Somewhere in the Skies - Bryce Zabel: AFTER DISCLOSURE

Episode Date: May 27, 2019

On episode 110 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, television and film writer, Bryce Zabel, returns to the show. He tells us all about his personal memories of Stanton T. Friedman and what it was like working with him directly on a film dedicated to the life and career of Friedman himself. He then tells Ryan about two mysterious incidents that involved possible Men in Black while filming his television series, Dark Skies. Zabel then gives his thoughts on the Project Blue Book television series, To the Stars Academy, and if we are on the horizon of UFO disclosure. Guest Bio: A winner of the prestigious Writers Guild award for screenwriting, Bryce Zabel has created and produced five primetime television series, including Dark Skies and The Crow, and worked on a dozen TV writing staffs (Lois & Clark, Taken). A produced feature (Atlantis, Mortal Kombat) and miniseries writer (Blackbeard, Pandemic), Bryce’s latest film, The Last Battle, will be shot by StudioCanal next year in Europe. He was the first writer since Rod Serling elected to serve as Chairman/CEO of the Television Academy. He has taught screenwriting as an Adjunct Professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, reported on-air as a CNN correspondent, and won multiple awards for investigative reporting for PBS. His Breakpoint alternate history book series is the winner of the Sidewise Award. Currently, he is developing Unidentified, about the race to break the Roswell story, and Captured, about the Betty and Barney Hill abduction. His book, A.D. After Disclosure, with Richard Dolan, was the first book devoted exclusively to the Disclosure topic. His work can be found at www.BryceZabel.com. Use Promo code: SKIES for discount tickets to ALIEN CON Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies To watch ROSWELL: MYSTERIES DECODED for free, CLICK HERE  Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com YouTube Channel: CLICK HERE Official Store: CLICK HERE Order Ryan's Book by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is part of the eOne podcast network. To learn more, CLICK HERE SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is sponsored by HelloFresh. To receive 50% off your first order, use promo code: SOMEWHERE50 at checkout by visiting Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up, saucerheads. This is Ryan Sprag from the Summer in the Skies podcast, and I have an exclusive offer for you to come join me at Alien Con Los Angeles. AlienCon brings together UFO researchers, the stars of ancient aliens, and science fiction fan favorites. But most importantly, it brings us all together as like-minded people to talk about these topics. I'll be giving lectures and taking part in numerous panel discussions with some of the most popular UFO and unexplained podcast. out there today. And don't forget to check out live podcast recordings of Somewhere in the Skies and Unknown, hosted by Jason McClellan. It's going to be a jam-packed weekend you won't soon forget and you get to be a part of. The event is June 21st, 22nd, and 23rd at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Tickets are on sale right now at thealiacon.com. And if you use the promo code

Skies at checkout, you'll get an exclusive discount on all tickets. tickets. Again, use the promo code Skies. For guest info, special offers, full schedule, and tickets, visit thealiencon.com, and I'll see you there. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. Welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. I'm your host, Ryan Sprague. This week, we continue our remembrance of Staten Friedman with television and film writer Bryce Sable. He returns to the show to talk about his memories of Stanton Friedman having worked very closely with him on two movie scripts, one directly concerning the life and career of Friedman himself. We get a different side of Staten in this interview, hearing about his personal life outside of the UFO field. It's a conversation

that adds to what will be the rich legacy of a physicist turned euphologist, Stanton T. Friedman. Then, Bryce and I chat all about his own personal content. contributions to Hollywood and UFOs. Some strange tales of possible men in black attempting to influence his television series, Dark Skies. And then we chat all about his thoughts on the current happenings but to the Stars Academy. And if we're truly on the horizon of UFO disclosure, here's our conversation with Bryce Sable.

Bryce, thank you so much for joining me once again on Somewhere in the Skies. Hey, it's a pleasure to be with you. and we should note for the listening audience that we're doing this in the morning. And I was just thinking, which is very interesting because a lot of times interviews about UFOs are always at night. So I'm preconditioned to think this is something you do after dark. So I'm really happy to be talking to you in the bright morning. Absolutely. What better way to wake up with a cup of coffee and talk all about flying saucers?

And also it's kind of symbolic of the mainstreaming of uphology, which is taking place. place now and something that needs to happen. We need to take it out of the dark and put it into the light. So there we are. We're very trend setting right now. I love that, man. I love that analogy. And you know what? We're going to get to UFOs in the mainstream. But first, the real sort of reason I wanted to talk to you today is, unfortunately, we lost one of the most influential UFO researchers to ever be a part of our field. That is Stanton Friedman. And I don't know about you, but this news, it sort of came to a shocked to me when I first heard it. I didn't believe it until it was unfortunately confirmed. But before we get to, you know, your direct ties to him concerning your projects with him and everything,

could you maybe give us a little snapshot of who Stanton Friedman was to you and what he meant to you? Well, I think Stanton Friedman means to all of us and the know who have studied this issue, a titan of the history of the research into the flying saucer phenomenon. And I should point out, Stanton Friedman liked to call them flying saucers, not UFOs. He felt that the things he was interested in studying were the ones that were flying saucers, not the unidentified ones that could be planes or planets or whatever. Stanton is a huge loss for us, but I think we saw it coming. he had a heart attack a couple of years ago.

And I think what's interesting about Stanton leaving us so dramatically by dying literally at the airport, he was coming back from one of his lectures. And he had said he was going to try to retire. And maybe he had scaled back a little bit, but he was still at it. I think Stanton Friedman will go down in history about at the level of, say, Jay Allen Heineck. I mean, he was someone who was dedicated for a lifetime to this and existed at a very high level of the conversation. And I think that we should all just acknowledge, though, the main contribution that Stanton made besides his just tireless talking to people about the topic and trying to bring it into the mainstream, the main contribution Stanton Friedman has made is he was the man who found Jesse Marcell back in 19. 78. He's the man who brought Roswell to the public's attention. And it got a little confused over the years, but it was Stanton Friedman. So we have to give him credit for that. And it's a big credit.

Absolutely. I mean, for those who don't know, the only reason we're talking about Roswell, like you said, is because of him. Without his dogged research and tracking down witnesses, you know, where would we be, Bryce? I honestly think this case could have just faded into obscurity. But now it's the biggest thing. It is, but also luck. In 78 Stanton Friedman was sitting in a coffee shop at a television station when someone who he had been there talking about flying saucers and somebody said, you know, you really ought to call. So it's all about kismet and karma and being in the right place at the right time. And for Stanton, it was about being ready to cancel this plane flight and to get in his. rental car and drive out to see that guy. And those are things that we have to give him credit for. I think the thing I wanted to just mention here is that we all have a pretty, I guess it's

pretty one-dimensional view of Stanton because we know him for the public Stanton, the man who, as I said, spoke at a number of conferences over the years. In fact, most people who have seen him, if there's any knock on what Stanton did at the conferences, as he had his talking points, and he pretty well stuck to them. He was not the guy that was always coming up with, oh, my God, I have to see him, you know, I have to see him in St. Louis, because who knows what he'll say this time. He tended to stick to the script. But the thing that I thought was extraordinarily interesting about Stanton in interviewing him

at length for one of these projects, which we'll talk about later. but I got to know his personal life. It was important for me to create a timeline of Stanton's life. And so we literally spent about 30 hours going through his whole life story. And here's an interesting thing, just a little factoid. We all know that Stanton Friedman has probably had, you know, thousands of articles written about him in his travails across the world, talking about flying saucers.

But I doubt very many people realize that one of the, the very early articles about him in 1963 was Ladies' Home Journal writing about Stanton, because he and his wife, who his first wife, Susie, who was 15 years older than him, and she had been married three times. They had, Stanton had adopted her children, and they had adopted another child. So it was an article about adoption that Stanton Friedman was featured in in Ladies' Home Journal. He was a man with a big heart. I thought he had a really good sense of humor.

He had great perspective on himself. And he would probably have argued with you, well, I'm not really that important. I've done a few things here. But we all know that he'd have been missing the mark because he was hugely important. But I think Stanton would be also interested. I just got through reading his New York Times obituary. and I think it proves that even though the New York Times is the newspaper that broke this story, the current story we're talking about so much these days with atyp and so forth in 2017,

they still wrote a rather, they turned over Stanton's obituary to someone who basically was very skeptical of flying saucers and made the usual jokes and that kind of thing. And I think that's too bad. I hope that the future will give us a chance to reevaluate Stanton and so many other people. And let's face it, once disclosure is full and ongoing, the history of this whole story will be revised and Stanton will play a big role in it. I hope so, man. And I mean, that's one of the other big reasons that I wanted to have you on specifically, because you had that inside look at Staten Friedman that many of us never saw. And this came in the form of two very interesting projects that you were working on with him. So I was wondering, would you mind maybe running us through what these projects are and what it was like getting to know him beyond the whole UFO thing, like you said?

Sure. I think I'll tell you just what the projects are. And then I'll try to I'll try to spin it toward the Stanton thing because I agree with you. It's time for us to give him his due and nobody wants to do that more than me. So I first met Stanton Friedman back in the 90s when I was doing an NBC series called Dark Skies. And I was in a reading mode. So not only was I writing a lot back then, but I was also reading a lot. And I had reached out to Stanton and optioned his book, Top Secret Magic, and gotten to know him a little bit during that time.

And we kept in touch on a professional level at that point, me trying to set up his book and not. I was never able to do that at that time. But then a few years later, flash forward a few years later, and I reached, I got this idea. It would be an interesting film to tell the story of the competition to break the Roswell story. Because even though Stanton Friedman ran the first lap of that, he then also went off and got involved in the magic, majestic 12 documents. And, you know, nature abhors a vacuum. other researchers came in, notably Don Schmidt at the time, and Kevin Randall. And they challenged him on the Roswell thing.

And for people that lived through uphology in the 90s, it was like Trump and Pelosi going at each other. It was crazy because most of the world didn't think that Roswell didn't know anything about Roswell. And if they did know anything, didn't think it was real. And then you had Stanton and Don Schmidt going at each other over this. So I thought, what an interesting thing. So I optioned Stanton's life story, Don Schmidt's life story, and Schmitz witness to Roswell and Stanton's top secret magic, and kind of put them into the blender or the atom collider and tried to come up with a movie. Now, the Stanton angle on that is that I really wanted to dig a little deeper.

I wanted this to be the spoonful of sugar movie that could get people to really take Roswell seriously. So in other words, I wanted the characters of Stanton and Don to stand out and to have the Roswell thing, a very important part of the film, but something that would cause people to go maybe want to read more, but they'd enjoy the characters. So I needed to talk to these guys. So Stanton and I spent, as I said, about 30 hours, but I was building a timeline. You know, starting from, okay, when were you born? Where were you born? What hospital were you born in? And what's the UFO, first UFO book you ever read, that kind of thing, just went, went over it and over it with him and learned all kinds of things that make me smile about him.

I had to drag it out of him. I'll be honest with you. He was not comfortable talking about himself. He wanted to talk about flying saucers. But he also understood that a film is essentially telling a person's story as opposed to. to the story of the event. So we talked, and interesting things popped up, like he was classmates with Carl Sagan when he went to college.

I thought that was pretty interesting. Just imagine a class with two college students, one of whom is young Stanton Friedman and the other is young Carl. In fact, that's the movie we should make. We should make the movie of Stanton and Carl in college. You know, that kind of thing, very interesting. And by the way, the first U.S. book he ever read was

I don't know how to pronounce his name, Rupelt. His blue book, he read that. That was his first thing that got him really going. And you know, he really didn't start lecturing until 64, 1964. So if you think about it,

he got a pretty good run of lecturing in 50 some years. Wow. He was talking about this. So I think part of the contribution that stand made that you're referring to, Ryan, is that just by lasting longer, you know, he did make it to 84. He, and he continued to talk all the way through. So many people had the Stanton Friedman experience and they heard what he had to say. And, and I think it was very

helpful to the movement, if you will, that a man who was as bright as Stanton and who was a nuclear physicist, which he was happy to tell people, and he should, because he couldn't be dismissed as easily. It's very interesting that a person like that kept out of all those years, and he changed more than a few minds, and that is important, and he was fearless. When Ted Coppel put him on nightline, Stanton just put his head down and went in and suffered the slings and arrows, but managed to get his point across. Also here in Washington is Stanton Friedman, a physicist who has been involved in nuclear space and research for such companies as General Electric, Westinghouse, and General Motors. Mr. Friedman, there are books, there are magazine articles, there are television interview programs which have very little time, such as this one.

Give it your best shot. If you are seeking to convince the skeptical, what do you point to? I'm seeking to convince the healthy agnostics. The skeptics don't want to listen to the data in my findings. I point to the 2,400 plus landing trace cases, physical changes in the environment collected from 65 countries. I point to the 3,200 cases in Project Blue Book Special Report 14, 20% of which couldn't be explained and at all the characteristics we attribute to flying saucers. I point to the 3,500 pilot sightings collected by a NASA scientist on the West Coast. I point to Bud Hopkins 140 abductees with a waiting list of 200 and an enormous amount of data in the form of documents. Some of them obtained from the government directly, some not so directly, clearly indicating that our planet is being visited, that some UFOs are alien spacecraft,

and that we are indeed dealing with a cosmic watergate. So I've always had a lot of great respect for what he did, and I don't think we'll ever forget him. And in fact, I'm very hopeful that I can get this film made, and that will give the world another chance to reevaluate who he was. The name of the film, by the way, is simply the crash. And it's the story of what happened at Roswell and Stanton and Don competing for it. The other project that you mentioned is called Captured, and that's based on the book that was written by Kathy Martin, who is the niece of Betty Hill, or Betty Hill. She's the niece of Betty Hill.

And it was co-written with Stanton Friedman. So I've spent a lot of time talking to Stanton about that. And I thought that was interesting because Stanton was historically more of a cautious person that didn't like to say more than was there. Right. So he would stick to nuts and bolts cases as much as possible. And it was very hard to get him to speculate. That was not something he was into. And certainly, he didn't seem to want to speculate about abductions.

but then he wrote the story of Betty and Barney Hill, and he obviously came to believe that there was a very good case. And just as an aside on this matter of abductions, at one point I said to Stanton, okay, I've just read my fifth Whitley-Striever book. What do you think about this guy? Is he telling the truth? Has Whitley-Streber been abducted?

And he thought about this for, it must have been a couple of minutes before he spoke. It was kind of interesting. Just watching a quiet Stanton Friedman. It was like your computer is hung up in process. Buffering. And then after, yeah, Stan was just buffering for a couple of minutes. And then he says, well, I think that he has been abducted at least once.

All right. That was mistake. And I think that he also thought that he just, that Whitley was too good of a writer and maybe just ran with it on some stuff. Interesting. Interesting. You know, I mean, but but that's the kind of thing. I literally have a a 30-page timeline of Stanton Friedman's life in front of me. And it's it's it's it was a life well-lived a man who, you know, he was married twice. He had some tragedy in his life in that a couple of his children died before he did. And and and he was in many respects, sloic about that kind of thing.

One of the, one of the things that struck me is that in the midst of his doing this incredible work, you know, trying to validate the Majestic 12 documents, he had a sundae of AIDS during that time. And, you know, and this was when AIDS was brand new on the scene in the 80s. And, you know, a tough life. and he had his share of sadness and disappointment as we all do in our lives, and he still managed to carry on and to carry the flag for openness on the topic of UFOs. So congratulations to him and we'll miss him.

Absolutely, man. I mean, it really puts things into perspective. As one of the younger, I guess, UFO researchers out there, I mean, he was the reason I got into this. I read Crash at Corona and my life changed after that. I found out flying saucers were crashing on our planet. No matter what they were or what people speculated or what actually crashed in Roswell, it sent me on this path, as I know it has many other people. And, you know, I had the rare opportunity to see him give his last lecture in Canada a couple years ago.

And, you know, I will never forget that. So for someone like me and these people coming into the field fresh and young, to look at someone like Stan and see that you can have a life outside of uphology as well. I think that's very important, too, is getting to that human side of this man who most of us know through UFOs. So if anything, I'm glad that we know more about him other than UFOs in that you are still going on with this project. You know, it's going to be hard when one of your protagonists finally leaves this mortal coil. Well, I'll tell you what's artist about it, Ryan, is just that many times, I had to explain to Stan. Now, this is a movie.

I let him read the script at one time, and I said, now, this is a movie, and don't get offended or anything. But don't think of this character that you read called Stan is you exactly. He's 180% of you. That's how I would put it. And he took it in good stride. And his only thing to me was, look, I understand, you know, how movies are made and all that. He said, just hurry up and get this thing done so I can see it. And so I think that I have a special sadness over that, that I was unable to accomplish

that in his lifetime, but it doesn't stop me from wanting to finish it as part of his legacy. And if you think about it, it is kind of a study. It does, there is a natural warmth and comedy in the whole thing. If you think about Stan and Don Schmidt, Don Schmidt, we all know, is, you know, very, you know, he's, he's a smooth guy. Yeah, yeah. Trims his beard. He combs his hair.

He looks, you know, he puts on a nice suit, and it's always fitted, and he's working out, you know. There's, so there's Don. And then there's Stan, who was just kind of, you know, kind of a wild man with the wild eyebrows and the bushy beard. And, you know, he just marched to his own drum. And he didn't, you know, he wasn't trying to impress you in any way. he was just trying to convince you that he was right about these things.

So what I found, I'll tell you that one of the things that first got me to say, this has got to be a movie, is that I was talking to Stanton, and he said that what had happened in the 90s, and these were brutal comments, these two guys were making about each other. I mean, to read them now, it's kind of funny. I mean, but it was good. I mean, it was, they were thrashing out an issue. It was sort of the To the Stars Academy of its time, you know, where some people take one side and some people take the other.

And so they were fighting about these two sides. And what I thought was astonishingly interesting is no researcher makes a lot of money. Let's face it. That's not it. And nobody who writes UFO books makes a lot of money. No, that we just all know that to be a fact, even though some people pretend otherwise. But they were living hand to mouth, but trying to be devoted to their Roswell research, which relied on the kindness of strangers. So along comes in the 90s, after these two guys are going at each other, hammer and tongues for years, they get an offer to fund a further round of research.

But it involves them working together. So Stanton and Don, who are these bitter enemies at this point, end up driving around in a rental car and staying in most. hotels together. And I just thought, if that's not a movie, if that's not, if that doesn't give you something to write, I don't know what does. So, so hopefully when people see it, they'll get, they'll see the, you'll see Stan as the warm human being that he was, flaws and all. And you'll also see him for the tenacious researcher he was. And, and, and let's, let's be serious about that. He was tenacious, particularly on the Majestic 12 documents. It's hard to, you know, go to all these different places and go through all these documents and to study whether it's PICA or elite typeface that's being used.

And when somebody first started using PICA and, you know, all that stuff, that minutia, which is what an investigative reporter does. And I've always looked at it this way. what Stanton Friedman did for Roswell, for Majestic 12 documents, for just the study of UFOs in general, is something that, frankly, Woodward and Bernstein should have been doing. And since Woodward and Bernstein and every other establishment investigative reporter seemed to be taking a pass on this topic that we're also interested in, Stanton stepped into the breach and did that work, and he did it well. I mean, I'm also, you know, in my early pre-Hollywood life, was an investigative reporter.

And I got to tell you. And I, you know, I studied broadcast journalism at the University of Oregon. So I know a little bit about it. And I will tell you, his methods were top-notch. And his doggedness to persevere even after he's run out of money and he's run out of time was phenomenal. So just a lot about the man is worthy of emulation and not the least of which is just when you see that something needs to be done, you set your brain on doing it and you just pay the price to get it done. And it did have a price for him. I mean, obviously his two wives both had to put up with a guy that was his dog at his Stan Friedman.

But they loved him anyway. So there you go. Absolutely. And I couldn't agree more, Bryce. And I mean, this accurate portrayal of Stan in the work you're doing, I think is important and essential. And it kind of reminds me of the recent TV show that came out. And I'd love to get your perspective on this working in Hollywood, Project Blue Book. Now, here's another big icon in our field, J. Allen Hineck, now on television on a weekly basis. Right.

They got their season two pickup, and who knows where it's going to go from there. But I've got to ask you, man, what do you think about how Jay Allen Heineck has been portrayed on the history channel? Well, I'm conflicted because I do this for a living myself. And so as a consequence, I don't want to be too critical of the decisions other people have made. So without wagging a finger at anybody, let's just state the fact. the Jay Alan Heineck of Project Blue Book bears precious little resemblance to the actual Jay Allen Heineck and what work he did on Blue Book. It's moved around a lot.

There's a lot of dramatic license. But on the other hand, look, I'm going to be taking dramatic license with this movie about Roswell and even with the story about Betty and Barney Hill. And in fact, I have a movie coming out next year about the true story of the last Battle of World War II. It's called The Last Battle. And I only bring it up to say that over the course of time, the film that will be made will not be the exact truth about the last battle. It'll be pretty good. It'll be in the right world. And it'll be a fabulous film. But if people want to know the truth, they're going to have to go read that book. So, circling back to Heineck and Blue Book,

to the extent the Project Blue Book and the History Channel have brought more people's attention to the real story of Blue Book and the real story of Heineck. That's fantastic. I only am concerned, and again, I don't want to be the pot calling the kettle black, but I'm only concerned that there are lots and lots of people when they hear about this popular news series who tune in and all they'll ever know about Blue Book is what they see on the air. all they'll ever know about J. Allen Hinek is what they see on the air. And that's too bad because the actual story of Hinek and Blue Book is fascinating. And does, by the way, wrap into the two

other individuals we've talked about. Obviously, Stan was very moved by much of what he read in Blue Book. And, you know, one of the things that he was most, one of the things that he was most, one of things that he talked about to the end of his days was Blue Book Special Report 14. So if anyone wants to honor Stan, go read that. And Don Schmidt, of course, knew and worked for Jay Allen Heineck. And Heinek was like a mentor to Don Schmidt. And interestingly enough, and apropos of your question, toward the end of Jay Allen Heineck's life, according to Don, I think he was being wheeled into a surgery the way this story goes. And one of the things that Heinex said was, why won't they tell me even now? Wow. That's a quote. Why won't they tell me even now? So,

if that's the true state of Jay Allen Heineck as he faces his own mortality, then obviously the Jay Alan Heineck of Project Blue Book, who seems to be running into dead bodies and crash wreckage and abduction victims and, you know, a lot of the stuff that's already in season one, that didn't happen in the way that it did because Heinek was always kept at arm's length. And Rumsfeld, even, I believe, according to Don Schmidt, Heineck was in Rumsfeld before he was the Secretary of Defense that we remember him as during the Iraq War, Donald Rumsfeld was also the Secretary of Defense briefly in 1976, I believe, for Gerald Ford. And Heinek was in his office and demanded to be brought, and this is 76. And remember, Blue Book, as you're watching it on TV,

is in 52, I think. So Heinek is in there in 76, demanding to know more. And Rumsfeld famously had a standing desk and he comes around his standing desk and just gets in Heinex face and says, don't you ever come in here and talk to me like that again? Don't you ever bring this up again? Wow. Yeah. See, I mean, you can't write that stuff. You really can't. So David O'Leary is a friend of mine. We had lunch when his show got picked up. He's a terrific guy, great writer. I do know that there are certain, you know, when writers, come into contact with studios and networks, quite often executives who don't know anything about the topic,

will say, well, here's the way I see it, and they'll start to treat it like it's just a fictitious character. So here's what I would have this Heineck guy do. And so the argument would be, well, but Heineck didn't do that. Yeah, I know, but this is a TV series, and this is better. So they're trying to improve on history. And I get it because I do it myself. I think it's a spectrum.

If you look at the spectrum of adherence to truth versus dramatic license, I think you kind of want to try to hit the sweet spot. You want to take enough dramatic license that you make a great project. And that's got to be first because nobody's going to give you millions of dollars to make a movie that they think is going to fail. So you have to make the customer satisfied, if you will. But at the same time, your job as someone who's the writer of a true story is to at least get the essence of it right. Yep, I hear you, man.

And I keep telling people it goes for your films and it goes for Project Blue Book. Like, these are not documentaries. No. You know, and we have to remember that. So I really appreciate getting your perspective on that whole thing because I know a lot of people were up in arms about Blue Book. And there will always be those people out there. But the fact that these things are getting out to the mainstream is more exciting than anything. And you had your major brush in the mainstream when it came to your television series, and that was Dark Skies.

And I got to ask you, I remember hearing you tell a story about two mysterious incidents, I should say, that took place during the development of the show. Would you mind running us through those? Well, I mean, the thing is, we all have this happen to us. We have people say, hey, did you? Have you ever seen a UFO? And I have to say no. And then they say, hey, have you ever, are you an experience here? Were you abducted?

No. But I have had a couple of experiences that put me in a close encounter with something that looked like a cover up. And let's face it, people don't cover up things if there's nothing to cover up. So you sort of can intuit what we're facing by these two stories. And I've told these stories before. and I don't want to spend all your time, but I'll give you the short versions. And also,

Robbie Graham, a friend of ours, has written a really nice explanation of the details of these things in a mysterious universe article. But here's what happened. We had shot the, you know, dark skies, for those who haven't seen it, it's out on DVD if you want to see it,

but it was a television series in the 90s dedicated to the, it was a period UFO. piece. So the whole concept was JFK in the pilot, JFK was assassinated because he was going to tell the truth about UFOs in his second term. So that's kind of the story it was. And then we wound real people and real events in with UFO and euphological events. Okay, so we finished that pilot and we get picked up to series and we're having a big party at my house, about 200 people at the house. and they're the casting crew basically.

And no one has seen the show yet. We've cut it. We've submitted it to the network in the studio, but generally speaking, not even the people in the casting crew have seen it. They're coming out and we're going to air it. And everybody got a little magic badge. MAJIC, you know,

because our Majestic 12 was sort of a character location in the show. And so we all had our little fake magic badges, except there's this one guy in the backyard who doesn't have one. And I don't know who he is. I know everybody else in my backyard, but I don't know this guy. And he's talking to my partner,

Brent Friedman. And this guy looks to be, you know, 30 blue sport coat, khaki pants, kind of preppy kind of thing. And he basically has, is telling Brent that he's from naval intelligence, okay,

and that they've seen our show. And they think it's really good, but they, that we could use some help and they're prepared to help us. And so Brent's like, what? Well, first of all, how did you see it? Well, you don't need to know about that.

Well, what do you want us to do? So I joined this, but I'm in the middle of hosting a party with 200 people, so I don't have a lot of attention on this. But the guy has scribbled for Brent on a napkin, some kind of mathematical formula. And that napkin no longer exists, at least in my. sphere of things. But I said, what is this? And he goes, secret of the universe.

Sound light and frequency. And we're like, okay. And I didn't have time to deal with this. And I wasn't really I think the guy could tell I wasn't really happy to have somebody crashing in my party because I figured like this, he's not really naval intelligence and

it's some kind of bullshit thing. And I don't know why he's here. And so he took his leave. He said, you know, nice meeting you guys, you know, I'll be in touch. Well, he was in touch. And he, he's called Brent up, I believe the next day and said, listen, I know Bryce is skeptical. What if I bring, you know, my boss in? And we'll talk to you at the office. So Brent scheduled it. So suddenly in the middle of the day, I'm told, hey, that guy from your party, he's there with his boss and they're in the conference room. So we go to talk to these two guys. And I have

to say, these are not fanboys. They're not the 400-pound guy in the basement on his computer that Trump talked about. They're not that kind of guy. These are lean, muscular, military-bearing kind of guys. And they're not there to kiss up to us. They're actually, the other guy who's about 40-something is actually kind of dismissive of us. You could sort of see he's like, you know, I wish I didn't have to be here talking to you, boneheads, but here I am. And they laid out an entire scenario for what was going on in the whole UFO world that was quite detailed. And if it was done to hoax, Brent and I, somebody put many, many hours into creating this hoax. I felt like I was in the center of a multi-player role-playing game, to be honest with you. And literally, the same thing

occurred after a couple of hours of this, where I have to say, I didn't see these guys as fakers or hoaxers. They seem pretty straightforward to me. And again, you've got to be pretty confident of your hoax if you can be irritated with the guy you're hoaxing. I mean, it was just really interesting. But at the end of a couple hours, I said, guys, to be honest with you, I got to go. I've got a show to run.

And I don't think the network or the studio wants, gives a damn whether I'm talking to you guys or not. They want me just to make the show. Okay, final piece of this, so they left. Final piece of it is that the next day, and Brent was sort of the go-between here, this guy calls Brent and says, okay, look, I hope that what we talked about yesterday was helpful to you guys, but I can see that you want the full treatment. You really want in. And Brent said, well, you know, yeah, Now, if you've got a way to prove who you are in a better way, yeah, that would be great. Okay, here's what they proposed. I'm not making this up because it always makes people laugh that it's like, are you kidding?

But this actually happened. He said, well, look, the big guy is on a ship in Long Beach, which frankly makes sense from a naval point of view. And if you want to meet him, he's prepared to meet with you. but we have to do this in a slightly different way. He's prepared to meet with you. The meeting will happen on Friday at midnight in a cemetery. And, you know, listen, I thought my first take was, this is some kind of cult initiation or something. Brent's take was that there was something buried in the cemetery they wanted to show us.

I don't know. But what I ended up saying was, you know what, I'm done here. I've got three children, and I'm not meeting anybody in a cemetery at midnight. So we're done here. And I never saw them again. I mean, that's a movie within itself, man. Well, in fact, I'll be honest with you, what Brent and I were talking about is we thought, wouldn't it be an interesting television series literally to do it from our point of view?

And the question would be, what happens if you go to the cemetery? Yeah. You know, what does happen? I mean, do you get killed? Do you get to do they dig up a piece of Roswell footage? What do they do? I mean, but, you know, again, I'm a father of three. And I just thought, it's irresponsible of me as a parent to put myself at that kind of risk.

So I just took a pass. I completely understand that price. However, I would have sent you to the cemetery at midnight if we'd know in each other back then. I will be your scapego for that one for sure. And I just want you to know that there was, you know, you know, You know, memory fades, I have this written down, but there were a lot of details. I mean, none of this was this. I mean, in two hours, these two guys told us a lot of details.

Now, and they were not details that I was, you know, the Internet was not as full of stuff as it is today. So I had not heard of a lot of these details. So I don't, you know, I don't know. Maybe they were making them up. Maybe they weren't. Maybe it was disinformation. Maybe they were the real guys and it was disinformation. I mean, Brent and I have played this over in our heads many times over the years to try to figure out what was going on.

Well, I mean, Bryce, that really ties into the article that you mentioned that Robbie Graham wrote and this whole idea of, you know, the government or the military getting involved with Hollywood. I mean, have you ever heard any other stories about these sort of things happening where they try to pump disinformation into? these sort of projects? I mean, not to the direct level that I feel this story rises to. Now, of course, we've all heard the stories about, you know, Reagan talking to Spielberg and people, you know, those kind of stories. But this was kind of, I mean, obviously this, I doubt anybody told Spielberg he had to go to a Long Beach cemetery at midnight. So no, I actually haven't heard of anything quite this direct. But I will just to set the table, NBC had invested heavily in dark skies, and it was a big show for them.

And they were making it the centerpiece of what they called their Saturday night trilogy. So we were the 8 o'clock show, then there's a 9 and a 10. So we were the anchor to the whole night. and we were expected to be a big show. X-Files was also on at that time, so there was just a feeling that this was going to be a big one. And of course, until the audience actually watches or doesn't watch something, you're full of a lot of expectations.

So it wouldn't surprise me that somebody who was part of managing UFO perception for somebody would have been dialed into this. And even though the show had not aired, people with connections probably could have got a copy of it. I mean, if you were seriously wired into the who's doing what on the inside and you needed to see a copy of the dark skies pilot, you know, it had been around for a few months. So it's possible. But they were very detailed about it. I mean, in other words, they didn't just show up and say, yeah, we, you know, tell us about your pilot. No, they told us about our pilot.

They told us what was in our pilot, what they liked, and what they didn't like. That's very interesting. So they definitely had at least someone on the inside who was able to get them the script. Somehow. Yeah, wow. You have to be a skeptic, too. It's quite possible that I guess somebody in Hollywood had an assistant who was a friend who loaned him this and they made a copy or whatever. and then somebody decided, wouldn't it be fun to scam these guys?

But if they did all that, they would have had to write all this scenario out, and they would have had to train actors to deliver it. So it all seems like kind of a long shot as to how it occurred, but it did occur. And again, some of the extra details are in that mysterious universe article. But yeah, it happened. That's crazy, man. The mystery will remain. But, you know, sort of bringing us back to modern uphology, we had the Pentagon UFO story release,

and there was this explosion of mainstream media coverage. And now we're getting tons of new UFO investigation shows on TV, guilty. I'm part of one of them. And I'm very critical of all these, you know, scripted reality investigation shows, even my own. But the fact of the matter is we're getting word out to the mainstream about. UFOs and we even had the Navy announced they're updating their re-evaluating their UFO protocol so I got to ask you having co-written the only book on hypothetical UFO disclosure you know and its impact do you think do you think we're living in a new age of UFO disclosure I guess that's sort of the

way I put it well the book you're referring to is called AD after disclosure and I co-wrote it with Richard Dolan who I think is still one of the best UFO historians out there. And yeah, we tried to, with that book, say, look, there's been 5,000 books written about UFOs trying to prove they're real. What if we write a book that says they are real? What happens when we all admit it to ourselves? And that's a pretty good definition, a broad definition of disclosure. It's when somehow people have talked openly enough about it that we all pretty much understand that UFOs are real, whether we know what they are or not, but we know that they're not ours. So are we in a new age of disclosure? Absolutely. I mean, I don't think you

could think anything other than that. Now, does that mean it's all a seamless, wonderful transition? No, that's not happening. It's not like Sarah Huckabee Sanders is going to call in the press and say, and by the way, here's everybody has a hard drive with four terabytes of UFO footage on it, go crazy. not happening. What is happening is, let me put it this way. Richard and I saw the world that we were living in then as the BC world, the before confirmation world. And the world after we admit these things are real as the AD, the after disclosure world. So it's a continuum moving from BC to AD. We have moved further down that continuum toward the AD world. We're not there yet, but we seem to be getting closer.

Somebody, somewhere, is allowing some of this new information out there, and there must be some method in that madness. So I think we are moving in that world. Also, what has happened over the years is it used to be, if you think about it in the 1950s or 60s, if anyone was going to disclose anything, it pretty much had to be the government. They had all the goodies, and if anybody was going to talk, it was going to be them, and they didn't talk. So the rest of us were left out in the cold, like Stanton Friedman, knocking on the door, trying to tell the story of what was going on, but not really being on the inside. Today, we live in a different world. We all have our cell phones. We have our computers.

We have the Internet. We have access to incredible technology for surveillance and observation and so forth. So we are currently in the process of disclosing to ourselves that this is a reality we have to deal with. So, yeah, we are in a new world. It's partly because of the technology that we're doing it ourselves. And I wouldn't be surprised if the fact that we are so actively and accurately starting to disclose some of this behavior amongst ourselves and to the rest of the world, that the people, you know, I'm not going to call the people, bad guys, I don't know exactly who they are, but somebody has been involved in managing the UFO secret for up to seven decades. And the group of people who have been managing it

have probably transitioned from military only to more of a mixed use group right now. And I wouldn't be surprised if there are hawks and doves within that group on the topic of disclosure. Some of them saying, we've got to get this out now. and some of them saying we can't. It's like in dark skies, we had two main characters who represented the polarities. One of them was the head of Majestic 12. His position was the people can't handle the truth. And then we had a young guy who was being brought in, and his position was the people

have a right to know. And the interesting thing about those two positions is they're probably both right. The people do have a right to know and the people can't handle the truth. But I think we are entering a world where we are. are going to have to deal with it regardless, whether we can handle it or whether we can't handle it. And just to conclude this, if you go back and read books about flying saucers going all the way back to Kehoe's books in the 50s, he was always talking about the silence group. And for him, disclosure was always right around the corner, right? And now we've got Steve Bassett, who predicts disclosure every year, whether it happens or not.

And I always say, I always tell Bassett's a friend of mine. I always tell him, well, you keep doing that, Steve, because one of these years you're going to be right. Yeah. And then he'll say, see, I told you so. But I do think that we are in a horizon where I think it will happen in my lifetime. And I'm not as young as I used to be. So that's a statement. I think something else.

People always like to quantify the win. And I would never presume to say next year is it. but I would look at the horizon. Here's what I think. Things are moving fast, and let's just put it in a real perspective, whether you like Donald Trump or you hate Donald Trump. It doesn't matter for this one. If Donald Trump is reelected in 2020, Donald Trump is going to be the disclosure president.

He might be even before 2020, although that's probably an outside chance. But I don't see this thing going on much longer than 20, 24, 25 at the outside. So that would make whoever our next president is the one on the standing on the job when it hits. You touch on a really good point, Bryce. It is moving very fast. Everything in our world is moving so fast now. And with the UFO topic, I mean, some people are impatient when it comes to this whole to the Stars Academy and what they're doing. You know, give us, give us everything. Give us everything. But, you know, sometimes these things take time. And we have gotten a lot from this specific group. We've gotten videos that no one ever knew existed. We found out about a secret Pentagon program. So things are moving fast.

That makes it. I think you're right. I try to stay up on this, but I don't think I quite understand. Why is there this resistance to the Stars Academy? What's going on there? Yeah. The only thing I can, and it's very divisive, to be completely honest, within the UFO community, Bryson. You and I both know, like, that's a very small percentage of the population. But when it comes down to it, it seems to me that a lot of the older guard, let's say, of euphology, perceived this group as just another, you know, aviary, this group that we've heard about who were full of government insiders or former, former military. And they were pumping disinformation out to the UFO community and beyond about the UFO topic.

So, and some of these members of that original quote unquote aviary is, uh, are members of to the stars. So there's, there's a hesitancy, I think, from the older guard that, uh, you know, this isn't disclosure. This isn't anything new. We've seen this before. But for us younger people, this is our first time experiencing this. I, I don't think I agree with that analysis that they're making then because these videos are not disinformation. They may be not the full video.

or not the highest resolution, but I'll look at them and I say, these are pilots that are actually confused by what they're seeing. And, you know, all these stories. So I don't know. I mean, look, I was initially skeptical that, you know, wait, Tom DeLong's going to save the world. That struck me as odd. And it still does, to be honest with you. And I was frustrated at the beginning where part of his plan was, hey, we're going to make, you know, movies and television series and to get the truth out. Well, that's what I said back in, you know, the 90s on dark skies. And, but the thing is, I was not, I, I didn't actually know the truth.

So I was just, that was part of the dramatic thing. But Tom DeLong is actually saying, I actually know the truth, but instead of holding a news conference and telling you what the truth is, but as I know it, I'm going to, you know, talk around the edges about it and do a television show or do whatever. So I was actually pleasantly surprised that instead of trying to do his secret machines as a TV series, which he probably still is trying to do, I'm pleasantly surprised that unidentified is not going to be a dramatic series, but is an actual series about the reality. And I hope it's as good as it could be. I'm really praying for it to be successful. Me too, man.

I mean, having seen the first episode, I was blown away. And these, you know, we all know, first episodes of shows introduce you to everything. So basically, we've got the New York Times article to the stars forming, this group. This is all stuff us in the UFO community know, and that's what the first episode is. I will come out and say that. I won't give away any spoilers, but it's our introduction to what Tom DeLong is going to be disclosing to us. So if it's of any indication of that first episode, I have no doubt we're going to get some new stuff, and we're going to get some really big bombshells.

And the fact that it's going to be on the minds of people watching the history channel, they're going to go talk to their friends and their neighbors about it. We are entering a new age of UFO discourse. And I wish him all the luck. I'm still pro to the Stars Academy. You know, I will eat crow if this all blows up in our face. But I honestly don't think it's going to. I think it's a new age and like you said, a new horizon.

So I'm excited. I am too. And the thing is, it doesn't have to all be on the shoulders of Tom DeLong or to the Stars Academy or Lou Elizando or any of these people. There's a lot of disclosing that needs to be done. And not everybody, it doesn't have to come from one source alone, nor will it. I think one of the other frustrations people have felt is Tom, in some of his interviews, has said some things where you just say, whoa, stop. Tell me what you mean by that.

Right? And you, like, I didn't hear him say it, but I saw it quoted. I don't, I hope this is an accurate quote. But he was just saying something that somebody had told them why they haven't been disclosing. And he said, I couldn't sleep for three days. Well, okay, why not? I want to know what you got told that you, that you couldn't sleep for three days. That's me.

That's what I want to know. Now, maybe that's the windup of their show. and if that's how they want to unspool it, that's fine. One of the things that I think all of us are a little concerned about is we don't know what's really going on. We don't really know. And it might be not good. And that's certainly a possibility. Or it might be a mixed bag.

There might be some good and some very bad. I don't really know. I just think, though, we live in a time of, as you put, at rapid change. And there's just a sense, I think, out there in the zeitgeist that it's time to get this one over with. And just kind of a concluding thought on that is I used to be the chairman, CEO of the Television Academy. And when I first got elected, they brought me in. And the guy who was the executive director there took me aside. And he goes, just one thing for you to remember.

And I said, okay. And he said, all of us together are smarter than any way. one of us. And I just think that is so accurate. All of us are smarter. And so now it's time for us to prove it. And that means that those who are in the know need to tell a little more and be a little more transparent. Transparency is the thing. That's what I hold us all to. Transparency. Absolutely. And I really hope we're going to get that within our lifetimes, Bryce. But I got to ask you, What comes next for you in your work and where can we find everything you're up to? Well, I'll tell you one thing.

I'm interacting a lot on my Twitter feed, which is at Hollywood UFOs. So at Hollywood UFOs is a good place to sort of pick my brain and for me to pick yours. So I do enjoy that. I'll tell you one thing from the – I've got a lot of non-UFO things that I'm working on. But one of the most exciting that I'm working on that is UFO-related. is the book, AD After Disclosure, which was written by Richard Dolan and myself, is being developed as a television series with myself and Brent Friedman, who was my partner on Dark Skies.

So if that means anything to anybody, you're getting it all put together into one little package. And I'm very excited by what Brent and I are coming up with. We hope to be out on the market with it very soon. because I do think it's time for us to pivot from thinking about the cover-up. I mean, all stuff that you see historically has been, oh, well, people who know the truth aren't telling us the truth, and I have to go get the truth, and then you get the truth, but you can't keep it or tell it. I want to tell a different story.

I want to tell the story about that starts with AD Day 1, you know, from the moment where basically everybody on the planet goes, oh, wow. So this stuff's real? I want to tell that story. And so Brent and I have worked very hard to try to find a credible way in to do that. So that's what we're working on now. And of course, these are the two feature films that we talked about earlier take up a lot of time. Because you know what?

It's just not easy to sell anything. I mean, I don't care what you're trying to sell, whether it's movies or television series or shoes. You know, you still got to get somebody who has money. to give you the money to do what you want to do. So it's never easy, but just to go back to our friend Stanton Friedman as we think about and you just never give up. You just keep moving forward. And I look forward to a time very soon where we get done with talking about the cover-up

and we get started on talking about the phenomenon. Absolutely. I love that, Brace. what comes next. That's what we should all be looking forward to. And you know that we're all in your corner when it comes to this. So I got to thank you for coming on again. My pleasure. Thank you for taking the time to reflect on how Stanton Friedman lived. And we can only hope he's, you know, now finding those answers. We're all searching for. So thank you so much, Bryce. My pleasure. Watch the skies and we'll talk to you again.

That's it for this week's episode. Again, my special thanks to Bryce Sable for coming on. You could follow him on Twitter at Bryce Saber to keep up to date with all his work. Speaking to which, Bryce and I had a little debriefing session after the interview, where he briefly talked about some mysterious things that happened to him concerning the work of John Keel. One of them, straight-up gamer shows. So to check out those stories, head on over to the Patreon page

and listen to Bonus Episode Number 35 with Bryce Sabler. If you want to help the show continue, become a patron today and receive many rewards in return. To learn more and to contribute, visit patreon.com slash somewhere skies. We're also on Twitter at SummerSkies and Instagram at SummerSkies Pod. Our store is open at T-Public. All different designs, cuts, sizes, and items. Head to T-EEEPublic.com and search for the Somewhere in the Skies store. Please take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review the show.

on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, on your Android apps, or wherever you listen to the show from. It really helps us gain visibility and find new listeners. I've got some new articles up over at the Rogue Planet website, including a review of the premiere episode of History Channel's new series Unidentified Inside America's UFO Investigation. Head on over to rogueplanet.tv to read the review and to listen to our sister podcast, Unknown, hosted by Jason McClain. Thank you as always to the E1 Podcast Network, KGRRA Radio, Rogue Planet, and to you for listening. I'll see you here next week, and remember, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching. Somewhere in the Skies. Somewhere in the Skies is produced by

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