million and we're going to shoot in Vancouver. So, it's 1.7 because the dollar is so strong at that point. Yeah. Right. Yeah. This is 90 or excuse me, this Yeah, this is 1990 uh the end of 97. I want to say 1997. And so this is after the uh alien autopsy video came out then. Ray Santilly. Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, um, Bob Bob Kivette, um, he, uh, he was the one who actually produced the encounter segment on Fox that I went on. And he told me about this footage before it became a show. And I told him, I said, "Everything you've told me, it sounds BS to me. I'm just telling you." And and Bob said, he said to me, he goes, "Yeah, you're probably right, but I'm going to make a crapload of money off of this." So there you go. And um and they did. Um but anyway, so this is Hollywood. This is what it is. This is Hollywood. Yeah. And so um I had my first anxiety attack cuz I don't know how to spend $1.7 million. And so we came in half a million under budget. Um shot it up and then and then you know this crazy business. Everyone at the network got fired while we were shooting our movie. And I didn't shoot it one night. I shot it in in a week this time. And we got the guys from the XFiles to do the ship and aliens cuz I'm trying to spend money left and right. We come back, they watch a two week cut and they I'm not kidding. Um we heard this directly from their TV department, movie department. They said it was the worst screen of their career that they were actually throwing money or um food at the screen and the head of the network said, "Thank God we're here to save the network." And so they put it up to slaughter. They throw it on a Tuesday night prime time slot. Well, it gets them the highest ratings they've ever had for a prime time Tuesday slot. And they put more footage in um with some BS uh uh explanation that with government hidden, you know, government uh um secret technology, we were able to pull out more footage and it gets even better ratings. And then they say that'll never be on this network again. We're at 1998 January. So a year they said it'll never be on the network again because they were not they didn't sign off on it to begin with. Exactly. Yeah. It makes her predecessors look like they knew what they were doing. So what an industry. How crazy. It's lovely. It's lovely. And so, uh, a year and a half later, Blair Witch comes out. And then I, it came back to me that the head of the network, Dean Valentine was his name, said, uh, well, maybe these guys weren't, uh, completely out of, you know, you know, completely wackos that that they had this idea. So, it was kind of a nice vindication thing. But again, I'm going, well, that was it. That's my 50 minutes of fame. And then um online hits and a bevy of new conspiracy theories come out about me and the film and that I was hired by the government to remake my own film to discredit the original one which is real is what is being purported and I because they saw it at the international UFO Congress in Laughlin Nevada in 1993. They're like this has to be real. Yeah, exactly. I'm just guessing. Yeah. No, no, no. You're dead on. And so the original version, by the way, was called UFO Abduction Case File 77 because Close Encounters, the third kind came out in 77, so it was a nod to them. But the remake was called the McFersonson tape that we were doing for UPN. And in maybe some territories it was actually called that, but ultimately they wiped that away and they called it a very imaginative name, which was alien abduction incident in Lake County. And um and then the original became the OG McFersonson tape. And so it just ended up becoming that it just took on this crazy like a cat with nine lives. It just kept going all these different iterations. I feel like the Forest Gump just being dragged along. I'm not that clever that I could have engineered even a fraction of this. I just feel like you know what next is, you know, gonna come out. Uh that's fascinating. I I figured we would talk about this for like maybe five or 10 minutes, but it's too fascinating. Like you just had to tell the whole story. That's uh that's amazing. So I'm so glad that we did and we must link so that people can see whatever is available for people to see that they have to be able to see this. Yeah. Well, it's um Yeah. There was uh going to be a third version. Paramont um there they have a a a genre lowbudget division that had green lit it and then that division closed down and so there is a third version for a script that I may or may not do someday but anyway that's the tale of that. Uh thank you. I I hope that I hope that people watching enjoy it as much as I did. Um so I do want to ask you though about some of the current uh projects you're working on. you are you've done uh you're working on something that I am personally kind of into these days which is the alien perspective. Uh just personally I find myself increasingly as I as I study this whole subject of UFOs and what does it mean non-human intelligences. Um I like to speculate about about NHI. I like to speculate about aliens, why they might be here. Um what they may be like. Um there's other people out there. You mentioned communion earlier. Whitley Straber is one of those people who I think is still very very active in thinking about these questions. his recent books called The Fourth Mind, which I'm reading and I enjoy. I It's just very thoughtprovoking. But you're in this space also. So, you've done the alien perspective and now you have just done the alien perspective, too. And uh we'll show the trailer in a in a moment, but could you just talk about these projects uh and what what is your goal and how you went about uh doing it and who you brought in to discuss this and and what they think about alien perspective or what you think about the alien perspective, wherever you want to go. Sure. Um ultimately what hap again it it all starts with this little this little you know um video that I made. Um I'm invited by uh um Alejandro Rojos and Karen Bard to go back to the scene of the crime which is the international UFO Congress convention and for the 25th anniversary showed the movie there and to do you know they have you know essentially a UFO TED talk is what you know we do when we go to these conventions. And I said yeah I would love to but I I don't know that that's going to be a good idea. And u I have a little nervousness about it. And Alejandra's like why? And I said, "Well, I don't take myself serious at all, as people can tell. I take my work very serious, but I I don't put on any errors. It's it just is what it is, and I don't know if people are going to be able to, you know, roll with that." And he said, "No, no, no. This community is great. Trust me." And I go, "Okay." So, I go out there and I tell them all the craziness that I just unpacked for you. And um and they loved it. They thought it was, you know, um funny as hell. and um and a new appreciation for the film. And so while I'm at the the congress, I'm I'm meeting people that are extremely intelligent, have incredible ideas on this and um and and I'm seeing that, oh, this is hasn't really been taken serious. This the phenomenon. I take it serious and I know others do, but by and large, it hasn't really been taken serious. And I start to see that there might be an angle in which to come at this. I'm not quite sure what it that's going to be, but there is something here that's more tangible than it's ever been before. And this is a year right after barely a year right after um the tic tac 2017. Um December. So right, we're we're in that came out in 2017 early 2018. So was this the 2018 uh UFO Congress in March? Yeah, March or February. I think. Yeah. Tracy and I might have been there for that. Oh, you might have been. Yeah. I was kind of a newbie to the conventions. Yeah. And um and so I it it became apparent that this needed to have a um a treatment done on it. Uh the UFO stuff that hadn't been done uh ever before. And because I done We might have missed you. I think we did 2017 and 2019. Now that I'm thinking Oh, you skipped. It was the leap year for I can't I actually can't remember it. Anyway, go on. So, I um I uh I thought that, you know, uh because I'd done documentaries for Bravo, A&E, and Discovery, I thought, okay, I'm going to, you know, pull all the stops and have it be something that that has a certain uh you know, level uh that I wanted to to see in this space. But, but there's been so many great documentaries uh in this that I I didn't want to be derivative. that would I I that's not going to get me up every morning and pick up a camera. So, what you normally do as an as an independent filmmaker or as a filmmaker period is you sometimes when you want to do something new in a space, you see what everyone else has done and then you do the exact opposite. Mhm. And in this case, it's a little mental exercise I do. In this case, I'm going every single documentary without fail is all from the human's perspective. What if we were to flip that on its head and look at it from the aliens perspective even as a hypothetical? And what that allowed me to do is it allowed me to get people like Professor Mitch Kau, um the guy who created the simulation reality hypothesis, Dr. Nick Boston out of Oxford, tons of specialists in fields that normally don't talk about this, but felt comfortable to look at it as a hypothetical. And what came out of that was these gems left and right. It was like, oh my gosh. So, it it really came from going and and connecting with the UFO uh community face to face. And then, you know, it just became this thing that was going to be 15 interviews, nine months later I'd be done. You know, like if I'm shooting a documentary for for TV, but as you know, you interview one person like we start at NASA and then they say, "Well, we don't have a protocol for when we actually see extraterrestrial life. when we see a planet with like a grid or a Dyson sphere, we don't have a protocol for that. I'm like, "Holy crap." And we had that actually on camera where she admits that. Then that pivots us to somewhere else. And so it ended up going on and on where it became 66 interviews, four countries and uh seven years of my life. Wow. This is part one. part one and two, which it blossomed to a four-part series at one point, but there were two episodes that were skewed too much. One was full on the the alien uh abduction, the experiencers. It was very specific to all that. And what I'm doing with the documentaries is is I'm making them for us, the UFO community, and to say, "Here's stuff that that we've all been kind of pondering, and maybe here's next level in a couple places." and have a couple mic drops of things that we haven't seen before. Yeah. But I also have to take the UFO by curious who are a little bit interested and convert them and say, "Hey, come and take a look. This isn't your dad's, you know, um UFO documentary." And so that was the the goal anyway. And so it blossomed out into four episodes and then two of them again, one was all about experience. So I pulled that out and that became its own fulllength feature doc called the experiencers which is coming out either at the end of the summer or end of the year. And then the other one was a subject of a of a person an amazing Harvard professor Pulitzer prizewinning professor John Mack. And so this is the first John Mack documentary um about him. And I've been working on that pretty hardcore for the past year. And so all these things are just now starting to get uh like a time release. Wow. Okay. Well, the John Mack one, I think many many people will be interested in seeing that when it is available. And um I wish you the best success on that. Um so, how about we do this? How about because I have a two-minute trailer that you have provided me with. We'll show that and then we can talk a little bit about uh the alien perspectives in terms of maybe what your uh interviewees had to say about it and and maybe what you think about it as well. So, can we do that? Perfect. All right. So, let's play that. Now, the Vatican has been studying extraterrestrials for a long time. There are usually a few reasons why non-human intelligence would want to interact with human intelligence. They may be just as curious as we would be about them. They may just be the ultimate intellectual that they are so curious about who we are that they may even tamper with where we're going. [Music] People are calling this reception of information from non-human intelligence today a download. Maybe eventually we're going to need to upgrade our minds regularly in order to keep up with the pace of technology. Alien scientists have the same commitment to coming here and studying the antill that is us. Americans would never be in an asymmetric war unless we were invaded by aliens. We need to think about that. Why are they coming here? I was contacted to take a look at the material and try to see what I can tell about the origin of the sample. I think it's going to be shocking for a lot of people. [Music] Okay, that was really nicely done. Thank you. Um I guess uh what I like is that you know there are these very interesting people asking legit questions like what are they here for? Why might they be interested in us? So I guess my question to you is um what were the what were some of the interesting ideas about why they were here? And what are your ideas about why if if there are non-human intelligences here? I guess I'll leave it that way. if they are here, why do you or or the people you've interviewed think that they are here? Well, the evidence is overwhelming. Uh again, the baseline for me is John Max research. Um his original book, Abduction, that wasn't the original title. The original title was the abduction syndrome because he looked at it like this was going to be some maybe mental thing phenomena that was going on that was happening to highly credible, legit people. and um and there could be something gleaned from it whether it's in the material world or in the mental world. But then he would come across evidence like scoop marks or sometimes people's you know their backyard there would be something out with it with the um with the landscape. So he he couldn't avoid that as well. And so he thought he might have even thought, well, I'm going to figure this out and it'll be this mental ailment and I'll call the John Mack syndrome and it'll be this thing and I'll be known for that as well. But it became more than that. And the thing about John is that he was open in with everything. um you know he would go to Eselin and did meditations and he was always he was an explorer and so he wasn't rigid and that's what it took for someone to look at this. Um he was a genius. Um so he was he was just able to say well let's look at the data and the data will tell us where to go with it which is how it should always be. Forget the you know the um the stigma. And so that's what it was for me and that's what it was for all the people that we interviewed. It was like, okay, let's assume that this might be real. What would that look like? And then it became this thing that was actually very manageable and actually made sense that we would do this because us in the future, we are definitely if we have a ship that we can time travel, we are going to be doing that. Enough said. and um and not just you know time travel but we're going to be going to other star systems if we have that technology warp speed and everything which has already been proven I think in the 90s someone came up with a way to possibly Miguel Alier did the equations yeah so it it's it's something that we need a lot of energy for that we we haven't figured out you need a lot of energy right however see here's the thing my menu for the phenomenon is pretty long it's it's not Um, McDonald's, it goes on and on in their specialties of the day because you look at it and I go, you I was talking having a conversation with Lou Alzando a few years ago and I said, you know, I'm really interested in the notion that what is happening is that these crafts and these beings might be traveling in the astral plane. And what I mean by that is like when people say they pass on, when we see ghosts and stuff, they call that the astral plane. Yeah. And so it it is substantiated by people saying they've seen loved ones on these crafts or near these crafts. So if they're both able to exist simultaneously, then there is a possibility that they've figured out how to change their matter, which would be just a matter of vibration to be able to skip over to that and they could come in and out. So when we see a ship move and going like this super fast, it's not. It could just be like the kids at aerial school where they said they saw the beans move like almost they were skipping time. Yes. It could just be right relocating themselves. I'm here now. I'm over here and I'm over there. And so um it it opened up a whole bunch of other possibilities. And so um you know Greg Bishop is a good friend of mine and you know whenever I've got I didn't I know Greg quite well. Oh yeah. He's Dodger games. He's Yeah. He's he's a great mind. And whenever I have something I want to munch on, I'll just say, "Hey, Greg, what about this?" And Greg will throw down on it. Um, and say, "No, that's stupid." Or, "All right, well, that could be interesting, but let's factor this in." So, you know, these are all hypothesis. Um, but just the notion alone. And then I also I pushed it with with um Alzando and I said, I think that these crafts I think there's a possibility that they're a living breathing, that they're a projection of the crafts themselves. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that they're organic. How did how did he respond to that? He was open to it. Yeah. He said, I I think you might be right. That was his, you know, direct quote. I think you might be right. And so it's not been verbalized, but it's like, okay, I just want to, again, my whole thing as an independent filmmaker or documentary filmmaker is I want people to play with a notion. That is the theme. And where it takes us, there are no rules, man. it is. We're we're just going to see. And what comes of that blew my mind, you know. Um I think there's a lot of reason to wonder uh about these craft as having some level of awareness themselves. Uh the craft and the items inside the craft as well. Uh this this is an idea that's that's uh been rattling around for a while and I I think I think there could be something to it personally. Definitely. Well, you know, we we recreated the um tic tac um incident in the alien perspective part one, mostly because, you know, again, I'm a little dyslexic and when I see that footage of the tic tac, the flare footage, what I see because of of my generation is I see Pong. I see this little like Atari beam of pong moving back and forth and takes off. That to me isn't what Commander Fraver is recounting. And so I wanted to recreate it and and do it with animation where I could actually get inside the jet and be right over the shoulder of fra and we see what that would look like. And so that became something an awareness of um of a whole other dynamic because now you can see how the whole orchestration of all the action worked. But the thing that was most um apparent was that like you just said it was an awareness when Fraver says he's looking at this white tic tac type thing and then it pivots and looks at him. He said literally he says it turned and it looked at me. He doesn't say the craft turned over and repositioned it. He says it looked at me and then it took off. So the whole craft had its own awareness. He said he wasn't separating the pilots from the craft, which again I that's not something that doesn't come out a lot in Fraver's discussions, but because I wonder was he just speaking kind of casually like like it looked at me or was he really like seriously saying it the craft looked at me? Could you get a sense on that? I think it was a lack of being able to describe it in any other way. I think this is what his experience felt like and it's telling. I don't take anything for granted. If you're saying that, it means at some level you're thinking this thing had its own intelligence and he has said that before, right? Got to agree. Yeah. Yeah. I got to agree. And that of course is also something that happens a lot like people will all very often feel that there's a a consciousness connection between the craft or whatever. Maybe there's an intelligence inside the craft. But it's hard to distinguish sometimes like you just feel something coming from that thing. And um I know I actually you know 30 uh almost 30 years ago I myself actually had my the one the one definite UFO sighting that I can say was a UFO uh was in um was in 199 uh 798 and I was with my 1999 I was with my son outside our house. It was a perfect blue sky. I've told this story too many times. But I saw this bright object in a clear sky that completely arrested my attention. And it was unlike anything I'd ever seen by far. It was nothing remotely like it. And I had this thought in my mind that if I were to turn my head away from it, even for an instant, I would never see it again. A thought that made no sense because there was no place for it to hide. But it was it was in my head. Uh but my son, who was 3 years old, was demanding my attention. I turned to him for a second. I said, "Hang on. I'm watching something." And when I went back to look for it, it was completely gone. Told you. Did you beat your kid after? Did you smack him? Oh, yeah. No, I taught him some lessons. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, this is UFO time, son. He was He was three years old and he he just needed my attention. And I mean, I I was um I almost laughed at at the situation at the time because I was like, what are the odds that it would actually be be gone when I turned away? But the thought was so powerful in my mind that and and then I did and then it was gone. I spent the next five minutes looking all over for the sky for that and it was just not there. So that I felt like there was a like there was a connection there. I don't know how else to explain it. And when you go through the research the literature on these sightings that is it is extremely common that people will report this type of thing. I mean, I look at mine. Mine was minor compared with that of many other people, but um so I think there's something going on. But back to the alien perspective. I just want to pin you down on this. So what you mentioned abductions, but you didn't really follow through on your thought here. So is is that what they're about? Are they scientists here to to look at us, or are they invaders trying to muscle in on our territory? Are they uh here to to guide us? Are they they just don't give a crap? Uh, do you have a take on this or do were there guests or people you interviewed who you were most impressed by their by their take on this? I'm sorry I wasn't paying attention. What did you say? No. Okay. I I will do my best. That's good. That's like right out of Second City of Television. Like this is exactly guilty as charge with a little bit of Ron Burgundy in there. Um, it is. So, it it's funny because it keeps changing as I get more and more items on on the menu. Um I think that what is going on, you know, my buddy Dave Foley, he um he told me about his UFO um witnessing of and he was with Jeremy Corbel and he said literally he goes this is they were they were walking and this was out like in a desert type terrain and he made the comment just flippantly Dave did. He says this would be the perfect night to see a UFO. And Jeremy says, "Yeah." And they turn and they're walking. And then right away Jeremy says, "Dave, look over your shoulder." "What?" "Look over your shoulder." He looks over and they see this craft and it's moving along. And now Jeremy is a filmmaker. Jeremy easily could have pulled out his iPhone. Maybe he's got a Samson. I think he's an iPhone guy. And he could have videotaped it, but he didn't. They watch this thing move along, do its little here we are little bit of showboating, finishes and then takes off and they go, "Wow." And then that's it. They don't really discuss it more. They're they're kind of absorbing it and then later on they bring it up. But it wasn't this thing of, "Oh my god, this is it." D. It's exactly like you said, a calmness, an understanding that I see you, you see me, we're doing this little thing. And for Dave, I think it was kind of to reaffirm and with with Jeremy. Jeremy Corbel had never seen a UFO before. And so both of them had this experience and that was the takeaway. Yeah. And so I've not had my experience yet. And so I would complain to Ivonne Smith's documentary, wonderful hypnotherapist. And I said, Ivonne, what the hell's going on? I'm like at that point, I think it was five years into this. And I go, "This is all too consuming. I'm not an experiencer that I'm aware of. I've never had anything. I've combed through my past. There's no missing time. There no a flashlight. It's just not there." And she laughed at me and and said, "Yeah, Dean, they don't have to knock on your door to get to you." Which was really comforting. Um and and I thought about that and and I thought that it will come to you in the way that it needs to. And if I need to have that experience, I have no doubt that I'm going to see a craft. And I really want to see one. Spielberg hasn't seen one, which is keeps causing him to make these movies. He's got a new movie that he's that he's right now shooting um back in the UFO genre. And so um you know, one little other little tidbit is a buddy of mine who's a documentary filmmaker, doesn't work in this field at all. He's a legit, right, in quotes, uh documentary filmmaker, and he would give me crap sometimes. And then I get a call from him and out of the blue and he says, "Hey, can we talk?" I'm like, "Yeah, man. I picked up the phone, of course. What's up?" He says, "Um, so I saw something." And I go, "Yes." And he says, "Well, I moved out of my apartment. It was about 4:00 a.m. and we were on the deck and we were just relaxing. We were exhausted. A long night of moving. And I look out and about 100 yards away, I see this metallic, silent moving craft. And it has this little blue kind of light around it almost around the frame of it. And it's moving along and we're looking at this thing and it's he said it was blatant. I am a UFO. This is it. And it moves along and then at some point the the little thin blue line encompasses like wraps around the whole craft and then it says it just shot off. And I said, "Dude, I'm so envious. That's great. Congratulations." And he said, "No, no, no, Dean. You're missing my point. I am jacked up by this. I I saw something that should not exist. He said, I'm really having trouble with this and I don't know if there's someone I could talk to or whatever. You're the only person I knew. This is the definition of ontological shock that John talks about, right? And so I always like to give this example. I say, "Okay, I've got a deck and and you're out in your deck and you're sitting there and you're enjoying the sun, maybe reading a book, having a lemonade, maybe an Arnold Palmer, and around the corner comes a chimpanzeee and it pokes itself out and then it tucks back around. How jacked up? How freaked out are you going to be that that shouldn't be there? I know what those things are. That is so out of context. What the hell?" And you go around the corner and it's gone. you that is going to mess with you for a long time. Now imagine an alien NHI comes around the corner does the same thing. Exactly. It's not going to be that that dissimilar from this should not exist. This should not be here with our version of what reality should be and is possible. Right. So when I think of experiencers, they witness that stuff um several times and and here we would be struggling with seeing a chimpanzee come around. So yeah, it it's it is um you know, I've been to a few experiencer groups during the filming. I was one of the only crews allowed uh to film and at one of these uh events and the first day I went there, my girlfriend Ally, who's um a co-producer on these uh she's fantastic. We were like, well, this will be interesting. You know, when I'm going to the scene and I get there and then around the table, they introduce everyone. It's like, hi, I'm so and so. I'm a I'm a a chiropractor. I'm a doctor. I'm an archaeologist. I am uh a homeland security supervisor. I've done a TED talk. And I'm like, wait, what? These are smart, intelligent people, and they're telling their experiences. And the whole time, no BS meter of mine. And I've worked on crime shows, so I I know when I'm talking to a convict, when I'm being strung on, nothing. So, when I came home, Ally goes, you know, so how uh was that? Was it uh you know, crazy, wild? And I said, "No, it was terrifying. I have to give this even more weight than I've been giving it." Yeah. Yeah. Because these are people who like I've met many of them as well. I'm sure a lot of people watching are either those people themselves or they know those people. You guys all know who you are. And we all know all of us who've talked to each other. These individuals are exactly as you described. Super high functioning usually or frequently I should say. Um uh you know you get a broad range of people but these are sincere individuals and with very very specific recollections of what they've experienced uh they you cannot tell them that this was an illusion. They they know it's not true. No. And and furthermore one of the stories that I heard was which is the most incredible story out of all the experiences I heard. I heard this story about this um guy who he discovered that his father wasn't who he thought his father was and his mother had during high school had connected with someone else. We'll say um hooked up and um and discovered that and he discovered it because he went and did his DNA test and discovered that he wasn't the same, you know, composition, if you will, of what he thought his um ethnicity was. And so he tracked down his uncle uh to his biological father and said, "Hey, I'm trying to track down my father this and that. I am so and so and I'm his son." He's like, "Oh my god, that's so great to meet you." Blah, blah. And then he said, "Um, so yeah, so I'm I'm, you know, trying to find my father." He goes, "I'm sorry, you know, sorry to tell you, but your father died about a year, two years ago." He goes, "Oh man, what was it? Cancer?" Because he's got a kid. He wants to know if that's in his genes. And he's like, "No, your father wasn't well. Um, what do you mean?" Well, he drank a lot. Um, he's like, "Oh, alcoholism." Okay. Um, yeah, he drank a lot cuz, you know, he he believed that he was abducted by extraterrestrials. And oh my god. So, did he try die of alcohol? And he goes, "No, he died of suicide by cop. He couldn't stand it any longer. So, he went to um I don't know if it was a liquor store. I don't remember the specifics, but he went and caused a commotion and ran out of cop with a knife and they gunned him down. and he burst out crying because he's like, "I could have told him, you're not crazy, Dad. I grew up with my other family having these experiences as a kid." And so that to me, h it's it's a tragedy. And so that to me is one of the reasons why I'm I'm doing this is to say, okay, stigma needs to go. That needs to just be eradicated, you know? So, wow, that's incredible. I don't think I've ever heard that before. That's an amazing story and uh uh I'm very glad you were able to share that. Wow. So, um I'm trying to think of other things I want to ask you. We're going to follow up. I I have a whole series of other questions I want I want to ask you. You know, I didn't answer your question, though. But you was going to say you have not answered my question. So, what is what how do you perceive the alien perspective? I'm going to ask you. Forget your guest, forget the people you interviewed. What do you perceive as the alien perspective? All right. So, the alien perspective is our perspective. Um, it is what we are going to be doing in the future when we have evolved to that that apex where we're we've gone from a type one species, which we're not even a type one. We can't control our sun. We can't terraform a planet. We are so young. 1969 we're on the moon. 1869 we're horse buggy torches. Yes. Exactly. And so it gets frustrating for anyone who wants to get answers. Um, and I understand that, but I keep tempering everyone's expectations with, and they talk about disclosure and everything. I keep saying, I know, I get that, but right now we're getting teasers. We're not even getting a trailer to what is coming because we're not able to to match that. So when I think of the aliens perspective, I think of projecting our perspective out. What would we think of another species that isn't as advanced as we are now? Mitch Kau will say they would be bored. It would be like, you know, us talking to ants and Dave Foley would shoot back, well, we have those. They're called entomologists. So, curiosity is something that's carried with all species. So when I think of the aliens perspective, what has kept them alive or kept them an intelligent species is one thing and it and it's where all the advances come from everything which is curiosity. So I think their p from my point of view, their perspective on us is that we are a species that is advancing at an alarming rate where our technology it's kind of like a little cat. You know, a kitten will run down the hallway and its hind legs will run too fast and it'll tumble over because it hasn't coordinated itself. That's what I think they're looking at us. I think they're going, you know, again, we can look at all the war and all the craziness we do, but we can also look at music. We can also look at humor. We can look at how we are there for each other. Um, you know, Mr. Rogers said, when the crap hits a fan, look at the people who are coming to help and they are there. That is humans at their best. So, I think they're looking at us with their own menu and saying, "Okay, they have this and that quality, etc. But as far as them coming in and saying, "All right, we're going to show you how to do things." You know, it'd be great for them to clean clean up our environment, but we messed up our room. Why should we have parent come in and clean it up? Because we're just going to mess it up again until we figured out how to to take care of it and how to respect it. And so I think that they're looking at us and going, "Wow, these guys, they still got some wrinkles in the sheets to to iron out." Um, hopefully that answers that question. But I grapple with that still. I I think that's an interesting perspective. So you're not I mean I gather that you tend to see them as you know not hostile to us kind of overseeing us uh looking at us as as a species that certainly needs more development and um if they're able to help they would but really maybe not not able to help as much as we would like for them to help because what we want is a deosex machino we want them to bail us out like everyone wants that because we know we can solve our own problems. Most of us probably feel that way. We're like, "Aliens, save us." Uh, but I've thought about this a lot, too. I just don't think that that would be possible uh in any way. But then there's the possibility of like you hear about infiltration and there's uh at least in the trailer, um you had Travis Taylor talking a little bit about that and I definitely had the sense that he's thinking maybe we have something to be concerned about. Yeah, if we do have something cons be concerned about. I have not seen credible evidence of a of a repeated nature. Um, we've not we've never heard of a a tic tac dropping a bomb over some country. Um, you know, we don't I know that Whitley Streber sometimes will talk about, you know, some of these beans uh um that you know, the concern is that they will eat your soul or something. And I was joking with him and I said, "What does a soul taste like?" like is it tastes like chicken? I'm just curious. Um I I think that all souls are kind of equal and that kind of comforts me that the Daly Lama soul is equal to ours. It's more maybe more developed, but as a as a a life form in existence, I think again this is just my belief that I think that we're all part of the source. We're all part of something and that whatever created everything that's God for me and that we all come from that. And I think that this planet, just like for the aliens, no one came, most likely no one came to their planet and cleaned up their messes. They had to evolve to a point where it's like going through college and and you know, graduating or or grad school right now. I mean, there's an argument that we're in nursery school. We're not even in elementary school full on, but we are we have the potential to get there. And so I Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm I'm hopeful for that. But I feel like, you know, I'm I'm just starting to wrestle with this idea of what would happen if we did not have any experiences with these crafts or or these NHIS. What would mankind be like without that narrative? I haven't heard anyone question. Yeah. If we had no if there was no UFO phenomenon that anyone acknowledged or recognized, if we Yeah. I wonder would we would we feel more isolated? Would we feel less hopeful? And and what is exactly and what is the point of that? Because they know that they are affecting us like the prime directive. They're breaking the prime directive just by being seen. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So they are doing subtle influences. They can't help not to be doing subtle influences. I'm really glad I asked you on this program Dean because uh I mean one thing that I I like to to present on this program is uh like philosophical perspectives just different ways of understanding this phenomenon that anyone who's on this channel has some kind of interest in the UFO subject and we can we can keep chasing all the latest headlines like who said this I don't believe him this person is good this person's bad uh this newest claim and whatever and Those are interesting. But I personally I I get the most engagement when we're just sitting around thinking about this. Who are these other beings? What might they be here for? How does this how does this affect us at uh at a deeper emotional level, which you really wonderfully described in your own life? And um so I'm really glad I'm I'm actually really I didn't know what this would uh I had no idea where this conversation would go. Well, uh, either did I. I thought it was going to go in the toilet myself. I'm surprised it it uh No. Uh, uh, all serious aside, that's why I love this community because I'm meeting great minds like you who have been writing about this from all these different angles and no doubt there's going to be crossover. Uh, you're next gen in in my book because uh, well, you've done three books on underwater submersibles alone. um you you like you drill down and and for me I drill down in my ways but but people like you and Jacqu Valet and others they they spend time where they're going to focus on that one thing and it's so it's so well thought out because you guys want to understand this regardless of the audience who's going to read this whatever it's like you need to understand this that curiosity and so um no that totally means a lot to me Thanks. Yeah. Um, actually a lot of your ideas about uh why they are here um and as it relates to our own level of development like I'm I'm pretty much on board I think with most of those things that you were saying uh and I've been kicking that around quite a bit myself and I'm sure that I will be presenting these ideas here on this channel in future programs as well uh because they're they're relevant and uh I enjoy thinking out out loud about a lot of those things as well. I tend to think that we're on the cusp, we're in the midst really of a massive transformation of our species right now. I don't even know if it's good or bad. I it could be it could be both. It could be neither. Uh it is what it is. The the rapid development that we're going through now technologically. I I'm just going to take a guess that this rapid kind of hockey stick or exponential uh graph that we're we seem to be on um might very well be a universal development. It might just be something that once uh a species gets science as it were and builds upon itself that it just might follow that um very very sharp incline. Um which I think in in a lot of ways is disruptive to our species. Like there are times when I would I like to think can we just go a little more slowly with all of this? But but what I what I want is not relevant. Uh and it just it is what it is. And I suspect they have probably gone through some version of this and they I I tend to think they're watching us go through this transition that um that they may have gone through as well. And when we come out on the other side of this, I I suspect we'll have a different understanding of like quantum physics uh of consciousness itself and maybe the structure of reality, the fabric of reality. And then uh perhaps we might be able to have a real conversation or at least the beginnings of a conversation with them about certain things. It' be like, you know, you go back a thousand years, just 1,000 years in into medieval Europe, you find the smartest people there and you would still not be able to talk them to them about almost anything in our world without their head their head exploding. It would just not be possible. There's no common frame of reference. Um, and now here we are presumably dealing with another species that's just, you know, even maybe further ahead of us. So, I don't know that there's really an easy point of communication at this time, but maybe in the future there might be a way. Well, it's interesting because I've now been using the same term hockey stick. Uh, not just because of hockey being great. Um, but you can't use Moore's law anymore. Moores law was like retired 10 or 15 years ago when yeah technology kind of going no as far as I know we're doing things or are close enough that the the cuz the gradual buildup was was pretty straightforward. It was very predictable and then it shot like this with the integrated circuits. It's like it's almost it's it's kind of hard to to even see the tip of it where it's going but it's for me it's it's we're we're living off the charts like you said. The main point was that we have technology now that we are not mature enough for. And so it's kind of like when we were on that the the uh panel um for the underwater submersibles um we were talking about the idea that how do we get these safeguards? Do these aliens have safeguards so they don't pervert the technology and weaponize it? Yeah. And and I said something to the effect of I think maybe it's that they're so evolved that they know as a as a evolved species not to put their finger in the light socket because Yeah. Yeah. Zapping themselves is going to zap everyone. And so we almost have to have a hive mentality. And so the question is will the technology elevate our evolution our our our spiritual and mental evolution? I don't know. I think it's still a kid that has this new toy that's just shooting everything in sight. And so even though people will say there's less violence than there ever has been on the planet this or that, the violence that there is because of the tools and the technology we have, um you know, it's like almost thank God we haven't discovered on our own um gravity because we're going to be flying people left and right off the planet that we don't like, right? So, we have to get to a certain place where we earn it and and we, you know, get our diploma. You're not going to give a diploma to, you know, a three-year-old. But the thing that's frustrating the UFO community is that when I look out and and you do the same thing, you look out at your audience. These people can handle it, but we're only, you know, it's the old adage, only strong is our our weakest link. But can everyone hand exactly the weakest link? Yeah. If we had a a a solution to free energy, infinite energy, great. you know, we we can have free heating or free air conditioning for the rest of all time, but what if you can blow up uh the Atlantic Ocean with a weapon that you develop on it and and some someone's just going to do it? Well, there's a saying Yeah. There's a saying in my business, which is um if you show the gun in the first act, you have to shoot it. You have to use it in the third act. And so, if we have this invention, it's going to get used. We did that with the nuclear bomb, the hydrogen bomb and yeah, whatever technology. So I I think you know the only thing that's a little bit disheartening is you know is that the animals that are on this planet from primates to you know to ants all of them are hanging you know hanging in there based on what we do you know to this planet. And so without getting too much into it all fits in. And so I kind of feel like um we we know what the what the right course of action is, but how do you get people to do that? I think part of me, like I said earlier on, is of being of service is to be able maybe to shine light. And at the end of the alien perspective, part two, I make a a very um uh black and white almost example of of what could happen playing out um through animation. um that one scene and that I feel is something that um you know I'm rooting for. I'm rooting for all of us. I have a kid. So do you. Um you know I don't think about them uh just them. I think about their kids and their kids etc. And then also I just think about again how you know amazing this planet is with technology when we do have new technology it usually comes with wonderment and excitement and and when it's utilized in the right way. And so I am excited for that. But with AI and everything, man, all bets are off. Yeah. Well, this is a series of conversations. Maybe we'll return to this. Um before be so before we go, I just I'm going to have links below to Alien Perspective 1 and two and whatever like relevant platforms, you just give those to me and I'll put them down below. Uh I will definitely want a link to your awesome legendary found footage. But then I'm wondering also if we should link to um to a um a cover from a mysterious group called ABBA. And I I don't know if you would like for people to see that. Um may we share that we also discovered a mutual Yes. Don't laugh people. A mutual appreciation of the great group known as ABBA. Um, I I will have my girlfriend Ally sign a release and we we might be able to make that happen. It's uh it's pretty pretty cool. Very much under underappreciated in my opinion. If you count on that needs to go up. So maybe we'll have a little link for that as a little surprise for people. I enjoyed one and only music video. Yes. Okay. Tracy and I are are actually big fans of uh of a lot of that genre and uh we will uh No, no kidding. will like play ABBA music every now and then like we'll get into it. We don't just play it like we'll get into it. No, now you know. Well, here's funny about ABBA. So, I had this spiritual teacher who they were we were all listening to Abbott was happened to be on and everything. It wasn't it wasn't a concentrated thing. We were listening to the Beatles. were listening to stuff from the '9s and 2000s as well, but it came up and it was I don't I think it was Dancing Queen and and he said he said that the reason why ABBA caught on in such a huge way to the chagrin of a lot of other musicians and and other music lovers is that it has this progression that is very appealing for um a a vibration if you will, but it's very appealing. the notes and everything are very appealing for um emotions. And so when you're listening to like Dancing Queen, it has like four different octaves where it's going you can dance, you can dance having I mean keeps going and building and that people need to have that type of you know which is which is why when you go feels great like their music feels great. It's gospel music dude. It's gospel music where you go on you listen to this and it's transcend. So, yeah, I know it's super commercial and everything and uh people are going to now hate on us, but whatever. No, no, they won't. They're going to love it. I have a I have a cousin who I adore and she's brilliant and uh if she hears this, she'll know who she is. Um she was she's a lifelong reader of like uh New Yorker and she listens to jazz music. She's a big John Cold Train fan who I love John Col Train and I love that jazz. Um but like serious music, you know. Yeah. uh 10 10 plus years ago, probably 15 years ago, I just said to her, "Yeah, I kind of like Abba." And she looked at me like, "Oh, I'm so disappointed in you." Like, that was the look I got from her. Uh I don't know if she actually felt that way, but that's what it looked like. But I stuck by my guns. Good. I I dig the ABBA. Yeah. Don't let anyone mess with your uh No way, man. Yeah. No, no, no. This is This is your true self. Don't Don't let them abbush shame you. Very good. Very good. So, we're going to have that link below. Uh because you and Abby are really quite quite remarkable on that. I just got to say got to say it was very good. Uh so, I got nothing else here, Dean. I honestly you just like u this is a lot more fun than uh probably any other interview that I remember um having on this program. So, this is just really awesome. I want to thank you for that. Thank you. That means a lot to me. Yeah, Richard, I love everything you're doing and I look forward to the next stuff coming out of you. Thanks so very much. Uh, I want to thank everyone for being on this little ride with Dean Aliato and myself. Um, throw your comments down below. I want to know what you think about all of this. And uh, I want to know if you enjoyed this as well. And Dean's links will be below as well. And we will be back. I will be back sometime soon. I want to thank you all again. If you like this video, hit the like button, share it, subscribe to my channel, and if you really like what I do, go to my website, richelmembers.com, where I do this kind of thing and also UF other UFO related things on a regular basis there. That's it. Thanks you. Thank you very much. Let's keep fighting the good fight. Later.