Somewhere in the Skies - Incident in Lake County: A Found Footage Conspiracy

Episode Date: May 7, 2018

On episode 55 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, we welcome filmmaker, Dean Alioto to the show. Dean Alioto is the creator of the mysterious and enigmatic UPN TV special Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County (aka The McPherson Tape). For two decades, Alioto’s TV special has generated conspiracies worldwide and has been studied by top experts in the field of UFOs and alien abductions. Alioto runs us through the trials and tribulations of creating the TV special and the reaction to it upon airing. In addition, Alioto also talks about the original video that the controversial TV special was based on. Known simply as, UFO Abduction, this video brought the house down at the 1993 International UFO Congress Convention with its shocking footage of a family being abducted by aliens. Alioto and Ryan then dig deep into why so many people refuse to believe these two films were created instead of "found". Then Alioto runs us through a few of his favorite UFO cases. This is a jam-packed interview with the filmmaker who arguably created the entire "Found Footage" genre, almost ten years prior to The Blair Witch Project. Guest Bio: Dean Alioto studied film at both University of Southern California and San Francisco State University. Alioto’s theatrical film debut, Crashing Eden, won several national and international awards. The dark satire was praised by Variety, singling out Alioto’s writing and his ability to work with actors. Alioto’s second film, L.A. Dicks, told the story of two Los Angeles detectives who pitch their real-life cases to Hollywood. The film went on to receive the Spirit Award at the Toronto International RebelFest Film Festival. In addition to filmmaking, Alioto is a drummer and enjoys playing with his fellow musicians in the band, Uncle Bob and The Wonderland Express. His work can be found at: www.deanaliotodirector.com and at: www.ufoabductionmovie.com Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies Official Store: CLICK HERE Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com Order Ryan's Book by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte Closing song, "Awake" by Tycho SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is produced by Third Kind Productions, in association with eOne Entertainment   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

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Terms apply. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. My career, Ma. What career? Music video director. Yeah, right? You can't even hold that thing steady. Yeah, it's supposed to look like this. Whoa.

What was that? What is that? What? What? What? I swear to God, that's a fucking phone, man. Where is it? Shh.

That's an alien. Give it back. What? Oh, they're cutting open one of the cows. What? They see us. One of them's looking right at me. Oh, they see us.

Oh, it's the camera. Keep up. Over here, over here. Right. Come on. We need to get the hell out of here. What's going on? There's fucking aliens out there.

They saw us. Then they fired at us. I don't think we're going to make it. Holy! Welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. Brought to you by the E1 Podcast Network. and now also being broadcast on the KGRA Global Radio Alliance. I'm your host, Ryan Sprague. Thank you so much for joining me today.

So, as for that soundbite you just heard, I should probably explain. In 1998, at the age of 14, I remember flipping on the TV one evening just after a late dinner, and I watched a TV special in which a home video showed a family out in the woods, investigating what appeared to be a plane crash near their farmhouse property, but they soon realized this was anything but a plane crash. It was a craft from another world, and the occupants of the craft were soon to come face to face with the McPherson family. The rest of the evening played out in the most terrifying real-life

and real-time alien encounter imaginable. The TV special was titled Alien Abduction, Incidential, in Lake County. It was one of the highest rated and viewed specials to air on the UPN network. It even involved actual UFO researchers giving commentary

to the events that played out. And even though I'd eventually learned that this special was completely fictional and was inspired by an original version created and directed by the same person, I still wanted to believe that the McPherson family

had encountered otherworldly. beings and caught it all on camera. Today, I talk to Dean Alliotto, the creator and director of both incident at Lake County and the original film that inspired it. UFO abduction, the McPherson tape. Dean brings us through the fascinating journey of making these two films, the aftermath and reactions by both the UFO community and the mainstream at large. And then we talk about the conspiracies wrapped around both him and

and the films, leading all the way up to his most recent presentation at the 2018 International UFO Congress and Beyond. So, without further ado, here is my jam-packed interview with filmmaker and budding UFO researcher, Dean Alliotto. Dean, thank you so much for joining me on Somewhere in the Skies today. You are so welcome. Before we even get into the crux of the interview, I have to tell you that when I was, I believe, 14 years old, I turned on UPN and I watched as this family was being overtaken by aliens. Now, as a budding UFO buff at the time, I was, A, excited to see something like this on television, but also terrified. I thought this thing was real, and so did so many other people around the world. And it terrified me, man.

that was incident at Lake County. And then I learned that this was not the first time that this had been, you know, in the zeitgeist. You had made a previous film about incident at Lake County. So today we're going to talk all about that. But before we even do that, I have to ask, man, how did you even get interested in the topic of UFO, specifically alien abduction? Let's start with the origin. Okay, the origin. We're going back, cue the going back in time music.

Like, when I was a kid, I had a crap load of energy. I was classified as being hyperactive, and so, which would have nothing to do with my parents' divorce, I mean, moving with my father and my brother's moving with my mother. Not at all. It was hyperactivity. So my father's doctor had me on 10 milligrams of Ritalin. For kids, Ritalin is like kind of a, almost a downer. It's a, you know, relaxing, if you will.

For adults, especially those in college who have used it before, it's like, speed. So I would be on that during the day, and then that, apparently I still had too much energy, so they put me on double the dosage. That didn't work. So they put me on three times. And what that did to me is it made me literally a zombie during the day. I didn't eat as much. So actually, when I moved back with my brothers three years later, my younger brother, who was two years younger than I was, so I would have been nine when I moved back, was taller than me. And so during this period, what would happen is, from age of seven to nine, I was, you know, I would be during the day, I'd completely be out.

Then at night, the Ritalin wore off. And so what happened then was I would boomerang back. And so all of a sudden it would kick into this energy, so I couldn't sleep. So it's very important for kids to sleep. That's where they grow. That's why my growth had been stunted during that period. And so my father's remedy for this was a black and white Sony TV. So I had it on the dresser, and so I would watch TV shows at night at UHF, stuff like that,

whatever channels I could get. There weren't much at the time. And so I got a chance to see all these classic sci-fi movies. And I found myself really digging them from, you know, the day the Earth stood still to the thing, the original to outer limits, all of that stuff. I could not eat it up quick enough. Also, I had this window that looked out over this. It was kind of like I am, I want to say like a lot, a little meadow and kind of a lot. And you could see the stars. This is in Sacramento. And so I found myself constantly staring out there.

Like I wanted to project myself out of, you know, the sorrows of, you know, a broken family, if you will. And so doing that, I just, I was fixated. I don't know why. And if you, you know, go to an alien abduction support group, they're going to greatly insist that it's because they were talking to me, reading me. Regardless of that, that was. kind of it trained me to look beyond our existence here and to consider alternatives and to kind of broaden my my spectrum of what I was considering as our life here. Incidentally, later on when I boomed back with my mother, my mother had discovered this diet called the Feingold Diet, which

unfortunately died when he died. But basically what it is is you remove all artificial colors and flavors from a kid's diet. And then, because it turns out that I have a reaction to that. And so I did have an abundance of energy, but it's because we were eating, you know, red-flavored jello and all that stuff, you know, all the processed food that was eaten in the 70s. Anyway, long story short, that stargazing, even without a telescope, stayed with me all through, you know, growing up, and then when I saw in search of, that kicked it into a new gear where it was like, okay, I'm interested in Bigfoot. I'm interested in, in, and, uh, ghost, Loch Ness Monster, um, the Bermuda Triangle. and aliens was like the top of the top.

And then I saw this TV movie, a rerun of this TV movie called, it was the Bardi and Benny Hill story. The book was called Interrupted Journey. I forgot the name of the TV movie. The UFO incident, I think it was called. Yes. And with James Earl Jones and the Stahl Parsons. And that was the first time I had seen the kind of stereotypical gray alien,

the shorter alien with the big eyes and bald head. So that was a whole new, you know, item on. the menu that I gobbled up. And then close encounters of the third kind. That was, was amazing. It was amazing because unlike all of the other sci-fi movies I had seen before, this one was spiritual. This is about someone who had a calling. And I felt the same way as a, as a budding filmmaker, I felt like that was my calling. I needed to express myself in a creative way. And here was someone who kept saying, you know, he would see shapes and stuff that that was tied in somehow visually. There was some synchronicity, some connection to a

bigger purpose. And anytime you want to work in any kind of medium, whether it says as writing books, writing plays, music, you're trying to communicate and you're trying to give way to ideas. And the bigger ideas, the better. And here was a film that was, you know, a communion between our species and a greater species, which is interesting because it's like meeting a higher intelligence. The problem I think, and I'm going off on a little tangent here, the problem I think with most people on the planet is we're here. It's hard. It's hard living on this planet, day in and day out. But, you know, when it comes to things like having faith of getting through the day or having faith just in general, the irony is that there's more

religion that's there where people believe in religion and follow the credo and stuff and the rules, if you will, then there are people who believe in extraterrestrials. Now we have 83% of the population believes in UFOs and aliens and believes that we've probably even been visited. Five percent believe they've actually seen UFOs and had their own experiences. So that is, while those numbers are huge, it's not something that affects everyone's day-to-day in life, but religion for a lot of people does. there is more evidence, compounded more evidence, stacked up to support actual visitations from a higher intelligence. I mean, you could say God and angels and stuff is a higher intelligence, obviously, but there's more evidence to support that, to support other civilizations that are beyond

our comprehension, whether they're coming from other planets, other dimensions, the future, the past. And so for me, this is a way for us to kind of get out of our hubris, of our, planets and and where we are and what are, you know, places in it. And I think that when you start looking outside of that, like all the syndrome that astronauts have where they go up and they see how small the actual planet is and how we're one big village and they come back, then maybe we'll stop, you know, the more we can go there and look outside of that and look within, I think the more we'll stop treating the planet like a motel six. That was a wild-ass tangent, dude. Oh my God, I loved it. Are you kidding me?

No, I love veering off the path. You were asking how I got into it. So anyway, that's kind of those films, cinema, you know, especially close encounters, set me off on my path. And so when it was time for me to make my first film, which I had to make, by the way, by 25, age 25. What was that? Well, Spielberg, Lucas, Orson Welles, classic Citizen Kane, greatest movie, consider the best movie of all time. all of these filmmakers made their first film before or by 25. So I thought, well, if I'm going to have a shot at this and be taken serious,

I need to do that as well, which is just ridiculous. You know, good ideas when they come to you, they come to you. You can't force them. And so while I was 24 years old on the precipice of 2025, I did not have any idea. I didn't know what the hell I was going to shoot. And I had no money. So a buddy of mine that I'd gone to high school with said, hey, I want to be a producer.

I'm like, great. And he said, so I want to produce your film. And I said, great, do you have any money? He's like, why? I got $6,500. And so I asked him again, do you have any money? So he said, you know, no, I've got that. Can we do something for that?

And I flippantly said, we can make a home video for that. You know, that's not enough. Sorry. And so I went on trying to, you know, think of other ideas and stuff. And then I read the book Communion. That knocked me on my ass. I had been a big fan of horror and sci-fi fiction and Stephen King. There was nothing scarier than that.

And then I read Communion and I was like, this is horrifying. This is a whole new dimension of horror because it's based on someone, whether this happened or not, that he believes this happened. And because he's such a great writer, Whitley Streber, it was compelling and riveting and sucked you in and took no prison. So after reading that, I thought, God, I really want to show what an abduction is like. Because except for that documentary or the TV movie, the UFO incident in 75 and then in 77 where we see a little berry kidnapped through the little door trap and the kitchen, that was all we ever saw, really, of abductions. And so getting like full on, you know, embedded in this, I thought, okay, I really want to,

not only do I want to experience this without actually getting the anal probe, but I want to be able to convey it to people. I want to use my craft, you know, my tools to show what it would be like. And then it all of a sudden clicked in where it was like the best way to do that is to shoot as a documentary. And so, you know, you could go to this is spinal tap version and have people, you know, looking at footage and stuff and talking about it, which had already been done with Holocaust Cannibals, I think that was an 83. And we're around 88, 89 right here on this film that I'm talking about that I was doing. And so I thought, all right, what if I shoot it as a home video? What if I have a 16-year-old who just got a new video camera, which would be the beta max, the

one that Marty McFly had in the future? And so I'll set in 83, even though we're going to shoot an 89, because I wanted to have the feeling of this video had been around for a little bit. So, and I thought, okay, so I need an event because I just want to go out and start, you know, having aliens flying down and everything. So I thought, all right, well, let's set it up. We'll set some normalcy. We'll get to know the characters. And then we'll introduce the inciting incident. Holy shit.

What the hell was that? It's a spaceship, Mike. I know it. It's a fucking guy. Bullshit. It's not a spaceship. What is it then? You guys would get the fuck out of here.

No, man. I think that's nice. Don't look at us. Get the fuck out of here. And so the other thing I knew that I really wanted to work with themes, and it's always important to me on any story I tell, is family. And when I had seen close encounters, there was some of that, obviously, where he was dealing with his family and him not wanting to grow up, you know, the Roiinary character, but also E.T.

Now, E.T. was the thing that cemented my decision to, I know I want to be at work in the film business. I know if it was writing or whatever. But when I saw E.T. Here was a broken family. You know, here's the middle child, the messed up middle child, which was me, the single mom. It was my life, my childhood. And then it was injecting aliens into it. So for me, it was a cocktail that, that knocked me, you know, again on my ass. And so I thought I wanted to do that. I wanted to infuse that, which Spielberg is so good at. And so I thought, okay, well, let's start. with a birthday party, a benign event. And then there's a blackout. This is at night in a cabin in the hills. And they see a light flash by and they go out to investigate. And so they get out there and they see they come upon this ship and these aliens. They race back to tell everyone what they saw. And over the course of the night, over the course of shooting it all in one take, we see the family get abducted one by one as they're taken out. And so it was a lot of all improvised because I wanted to feel as real as possible. Again, I have to preface this, this was not trying to do a hoax. It was doing 1960s French cinema verite. It was trying to work in a space

that had not been done before that I was aware of. I did not, I swear to God, no at the time that I'm creating or being one of the creators of a whole new narrative and filmmaking since the advent of editing. It was a gimmick. It was a $6,500 gimmick. So we actually, you know, went and and shot this thing and hired improvisational actors and, you know, pulled them together and, and did it all in one night. Well, what was that like, like the auditions for something like this? I mean, actors weren't used to this, you know, being like, hey, so we're just going to throw you into a cabin in the woods and see what happens. We're not going to tell you certain things. I would imagine, like this, like you said, this was the advent of fun footage, man.

Blair Witch wasn't around for another what, 10 years or so? Another 10 years, yeah. Yeah. So how did, as a director, how do you approach your, within like your auditions and whatnot, approach the actors to be like, this is what we're doing. Like, what can you give me? I'm interested in that aspect of it. The skill set that I used for that was complete ignorance.

I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I was making it up along because my experience at that point in, organizing a production had been as a as a as a as a as a as a as a as a as a viewer as an auditor i had a chance to work on um i worked on the last dirty hairy film i worked on for a day shooting um stills for indiana jones in the last crusade so i got a chance to see spilberg i worked on the doors so i got a chance to see all my idols do it but the level that they were doing at it was was was monstrous compared to my minus minuscule budget which was another reason why i decided that i didn't want to want to try to take whatever money I had resources and make it look like a slick Hollywood film

because I couldn't compete, but I could compete on telling a story that was done as raw as possible. That I could own. So I thought, all right, so let's look at the math of this. We're going to be improvising based on a 10-page outline with beats. So I should probably get improvisational actors. So we had a lot of actors come in that, you know, some were comedians and stuff, which isn't exactly the right tone. but anything, when you're tackling a big serious subject, any drama that I do, I always tend to have some levity in there. So a very funny actor who he cast as the older brother for Eric was Tommy Giavachini.

Tommy came in, give a very funny story because basically what we did is we had these actors come in and because there was no script. I said, tell me a story where something amazing happened that you've experienced. And it turns out to be a great way to get actors to loosen up and to talk and to forget. forget about having to perform and be on. And it's a technique that I've used since then. But the greatest thing was that because we were saying, you know, tell us a story if you have or you've heard anything about UFOs, you know, throw that into the mix as well. And then it came to casting the mother. The actress Shirley McCull comes in and she looks at us and she says, so have you guys seen a UFO? And completely turn the tables on us. And Joey Tognery, my executive producer and I,

We're like, no, that's why we're making this. We want to see it. And this is our way to recreate it so we can see it as well. And she's like, well, I have. And now we're leaning forward. She owns the audition. And so she's saying, all right, so I grew up in Oklahoma and she just goes into it. She had us at Oklahoma because she's like, it's a prairie.

It's out there already. She's set the tone for us. And she goes ahead and tells us this amazing story. So I didn't believe in UFOs either, right? I mean, that's pretty far. That's like those. disease spooks. In 1965, we were in Oklahoma then, my husband was in the naming, and he stationed at NSA

National Security Agency, which is the top spoof agency for the country. And we used to go to Oklahoma to spend the summer with all these children. So one summer we're there, 65, and there are lots of sightings of UFOs, and my in-laws are out in the country. So one evening, the kids and I went out to the country, and they had seen a foreign woman. and they had seen a foreign sauce with the night before. And I said, oh, sure, yeah. And what have you been drinking?

No, nothing like that. And the kids are all outside, you know, and they're watching for UFOs in the sky. And they're out there for maybe 30 minutes. They're running in the house. It's there. It's there. We all fly out in the yard.

And this is my in-laws, my brother and sister-in-law. And these people are really straight, right? They don't. Nobody have been drinking anything but coffee. Go out and look up in the sky. And I see a little airplane light. going across us. All that. That's an airplane. It's a no over

there. And I look, and there it is. It's just like the close encounters. I mean, there's a little town about three miles away. This is out on the prairie, so it's very dark, and you can see 30 miles in any direction. It's at night.

And I would say it was between two and three miles away because it was between us in the little town, just beyond. And the thing either has revolving lights on it, or or it's revolving, you know, it's that far away. But the shape is the classic saucer shape, and there's this beam of light unlike anything

I've ever seen before coming out of the bottom of the saucer. And it's moving, it's not a helicopter, it's not swamp gas, it's not a duck, it's not all the things that they were saying that summer that these UFO objects are, well, it's just, you know, people are mass, hallucinating, uh-uh, let me tell.

you this beam of light is coming straight down from this thing and we watch it for I don't know five or ten minutes kids are freaking love me what is it my dancing my is it I'm just I don't know but it's real and we watch it for a little while as it moves around not like a helicopter and it can stand completely still in mid-air and then it moves like this and it stops again and maybe five or ten minutes and we hear airplane motor way off in the distance kids of course want to go in to call the police I say no way you know we're not going to get our name in the front page of the paper demise those coops who saw the spaceship but then then the airplane motors way off and oh this thing was totally silent no noise

you can hear really well out of the prayer you can hear a gunshot 10 miles away you can hear the fire trucks in town not a sound not even up Nothing. Airplane motors way off in the distance, and suddenly this thing is like this in the sky, and it just, from a standing, you've seen the spaceships when they take off, how they sort of hover, you know, as they go up,

and then they gather up speed. This thing is like this, and suddenly it went, and it's over South America. I mean, it disappeared in two seconds, and a couple minutes after that, two airplanes come, one from Vance Air Force Base, and the other from Alta's Air Force Base, I'll give you odds, and they circle around in the sky

about where, and I thought, you fools, that thing's clear over Argentino by now. And all this time, the Army and the Air Force is saying, no such thing. They don't exist. Now, they didn't come and get us to understand. We didn't go up with a ship and have an operation or anything. But because I've had that experience,

I'm not about to say this is, the hopes of. I think that the UFO cover-up is the biggest cover-up in American history. She told the story so well, regardless of what it was about, obviously, she got the part. Yeah, that's a way to sell it, for sure. My gosh. Yeah. So from there, once we had our cast assembled, we did, for about a week or two, we did improvisational, we improvised the whole. We, we improvised the whole. beach sheet and we would this is in San Francisco now we would run around we're in Pacific Heights we would run around the block

acting like we saw a ship and running back I'm sure our neighbors thought we were a bad shit but but we went ahead and and did that so that we felt like we had a rhythm and that everyone was connecting the chemistry was getting set of a family

and so we were used to each other and we felt comfortable and that was probably the best thing because the key to all film making is being prepped. 90% of it is prepped. 95% of it is also casting. But we had the benefit of that. And then so when we got out there, it was like shooting a live event. That's another thing I want to bring up, Dean, with this original version of UFO abduction, you know, going down the Hitchcock route, first of all, you were in this, you were a character in this

version. And this was also a continual shot throughout the entire thing. So those are two other huge things I'd love to touch on before we move to the the second act of your journey. Yeah, so how was that being the director, also being in your film, and the whole idea of having to block out this entire thing? I mean, you watch, and it is. It's just continual the entire time, which to me, I can't even imagine what that was like, as a playwright, like being, I'm imagining a million stage managers everywhere, being like, cue this actor, cue that light, cue this alien.

I can't imagine, dude. What was that like? Well, again, it was ignorance. It was just kind of like, well, we got to do it. And so I think I looked at it as being, you know, when I was a kid, I would always do haunted houses every year. And I would put them on my backyard and none of the neighbor kids would come because they were too scary. And but I would put on these little shows and I would have friends help build it and everything. So I kind of looked at it like that, like it was, hey, let's put together.

this little, you know, project we're doing, like the little rascals. Let's, you know, put together a show. And so, um, it was, it was, you know, basically I thought, okay, so I'm going to need to cue people as we're going along this. So I had a headset on. So I'm playing the 16 year old and I've got the camera on my shoulder. And we shot it on eight millimeter video. That was stereo. That was a big thing. Ooh, we have the first home video stereo camera. Nice. Yeah. So I've got the camera on my shoulder, got a headset. So I am cueing them. I'm like, okay, cue the light, cue the ship and aliens, cue the whatever. And I would have to lean away from the cameras that you wouldn't hear me. None of the actors were miced, by the way. I wanted to have the actual sound be picked up

by the camera. And so I had to be very quiet. And there's a couple shots. If you listen really carefully, especially to the digitally remastered version I just did, where I'm going down a hallway and you can kind of hear me and I'm talking you hear a little bit of buzz of the okay so good right oh we got action go and so it was it was a juggling act but I'm also a drummer and so I guess I like the coordination of having to do all these things and being a Gemini probably helps if you believe in that type of thing but so it was just let's go by the seat of our pants let's just run it and we went out there and my ex-exed was the alien wrangler.

So we had three kids, and I took a playbook, a note of the Spielberg playbook, and had kids play the aliens. And so we had a ship, and we had our aliens, and way out buried in the woods, no other lights around except for the lights that we used inside the ship. And we had a little fog machine going. So if I were these kids, I would have been pissing in my pants. So my ex had a really, really heavy, heavy, job to do. It could have gone south. We could have had renegade aliens all over the place.

She corralled them. And so we got out there and I, you know, we say, okay, cure the aliens. And by the ship and the alien masks and hands were all done by this guy, amazing production designer named Bill Bowes. He did it all for 750 bucks. He did it with foam core and plywood, literally. And then I think he found some like hoses and stuff from some and dust. plan. But that was it. Those are like little nuances. He went on to do the first Fantastic Four movie did the Scooby-Doo films and worked with Tim Burton on James and the Giant Peach. Very talented guy. So we lucked out. I mean, it was a lot of, you know, the crew gets a lot of kudos here. Craig Patterson, who was my first AD, rocked it as well. We, yeah, I had to cue all of them.

And then the thing that was great about it, yeah, it was challenging. But the thing that was terrific about it is that if the scene wasn't anxious or enough, are it was moving too fast. I could modulate the actors by bringing my energy down or bringing it up, inciting it more, instigating it more. And so that was something that I really enjoy and wish I could do more as a director, is to inject yourself in it. So you're saying, okay, now we're playing at this tempo. Now we're at this tempo and everything.

So that was kind of the benefit of that, that I could lead them to where we needed to go. But sometimes I would get so caught up in what was going on and listening and trying to capture it that I got, you know, I would lose loss of, uh, uh, use, uh, use track of time. I'm not saying there was any missing time here. Are you, are you sure about that? I haven't done regressive hypnosis. So maybe. I have to talk to Yvonne Smith about that. Yeah. I, you know, I think it was about two years ago now. I shot my first feature film,

my first ever film I'd done with a director. And, uh, we'd gone around bragging that we'd shot a feature in two weeks, thinking we were like some, you know, we'd done some amazing feat. Then I hear that you shot this thing in one day. I mean, that's incredible, first and foremost, especially with everything you had involved with this. I mean, I can't imagine. Like, what was that like, you know, doing this, knowing you, like, you only had this amount of time to do it. You only had the actors for this amount of time. I mean, was that any pressure on you as the director to be like, I got to get this done in one day? Or is that just sort of how it played out? Well, first of all, I'm sure your two-week movie is much better than my movie. And so, second of all,

it was just kind of like, this is all we have. So it's kind of like a painting party. You invite a whole bunch of people. You spring for the pizza and beer. And then everyone's working together and you hopefully are just jamming and getting it done. And at the end of the day, you've got to, you've got a new coat of paint on your house. And this was at the end, except, you know, we end up at the other day with a movie. So it was really just kind of like use what you have. That was all that was on the plate for us. And so, you know, again, it's, in hindsight, I look back and I go, holy crap, you know, I don't know if I could have done that today. I would have been too cautious about unions and guilds and stuff. I'm in the director's guild now. And so, you know, I would have to

have an official line producer and first ID in a second. And anyway, so it was, it was, there was a lot of freedom that I've not experienced since and probably won't ever. So that was, that was kind of, it was, it was all out of necessity, man. It was all just, this is what we have to work with. So let's do it. And then when it's done, you think, okay, we've achieved it. Yay.

We're not even a tenth of the way there. Right. If no one sees it, then it means nothing. So at that point, it was still this home video that I had shot with my friends. Well, yeah, exactly. And that's kind of where we springboard into, like I said, the second act of this whole thing. So filming's complete. You've got this thing, you know, sort of just lingering.

You've got it on your shoulders ready to go. So what do you do next? I would imagine you try to look for someone to screen it or someone to distribute it. And that's where the story gets really. interesting. I've heard you talk about this in several other interviews. So please walk us through this crazy story, man. So the first thing we did is we had a premiere of it. And we, through a mutual friend, someone had known Jacques Valet. And they brought him out to the premier screening of it in San Francisco. And so Jacques lives in the Bay Area. And so Jacques came out. And I

had read dimensions and was a big fan. And I also knew that he, the Francois-François-Troufoufouc during close encounters was based on Lecombe was based on Jacques. And so was a big fan of his. And so he came out and saw it. And he was really super, super nice. In fact, we met after. And he had said that that was one of the most realistic portrayals of this they'd ever seen.

And all I wanted to do was talk to him about aliens and UFOs. And all they wanted to do was talk about making movies with me. So we kind of had to meet in the middle. But it was great to, you know, have him see that and to see it with a live audience. The funny part, and I should have gotten, I should have been cluding at this, at this thing, this incident that happened. But during the screening, this buddy of mine brought his girlfriend at the end of the film. And I'd already introduced it. And I said what, you know, the intention was and everything.

And so at the end of it, she is like, you know, Ashen faced and she comes out. And she's like, why is everyone laughing? Why is everyone clapping? This is awful. This family was terrorized and everything. And my buddy was trying to tell her, no, no, no. Oh, no. I don't know if they got there late or something.

Maybe. That's probably what happened. But, um, no, man, it's a testament to your work. You know, I thought, well, that's an anomaly. That's funny. But, you know, whatever. And so we, Joey, again, my executive producer and I got in the car and did a road trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles to sell them.

movie. And so we met with all these distributors and all of them hated it. One woman, she used to run this company called Vestron, I think it was Vestron. She was insulted. She said, you take up my time with this, this home movie. Do you think that I have time for this? Don't ever, ever reach out to me, talk to me again until you can make a real movie. And so we thought, well, okay, this truly is a home movie and we met with one other person on the way out and it didn't seem like a you know it was a a good chemistry or anything happened we're like whatever we took off back licking our wounds back home and the next day we get a call and the very last person we had seen said hey i think this thing is funny as all hell i think it's great i think it's cool i want to release it so we're you know

we feel like we've won the lottery we're excited it actually has a happy ending and the story Then three months later, I check in and I say, hey, how many units have we sold? And he says, unfortunately, we did not sell any and we won't be selling any. And I said, you know, what is, what do you, what does that mean? The warehouse that we have all of our master tapes in burn to the ground. And I thought he was joking at first. And he says, no, they literally burned to the ground. I'm not saying that it was, you know, I'm not saying he set his own thing on fire for insurance reasons, but it wouldn't be the first time that I'm not. I'm not saying that. happen. Oh yeah, I'm sure. So again, a huge hit and we're like, that's it. At least I made my first film by 25. I got that out of it, I guess. But, you know, time to move on. And so I continue doing directing a TV. I ended up doing a season or two of totally hidden video, which was kind of funny because it's almost like hoaxing in a way. You're hoaxing people doing pranks. And then, And then I'm working on a crime series. And then I'd get it in Los Angeles and I'm commuting back and forth.

And I'd get a call from this guy whose name is Sean David Morton, the notorious. Yes, that's a good one to use. Yes, DM, notorious SDM. And so he says, hey, your name came up. We're looking for someone who knows something about this found footage. That was the first time I'd heard the term found footage. This is about 94. And so I said, well, this wasn't found.

You know, we made it. And he said, okay, do you know what's been going on with your film? And I said, nothing. The distribution company burned to the ground. So I don't get what this is all about. And he says, well, apparently a few mom-and-pop video stores got advanced screeners. And someone, you're telling me that it was that had credits. This has no credits in it.

So I guess they edited it off the credits and they injected it into the UFO community. It ended up at the International UFO Congress Convention, which I'd never heard of. I'd never been to a UFO convention in my life. And I thought he was joking. And I said, really? I said, are you serious? Because whoever did this is definitely more clever than I am. And he said, no, it hasn't.

In fact, there's a lieutenant colonel, Don Ware, who believes this thing is real, and a UFO researcher Tom Dongo. And they both believe that this is authentic. and I'm representing a few shows that are interested in, they've tasked him with finding out who has the rights to this. And the shows were Unsolved Mysteries, Hard Copy, and a Fox series called The Counters. And I joked and said, well, I guess Unsolved Mysteries is out right. David said, not necessarily. And I said, no, it's out. It's the mystery solved.

And then we looked at hard copy and they said, we'll do a little bump, a little two-minute thing. And Fox says, we want to do a six and a half minute segment and feature this as the world's greatest UFO hoax of all time, blah, blah, blah, and they seem passionate about it, which is important to a filmmaker. So we went with them. It's easy to understand why people would enjoy hoaxing UFO encounters. What isn't easy to understand is the way they do it. Our UFO hoax hall of shame is full of cases in point, and we admit even we were fooled. Perhaps the most bizarre example of mistaken identity began in the fall of. of 1993, when copies of this videotape began to circulate among UFO enthusiasts.

It begins with a birthday party, obviously shot on home video. But then, the party takes a strange turn. For 60 terrifying minutes, the panic-stricken family fights off the invading aliens. The home video ends abruptly as the aliens enter the family's home and apparently abduct them. It had this huge following, and this is really before the internet kind of kicked in. So instead of people sending me emails, I was getting calls after the segment aired with me explaining it and showing pictures as well, behind the scene stuff to kind of de-hokes this. There were still UFO researchers from Brazil, from Japan, calling me at all hours of the night and UFO fans saying they wanted to get a copy of this. That went on for a little while, and then I kind of died down.

I think I just flashed to. Sean wanted me to go out and help him prevent an alien abduction, not that I'm remembering. If you videotape it, I guess you can prevent these things. There have been manuals written about that, apparently. Apparently, yeah, I haven't gotten my hands on them yet. So maybe I should. The dummy's guide to preventing alien abductions. Yeah.

And so that was fun for a while, and then that kind of died down. And then I was working on the Stephen J. Cannel Crime series in the headwriter of the show says, hey, I heard about this thing that you have. I want to see it. And this started the whole second phase of my, you know, weirdness with UFO abduction found footage movies. At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV. Then I heard a voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows, and they were all free. The truth is our city. It's just so beautiful. On Pluto TV, free streaming of Terminator 2, Fringe Arrow, the 100 NX files may cause excitement, loss of sleep and sudden belief in extraterrestrials.

No credit cards or alien encounters necessary. Pluto TV, stream now, pay never. So, yeah, this was what, in 98, when this really started to take, formed an opportunity arose for you. So how did that sort of come? to be this again i love i love the two acts break as a playwright this is i your life is playing out on the stage and i'm loving it man so yeah give it to me uh no pressure okay no no so this would have been 96 now i'm gonna say 96 um we so he he he he wants to see i show it to him he says i can get us a tv movie deal from this and i flippantly say right paul this is paul chitlick

I say, right, Paul. And I said, I want a story by credit. You can write the teleplay. I'll direct it and we'll produce it together. And he goes, okay. And so the next day, he calls me and says, we have a meeting at Dick Clark Productions. And so I'm intrigued. And I'm like, all right.

So we go there and we walk and we meet Neil Stearns, who's the head of the TV movie department. All we say is Paul walks in and he says, hey, Neil, I want you to meet my friend, Dean. We've got a project we want to show you. He's like, what is it? We don't say anything. We walk over to his VCR, which we had alerted them, have a VCR and TV ready for us. We walk in, we put in the cassette of the six-minute segment from The Encounter Show. He watches it, he laughs his ass off, and he shakes her hands and says, you guys have a deal.

We walk out, I turned to Paul. Paul had written for Twilight Zone, the reboot of Twilight Zone. I guess it was a third reboot in the making. So he had been around and he'd sold projects before. And I turned him and I go, did that just happen? And he goes, yeah. I said, is that normal? He goes, no.

So it became something that later on in life in different projects I've done and different genres, I've never had the same success. This thing seemed to have its own, it seemed to be on a treadmill that I was just a part of being dragged along, which has never happened in any other genre that I've worked in. And so we now have to find a network that is going to air this. And then based on that, they pre-sell it. pulled together the funding and we go out and make this thing. So we went around, we went to Fox, which was really funny because there's this guy, Mike Dornel, who was adamant that this type of

project to do something like this, a TV movie version of our original, that people would lose careers over. And I think the meeting ended with me spilling coffee on his white polar bear rug. Oh, no. But it did not go well. And so the irony is that only a year later, they did alien autopsy, factor fiction. And he didn't lose his career, so I don't know that that had any merit. So we went to UPN. They had just started their network, and they're like, hey, we love this. The woman who was running Lucy, something, I forgot her last name.

She was all into it. They were like kids giggling. This is so much fun. Can't wait to do this. But we need a few months because we're still getting the network and we're still building that with the TV movie division is going to be. but we want to work with you and we want to do a series of movies with you guys because you guys seem like you're doing some really fun stuff so we're like oh my god this is great so

months go by nothing's going on dick clark those guys they get impatient and so we go to showtime showtime's like let's do it great let's make a deal and now i learned the two worst words in the film business business affairs they hold on to it for six months at that point Dick Clark and everyone says enough and we reach back out to UPN. You guys still interested? And they're like, oh my God, yes. And we're ready now. So we go back there, make a deal.

The budget now is $1.25 million. And we get further news that we're going to be shooting up in Vancouver. And so the budget's going to be really about 1.6, maybe 1.7, because of the value of the dollar. Wow. So I have my first anxiety attack. Yeah. My life. I'm freaking out because I don't know how to spend 1.25, let alone 1.7.

This shouldn't cost that much. Right, right. And I start thinking, why don't we just show the original? It's already been done. Again, I'm not really appreciating what all the enthusiasm is, I swear to God, I'm kind of like it's already been done. It's a gimmick. We're going to redo this.

Okay. All right. Now they want it all scripted. We're going to go up and we're going to hire Canadian actors. I'm like, all right, let's do this in a week. So instead of one night, it's in a week, but that's still not enough to eat up the money. I'm like, let's get the guys from the X-Files

through the ship and aliens. So we get them. We've got Clyde Clots to do the ship. He later on married Julian Anderson, and they had a kid together. And then Toby Landala, who did all the creature effects for the X-Files. He does the masks and the gloves.

And so we have that, and then we hire these actors. And it's about two weeks before we're about to shoot, a week and a half before we're about to shoot. And then we get word that the script that we have, the 90-page script, is timing out at only 45 minutes. Oh, no. Which you know what that means doing theater. Not good. It means that the running time of it is half the length.

And so it means that you now have to literally double the length of the script. Oh, God, that seems like a nightmare to me. I mean, a lot of writers would look at that as an opportunity, but when you're this close to crunch time of, like, filming, I can't imagine. Like, what the hell are you going to do? You have to create a whole new story. It's literally a whole new movie. So I wrote a whole new outline.

I gave half of it to Paul, and he wrote that half, and I wrote the other half. I wrote including the Tommy Confessional stuff. My name is Thomas McPherson. We were attacked by aliens. I think they killed my brothers, Kurt and Brian McPherson. I don't want to die. I'm really afraid. I don't think we're going to make it.

I miss my dad. I wish he were here. Which I believe was the first time a confessional had ever been done before in this genre. and sonata script was 145 pages or 100 160 pages and the greatest compliment we got was that the actors were so into this and by the way it was called the McPherson tape at the time

it was not called alien abduction incident like county so there was this mystique around it even when they were shooting the reboot of outer limits and Stargate I think that was being shot around there as well it was like this is the cool thing that because again there had been no found footage thing. They thought we were doing some weird shit. And so we, we go to shoot, yeah, so we rewrite. And so this, this actress sends me a card. And in the card are her tickets

for the World Series. And she says, I want to let you know that I'm a huge, I forgot who was in the World Series at that time. She goes, I'm a huge fan of them, but I'm a bigger fan of our project. So I am not going to be going and I'm going to be learning my new. lines. Wow. What a testament. Oh my God. That was that was just the sweetest gift that that you could ever get and it and it kind of fueled us to feel even more empowered than what we were doing. So we get them all together and and we shoot this thing and I am remembering that the last shooting day, Friday, I remember we were only able to do one or two takes a night and I know I think it was only one take a night. And so on Friday, we do our take. And it did not work. There was, the energy was

really laxadaisical. It was depressing. It just had no sense of urgency. It was awful. And, um, and by the way, the way that we shot this was, I didn't play the kid this time. We hired a real DP to come in. And the actor who played Tommy, the kid, we had him dressed in an outfit that the cameraman, or the cameraman was, rather, he was wearing what the kid was wearing. And so, the actor would be holding on to the back buckle, the back belt of the cameraman guy, feeding all the actors the lines. So all the actors had to not look at Christian Ayers, who was playing the Tommy. They had to look at the cameraman. So that was a real challenge for them. So I'm sequestered in a room in this property that we own for this. And I am

telling the director like a sporting event, pan right, go up to them and pan over to your left. So I'm giving all the direction and that's it And then I can hear what the actors are saying And so and then I'm queuing again Cuing the ADs and so that was the apparatus That we had in order to to cover this So here we are Friday We shoot it awful horrendous

We're out of time, that's it It's a union crew and a story If it was a non-union crew we could keep going So I go to the actors and I'm going What's what happened? What's going on here? Let's talk about this and they're like yeah we don't know We're just kind of this is so depressing blah blah and i'm talking them and then i realize what the problem is they all know that the the men

the the brothers who took off are not coming back and so i tell them all right i'm going to rewrite the script i know what i'm going to do i'm going to need you to just roll with me but they're going to come back so just just know that they're going to come back okay just like you know you know we have so we go off and shoot it and we beg the crew to give us another take because we're going to go golden hour or whatever and they're so in it they're like fine you because you know we don't have the budget for it even though we're 500,000 under budget once you sign off on a budget with dick clark there's no contingency you do it that's it so they all agreed to do that all the actors everyone again which was a great compliment to their commitment to him and we shot it again i did not

bring them back so it ends in the way that it was no kind of shock and dismay and everything and them worked well. And so, you know, kudos to them and big thanks to them for doing that. So we shoot this thing and then we find out, we found out that Friday or the Thursday before we find out that everyone at the network got fired. So we don't know what that means. All we know is that we're almost done with the film. And we've got foreign sales already paid for so we know we don't have to worry about UPN. We finish it. We come back. We're feeling elated, exhausted, but elated. And then they tell us that they want to see in two weeks time they want to finish cut with all the visual special effects all the cg i so we race around the clock to get it dick clark wants it off their

calendar so now we're at 19 we're 1997 okay so in december 1997 we have to get it all done so they can air this in january and so we finish it in two weeks and give it to them and the head of the TV movie department at UPN who did not get fired, John Ledloff. He calls and he says, all right, I just got the executive screening. And we're like, okay. And he says, I'm just letting you know, I'm going to be honest with you. That was the worst effing screen of my career. They were literally throwing food at the screen, he said, literally throwing, I know it was a banana or a Snickers bar, but they were throwing food at it saying, how could this, the people who were, who ran the network beforehand, how could they think this was even a good idea on any level. You shot, you know, the first time that, you know,

you'd shot a movie with, you know, no name actors, 20 minute takes, you, you shot it on digital video. What the hell is that? So we did everything. It was the antithesis of a TV movie in their eyes because it had, again, it's good to be new and, and be fresh. It's not good to be too early with new and fresh. And so they fired us. Everyone got fired, and they brought in this woman who came in, and she cut it from two hours to an hour. And we had had interstitial interviews in it of these fake experts. Well, this woman brought in real experts, including Dr. Stanton Friedman and Yvonne Smith, Daryl Sims, and a few others, and did interviews with them and then edited it into our show as if they were commenting on the veracity of what we had done,

lending credibility to it within the UFO community. When I heard about this, I was shocked. I think since thousands of people disappear every year, we cannot rule out that having happened. There may be earthlings in alien zoos or enjoying themselves in an alien playground. I don't know. But in general, of course,

we get our information from people who come back. And I didn't hear about this until after it aired. In fact, when it aired, that was the first time, but I saw it. So I'm watching the movie, and all of a sudden there's Stan Friedman, and it knocked me on my ass. I could not believe that they had done this because I'm a huge fan of the genre, of the phenomenon, I should say. And so here were these people that were taking my idols and, you know, perverting it into this and also tarnishing the credibility of this. Now, there were credits at the end of the film, so it gave away that here was, you know, the suspension of disbelief so you can fully engage in this cinematic experience. That was all set up.

That was all the parameters. But once you put in people, real people, and you eject them into it, and you don't tell them. Unbeknownst of them, yeah. Unbeknownst to them. Now you're a scammer. And so I was shocked by that. In fact, I had heard Stanton on coast to coast. and someone called in and said, you know, they were mentioning this and he's like, what?

And then he was wondering if he had a case to sue them. And I was hoping he would. He did not. But, you know, Stan gets called to do many things. He doesn't know, you know, you can't track all this stuff. But anyway, so the two-hour version was released in Europe and Canada and continued to play for many years. And that did fantastic. And so the happy ending in all this is that even though it was cut down to an hour,

they had aired a second time and put even more footage in with the help of secret government declassified unscrambling technology. Right. I remember that. Even as a 14-year-old, I was like, what? Yeah. Yeah, that was a mouthful. It's like, okay. And so because what it happened was when it aired the first time, it was a Tuesday prime time show. It got on their highest radiance. So they put more footage in, did even better. And then the head of the network said that show will never be on this goddamn network again. And so, and so we were like, you know, we were blackballed there. And the fact that it did well, you know, really didn't look good for this, you know, the new guy who was wearing things. So, so it never aired again. We didn't, you know, all the deals that we were going to do with them for other TV movies, all of that went away. Even though we hit the mark and scored beyond everyone's, you know, expectations, that's just how all the business works. So that kind of we thought, again, well, that's it.

End the story. Flash forward to a few years later. And, oh, and by the way, after the credits were on there that said Alien 1 and 2 played by so-and-so, there was an online poll. It was the first time that a network had ever done this. But they did an online poll asking if people believed it was real or not. Again, this is after all the credits. 49%. I have a print out of it.

49% of those who took the poll believed it was still real. Wow. Which I thought there was a glitch in the system. I didn't believe it. I was sure that that was some miscalculation. So a few years go by, and in between that time, a year and a half later, Blurwich comes out. And now it's this accepted new technique that's being used. And hats off to those guys who did a great job.

They did better than I did in a few areas. And they also submitted it to Sundance, which I wish we had done. That was a genius idea. I kind of, again, I underestimated this every step along the way. Again, yeah, you were ahead of the game. You didn't know, yeah, there was no path being paved, for sure. No, and so we, so that came out, and then others came out, and it started this kind of whole thing rolling.

And then over the years, I would have people reach. out to me and then now email was was up and running and then I started getting calls from friends of mine saying hey you need to Google yourself yeah this is where the conspiracy aspect sort of comes in with you you became like a conspiracy theorist stream online I remember I remember going to these websites and these forums I think it was called like the para forums back in the day and this is long before I'd ever been introduced to you and I'm like oh man this dude's working for the government so yeah you got to run me through some of these this these incredible things people were saying about you well the the part two of the act two is um that it ran away from

me got away got away from us and took a life on life of its own and um I went and googled myself the first time I had done that that I'm willing to admit. And I just put in Dean Aliotto, aliens, or UFOs, and then I found hundreds of pages of people who were fans of the film, which was great. And then I clicked on a few of these and discovered that there were some conspiracy theories about this. And most of them were purporting that it was actually real. That was the first level. And I thought, oh, well, maybe that survey that they did, online survey, was accurate. Maybe people do believe that, but that makes no sense because we had credits there. We let the cat out of the bag. And then I dug in deeper to some of the conspiracy theories out there and saw that they were aware that this was a remake,

and they believed that maybe the second one was fake, but the original was real. And the next layer down was that I had been hired by the government to remake the original to the original to the throw people off the authenticity of the original, which I took, I mean, I looked at this and it was, again, part of me is I feel like Forrest Gump going through this, you know, experience. I feel like it's carrying me more than I'm doing anything to it. So I kind of felt like, you know, a spectator in a way. And so I, I will admit, I enjoyed the absurdity of it. And when I, you know, all of my friends and other filmmakers would be like, dude, this is, oh, this is, you know, this is so great

and what a weird social experience this is, experiment, this. So it just, it went on and on and then I started being concerned about how this was affecting my, you know, favorite phenomenon and the supporters of that, the UFO and alien phenomenon.

And so I started going on these sites and I became a debunker of my own, of my own hostess. And so it became this thing that I would do kind of as a pastime where I'd gone out and say, guys, look, this isn't real. Here's some behind the scenes footage. There's the aliens. It's the same place. Blah, blah, blah.

And most of the sites rolled with it and were grateful for it. I think Bad Movie Planet was the first one I hit. And then there was Project Absurd. And then it went all the way to the point where last year I was doing, I think it's called Found Footage Critic, which is a great site. These guys are terrific. And so I just, I kept doing that. And then I looked at the comments and I saw that people were not ready to let go of this conspiracy. They were holding on to it tight, man.

And no matter what I did, I was considered to be a fraud part of this disinformation campaign. And it started to kind of, at some point, I just had to kind of let it go and say, all right, well, you know, what I can do is I can shut down. websites and I can shut down YouTube that puts up this stuff and is purporting it to be real. So the YouTube infringement, copyright infringement department and I have gotten to know each other really well. I'm sure. A lot of time, once a month I go and I see who's been putting up my film and saying this and that and I nuke it.

I take it down and started doing some podcasts and stuff as well to say, hey, this isn't, this isn't real. And, you know, again, a compliment, huge compliment to the cast and crew. Again, I kind of thought that that was it. That was the end of that chapter. And I had been invited to talk about it. I'd been invited to go to conventions, UFO conventions and stuff. And I steered clear of that because I'd have to admit I was worried that there would be some overzealous proponents for this being actual nonfiction. That they would come after me. And so I was kind of scared about that. And so I kind of, you know, shied away from that until this year.

That's kind of where I started corresponding with you because I'd spoken at a convention last year, the International UFO Congress in Arizona. And I saw the speaker's list this year, saw you on there, started bringing back all these memories about your film. And I was like, oh, my God, I got to talk to this guy. PTSD memories. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Oh, man, I can't tell you, you know, the sleepless nights after watching that. And recording it, you know, on my old VHS, I think I wore that thing out, just rewinding and rewinding. I even, you know what?

I never told you this, but I brought that bootleg VHS into my middle school class, I believe, and showed it to my entire class. Oh, no way. And again, you know, I am one of those. culprits that did not show them the credits afterwards and said, watch this. So I have to, I may have fueled those conspiracy. Those conspiracies, man. So I do apologize.

But back to now, back to 2018. So this is what the 25th anniversary of the original film. Is that correct? It is. It's so funny that you say that you showed it. There is a, apparently, the subculture. of kids who do that. In fact, if you go online,

this is the only one that I've let have my film remain there. There are these high school kids, and they interview their friends about UFOs, ask them questions and stuff, and then they sit them down to watch my original movie. And then they videotape their reaction. Apparently there's a whole subculture of videos where people do reactions of anything.

And this has been hijacked into that subculture. And I find that fantastic because, you know, at the end, most of these people, you know, they're letting them know. But it's it's kind of getting their reaction and seeing what they think. So again, I get kind of the craftsmanship or the, you know, we get to test the fabric if this thing still is working, if it's still an effective story. Right. So that's hysterical that you did that even back then. You might be epicenter of all the conspiracies of that. But anyway.

Maybe, maybe. Yeah. So I got somehow Alejandro Rojas, who does the International UFO Congress Convention now, we connected. And he, through actually Jennifer Stein, who did a great documentary on Travis Walton, he said, you know, the idea was that this is the 25th anniversary coming up. This was like about eight months ago. He said, you know, the 25th anniversary is coming up. This was like about eight months ago. He said, you know, the 25th anniversary is coming up of this film. it'd be great to have you come out and speak about this and and maybe show the film again. And I thought, yeah, again, I'm nervous about this and I told Alejandro, and Alejandro, by the way, is the coolest, one of the coolest guys that I've met. He's very funny. He, there's, you know, the same that I learned. It's like dropped every 10 minutes, I think, at UFO conventions, which is rabbit hall. Don't go. Here's a rabbit hole. Oh, if you're going to the rabbit hole here, it's really deep. And he and I both subscribe to the belief that you'd never want to go too far down the rabbit hole. You know, you always want to leave crumbs to get yourself out because it can go really deep and you can get lost in it. And then you've lost all objectivity. Well, he said, I think you're underestimating the UFO community because they do have a sense of humor. They do have, you know, they can appreciate it.

appreciate what you were doing and not that you were trying to prank anyone what your initial intentions were. They get it. And at the end of the day, it's a fun story. Trust me. He says, they're going to, you know, so with his promising of it being fine, I agreed to go out and to show it. And he said, I want you to show up, but I also want you to talk about it. So I want you to give a lecture. And I was like, oh, cool. So would you like a Q&A? That would be fun. It'd be great to get Stan Freeman to come out or have you, you know, moderate it. Because I've done festivals, film festivals where we do Q&As after, and he's like, we don't really do that. We have panels, which I want to get you on, where we do that.

But no, this is you lecturing for 75 minutes, just you, which I had never done before. So I tell him, I go, all right, yeah, I'll just go up and I'll, you know, wing it. Sure, we'll do it. Now, he hears wing it, and it's echoing in his ear. And so he calls me like two months before the convention. And he says, okay, so you feel good about your PowerPoint presentation, your keynote thing? And I'm like, well, yeah, it's just going to be me talking. And he said, oh, you're not going to have any slides or anything.

And I go, well, no, I mean, people know about it, right? I don't have to. I can just do that. But I go, it'll be fine. And he goes, okay. And so I got off the phone, and I'm like, he didn't seem okay about that. I better do some homework. So I go online and I take a look at other international, you know, other Congress speakers.

And I see that these guys are banging out these pictures and footage. They've got the keynote. It's like a TED talk. Yep. And even more so with it. And so I start to freak out and I realize I've underestimated what the expectations are of me here. And pressure sets in. And so I cram, you know, like a midterm.

I'm cramming to get all these pictures and stuff and tell this story and have something of a script that I can work off of. And I end up pulling together about 72 pictures and about five video clips together, including a clip of Shirley McCalla's great audition, which no one had seen before. By the way, that was the first time anyone had seen any of this stuff. And so, you know, I put all together and nervously set out to speak to these people and got there. And the first thing they did is they put me on a podcast that Martin Willis did, our podcast UFO. And so I get there and the first one there and I'm like, all right, well, it's my first UFO podcast. This should be fine. And then in walks Jennifer Stein.

It's like, hey, Jennifer. And then it in walks Travis Walton. and then Nick Pope and then Stanton Friedman and Catherine Marsden and who else? I mean, the usual suspects come in. And so Stanton sits directly across from me. Now, I haven't ever spoken with Stanton. And I'm a little bit nervous because I'm thinking, you know, this guy was done wrong by my film. Right, right.

And he's got beef with me. And I actually sent out an email, two emails, in fact, over the years trying to say, hey, I'm sorry that this happened to you. I had nothing to do with it. No response. So I see him. And before we start, I go, hey, Stanton, my name's Dean Aliotto. And he goes, uh-huh. And I said, I did a film called Alien Abduction Incident in Lake County. And he goes, uh-huh. And I go, well, you were in it. And he goes, right. And I go, well, it wasn't, it wasn't real. It was actually fake footage and they cut you into it. And he's like, ah, like I'm sure this does happen.

And I go, oh, so you don't remember? And I go, nice meeting you, Stan. So we start the, you know, the podcast and everything goes well. And so that kind of calmed to me before I had to go up and speak. And so I go up on stage and do my presentation. The first thing happens is this huge, loud feedback hits. I mean, like, deafening. And so I said, it sounds like the aliens will be taking control of this presentation.

I guess my reputation precedes me. And, you know, we had like close to a thousand people in the auditorium and they laughed. And I knew at that point, all right, they're going to meet me halfway in the bridge. So I may be safer. And so went ahead and gave my presentation. And, you know, I told Alejandro, I said, I'm not going to do this unless I can have levity to this because it's just so absurd. You can't take this too serious. I don't take myself serious.

Over the past 25 years, I've received countless letters and emails from journalists, UFOologists, educators, and UFO fans, all wanting to know the true story behind my films. I'm going to read you right now, one of my favorite emails. Dude, me and my friends were talking about scary things that we've seen and I remembered alien abduction. The incident in Lake County was the scariest thing. I've ever seen. I remember watching it in my basement all alone at night with the lights out. He doesn't say how old he is. Now I need to show my friends, but mostly show my girlfriend who gets really horny when she's scared. Okay. Please help me. Contact me and tell me how I can get the video. It's really important to me. I will be checking back five to six.

600 times a day to see if you respond. I am just trying to get the point across that this is very important to me. Sign Peter. Yeah, Peter, I'm getting the sense that it is very important to you. This was not my intention when I made the film, but good luck. You know, the truth of the matter is this wasn't like by some intelligent design. It was just kind of a desperate need to, you know, get my first film done and it became all this. So the audience was really cool, very fun.

I found the community to have great range with, you know, their belief systems and being appreciative of the journey of a filmmaker. And so we did that. And then it seemed to go really well, showed the film. And at the end of the film, Alejandro got up and he said, how many people, even after hearing Dean speak and everything, still believe that this might be real? And then there was like dead silence. And then in the back, in the very back of the room, three people raised their hands. God, you've got to be kidding me. I swear to God.

And these were the three that were willing to do that. And I said, I said, come and see me after the Q&A here. And I'll give you free sign copies of the movie. No one came to claim them. So. These DVDs are bugged. Right, right. When you implant DVD alien implants.

It's incredible, man, that even after seeing your lecture, you know, all this time that people are still willing to believe. And that's something I want to talk to you about here in a moment. But I know speaking to you, you know, right after the Congress, you had some pretty interesting experiences with individuals while you were there, like talking to certain people about their beliefs and whatnot. So, I mean, I'd love to hear a little bit about how people reacted, you know, after. knowing that these films are out there having seen them, and then hearing the man who had created it, created it, not, you know, found footage, filmed it, what they thought about it, that that whole idea of people still believe this thing. Well, when I had gotten there, I decided that there was a director,

a documentary filmmaker, George Hickenlooper, who did the behind the scenes for Apocalypse Now, The Hearts of Darkness, one of the greatest documentaries of a film of all time. Eleanor Coppola actually shot it and these guys directed it later on and edited it, etc. George I had worked with before and George is like, you have to do a documentary about this experience, this whole thing because this is insane. This is just too much fun. And I kept it in my mind and again, it was, I'm still too close to it.

And so I thought, all right, this is kind of monumental as far as bookending this. an opportunity that would be monumental to be able to to wrap it up and and come full circle with this. So I thought for the 25th anniversary, I would shoot behind the scenes footage of me doing this, which I did. And the first thing I did is when I got there, that night, I saw these guys sit in a run a fire, this, this outdoor patio, campfire. And they were shooting the shit and having a couple bruise. And so I sat down. I said, hey guys, how you doing? Older guys. And I said, so what brought you here? And then they proceed to tell me that one of them tells me that he's a Vulcan and that when he was younger he had his parents had his ears pair pinned. So that's why you

can't see it anymore. Another guy tells me that his ankle got all jacked up, but it's cool because the aliens healed it. And so I'm listening to this and I'm going, okay, so this has to be one end of the spectrum. And then I'm talking to other people who are telling me it seems every hour I bump into someone who wants to tell me about their UFO abduction experience or seeing a UFO and varying degrees of credibility. But all of them, I believe that they've seen this and have had this experience. And some of the stories are like the details just put the hair on the back of my neck up. And there's definitely something going on here. So you got the barrage of both sides of that. And my girlfriend, Ali, came to visit. I was there from,

like I was there for a full week. She came about two days, two and a half days before I left. And she came. She lasted 20 minutes and was like, this is overwhelming. I got to go to the pool. I got to go to the pool. Hang out there. It's hard, man.

The same thing happened to me last year with my girlfriend. And she's been supporting and enabling my UFO work for about three years now. Yeah. But even she had to step away many times because, again, Even as researchers and speakers, like, it's overwhelming. Just the wealth of information you're hearing juxtaposed to, let's be honest, like the disinformation, those who might legitimately be mentally disturbed or mentally ill or delusional versus those who are just trying to, you know, find meaning in their life and whatnot. It's such a breakfast club when you get there. Well, the thing to keep in mind, in all fairness, is you can go to Comic Con.

You can go to a sports fan convention. And you're going to find, again, you're going to find a spectrum of the populace that are going to be there and they're going to range from people who are in their basement and, you know, in their mother's basement, I've never left to someone who is, you know, an ex-colonel who has firsthand credible experience. And so I take that all, you know, I look at the whole canvas of this and take it all in as. as being just part of the fabric of, um, of this phenomena. And, um,

and so I kind of rolled with as much as I could towards the end, get a little bit exhausted and there was this, this guy who was like six foot five. Um, I think his name was Eric. And he says, hey, I want to interview you.

And I go, okay, uh, I'm leaving, you know, in a few hours. And he's like, well,

let's, you know, if you haven't had lunch and, you know, let me buy your lunch and, you know, I'll interview. And he's got this headset around his head,

so I don't know what podcast is with. whatever, but so we go and we sit in this bar and we're eating and then we're talking and I look over to him and I realize this isn't a podcast. This is someone who needs to hear my story for some reason and there's a personal reason for this. And so I say to him, so what's, you know, what, what, what are you looking for exactly? And he said, well, he said, I came across your footage when I was, uh, this guy was probably around 48, or excuse me, around 58 maybe, 55. He said, I came across your video a long time ago, the original one. And it greatly affected me. He said that a few months ago, he'd bumped into Tom Dongo. And I said, oh yeah, yeah, Tom and I mentioned he goes,

yeah, he said, Tom was actually afraid to come out here because he thought you were mad or we're going to make fun of him or something. And, I said, oh, yeah, yeah, he said, Tom was actually afraid to come out here because he thought, and I that broke my heart I said absolutely not I go he was duped by whomever injected this you know into the community no harm no foul please you know if you talk to him again I go how did you meet him he says well I talked to him through like a mutual friend and he's and I mentioned this tape I said hey have you ever heard about this tape and he said yes and that actually tom still believes that parts of it are real and I could tell that this guy was really troubled um this guy eric because he was like you know I missed your presentation, but I heard that you were saying that, you know, that it wasn't real.

Now, I got to tell you, this has been something that I've been following and tracking and doing my research. And you seem like a very legitimate person and a straight shooter. So can you just walk me through this? So I walked him through it. And I said, here's what happened and everything else. And I pull up some pictures. I said, you can go here, da-da-da. And there was a look of kind of relief and disappointment that washed over him.

And that's the danger, too, is that, you know, it's kind of like telling people there's no Santa Claus. So as much as I want to say, hey, you know, back on Earth, this is how the reality is. But at the same time, I don't want people spending bandwidth on tracking down this or doing research on something that's, you know, fictional. That, that to me is, is, is, is, is, is, uh, perverting the intention of this. It's just entertainment at the end of the day. It was meant to be entertainment. So I tell him this and he said, I have to say, I, I believe you, 99%. You know, I'm going to reserve one percent, but I got to say, I'm pretty much convinced that this isn't. And thank you for taking that off my plate of stuff to be, you know, concerned with and, and worrying about. And he said,

I'd heard the conspiracies too, you know, about the one and you, and the ex-mayer. I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, well, back back up. Being an ex-mayor. What? Well, so in the 70s, there was a mayor, Alyoto, Joseph Aliotto, who was a very popular mayor. In fact, he was being groomed for the presidency. And unfortunately, this publication that was as popular in its day as Life magazine, called Look Magazine, publish a story.

They were not doing well with their subscription, and they published a story. linking, trying to link the former mayor with the mafia. And it was a desperate attempt and they'd done that with other stories and they had no real evidence for this. And so the thing was that the mayor was an even more competent lawyer than he was a mayor. And so he sued them for 20 million and one which put Look magazine out of business. So it's just a side note. So the theory, and this was all new to me, hadn't heard this one before. And this goes at the top of the theories. This is my favorite. The theory was that the mayor was my father, which he would have been my grandfather, but okay.

It was like, go on. They said, okay, so because he was a politician, he was also linked with the government, and they had gotten to you through your father, Joe Alliotto, and had hired you and engineered you to do all these, you know, to speak about the film and take credit for this. that kind of it knocked me for a loop i laughed my ass off and then at the same time it it was a real eye-opener of how um fragile truth is and how it can be nudged on one side of the wall so easily and can propagate into to more and more stuff so the so now the truth has to prove itself so you're guilty until proven innocent and so um you know that that's a real kind of, you know, mere reflection of what's going on right now with fake news and everything

else. So why should this, you know, the UFO genre be any different, I guess? Yeah. That's a really good point, man. And like, we've spoken before, and this is something that I've taken to heart that you mentioned is when you have this belief system or you're trying to back up certain claims about things, like you're responsible for that. Just because we have these steams. even Greers or these Corey Goods, yes, I'm going to name them. These people out there touting what I personally believe to not be factual information or straight up hoaxing. It's not, like, you can't blame them. They're going to take advantage of these people's belief systems, and that's their thing.

You know, hopefully karma will catch up to them. But like you had said to me, and I think this is key, is that you, need to be responsible for the information you're consuming and what you decide to do with that. Yes. Yes. Yeah, I mean, this is a broad example, but can we really blame World War II on Hitler? Or was it a wish fulfillment by people who manifested this person who was just a conduit? Where does the accountability lie? You know, there's a great quote, I forgot, who said it, but, you know, the worst thing man can do, you know, the way. for evil to succeed is when man does nothing. And so I think that any time there's something that is saying, you know, here's a fantastical element, too good to be true. First of all,

99% of the time it is going to be too good to be true. But you, it's, you know, it's got to be, you can't say it's got to be user-friendly because there's no such thing of that when it comes to conspiracies. You have to have your own litmus test. You have to do. You have to do the work. You can't be lazy. You can't just bundle it up and say, this thing is too complicated. So I'm just going to call the conspiracy and say, oh, it's the government. And I'm not, I am not saying that the government is not involved in some shady-ass stuff. They are in some of the worst ways. And there's definitely some stuff going on with regards to the UFO community, or excuse me, the UFO field, you know, as we've discovered that they had yet another program,

you know that we didn't know about secret UFO research program so um i i think that you have to be accountable and so when when people are are running with this and there's people you know i'm not naming names you are um yes shame on them for doing that that's a desperate move shame on them but at the same time little shame has to get doled out to the people that are holding this up and saying yes i will unquestionably go about this and follow it. It's kind of like the Spanish Inquisition. It's, you know, all these other shitty ideas, bad ideas that people are doing that perpetuate

this and build it up into something that becomes so strong, it's hard to take down. And so, you know, that goes with new religions as well, you know, that pop up and everything. And, you know, it's part of, unfortunately, it's part of mankind's evolution. I mean, when we get to a place where common sense rules, I mean, are we seriously going back five steps and further to bring back the old flat earth theory? I mean, whoever's propagating that, I have no problem. You're an a hole, dude, dude, you're a complete schmuck. And shame on you. And it's like, come on.

So now we're going to penalize any exploration beyond that. you know, we're stuck on a flat planet that goes on. It's just... Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't agree with you more, man. Well, I mean, there... We've spoken, you know, off the air about a few UFO cases. Now, you're now in this world. You know, you've spoken at the conferences. You've shown that you've put the time, the effort, and you've done your homework. And you're researching the UFO topic. It's come full circle. You went from creating something for purely entertainment purposes took on its own life. You took it back. You did what you had to do in terms of that aspect of your life. And now you're looking at the UFO topic

with the legitimate cases. And two of those I find extremely credible have stood the test of time. And I was really excited to hear that you were looking into these as well. That's both the Cape Girardeau case and the Zimbabwe case. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on these. before we start to wrap things up here. I would love to tell you, but the government has told me not to speak. I knew it. It always happens to me. The thing is, I've become kind of an armchair de facto UFO researcher in doing, you know,

I realize that a third of the IP that I've created, the scripts that I've created, the 30 scripts and six pods that I've done have all been UFO or science fiction alien related. And so through all that research, trying to get the most cutting edge stuff, trying to get the most interesting theories in this, I've kind of become a, like I said, for lack of better term, I become a UFO researcher.

And speaking on all these panels and stuff and kind of, you know, tossing the phenomenon back and forth with the top people from, you know, Nick Pope to, you know, Von Smith and Jacques Valet, I feel like I want to now give back to this and contribute.

with what I've learned and hopefully put a new perspective on it because there's thousands of UFO documentaries out there and a lot of them are hitting the same note over and over and I want to come at it from another area otherwise I you know I'll have nothing to say and I'll just be throwing another thing on the pile while there's great documentaries that that are still always you know documentarians like James Fox who I'm a big fan of um with out of the blue and I know it I saw that are paving the way and doing some really great stuff and his new project coming up I'm very excited to see. I've just decided that it's it's time to kind of take the, uh, the big, you know, um, files that I have of all the notes that I've made and, and little mini discoveries I think would be interesting to ponder.

And I'm now going to be, um, I've started a company called alien content. And, um, I've got my own Patreon site that I just started. Uh, so you can go to alien content.com and subscribe if you want to be a part of, um, of creating and even being a kind of a bit of a producer helping, uh, so you can go to to create this stuff. But in addition to that, I've got other projects that I'm developing at various phases that will be geared to be studios and gear to be independent. However, what's top on my list right now that I'm really excited about is this documentary that I'm doing, where I'm going to be touching on some of the big cases as well as looking at this phenomenon from a different perspective. And as I develop it more and feel like I have something, you know,

tangible that I can lay out for you. I will keep you abreast as I go. But the reaction so far has been really cool with some of the people that I want to pull into it. But the two cases, yeah. You know, for me, there's three. We're not going to talk about Roswell because that's its own thing. Yeah. But there's three cases that one isn't really a case. It's just that footage. That footage being the gimbal footage that was released by the Department of Defense of seeing that ship. That to me was amazing.

But the other two cases that it's just like Mike drop. on the whole phenomenon is the Zimbabwe case and the 1941 Missouri UFO crash of the Cape Girardu, which for me, what's interesting about that, again, it's fresh because it's taking religion and aliens and mixing the two. You know, here's this Reverend William Huffman, who gets a call at around 9 o'clock, 9 p.m. to come out and to do last rights on three crash victims from an airplane that airplane crash that occurred in the forest. So he goes out there to do this, and he gets there and sees this burning wreckage, sees the fire department, sees the local police department, and he's led up to these three creatures that are creatures that are not humans. At first,

it looked like these were burned victims that they could have been, you know, mutilated by the accident and everything and quickly realizes they're not. They're the gray aliens. And he sees this ship. And he gets a chance to actually peer inside. Now, this is 41. This is before any apparatus of whether it's real or not, you know, majestic 12, none of that. And it's two years before the battle over Los Angeles. It has a whole other, you know, level of credibility to that as well. And so these guys were fumbling around with this and not knowing what to do. And the military hadn't shown up, I don't think, on the scene yet. And so what happens is this guy who's taking pictures, he takes a picture of this alien who gets propped up between these two guys.

And he performs last rights and everything. I think one of them was breathing. Yes, one of them was, was breathing. And then expires right there with him. And so he comes back home shaken. And the government showed up. There was an Air Force base nearby. They show up and swore him to secrecy.

And so now he's got a wonderful relationship with his wife. and he doesn't feel comfortable having, you know, keeping something from her. You know, this is a man of God and believes that, you know, that you should not be, you know, keeping things hidden, deceitful, et cetera. And so he can't help himself and he tells her this. And he says, this is the last time I'm ever going to talk about this, but this is what happened. I just came out and saw this. I don't know what it was, but it wasn't from here.

Inside the ship, there was these weird kind of hieroglyphic things and et cetera. And so it goes away. for a while and then when they have a grandchild, whose name is Charlotte, she hears about this and she, through her mother, through Williams' daughter. And the mother says, yeah, this is it. And they mentioned that they have this picture that they got from the person who took the photo. And so it shows the aliens propped up between these two policemen or firemen. and she's seen it firsthand. She sees this picture.

And then this guy came and I think a few years later when she was a kid and wanted to borrow it. And he does and it kind of disappears. And so this picture is still out there. And she gets more information on, this is Charlotte, on her grandmother's deathbed who tells the story and says, here's what happened and tells her more information. And so she hears the story. And she'd already seen the picture. So it wasn't like, you know, this was something added that was fully. originated then. It had already been this legacy in the family. So that to me is interesting because,

again, it was here was this, you know, this man of God, you know, who comes out and he's confronted with this and how does that affect him? You know, even just to do a, a biopic of that, I think, would be fascinating. But I want to pursue that because I've not seen a lot on that. And again, there is this smoking gun of this picture that is still out there somewhere. Now, from that, we've got the 1994 Zimbabwe case, which has picked up a lot of heat over the last few years, even though it came out and John Mack was there, you know, covering it as well, Dr. John Mack. What makes this the most profound to me alien abduction experience, period. Well, it wasn't an abduction, an alien sighting more than any other siding in the history of

science for me is the fact that you had 62 kids at the aerial school, elementary school, who witnessed this. And their age range from five to, you know, 11, 12 years old. The teachers are inside for a parent teacher conference, and they see this ship land. And I'm sure all of your listeners, I'm not telling me anything new, but for those who haven't, the ship lands, alien gets out. One of them climbs on top of it. It's a silver ship, classic silver shape. And then one of the aliens, the second alien, I'm calling them aliens that could be, again, interdimensional beings, time travelers, we don't know.

Yeah. But the being, right, comes up to them, standing only three feet away. The only thing that's dividing the space between them is on the ground, half buried is these, you know, all these logs laying flat, which is kind of the perimeter. And the kids know not to go beyond that. So the alien comes up and they say how it comes up. it's almost like it disappears and then reappears, disappears, reappears, almost like it's imitating the walking, but it's in between different frequencies in a way.

And so these kids are black, white, Christian, Muslims, a great diverse group, and they communicate with this alien. And the aliens doing, most of the communicating, and what they're doing is they're showing them image after image after image of the planets, of what we're doing, the technology that we have, and how we're ruining things. and how it's they pretty much are responsible and they're tasked with helping to get the word out there

and to be responsible for the planet what's going on and protect the planet. And so all of them have the same experience. They draw the same pictures. You can't get a crime scene where someone comes in and shoots someone point blank and walks at the door to look identical. These kids, they're, you know, they don't have a lot of clutter up there on their brain. They remember all the details. they list it all out. Fortunately, you know, John Mack is in town in the country.

How fortuitous is that? Yeah. And so, again, is that an accident or is that part of some divine plan? I don't know, but he comes out and interviews these kids. And there's a documentary. And you see that being done. And you see these kids are in shock. They're still shaken. They're talking about it. This is real. Something scared you, is that right? Yes. What scared you? The noise.

What noise? The noise that we heard in the air. You heard a noise in the air? Yes. What was it like? Like a roar or a buzz or a hum or what kind of a noise? It was like someone was blowing a flute. It was scary myself.

It was scary because you saw something yourself? Yes. I saw a little object hovering. It was. quite big actually and then there was little ones all rounded we saw something silver and then we quickly ran to the logs and we saw a silver silver thing and we saw a man standing next to it what was it what did it feel like when he was looking at you felt scared it felt scary what was scary about it well felt scared because i've never seen such a person like that before

This is not, you know, some, you know, school prank or whatever. It's traumatizing just to watch it. And so flash forward 24 years later, and a lot of these kids are doing things like Emily, who is one of them. She is now involved heavily in nonprofit. All of these guys are doing things that are related to helping to some degree, helping the planet and bring awareness. So, you know, when I look at that, I always jump in my mental helicopter and I fly above it all and I go, okay, all right, let's look at the big picture here. And looking down, I harken back to Nick Pope, who when asked about, do you think disclosure is going to happen or not? He says, it's going to happen, but it's not going to be a capital D.

It'll be a small, lowercase D. And while I don't think that the government's ever going to come out and say, all right, here's what's been going on, I think that how I interpret that is that disclosure is happening, cutting out the middleman. Why go through the government? Let's take the cause of the people. So I think that the beings, whatever they are, who appreciate our planet apparently more than we do, I think that they're going directly to the people and to the humans, if you will, and are pleading their case. and if you believe Yvonne Smith and her statistics in what she's heard and her research dictates, she believes one in 50 people have had experiences that they either remember or don't but are affected by it. And so the word apparently is getting out there.

It's just not going through, you know, the bureaucracy. And so when you look at it with that lens, you realize that we've already achieved this. And so now you go, okay, so what is the end game here? Well, the end game here is for us to cherish our planet, you know, to look at it and say, oh, my God, you know, this is a living, breathing organism. And I don't know how to do that. I'm really trying to do that with cinema. I, you know, I encourage people all the time to travel because that's the best way for you to realize that.

We're all one organism. You know, astronauts have gotten that so profoundly that experience of looking at the planet from a distance. when my daughter was in her teens, I took her to Europe because I wanted her to be able to take it all in and realize, you know, she's a part of all of this. You're not secluded to your one area. It's not America and them and anyone else. It's all one big planet, one big population, one big person. And this planet is just as much us as them. So it's very simple. Just take care of Mother Earth. You know, at the end of the day, that's, that's, that's, that's, it treat each other's as you will and so you know if you want to say well it's anti-christian or whatever well what did christ teach teach others as you want to be treated teach a planet as you want the planet to treat you that's a good point man on my soapbox sorry about that well no it's it's it's not even it's logical when you look at most major religions the core message of all of them is just love others you know and that's not getting too love and light or new agey like it's just love your

fellow man, your fellow woman, and everything will be okay. Love Mother Earth. It seems so simple, and we've complicated it so much throughout history. And whether one believes in destiny or not, like, we have a lot of power to change that. And if we have some sort of outside source, let's call it alien right now, just for our purposes, kind of nudging us along and saying, hey, be careful. Like we've been through this before. We know what's going to happen. Like you said, maybe they're from our future or inner dimensional, whatever. Whatever it may be, it appears they are trying to send a message to us through these small disclosures, as Nick Pope or you have said, of just do it. Just be kind to one another. And like you said, here in America right now,

it's been a little tough to love one another. Politics have gotten in the way. But we're all still here and we're all still talking. And that's a good thing in my opinion. I don't know. Maybe I'm a little too optimistic. I don't know. No, well, here the thing is, I believe there's been other civilizations here.

There have been. There have been other species here. They've been crow magnets. We've had other intelligence group here. And we don't know if they're, you know, Atlanteans, if these guys were, you know, more intelligent than we were. So you look at that and you go, okay, what can we learn from that? If the aliens are coming, I don't want them to save us.

I want them to be teachers, which is what they're doing and which is what we do when we go into some good effect, some horrible effect. We go into other, you know, like third world countries and we're helping and we're showing them how to have their own wells. And, you know, it's the old show someone how to fish, you know, and not give them fish for a day. Show them how to fish. They can, you know, take care of themselves on. word. I want them to be teachers. If anything, we have to be accountable. If you had a teacher that stepped in and said, no, no, no, two and two isn't five, I'm just going to do this. That would be defeating the whole purpose of evolution. And so right now, you look at where we are, and we're in a

very, very strange position. And again, I'm just talking about this current intelligence species on this planet. There is Moore's Law, which got all out of whack, where you track the progression, of evolution with the progression of technology, technical evolution. And you see that in the 50s and with integrated circuits, it started to diverge and separate. And so now Moore's Law has got to the point where it's flatline completely vertical. It's heading straight up. So now we're doing things that is beyond our evolution and beyond our maturity as a species. And so we can basically do God-like things. And so, you know, at the end of the day, I'm rooting for Earth because Earth is the fertilizer that everything comes from. So if that means that we're going to nuke the planet, we're not going to kill it.

We're going to destroy ourselves. And unfortunately, the lower species here. And then a new species will evolve. Evolution will bring the next one up and hopefully they learn. But I don't want to get to that point. I have a daughter. I have faith that we're going to find our way. But we are stumbling big time.

And maybe the pendulum with where we are right now with politics needs a swing so far. or the other way that it comes back. But I don't want it to be, it won't sustain itself if it's just done with some slogan. It's got to be done in a way that is something that everyone fills instinctively, intuitively, innately, is right. And again, it comes down to the golden rule.

Treat others. You want to be treated. Very simple. I love it, man. Oh, wow. I can't think of a better way to wrap this up, man. Again, like this journey, you and I went on tonight was, I, I anticipated just talking about your films, but this manifested into something

way more profound and powerful. And that, I can't ask for more than that. I learned so much tonight. And if what you're saying tonight on this interview is any indication of what's to come in terms of your work in the UFO field, outside the UFO field, I'm going to follow you all the way, man. Take my money. Take my time. I, I can't wait to see. see what you come up with. I have to ask, where can we find out more about what you're doing? Well, you can go to, right now you can go to UFOabduction movie.com. That is the website that you can go. And actually, as I mentioned earlier, I've digitally remastered my film. And so people can get the DVD or they can download it as well. If you order the DVD, I'll do a signed copy

of it for you. You can see my stuff there. You can also go to Dean Alley. ioto.com. And that has a sampling of some of the projects that I'm developing. And then you can also go to alien content.com, which again is the production venture that I'm doing where I'm going to be doing both fictional films dealing with real themes that are being researched in UFO and aliens, as well as hardcore documentaries working with some of the, you know, the best people and exciting people in the field. Doing your part in every facet, getting us those small Ds of disclosure and just opening us all up to new opportunities when it comes to this topic. So I have to thank you so much for agreeing to come on today, for pleading your case, and for showing us that you are a true UFO buff through and through, man. So, Dean, thank you so much for joining me on somewhere in the skies.

Oh, please. It was my pleasure. Ryan, this is great. Keep up the good work, dude. Thank you for having me on. This is fun, dude. This is fine. All right.

That is it for this week's episode. Past episodes, articles, and contact information to suggest topics and guests can all be found at the website, SomewhereInthe skies.com. We're also on Twitter at SomewhereSkies and Instagram at SomewhereSkies pod. We also have a very active Facebook group. Just search for Somewhere in the Sky's podcast. Be sure to check out the Somewhere in the Sky's store with all types of merchandise. Visit tpublic.com. and search for the Sprag 51 store.

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