Somewhere in the Skies - OMNIBUS 04 | James Fox: The Phenomenon, Moment of Contact & The Program

Episode Date: July 18, 2025

In another omnibus episode, we have a collection of our interviews with documentary filmmaker, James Fox. Fox is best known for his global-hit, The Phenomenon. These were followed up by Moment of Contact, concerning a UFO crash in Brazil, and The Program, which covers all the latest revelations in the halls of congress, the White House, and in the darkest corners of the intelligence agencies. Find James Fox's films: https://tv.apple.com/us/person/james-fox/umc.cpc.6nn94fbb6henu22kyijnrv1p9 Please take a moment to rate and review us on Spotify and Apple. Book Ryan on CAMEO at: https://bit.ly/3kwz3DO Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ PayPal: [e-mail] Discord: https://discord.gg/NTkmuwyB4F Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ryansprague.bsky.social Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomewhereSkies Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/somewhereskiespod/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryansprague51 Order Ryan’s new book: https://a.co/d/4KNQnM4 Order Ryan’s older book: https://amzn.to/3PmydYC Store: http://tee.pub/lic/ULZAy7IY12U Read Ryan’s articles at: https://medium.com/@ryan-sprague51 Opening Theme Song by Septembryo Copyright © 2025 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved 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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Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer. Greetings somewhere in the skies listeners, and welcome to another omnibus episode. This time, we have a collection of all of our interviews with filmmaker James Fox, from discussing his global hit, The Phenomenon, to his more intimate film about a Brazilian UFO crash with moment of contact, to his most recent film, that I might be in, called The Program. We navigate through these three films, the impact they've had on the UFO world, and so much more. Be sure to check out all of James Fox's films, available to stream on most major platforms. And be sure to rate and review somewhere in the skies on Apple or Spotify.

It helps us out tremendously. So, to all of our new listeners, I hope you enjoy your introduction to the work of the work of one of the most prolific documentarians when it comes to UFOs. And for those Somewhere in the Sky's O'Gs out there, I'm sure you'll learn an extra thing or two re-listening to these. All right, let's get to our omnibus episode with James Fox. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Somewhere in the Skies.

I am your host, Ryan Sprague. And today, we are going to be talking about the number one documentary in the world right now. And that is the phenomenon. And we're going to be talking to the creator and director of the phenomenon. You know him in the UFO world. You know him all around television and everything in between. And that is James Fox. James, thank you so much for joining me today, brother. Well, it's about time we got to do this, huh? I know. I feel like I'm the last person on the planet to interview you. But hey, your season now, we can really let, you know, let loose, and you can tell me some stuff that you haven't told anyone else.

How does that sound? Hopefully I don't sound like I'm on autopilot. No, I'll give you, I'm definitely here to give you good, new, you know, fresh information on because there's so much to talk about I could go on for a week. I know, man. I know. And that's one of my questions, because I know after having spoken to you at length while the process of this filming was going on,

so much wasn't in the film for the final cut. So we'll get to that. But before we even talk about the phenomenon, I got to ask you, how does it feel to finally have this done? We have been waiting just as long as you have, but probably even longer, for a film like this to come around in this medium. So, yeah, how does it feel, man, to finally have it out there? You know, that's a good question.

And I thought that I would feel happier about it. And don't get me wrong, I'm very happy with the film. the end result of the film, but the level of trauma that I experienced in getting this film out. And remember, it was incredibly challenged, just challenging, producing a documentary, especially a documentary on UFOs.

Then you're talking about a documentary that deals with, you know, alleged close encounters of the third kind. So I had, like, all the worries of associations with very high-level government and military officials that I was terribly concerned we're going to pull out the carpet out from under me once they realize they were connected to a film

that deals with alleged telepathic communication with beans on the ground in Africa with the students. So I had all that in the back of my mind the whole time. Like I have to get approval and these guys have to sign. So that was a lot of course out of money all the time. And then Corona hit.

As soon as the contracts had the ink dry to the contract for the film to be distributed in like 1,500 meters across America, which was been my goal since I was 25 years old, to that stamp of validation of having a documentary on the topic of UFOs in theaters. That was like, yes. And then COVID did.

So I didn't get that rollout, that red carpet rollout and sit, quite honestly, in a theater with an audience of people. And you get that sense of completion, you know, and I never got that. And so people think it's funny when I ask them, you know, well, you know, I really love your movie. Well, hey, I'd love to hear about it. Tell me, what be your favorite part. Like, I never got that. You know what I mean?

I never sat in a room. You got to see people's reactions of all this hard work. I felt, you know, I know a lot of people have been deprived of a lot of stuff during these incredibly challenging times. So I don't want to sound like I'm complaining. But I never got that full satisfied moment of looking around a room of an audience of viewers and getting this satisfaction of getting their, their feedback, their response in real stuff.

So how do I feel? I'm really happy with the end result, and I haven't quite soaked it up yet. Yeah. Hey, man. I mean, again, this is probably the most tumultuous time. Either of us will see in our lifetimes,

you know, with everything going on in the world, in our country. And for the film to come out right now, I understand. It's a little bittersweet. Again, it did hit number one, which is incredible.

But is there a possibility that we could see it in theaters once things kind of go back to normal, as people are calling it? There is definitely, we're having discussions about a limited theatrical rollout in 2021. There's a couple of people that were in talks with about it. So, yeah, that's definitely on the drawing board. And one of the things that I would like to personally make happen

is I want to do a reference. the world tour. I want to go and have a massive screening in Africa, you know, Europe, Australia, South America, you know, China, a lot of the places that we film and certain venues within the United States as well. So I'm definitely planning on doing something like that, but on top of that, there's discussion of getting in to some actual movie theaters. So the answer to your question is most probably yes. Awesome. Awesome. Well, let's dive into the film because we have a lot of listener questions as well. But I want to get to what I kind of personally found really interesting in the film. And that was your discussions with people who worked for Project Blue Book.

I mean, rarely do we get this much of a glimpse into the work and lives of those who worked for the most visible UFO program within the government within the U.S. Air Force Project. Blue Book. And the first person you interviewed was William T. Coleman, the public information officer for Project Blue Book. And he had some really interesting things to say, what was it like interviewing him? And yeah, what did you take away from what he had to tell you, James? Well, I was shocked that he had never done a proper 60-minute-style sit-down interview with really good lighting and really good audio to tell his story because Colonel William Coleman had one of the most dramatic UFO. And listen, I've heard a lot of UFO encounters, okay?

Colonel Coleman, in my opinion, had one of the most dramatic UFO encounters I've ever heard. And I don't know if your audience wants me to go into a little bit of it or not, but basically... Yeah, let's do it. Okay, so yeah, so the duration of this encounter was roughly nine minutes. It started off at an elevation of 9,000 feet. He was in a B-25. It was 1955 over Alabama. He had three other people in the plane with him.

There were engineers from Lockheed Martin and Boeing. And they started, like I said, they started the encounter at 9,000 feet. It ended up at maximum continuous power at treetop level. And I said to him, what do you mean by maximum continuous power? And he goes, if I went any faster, the engines would blow up. And he literally said he's chasing this disc. and they're all looking at this thing in broad daylight, they thought they're going to collide with it.

He had to take evasive action, and he was so low that if he turned, he was going to dip the wing into the trees, and so he had to pull up and lost sight of it for a moment. But to hear this guy's encounter, a lot of the time people think UFO encounters and some blurry light off in the distance. But, you know, when you get an encounter with qualified observers, engineers, pilots,

proximity of like thought we were going to hit this thing looking at it going there's no exhaustments there's no wings there are no tail there's how this thing flying you know and and um it was truly spectacular to hear it from the horse's mouth and then on top of that to hear him describe that once the air force put him as public spokesman for project blue book which was the investigatory armed the Air Force for investigating UFOs, what's the first thing he did? He went to find his report because when they landed in 1955, Project Blue Book was in full effect and they all took detailed, you know, notes, they filled out forms and, you know, detailed statements of the encounter. And one of the things that the Project Blue Book people at the time had said,

which he shared with us, was that all, they were shocked at how, identical everyone's description of the encounter was. And of course, once he got put in charge, public spokesman for Project Blue Book, first thing he did was went to find his own sighting report, and it wasn't there. Oh, man. Yeah. And now, was this, correct me if I'm wrong,

this was one of the times in the film that you had a recreation, and you actually filmed from within a bomber. Is this right? Yes. Yes. So it was really funny. money, least people helped find that bomber. And I knew at the time when I interviewed him in Florida,

I turned to my buddy, Dave West, who's the cameraman, and we looked at each other, and we went, we're getting a B2-5, and we're going to do a recreation because this is the most incredible encounter I've ever heard. And I want this to be the start of the whole movie. I want it to be sort of the cold open, the James Bond signing. And when we found a couple of B-2 bombers from World War II era, I think I either called the guy.

I'm pretty sure I called him because Lee Spiegel had organized, putting me in touch with these people, as well as Dave West. And I said, hey, guys, if you guys can't fly, I just want to get something out of the way right off the bat here. If you can't fly at tree time maximum speed, then we've got to go somewhere else. And this guy goes, yeah, I think we can do that. Oh, man.

That's when you got to hire the stunt people, right? It was crazy. I was sitting in the nose cone. I had to crawl through the cylinder, this long, like, polished cylinder, like squeak my way through here, and then I just ended up in this little glass bubble with a gunner,

with like where the gunner would sit, and just glass between me and certain death. And, uh, what was a really weird feeling, you know, it was really exciting and scary and all the rest of it. But what a cool, like, you know, I don't hear people mention that section of the film as often as I was expecting, but that was a really, really amazing encounter.

And I felt that it was a pretty good within, you know, budgetary expectations of recreation. Absolutely. Yeah, it brought so much to the film. And I guess while we're on the subject of Project Blue Book, which is a big part of, I guess, as a playwright, I would say the first act of the play. We'll get to the second act, but maybe the first act of a film. Let's talk about Robert Friend.

I mean, probably the most likable person to ever have worked with the U.S. Air Force. I mean, the smile on this guy is so endearing. And you got to interview him. And you were probably one of the last people to ever do that, because he unfortunately passed away not too long after you had interviewed him. And he is probably the one person who worked for Blue Book. other than probably Ruppel to really, really tried to get to the truth instead of having the Air Force tell them what to tell the public with this Project Blue Book.

So what was like interviewing Robert? And yeah, any interesting stories to tell about that experience? Definitely. So I'll start off with Jacques Valets. And it was such a privilege and an honor to work with Jacques. And Jacques helped us assemble the pieces of the puzzle together historically. in a way that according to historians it's never been done before,

Jacques did a lot of that, so he knew. And Jacques, ironically, his favorite scene in the whole movie, and he loves a lot of him. He loves all of it. But his favorite scene of the whole movie is this smile from Robert Friend when I think he says, you know, we didn't know what they were

or something. I said, oh, so you guys closed it because you didn't know what they were? And he looks at me and he goes, or we closed Project Bluebird because we did know. And he gives this sort of smile and it's like this little ding in his eye. That was awesome. Really powerful.

See, really, really a poignant moment. So just that look at his eye said so much. And Jacques just, he was like, that's my favorite part of the movie. I mean, loves the children at the end too, but jock, that part in particular. And there are a handful of people that do comment on that.

Again, not as many as I expected. But yeah, that's a beautiful telling moment in the film. Absolutely. And I think that's what really shown through in the film, James, is this isn't surface level. You know, I worked for Blue Book. Yeah, we investigated UFOs. He tried to get to the heart of these people

who were dramatically affected by the work they did. Like whether they believed anything was of extraterrestrial or, origin or not or multidimensional, whatever they think the source of UFOs are or aren't, it affects them. And I mean, that couldn't be more true than probably my favorite part of the film. And that was the Socorro case. I know this is one of those cases that you've chased for so long. A lot of us have.

And man, did you get to the part of this one? You spoke to his wife, Lonnie Zamora. So I guess for maybe some of our listeners who aren't aware of the case, could you maybe just give us the brief rundown of the Sequoro case? And then the stuff you found from the National Archives, these letters, yeah, please, please. Enlightness on this entire event. This is funny because this happened in 1964, April 24th, at roughly 5 p.m. in Sicoro, New Mexico, which is about 44 miles away from Trinity's site

where they detonated the first atomic bomb in 1945. So you've got a police officer, Longis Amor, who witnesses a strange object in the sky, a sort of a flash that catches his eye when he's in hot pursuit of a speeding vehicle. It's a Friday. He discontinues his pursuit of this speeding vehicle and goes to investigate what this potential light explosion

or whatever it was. He thought there was a dynamite shack up in the hill. He thought, but maybe the dynamite shack stopped off. He didn't know. And he came across an object in Norio that he initially was like, is that a car or is that a roll off down into the ravine? And like, are those two children? Like, what am I looking at?

He slowly came to the realization and looking at something otherworldly. It's an egg to craft. And there were two beans, small diminutive figures in white suits, standing and sort of walking around the bottom of this egg-shaped craft. He got eye contact with one of them. He was still sitting in his car, and he was a couple hundred yards away. And he was leaning out the window with the car stop, and he was looking at him. And one of them, look, I sat down with his wife, and she had an article that no one has ever seen that, says he was actually calling out to see if they were okay, and that one of them turned and looked

him in the eye. But that's, we don't know that for sure, but we do know for sure is that one of the beings turned and looked him right in the eye. Lonnie then drove his car a little further around this little bend to get a closer look, and he got within 50 feet of the landed UFO. And as his car pulled up, he heard a big thump sound. He said it reminded him of a tank hatch closing. He was in the military.

and he didn't see the beings anymore. And then he took two or three strides out of the car towards his object, putting him roughly 35 feet away, 35, 40 feet away. And it suddenly made a loud noise and a blue flame, and this is very important, this blue flame came out the bottom of this egg. And it went in the ground like a knife through warm butter. It didn't stir up the dust and rocks like a propulsion. you know, conventional propulsion rocket would do.

It went into the ground, like without disturbing the ground, a blue flame. And the object lifted up making a loud noise until it got to about 20 feet off the ground, at which point it went completely silent and the blue flame was gone. And then it just sat there motionless, you know, he said you could hear pin drop. It had a symbol on the side of it, which I'll get into detail on that in a second. And then it flew off to, I think it was the southwest over a place called Magdalene. In any case, first police officer get on the scene, the prints in the ground from the landing gear, there were prints from the footprints of the two beings, exactly where Lonnie had said he'd seen them,

corresponding to that. There was burn marks and the plants are still smoldering from the propulsion, whatever this thing was. And there were military officers on the scene within an hour, Richard T. Holder. They documented the entire landing site. They rope the area off. And it's considered the most credible, well-documented close encounter of the third kind in U.S. history. And the police officer, Lauren Zamora, everybody believed him. I mean, he was one of the most, he was rock-solid witness. But let me, I investigated the case really, really thoroughly, really thoroughly over about a five-year period.

went and got to know his, and getting into Zocoro and getting into that tight-knit community was not an easy thing to do. I befriended one person who then eventually introduced me to Lonnie's wife, Mary, you know, kind of got, became friends with her. I eventually bought their truck, which I have in California now, became really good friend. And his, then she introduced me to his co-worker that he worked out at the dump site for years. I got him on camera. I went to, I interviewed his daughter, Diane, which unfortunately, that part of the interview for whatever reason ended up on the interim floor, I met with his son Michael. They all confirmed for me that two things. One, his wife said he was never the same after that day.

And his daughter said the one thing that he confirmed unequivocally is that the Air Force really, really didn't want him to talk about it, especially the aspect of the encounter that involved the beans. because it's one thing to be, you know, unable to identify, you know, an airborne object. It's another thing when you've got beans on the ground. So that aspect of the encounter was really downplayed within the Air Force Project Blue Book Files. But when I went to the National Archives with the guy who wrote the book on the case, Ray Stanford, a Sequoro Saucer in a Pentagon pantry. It's the definitive book on the case. I went to stay with Ray for like five days in the East Coast.

It was really funny, you know. And Ray had like the rocks from the landing gear, from the rocks breaking and had the landing gear scraping up against the rocks. He talked about these pieces of metal shavings. I mean, this whole aspect of it didn't end up in the movie. But I said, Ray, you know, we're not very far from the National Archives. Let's go. See what we can find.

he had so much resistance. He was like, James, that's going to be an utter incomplete waste of time, anything that would have been found 50 years ago, it was already found. And we got this kind of argument. I was like, well, that kind of, you know, attitude, yeah, nothing is going to be found. I said, well, I'm going.

And he said, fine, you go. We got kind of an argument. And I stomped out of his house. I dumped in my rent-a-car. I started to back out of the driveway. And I see his face, look out the curtains from the living room. He kind of peers out. He looks at me and he gives me this like, just hold up, just wait a minute.

So he comes out and he goes, okay, I'll come with you, but I'm taking my own car because after 10 or 15 minutes, I'll be thoroughly, you know, just done with the whole prospect of finding anything. I said, fine. So he jumped in his car. I done to my car and off he went. Well, without boring your audience to death with the details, suffice to say, we eventually get the manager and we're like, look, we've been on this floor, we've been on that floor,

we get microfilms. This guy right here, Ray Stanford, was at this landing site, was at this location, investigated personally in this case, and we know there's a lot of documentation that's just simply not in the microfilm files, and we're not finding it. And he goes, okay, I'll tell you what, you guys go get some lunch. Let me see what I can do about this. Come back in 20 minutes, or half an hour where it was. So Ray and I kind of looked at each other, we're like, okay, this is kind of exciting.

So off we go. we have us in lunch we come back out this man comes with a cart on wheels all these folders all original project blue book folders okay not microfilms not copies all originals

when this cart rolled out there was a golden glow around it I mean I'm not kidding it it was like and it comes out and it comes out and red and I looked at each other. We were like giddy as kids on Christmas morning. Like we couldn't believe it. Ray looked at me and I looked at him and we both were like, oh my God. I can't believe this happening. So we like, go back. We get this whole thing. We're like, oh, my God. We're like,

they're like, okay, well, you got to put some gloves on and you've got to sit down and you've got to take one paper out and put a, you know, a placement holder. And we're like, geez, it's going to take forever. Get to walk that paper over to a printing or make a copy. And we're like, there's got to be a faster way. Well, I had gone back and I was thinking to myself, well, hell, we got the originals. I'm going to go back to 1952 and see what I got, Project Blue Book. So I went back to the desk and I said, hey, we loved, if you wouldn't mind terribly, we'd love the Project Blue Book Pilots from 1952 because I was like, what the hell are we going to uncover from the 1954 from the 1950s signing statements from the pilots?

Like, come on. So she goes, actually, you know, we kind of made a mistake. We weren't supposed to give the originals. but since you have them, you guys can have them until we close. I said, well, okay, well, I take what we can get. I said, well, is there a faster way to do this? She's like, well, you can go get your own flatbed scanner and you can bring it to, you know. So I said, Ray, wait here.

I went off to an office depot. I got myself a big glass flatbed scanner. Boom. Set that thing up. We were like a well-lobed machine. Now we were going through there. All the people I look over. and we've been there for like five hours, right?

We're going to go there until the sun was down, till they were locking us out. I look over at Ray, and Ray is holding this document. He's sitting right next to me. He's holding this document, and he's got a tear in his eye, and he goes, I found it.

I found it. I said, what, Ray, what? He goes, oh, my God, it's in Dr. Heideck's own handwriting. He goes, the symbol, the symbol has been a point of contention for all these decades, For 50 years, people have been telling him he's full of doggie doo.

What happened was the initial symbol that was seen on the side of the craft that was rather large in red. And remember, Lonnie came within 35 to 40 feet from this object that was sitting on the ground, okay? He saw this thing really well. Well, when the first military officer got on the scene, Richard T. Holder, he was like, look, we got to obfuscate. we've got to change this symbol and say it's something else so we can immediately identify any hoaxers that are saying, hey, we saw the same thing. They would know immediately it was a hoax. So they went from the symbol, the real symbol, was an inverted V. I don't know why they don't just say an A, but it was an inverted V, okay, like this, with a line here, a line here, and one line at the top. That was the original.

So it's like this with lines, two lines here, and then one across the top, right? So, and Ray has been saying this for decades, for 50 years he's been saying this, and no one's really believed in them. All this controversy is willing. Even Kevin Randall wrote his book and didn't put the real symbol in, and I had kind of an issue about that. But in any case, we found it. And not only did we find it, we found it in Dr. Heinex's own handwriting, and he didn't like describe the symbol. He actually drew it. So, yeah, I know.

It was a huge find, like a huge big deal. and that document didn't even end up in the movie. Can you believe that? I know. It's unbelievable. I know. I know. Believe me, I know.

But I'm telling you, I'm telling you, we had a screening of the film multiple times, and the last screening I had of the movie, I spent a month in China. I went to South America, I've been investigating the Virginia landing crash case from 1996, which is largely considered the Roswell of Brazil. I couldn't get it all into one movie.

You simply couldn't do it. And so we had a last screening of about 200, maybe 170 to 200 people in a theater when we had a rough cut with my voice, Peter Coyote had latest tracks yet. And I can tell I'm the director, man. I look around. I know when people are losing interest. And after the two-hour mark, people were kind of like looking at their watches and adjusting their seats. Some people were going to the bathroom. I was like, ah, yeah.

I got to cut this stuff down. And so we were brutal about it. And there were times, excuse me, in the edit room, I'm not kidding you. One time in particular, I had a whole block of stuff in the timeline that you know, had an editor and software works. You got a timeline. You got your video clips, your audio clips, things of that, your special effects, filters, whatnot. And you have multiple backups of the timeline.

But there was a one section of the timelines, like, you know, big, law. We must have represented like two years of work, maybe two and a half years of work. And I had to close my eyes and delete it. and it was literally like a gut punch. Like I, of course, nobody misses it because they don't know what was in there. But for me, nobody was into getting all that stuff. It was like literally when I hit the delete button,

I went, oh, you know, like, oh, it was a physical like, ugh. But we had to do what's called killing your darlings. And, you know, the film had to have a slow way. It had to continue, you know, we did what we had to do. And so a lot of stuff. man, I was going to say I'm a playwright, and that was one of the first things we learned in my playwriting courses. Instead of Kill Your Darling's, my professor said, kill your babies, which was a little controversial. But it's true, man, it's not easy.

It's not easy to work so hard to, to, you know, spend all that time on something and know that you can't make a five-hour film. Like, that would be a series, which we'll get to. I know there's maybe some inklings of something like that, but, dude, I get it. Varhinia is one of the most amazing cases. I know how much you hold that one close, so that had to be really hard. I understand. Oh, my God. I was knocking on doors in the town of Virginia, going to the town square, following leads.

Like, I'm telling you, man, you have no idea how hard I worked in Virginia. And I remember this sound guy from Sao Paulo, South Paulo. I don't pronounce you. Like, I'm the crazy American investigator. It's like, what do you do? You can't just knock on people. You're out of your mind? Like, you can't just ask you have strangers in the street?

I was like, I did it. I got results. And I'll never forget when we interviewed the sister of the military police officer, Marco Choreszi, who died after allegedly handling one of these beings. I'm interviewing the sister and there was her husband, like, literally standing 50 feet away. I could tell her husband wanted nothing to do with her going on. camera. I mean, nothing to do with it. Like, you could tell this has been a major issue within the family, within the town, and to do her brother justice, she'd be to go on camera. And I remember this,

I remember this Brazilian, you know, Sam guy kind of looked over me and he goes, you got to be the luckiest bastard I think of every bad because we, we were literally knocking on doors. Well, that entire film, that section of the, of the movie, sorry, gone. So, It's hard. It's hard. I know. Well, I guess kind of wrapping up Sikoro, there is one more aspect to that that I'd love to talk you about, James. And this actually, this came from one of your editors and your producers who told me this little tidbit. If you're willing to talk to us about it, these letters that were written to Lonnie Zamora at the time. First of all, I mean, like you mentioned earlier, this event was not. a positive aftermath for this guy. It went into his career, his reputation. Was not a career enhancing move. Exactly. And I mean, there were two times in the film that I actually cried. And that was one of them. When I heard in his own voice say, this like ruined my life, that hit me. And then there's another part, which we'll get to you. That made me blubber a little. But the letters,

all these letters were written to him. And supposedly he didn't write. anyone back, but there was one letter that he did write a response to, and you were able to locate that. Is that something you're willing to tell us here on the air? So I, let's see, how can I phrase this without going beyond my comfort zone here? I interviewed Lonnie's co-worker at the dump. I think they worked together for 30 years. I'd have to look at that to know for sure. And it was very, very difficult to get this guy to go on camera. I mean, extremely difficult.

I mean, it took, like, locals really work in this guy. And he finally agreed. And we had no idea, honestly, what he was going to reveal on camera. Of course, that interview didn't end up in the movie either. Unbelievable. And he has since died. So as Mary has died. I'm not sure if the local sheriff that I interviewed has died yet or not, but I interviewed him in the ICU.

That ended up on the room floor. But anyway, we basically learned that there was possibly some evidence that could still be in Lonnie's house. I, in lieu of calling, I went there physically and I talked to his wife, Mary, and told, shared with her the news that I had. and then I offered to rent her house for a couple of weeks and basically turned it upside down, which I did. And if I told your audience, the lengths of which I went to find said evidence,

we'd be here all night. But suffice to say, I do not give up easily. Okay, I turned that place upside down. In the process, I found a black duffel bag in his police locker in a, in a shack shed outside away from the house.

And inside was meticulous keepings of newspaper clippings, articles, letters of correspondence, most of which were never even opened. Some of them were open and clearly not responded to. And I asked Mary, I shared with Mary what we'd found. And look, one of the things is, it was, so many people responded from all around the world. Like, I just simply couldn't believe how many letters Lonnie had in this. And he had meticulously kept them.

Clearly, he put them all in one spot. And then, as I said earlier, the Air Force did a really good job at getting him to downplay the aspect of the close encounter of the third kind, describing the beans. And that was something that Richard, even Richard T. Holder, had said to him very early on, You know, they took him into the interrogation room. I don't think he got out there to about 1 o'clock in the morning.

The sighting happened at five. The military shut up at about six. And his wife said he came home and he was white as a sheet, you know, and didn't want to talk about it. But in any case, before the military had gotten on the scene, there were local police officers and other people that got to hear the unfiltered account of the beings and all this other stuff. And so that got out and was published in some of the local newspapers.

Lonnie had cut those out and had kept them really special in this little collection of things. And so you'll see when you watch the movie, there's those descriptions of the beans. And the fact that one of them looked right at them and all that stuff that probably would have just been forgotten. I had not been for obviously Ray Stanford and those little clippings. But also letters from around the world of people that seen similar things. There were also many references to people submitting photographs in the letters, okay? And I'm going, why would you, it would say stuff like, enclosed, please find, you know, four photographs of an object very similar to what you described.

I took them in L.A. I took them in here. Like I got a number of those letters. And I'm thinking to myself, why are the, the thing is opened? and there are no photographs in any of these envelopes. Well, I talked to his wife, Mary, and Mary said that he had an ongoing relationship with the Air Force. They would come back and check in on him, call him.

There was a correspondence that went on for quite some time. And I'm convinced, based on what I saw, and I know you asked me about a specific other letter that he did respond to, but I will say that I'm convinced that people sent him photographs of similar objects, because he was like the epicenter of UFO sightings in America at the time. In fact, probably the world because it got so much attention and that he gave those photographs over to the Air Force. Because why else would someone say here,

police flying and closed these photographs of, you know, on a couple of occasions in letters and there's no photographs? Like what else? Give me another explanation. Yeah. Wow. Yep. I mean, again, like that's the thing. When it comes to these cases, you know, they happen.

And then things continue after that. So the fact that they buddied up to him and probably confiscated those photos says a lot. And again, we won't go into all the specifics, but it was a very powerful part of the film. Oh, thank you. One of my favorite parts, too. One more thing I want to mention in this audience out there. This is something that I exhausted every possible avenue. And again, I can remind your viewers, if I told you the level of detail that I went after

some of this footage I'm about to mention to you. We'd be here all night and your eyes would glaze over. But suffice to say, I came across at the National Archives, before I met with Mary Azamora, I came across letters from Kingtonia, or Quintanilla, who was a Project Blue Book manager or chief project officer at Project Blue Book at Ryan Pattison Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio at the time.

Well, it came to my attention. that through Kintanilla, Kintanilla, and Dr. Heinek, through letters of correspondence, which I still have today, that there was a film crew that came to Socorro in, I believe it was May of 1965, but honestly, I'm not exactly sure of that day, but it was months after the sighting. In fact, I think it was under a year. the film was referred to in Air Force memos, Air Force letters of correspondence between Heinek. And basically what was said was, Keentanylis said, you know, it's come to my attention

that there's a film crew that's coming to Socorro and that Lonnie Zamora is going to participate in this film. And we really don't want that. Like I'm really concerned it's going to open up a whole new, the floodgate of inquiries, and we don't want that. He goes, it would be too obvious for me to go through Socorro, but why don't you be passing through and just stop by and pay a visit

and find out what the hell's going on? Is Lonnie really doing this? So I was like, wow, that's interesting. I haven't heard about that case. Well, then I even have the return response letter from Dr. Heinek, who says to Kintanilla, hey, I'm here I am sitting down in Sequooro, New Mexico with all the key players. and the only thing missing is the UFO, kind of, you know, ha-ha,

and confirmed that Lonnie was indeed participating with the film. But that's all I knew. When I came across this duffel bag at Lonnie's house, newspaper clippings cut out, and I got the details of this film. And it was a film called UFO, it was called Phenomena 7.7. Phenomena 7.7.

And the interest was, we were going to call this film initially 701, right? Right. No one is the representative number of cases after 12,000, I think, 618 UFO cases investigated by the United States. Therefore, 7.01 remained unexplained. That was like, it's symbolic of the sovereign, you know, 5, 10, 15% of UFO reports that after careful scientific examination,

defy a terrestrial explanation. So it's symbolic that number 7.01, well, Phenomenon 7.7, 7.7, the producers were Empire Studios, Michael Musto, and a guy named Dr. Frank Stranges. And I was like, oh, okay. And he was like, well, we're calling it Phenomena 7.7 because in 1965, out of this many cases, you know, seven, yeah, it was like seven whatever percent was unexplained. But anyway, it was very kind of similar to, you know, what we were initially called. That's interesting. So they came. I find out that Lonnie

participates in this film in 1965 from Empire Studios with the director and producer Michael Musto and Dr. Frank Strangers. Well, I couldn't find Michael Musto, but I found Dr. Frank Stranges. And I looked him up, and he had just passed, unfortunately.

But I wanted to find where this movie was, okay? And I read more articles about it, and that basically the movie was going to be premiered, And look, it was shot on 16mm color. And it was documented the entire, like, all the witnesses, Lonnie Zamora on camera. No one's ever seen it. And so I was like dying to get my hands on this thing. And I looked up Empire Studios.

I got a hold of Dr. Frank Strange's wife, Julie. And Julie had some medical issues at the time. And she was still, you know, very devastated by the passing of her husband, Frank. And I befriended her. It took me about a year. but then I went through, you know, with her blessing, I went through his storage facilities, which were in Los Angeles,

that were, you know, boxes stacked at the ceiling and all these at 100 degree temperature heat with no ventilation and no windows, and going in there and going through hundreds and hundreds of boxes from top to bottom, looking for a copy of this film. And she kept telling, I know it's here somewhere, and I must have spent two weeks looking for this thing,

pouring sweat can't breathe couldn't find it then i did research on empire studios it had gone bankrupt it was purchased by some other company i contacted that company i had people go into the archives there oh my god long story short after five years i gave up and i never found the film and i'm gonna ask your audience to be patient with me but i think it's called phenomenon 7.7 i'm 99% sure so if anyone ever hears of it or can continue that effort to find it, you'll find 16mm color, you know, interviews, a professionally shot with a budget from Empire Studios in 1965 of one of the most compelling and well-documented UFO close encounters of the third kind in Succorn, New Mexico. But I was unable to get my hands on it.

As the Krispy Chicken Sandwich from 7-Eleven, people always call me loud. And I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm crispy. Did you expect me to whisper? If you want quiet, go eat some soup and reflect. Like, I know I'm a handful. I'm bold. I'm juicy.

Throw some pickles and barbecue sauce on me. And baby, I'm a whole meal. And with seven rewards, I'm just $4. Quiet. No. Crispy, saucy, and $4? Very. Only at 711.

Valley through 62326, participating stores only well supplies lastly app for full terms. You did the dirty work, James. Now it's time for someone else to continue that. So any of my viewers or listeners, I know you are all as tenacious as James is. So get out there to look for that film. We need to find that.

Well, okay, so kind of moving to the second act of the film, James, because I do want to get to some awesome listener questions with you. This is what I have sort of coined B, MIT and A, NYT, before New York Times after New York Times, which seems to be kind of the cusp of UFO disclosure. I hate using that word. I know you do, too. but let's talk about that part of the film.

The people you interviewed about this story that broke in 2017 exploded all over the world. And you were able to get access to a lot of people who a lot of journalists have not. And a very few, I should say. That was Senator Harry Reid, Chris Mellon. Tell me all about this journey in the film. Because this is where it really picked up

for a lot of, I would say probably the younger people. out there who watched the film because this was more modern for them instead of the history lesson of Project Blue Book. Yeah, tell us all about what you found and what they had to say. Okay, so one thing I'd like to say, establish right out the gate here, is that I understand that, you know, the first part of the film is a sort of history lesson. I went to great length. to find never before seen archival footage, newsreel footage, stuff that the world has never seen. And I did it because it'll be the last time I ever do it.

The first half of the film is done. So the second half of the film is to be taken seriously, to be put into context. Because if I succeeded with my goal, and quite honestly it's been a goal that I've had for 26 years and that is to create the seminal feature-length documentary film on the topic of UFOs that can transcend the whole UFO community and penetrate a much broader global audience that has very little information on this very important topic in my opinion than Roswell and Area 51. So that is why I spent as much time as I did on the first half of the film. I had to put what a occurs in the second half in context. I had to walk the audience through, like, the history of the phenomenon, the modern day history of the phenomenon in terms of, you know, the evolution of policy within the Air Force,

how they were trying to deal with this problem. And that was why I did that. And I've read some, I try not to read reviews, but, you know, the same old history. It's like, well, I can't change the fact. The history is the history, okay? We focus on some of the more poignant moments of that historical record. and we do so in a way with new fresh archival material. I know that because I've had even Richard Dolan go,

where did you find that? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right, James. And let me be clear. I'm a no, you know, when I say like history lesson, I mean that in the best of ways because I have been investigating and researching this topic since I was 13 years old.

And that first half of the film, I learned so much that I never knew. So yeah, please, anyone who's, you know, writing reviews saying, I knew all this, I knew all this. No, you didn't. You did not know about a lot of these things that you were able to find. So, yeah, let's be clear. Yeah, that's, it was needed. And I look, and I had to do it.

I just had to because, like I said, they're not going to, look, I know my reaction when I heard about the Rua case in the 90s. When I was doing a film on UFOs in the 90s, three years. three years after that case happened. 1997, I'm trying to get an interview with Steven Spielberg, just naive enough at the time to think I could pull it off. And Stephen said, you know, through our mutual friend, Jenny Yang, hey, yeah, I'm going to go ahead and not meet with you, but I do want you to know there's this case that you should look into

since you're doing a UFO film. And it's a landing and a reported closing counter of the third kind. It took place and brought a day later to school in Africa. I'm thinking to myself, yeah, right. How could that happen in the whole world not knew about it? So I knew what I was up against. If I wasn't going to believe it to the point where I wouldn't even look into it, there's no way the general public could have believed that ever happened.

So I had to set the film up and jokingly we had this mantra in the edit studio. Where are we going? Road to Rua. Road to Rua. We're in a courtroom. We're presenting our case. And we need to build our case and to get to the point in which the audience may just walk away from watching this film thinking that that incident really did. really did happen. Now, probably about four and a half years into production, the New York Times

story breaks. I kind of knew from previous experiences, you know, you get the valleys and the peaks and the level of interest within the media on the topic. It never goes away totally, but sometimes you have these lull periods. And I've seen that. It happened with all films I've ever done on the zombie, and I've done four. And I jokingly was saying in the studio, you know, it was like, well, how are you to end this movie? I said, well, I don't, you know, I, usually there's a sighting that gets promoted, I'm sure something will happen,

you know, it's going to be several years. And, but I had no idea that the secret Pentagon program, A-TIP, was going to wind up on the front page of the New York Times, and then a household name, Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid was going to be the guy who launched it. I mean, my God, that was like the most explosive thing that could have possibly happened. I mean, granted, at a couple of years,

years of production on the film, but my God, what a wonderful, wonderful thing to have occurred. And everything has changed since then. You asked me, how do I know that? It's because I've got people around the world that have been heckling me for decades on my research into this, in my films into this, less so, you know, more recently. But when that story broke, I had people all over, all over, going, maybe you were right. Jesus, James. I I can't believe this. This is amazing. It really changed the climate significantly.

And then, of course, we had our primary targets of, you know, Fravor and Mellon and Reed and Lou Elizondo and the New York Times. And, you know, we had to, you know, I'm not kidding when I said it was at least another two years, at least another two years and possibly more because when we eventually got an interview with Senator Harry Reid, which was a truly wow moment for me in production, he dropped a couple of bombshells, which led to us realizing we had other elements of the phenomenon that we had to cover in the movie, which added an additional year of production, and that is UFOs and nukes.

And, I mean, there were some things that Harry Reid said in your film that instantly went viral, you know, once the film came out and was all over the headlines. And that was pretty, pretty interesting, some of the stuff you had to say. Yeah, so I guess kind of wrapping up that part, James, the UFOs and nukes. This is a very alarming topic within uphology that doesn't get the credit that it deserves. And I think people like Robert Hastings and Salas and individuals like this coming forward and giving their testimony, hundreds of cases. I mean, you compiled so many of these. And one of my favorite parts was the part that you had with map the world.

How many nukes have been detonated? I won't say anything else, but it gave me chills, man. It gave me chill. You know, I got to plug a couple of people there. Robert Hastings made his entire archive available to us. He worked with me night and day. He was absolutely amazing. He deserves all the credit for that.

I mean, it was painstaking and putting that together with my writer, partner, Mark Beresh, who was amazing. And also we have George Knapp was working tirelessly behind the scenes to make it. Harry Reid on board, that was like a window about, oh, maybe like this. I didn't talk to even my partner about it. No one. No one during negotiations they wanted jinx it. And it almost got pulled out from under us the morning of. But yeah, that, you know, you think of UFOs, you know, but then you hear about interacting with our nukes

and penetrating extremely sensitive nuclear weapons facilities and shutting them off. Yeah. Some cases turning them on. that's an intelligence. That's like, whoa, damn, what are they saying to us? Now it's one of my favorite moments, basically, I met with Robert Salas years ago, and he goes, well, the message is pretty clear to me.

It's like taking matches out of the hands of a baby, you know? And that was one of the aspects that Senator Reid had shared with me on camera when we were doing a little walk and talk, getting some B-roll in the hallway, which was massive. I mean, I couldn't believe that he didn't reveal it. and I didn't ask during the sit-down, but he did reveal it during the walk-and-talk for the B-roll. And he said that was one of the more alarming aspects of the phenomenon. And that's why we ended up doing the section that we did with the U.S. and Nukes, which I find it's unbelievable.

It is. And I think it's only just begun of what we're going to learn about that part of all of this. But kind of wrapping up my personal questions here, James. Zimbabwe. We have to just cover it briefly. We won't go through the event. Anyone who wants to know about the event, go watch the film. You cover it in great detail.

But what you did is the case involved child witnesses, which is amazing. These cases with children, they make some of the best witnesses because they have no filtering mechanism. They don't have preconceived notions about what they saw. They just tell you what the hell happened. And I wish we had more of those types of people out there. So, but you caught up with them. You went to Zimbabwe and you interviewed these witnesses, God, decades later. And that was the other part of the film that made me cry was when you interviewed these people and all of them, all of them stick to the story, which is incredible.

You know, and it shows how much to affect their lives. I get goosebumps just thinking about it. It's the most amazing case I've ever investigated. Absolutely. You know, looking at, at Randall Nickerson, by the way, he's got a film coming out. One of our co-producers, Dan Farrow, is producing it with Randall. He's been working on it for a long time, and he needs to get credit where credit is due. He's done an extensive research on that case.

He was very helpful in locating some of the witnesses today and making that and pulling that off. And look, I had a level of resistance from day one with that case, because my investor at the time, this guy, Larry, was just like, you know, you mean to tell me? I said, I get it. I said, look, I had the same reaction. Just, Larry, hold on. Just please. I said, just look at, you got to just, look at this archive footage of the children being interviewed by a Harvard psychiatrist.

Just take a moment, you know, I don't believe. Because, look, it's really hard for anyone to wrap their mind around how a sighting of that significance. You've got a UFO, multiple UFOs, land in broad daylight during morning recess. There were 100 kids. People often say 66, it's closer to 100, because 66 went on camera. 100 kids in the playground that witness in broad daylight, and the occupants get out and interact telepathically with the kids. And look, you'd go and ask anyone randomly on the street, and on street corner,

they're going to think you're smoking a crack pot. I mean, honestly, no one's going to believe it. But I'm telling you, when you look at the testimony of the children, then you track them out and you talk to them 20 years later, and then you go to the location in Africa, and you meet with more of the students, now young adults, and then the school teacher, listen very carefully. At the end of the movie, what Judy Bates says,

who's now the headmistress, you really have to pay attention and listen to what she says because she apologizes to the children for her behavior, at the time, her unwillingness to sort of back the kids up, and then sort of confirms that she was dealing with stuff from her own personal experience of that incident. It's quite remarkable. And a lot of people miss it, but if you listen very carefully to what she says, she's, you know, she's confirming what the kids saw, and she's confirmed in a way that would definitely suggest that she was a witness as well.

Absolutely. And I think it's important to also stress this idea that when a child comes to a adult with something like this, of course they try to brush it off. And so did the news. And this goes for the Westall case, which you cover as well, and a teacher who came forward with that one as well. I wouldn't exactly say he came forward. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.

We'll let the viewers debate that. But yeah, I think this idea of children being really good witnesses really shown through and the messages they were given. Again, there's so much to this case and you cover it so well. So we'll let the viewers look at that. But yeah. Let me say one thing, if I may, briefly.

That was that and Sikoro were two of the most challenging edits. Clearly there's so much content. You know, like I said, Sakura, I interviewed the old family and co-workers and local sheriff and all the documentation.

I mean, there's only something you could put in, you know, in 10 minutes, 15 minutes. That case, Zimbabwe, Rua, we probably spent over 1,000 editing hours on that piece, and it was pretty good. And I eventually got a new writing partner, this guy, Mark Beres, and he is an incredibly smart and talented guy, who just happened to have worked with John Mack during that time in the 90s and even traveled to Africa with him. That case was very close to his heart. He'd been thinking about it for 20 years. In fact, he founded a company planting trees after he heard about the testimony from the children and the environmental impact and all that stuff. And he's since responsible for planting 10 million trees. That case was so close to him.

He came into the studio with me, you know, pretty late on when we had. had a pretty good rough cut of that section. And it took, like, myself and three other editors take after take after take. I mean, it was a monster to get a handle on. And Mark came in. and he goes, well, let me have a look. And I said, Mark, I think we've got a pretty good cut. He goes, well, let me come in and have a look. So he came in and had a look. And he was one of those guys that was so fastidious about everything that it was, like, annoying. Because I'd sit in the end of room just going, you know, look over and I'm like, oh, Mark. He goes, oh, no, there's a statement here with one of these kids, and we're looking through like 15 hours of material.

It's here. You know, no, this is important, James, and I'm just totally annoyed. Just going, oh, come on. Like, I've been working on this for years. And he was right. Mark was right, because Mark made these little changes, these little bits of testimonials that may seem insignificant at the time, but that just had that next layer of not only you'd credibility, but storytelling that it really got that section to really pop. And, you know, the ending was kind of an accident.

I think I've talked about this before, but I was amazed at hearing the accounts of the children now as adults, hearing them after having 20 years to think about and process, you know, this whole event. A lot of them never even spoke to their partners about it after all 20 years because they were tired of defending it. But listening to the adults, you know, talking about an event that occurred 20 years ago as if it happened yesterday. You know, a level of description of the encounter and watching them draw what they saw. And I created this whole montage of the adults' voices, but them as children.

And I worked really hard on it. I spent weeks and weeks on it. And I didn't know where to put it. And so I sort of bumped it to the end of the timeline. and I don't know if you've heard this or not, but I was like, oh, I like this. I like where this is going,

because sometimes in you're in the edit studio, you just try things out. Like, do I like this? Does this work? This might work, and like a lot of times you scrap something, but you don't know. You have to explore and go down that rabbit hole.

And I did, and I was liking the direction it was going. You look at the children's faces, but you're hanging there as adults, talking about the impact and the effect it was having on their emotions and all this stuff, and the adults not believing them

and not offering them support and extracting, all this information out of them without actually giving them therapy and like helping them understand like what had just happened. And it was really great, great little moment. I took that chunk and I put it at the end of the timeline and I said, I'll revisit that in a few months. Well, during that period, I inadvertently, totally accidentally deleted the audio of all that hard work I'd done. I mean, we're talking like weeks gone. And I was like, oh my God, I can't believe I did that. I was like, I don't know if I have the courage to try to do that again.

I was like, ah. And the playerhead one day just kept going because I forgot to hit the space bar, which stops the player head in the timeline. And it plays over the children's faces that I'd edited with no sound. And there was like some soundtrack that was music playing, but no, no interviews, no them talking, just the faces, music. And I went, oh my gosh. Wow. that's powerful. Just, you know, they say an expression is worth a thousand words. Boy, all the expressions of those children's faces right after the incident was the most powerful thing I'd ever seen.

Yeah. I knew right then and there, I was like, this film's ending with the children. That's it. Exactly, man. Well, and I think that's what this film is about. I mean, it ends with the next generation, always. You know, this message of this is what happened then. this is what happens now. Whatever these intelligence are that presumably visited these children

or what message they wanted to convey, they did it to the children for a reason. And I think that's really stressed in what the kids now adults have done with their lives. I mean, you showed what these people did with their lives after saying that this event affected them moving forward. social workers, you know, environmentalists, civil rights lawyers. It's incredible to see that these children went on to do amazing things and attribute it to this event. That's what really kind of tugged at my heartstrings.

Because you know me, man, I'm all about the aftermath of an event and how it affects people. So I'm so happy you ended the film that way. Isn't it just like, I mean, it, you know, it's funny. I have not watched. the film since I completed it. I have not watched it. I needed to step away from it, but

I say this to your audience. Like when you eventually, if you read the film or if you buy it, if you do decide to purchase it, you got to get it on iTunes or Vimeo because you get three hours of bonus material for the same price. Other platforms, unfortunately, just didn't offer that. When you watch it,

do yourselves a favor and watch it with good speakers because we were going to be in movie theaters. And movie theaters recommended that I did a 5.1 Dolby surround mix. Well, that requires a sound engineer. Sorry, I got something in my eye. That requires a sound engineer in weeks and weeks of really hard and expensive work. Like, geez, you know. But I tell you, people told me, James, you don't understand how important this is.

You really need to go the extra mile. And I literally went to the bank. I took out a loan to do this last bit. And I think it took the guy the better part of six weeks, maybe eight weeks, something like that. And he's like, okay, we're ready for you. And we'd send him the files for all the Peter Coyote interview and all that stuff. And I went down into this beautiful theater, like big screens, surround Dolby speakers. I mean, it was really an impressive, like, set up.

And we watched the damn movie. And I felt like I was watching my movie for the first time all by myself. and I haven't seen it since. You know, we put some credits and things of that nature, but basically the whole film start to finish, color correction, audio sweetening, surround mix. And if you have a Dolby 5.1, that section of the film in Secorra, New Mexico,

the voices from the letters, they bounce around the room. Yeah. Like, the sounds, oh my gosh, Jesus, please watch this movie with good speakers, because my lord, I could not believe the difference it made watching it with the way it was designed to be heard. Because like I said, this was going to be in movie theaters. We got Robin that unfortunately for now.

And so it's truly a spectacular experience. In my humble opinion, when you see what this audio, this six-time Emmy Award-winning audio engineer did. Because, wow, it was really impressive. Yeah, and I mean, kudos to everyone who worked on the film in terms of who did the score and the cinematography and this and that. Everyone involved. We won't name them name by name. That's what credits are for. But just beautiful job by everyone, I have to say, James, I've seen every horrible UFO documentary out there and every good one out there as well.

Suffered through some bad ones. but this just hit every mark that a UFO researcher could hope for in a UFO film. So I would love, if you're willing to stick around, I will fire through some listener questions here. Is that cool? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Yeah.

I never have received this many listener questions for an episode. So this is fun for me. It really depends on how much you're willing to share. But let's just go through these, man. Some of them you already answered. So apologies to those out there if I didn't don't get to your question. Let's see here. Rick on Facebook asks,

Luis Elizondo endorsed the hell out of your film, saying it said things he could not and that it was entirely accurate. That is a hell of an endorsement coming from the former head of the Secret Pentagon UFO program. So Rick wants to know, given that most of the film was about a non-human human, intelligence, James. What are your current thoughts about the alien theory? This guy, Rick, he buys into it.

But what do you think? What was your intent with the film? Was it to say some of this could be alien? Or was it to say we don't know? I have drawn the conclusion, and I've asked this question to the highest level of people I've ever been in the room with. I want to know what is going on.

And I really want to know. Believe me, it's been a like, almost my entire adult life has been i'm a tourist i get to the bottom of things i don't know if we'll ever know in our lifetimes i'd like us too i i don't know but what what i do feel comfortable saying and this is speculation but it's informed speculation is that there is clearly an omnipresent intelligence that has the ability to manate F.S itself, it's nuts and bolts, it's also psychic in a multitude of ways around the globe. Okay. And it plays tricks on us sometimes. They have a sense of humor. They also, you know, can read our

thoughts, which sounds a little crazy, but I can't tell you how many times I've talked to witnesses about it. I mean, look, I'll give you one example of that alone. That's with Parvice Jafari. He was chasing to Jennifer Tehran in 1976. He was the Iranian general. And he decided just thinking about trying to shoot this thing

that he was chasing. He literally went to do it and his whole control panel locked up. He was like, he said to himself, boy, maybe that wasn't such a good idea. But I could go into detail after detail after detail about this, but they have the ability to read our minds.

They're technological. Their technology is light. years advanced from our own. You know, clearly I'm of the camp. If they wanted to do his harm, we would have known it a long time ago. I don't believe that. One of the things I learned in the, sort of organically in the edit room is I was working with this guy, Lance Mungia, he's a great guy.

He was an editor. He came over some fresh ideas and thoughts and came up with some brilliant, brilliant strategies. But he goes, James, you know, we should really, and David Marler had all this wonderful archive audio and stuff, newspaper clippings and everything. And he goes, we should take out a map

and see where these sightings are all happening in the 40s and 50s. And, you know, so we did this map out, Texas and New Mexico, we're going, oh, look at this. Proximity to Trinity site. That's right here. And these bunkers are right there. Roswell's over here. Huh.

We're going, hmm, that's interesting. This level of activity all around this you know, within proximity to all this nuclear activity. Well, what does that say to me personally? Then we looked at the UFOs and nukes aspect of it. They're clearly interested in our nuclear capabilities or the birth of the atomic age. I mean, all that stuff was happening right around that hot spot.

And we made that correlation. Of course, we read about it, you know, but to actually like be in the interim going, looking on the map and putting pins in going, there's got to be a correlation here, you know. And so maybe it's a parallel, you know, a parallel universe. Maybe it's, you know, another intelligence that's paralleling ours, you know. Yeah, possibilities are us, man.

Us from the future, you know. Be all the above. I don't know. But they definitely, I feel very comfortable to say they clearly have an interest in our atomic and nuclear capabilities. No question about it. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me about it.

Yeah. Well, okay, so Craig on Twitter asks, James, have you gotten any feedback from those in government who've seen the film? And if so, is there anything you could share with us? Anyone, you know, top brass or anything, reach out to you after the film came out? Yes, so I know my understanding is that both Biden and the Trump campaign got either a briefing or a copy of the film. I know that it's been making the rounds at the Pentagon because.

we got a call from a former CIA guy who confirmed that was happening, some of which were happy about the fact that the film was coming out and some of them were not. Because obviously, you know, we deal with Roswell, the potential crash of an alien spaceship. And I think they'd rather that just like disappear and, you know, because it's like one thing to talk about unidentified flying objects around, you know, buzzing around the skies. There's another one to say we've actually recovered one of these things. So, yeah. So yeah. So yeah. Pretty, clear indication that there's been a level of interest in the White House and among different camps in Pentagon for sure. And look, this is, this is not a quick flash in the pan journey we're

on here, getting the film out. This is going to be probably the better part of a year process with, you know, different screenings. We're in talks with, you know, different streamers for global platforms. You know, we're not in a hurry. We're putting the film out and we're going to get it out to the whole world and that process is going to take the better part of two years. I'm sorry, you're here. Excuse me. Hey, slow and steady race, man. Every time. Every time. All right. Well, our resident quantum physicist deep, he asks, beyond isotopic ratios in relation to the samples that Gary Noan and Jacques Valet were in possession of James and had tested.

Was there anything else anomalous about the samples, to your knowledge, that Jacques Fela is in position of. So what ended up in the film is what got kind of got the teeth pulled out of it at the end because of a couple of things. One, Jacques is very cautious of not making any concrete assertions without peer review as well as being published in a scientific journal. So I know that Jacques was very, very concerned about maintaining a fairly conservative position. I know that Gary had his concerns with this association with Stanford University

and that aspect of it. So we kind of had to tone it down because when we got in the actual lab, they were revealed a lot more than which would unfortunately end. They needed to get approval. It had to kind of get signed off on. And so we kind of toned that level of it down. But I do know that, and look, I'm no scientist, okay. I'm not going to even pretend like I am.

But I do know that the level of excitement was pretty high when they were looking at something that was manufactured that was engineered at an atomic level and they didn't know exactly why or how but that was Kerry felt quite confident that was gonna they will find out and that's going to potentially lead to other breakthrough technology

and this sort of thing so that's about as far as I can go on that yeah yeah I think that's about as far as a lot of us can go with that in terms of our scientific knowledge of isotopic ratios yeah look even people like Tom DeLong and to the Stars Academy and whatnot, they've got same, you know, the same sort of, not the exact same, but materials they're in possession of that are manufactured at the atomic level as well. So there has to be something to it. Only time will tell.

But Luis, Luis on Twitter asks James, you dived into CE3 cases in the phenomenon film. And I was wondering if you will continue reporting and investigating credible close encounter of the third kind or more cases in the future. And she also asks, and this is probably the most popular question, one of two most popular questions. Has Joe Rogan contacted you yet? This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner

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Saturday, May 16th and 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific time. Okay, so let's get the first part of it is the answer to that is yes, I will, I'm never going to do another history section. We've done it. Moving on, okay? So now, like, for instance, the Varsania case, I'm clearly going to do something with that.

We're in talks with major streamers about a miniseries. No question. of that in terms of the people like Joe Rogan, sit tight. Yep. We'll leave it at that. Yeah, yeah. Always leaving us with something, James. I love it.

Tom on Twitter asks, you've talked in recent interviews about how you have consistently run into reports of UFO witnesses encountering men in black, something that we didn't really talk about in the film or in this discussion. So do you have any theories about the purpose? or Jane of the Men in Black. Yeah, what are your thoughts on the MIBs? I didn't believe it. Well, I wouldn't say I didn't believe it

because I talked to people dating back to the 90s that I'd heard these reports and I was just like, I don't know, it's almost like they went over my head. I wouldn't hear them and then I just wouldn't register because I'm thinking to myself, come on, really? Like these guys showed up in suits, like really? Come on.

Then I heard another one and another one and another one and five years later another one. and another one, another one, and another one, and really credible reports of another ones. And finally, I was in South America, meeting with the mother of two of the daughters that came face to face as one of these live beings from that alleged crash in Virginia, Brazil in 1996.

And then I'm talking to the mother in her home. Like, I mean, this woman is not trying to sell crazy. And she's just like, yeah, and then these guys and suits came over. And I went, okay, I've heard enough. These guys exist. And sometimes they're menacing. sometimes less so. Sometimes they're there to take whatever evidence.

They're from an unknown government agency. I know that I talked about this a little bit with Christopher Mellon because we've been doing a lot of interviews together. And I'm not sure if I went beyond his comfort zone, but I started talking about it. It's from my personal experience from people that I've talked to, witnesses, and I can give accounts until I'm blue in the face. I checked in with Christopher Mellon after that.

The last interview that we did together, I was like, I hope it didn't go beyond your company. comfort level. I don't want to associate you with me. He goes, no, no, you didn't say anything that I was uncomfortable with. And I was like, okay, I just talked about men in black. You seem to be okay with that. But look, I didn't believe it. I mean, I don't know what agency they're from, but they're very interested. And look, the better the case and the likelihood of any decent evidence, they're damn straight. They're going to show up. Yeah. Yeah. In some form or fashion. Yep. I agree with you. All right. Nick on Twitter asks, you brought up the most pristine,

AP video that you'd personally ever seen in an interview with Rich Dolan recently. And Nick wants to know, have you had any further contact with the guy who was in possession of this video and will we ever see it? Great question. I got messaged by two people after that Richard Dolein interview. I was like, wow, I should have brought up a few other things as well because he's got quite an audience and an audience that's pretty, you know, plugged in. And one of the people confirmed, he goes, I saw that video too in 2001. I was like, oh my God, you signed. He goes, I said, how do you remember it? He goes exactly like you remember it.

I said, great. I can't believe it's the first person I've heard in 25 years that said that. Then I got contacted by another person and that other person is a private investigator, homicide cases, and he is looking into it. That's fair. That's all we can ask for. All right. Well, here we go. One of your editors actually chimed in is well here, James. And that's Lance, you mentioned earlier. He wants to know what through lines of a cover-up that you found via investigative journalism, stories about people, you know, being forced to shut up or about what they saw, being paid off, threatened, humiliated, physical evidence that was disappearing. He put it, yeah, what do you think? Is there a clear cover-up in all of the research? that you've done.

Hi, Lance, by the way. I think that Lance knows where the bodies are. I really do. I'm kidding. Kidding. We put it past him. Yeah, no, it was interesting having, I think one of the most telling moments for me

was when I was in Australia and I met with a couple of witnesses that had been silent for 50 years. One of them was a school teacher. It was a science teacher. And I know that he was a witness because I talked to all, A, the papers, but I also talked to the then-children, now adults that were standing next to him. And again, I won't bore your audience with details on how that interview came about.

But it was one of the more difficult things I challenged to do to get him to come forward. But he said that he had visits from Guy, he was at least one man in a suit and another one in a military uniform and they threatened him in no uncertain terms and on multiple multiple things reasons why he cannot talk about it didn't talk about it for 50 years yeah yeah I mean look I think that's changing now I really do I haven't I mean the last story I heard about these guys menacing witnesses was in the 90s

and I'm just I'm sorry I'm just trying to think if I I've heard any more recent cases. Well, the 2006 O'Hare, but I think that was more of a question of the United Airlines not wanted to be associated with pilots who see UFOs or apt to see UFOs. I think that was less of a government shutdown or cover-up, less so. But I think things are changing.

I mean, look at what's happening right now. Look at the fact that people like former Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, coming forward and publicly, you know, not only making those incredible states, but endorsing a film that deals with, you know, closing encounters of third kind and all these other unambiguous UFO encounters. It's very encouraging sight. Christopher Mellon, all the work he's doing, Lou Elizondo, like, you know, whether you like two stars Academy or not, it's quite an influential group of people getting together and making stuff happen.

And so I think I'm incredibly excited for the future of this. I really think that we might just be reaching a tipping point. I honestly believe that. I do too. And we'll get to that in a minute what the government is currently doing in terms of the UFO issue. But let's get to this one here. Derek on Twitter asks, do you believe that full disclosure would fundamentally change humankind, this big grand capital D disclosure? I mean, I know you're not a big fan of it.

I'm not either of it ever happening. But yeah, if it did, James, what would change? Everything or nothing? I am firmly convinced that if the floodgates opened and it was revealed what is known, I think two things. I think one, it's going to open up the floodgates of inquiries of which a lot of things they don't have the answers to. I really don't believe they know who they are, where they come from, what they want. I really believe in my heart of hearts. Yeah, of course they know they're real, and I'm sure they've recovered the stuff.

And I'm sure that Roswell happened the way they said it happened. But that doesn't change the fact that, you know, just because you have a piece of the debris, that you have the answers, you know, who they are, where they come from what they want. I think anybody who says they do is full of doggie-dudu. I really do, believe that. And look, my position can be challenged, and that's fine. I'm just speaking from my personal perspective and from people that I've talked to, and I've talked to pretty high-level people around the world. And I'd love to say that they do know what's going on. But the other prong to that whole potential revelation is, I think it could be just exactly what the world needs right now.

I think that it would force us to see ourselves for who we really are. And that's one race and one planet. And I firmly believe that. It sounds like a kumbaya moment here. But how could you not? How could it not have a unifying effect on all of you? humanity. So I'm very optimistic about it. And I think even if it's a little scary, we don't have a lot of all the answers. That's okay. Yeah. I don't think we're ever going to get those answers. Honestly, that's my my personal opinion. And I think you're right. I think the world is not doing too good right now. A lot going on. And I'm not just talking here in, you know, these very western eyes that us Americans usually look through. Yeah, we've got political turmoil. We've had it in the past. We'll have it again. But a worldwide pandemic. I mean, this is killing the world. The world itself is dying every day

from the things we've done to our own planet. So, hey, if there's going to be some sort of intervention from another intelligence, I think we're inching closer to them finally being like, let's cut the shit, let's help them out, and then let's see what happens. You know, it's really funny. I've thought about this in the past. And again, this is just total speculation. I need to emphasize that to the 10th degree. But I've, had a thought for some time now that maybe just maybe the level of awareness reaches a certain point globally of their existence, their influence. That consciousness gets to a certain level. That might be a tipping point as well for them revealing themselves more openly.

Again, total speculation. But I've had that thought on a number of occasions that maybe they felt we weren't ready. I don't know. Just say it. That's a good point. I truly think we are on the phenomenon's timetable. I really do. I think whatever it is, whatever variables are involved with it, that disclosure is not going to come from the government.

It's going to come from each individual seeing a UFO, having a close encounter, having a brush with a paranormal, whatever, whatever it is. We're on their timetable. And I think you're right. Once enough people finally acknowledge this, and I think we're getting closer to the work you're doing, the work Tom DeLong's doing, and all these other people getting involved with this topic, hopefully we'll get to that point

where they'll finally make themselves known. But kind of wrapping up the listener questions here, James. This is probably the most important listener question we have. And I don't know if you're going to be willing to answer it, but I'm going to try. Dean Aliotto asks, what was your craft service budget for the film? I had to, man, I had to.

Oh, my God. I think it was like a buck 50 or something. Some McDonald's, right? Yeah. Value menu. Value menu. Well, you know what's really funny is, I've said this before,

but we literally edited this movie at the end of a dirt road in a little shack that had an extension cord running from the main house a couple hundred yards away or a couple hundred feet away. You know, no internet, no very little cell phone reception because Jacques used to come out for these marathon edit sessions and he completely cut off from the world. And in this little shack with no running water, no toilet. And it was, you know, kind of a little rough. And I would tell people like, hey, but it was supposed to be a temporary situation to tell I could find something else. I live in a small community.

I know everybody. I was thinking I could find an affordable place to edit my movie, and I couldn't. And I have a room in my house to do it, the very room I'm sitting in now. But I have a son that we come in. I've got people coming in at all hours and, you know, really disturbing. And we got so much work done in this beautiful little space in this garden, in this little cabin, that we just made allowances for, you know, the fact that, you know, we didn't have a bathroom. We didn't have running water.

We didn't have. But magic happened in that isolated spot. And I sound like broken record here. Shocker joke around. He goes, okay, I'm coming out from San Francisco. I got my compass. I got my face paint. I got my knife, you know.

I was like, I got my pears, my bear spray. He's got down this like, down this. He's got a sense of humor. Everyone sees this guy is so serious all the time. He said with me, and Jacques has got the best sense of humor of anyone. I'm so intimidated by just being in his presence. I have to be honest with you. I really feel like, you know, an idiot.

I hate to say it, but I just feel so inadequate next to this guy, Jacques. It's just like, oh, my gosh, I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy. I'm not. You know, and yet he didn't make me feel stupid. He didn't make me feel like an equal, which I'm not. But he made me feel that way, you know, and he was really humble. and such an amazing man.

I just, I have so much admiration for him, so much respect for him. And I owe Lee Spiegel. That was Lee Spiegel. I was all Lee Spiegel that made that introduction. And I owe the film this wouldn't be what it is today without, without everybody involved, but without Lee Spiegel having brought Jacques to the table. That was a game changer. That's awesome.

Lee is a hell of a guy. He lives in New York here near me. and we've met up a few times and, you know, him telling me everything that was going on with your film. And you, I remember you were sending me, like, little videos every now and again of you in, you know, the garden area.

And there's, like, shock in the background. I'm just like, holy shit, this must be, like, the most surreal thing ever. So I want to ask, you know, kind of closing things up, James, what was the most, like, memorable experience throughout this huge journey for this film? Was there one moment you can,

really pinpoint where you're like, oh my God, like I did it. I knocked this out of the park. Or I'm going to make a difference in this entire discourse about UFOs. Anything you can, you can sort of muster up there? Well, there were a couple of wow moments. And I've described this before because I was always had a loss of trying to, trying to convey. what it was like the pressure of of producing this film. And the best way I find is that I felt like I was in the ring with a monster and that I was literally just trying to survive the next round. And that's the best way.

It's exhausting because you can't like, like I think I honestly, I look at myself in the mirror now and I just, I looked like a beat up wreck. I mean, this film piece of me died, making this movie and I'm not sound melodramatic, but I really mean it. A couple of wow moments for me was when I was in the lab at Silicon Valley with Jacques and Gary Nolan, I knew like, holy shit, this is big. Wow, I can't believe this is happening. The moment when I was in the room, thanks to George Knapp with Senator Harry Reid, I mean,

geez, I've seen that guy in my living room for a long time, for about Senator Reid. My God, I can't believe I'm sitting down with this guy. You know, there's a couple of those moments where, and then that increases the pressure because you know you've got more eyeballs watching, more expectations to deliver a good product. And I'd say it was the final year push where you can't just settle for, oh, this is pretty good. No, you take a section of the movie and if it doesn't move you profoundly, you rip it all apart. and put it back together again. And I can't tell you, we did that with every scene.

And then on top of that, when we were really happy, and I remember some people at 1091, we're like, oh, my God, this film's amazing. And we're like, no, it's not. No, it's not. We need this film needs another six months. And we'd rip it all six at the park, cut 30 minutes out, you know, restructuring thing up to the last minute. Look, we were editing just a couple months ago.

We were putting in new changes, you know? Yeah, yeah. I remember watching a screener like six months ago. And then watching it again a couple days ago. And I'm like, oh, there were some significant changes. You really went to that last moment before distribution to making everything good. We really did. We really did.

And honestly, it's the first, is it perfect? No, it's not perfect. Am I satisfied? Very. I, you know, I always have a quiet moment with myself. Usually at some point when I'm ready and I'm not ready yet, but I will. and that is I will take out some wine or a whiskey by myself and put the headphones on or whatever crank up the speakers and the stereo

and I'll watch it all by myself. I did it with out of the blue. I did it with I know what I saw. I did it with 50 years of denial. I always do it. When the time is right, I'll do it. And I sit down by myself and usually a little tear will come down my cheek. They're like, okay, buddy, I can pat myself in the back, you know, did it.

Yeah. Yeah, and I got to say that, and this is really important that I get this across, is that this is honestly the result of so many dedicated people in the field. Well, we dedicated the film to Stanton Friedman, but like the work of Jacques Phile and Don Schmidt and Kevin Randall and, like, I could just go on to David Marler. I mean, it just does, the list doesn't end. And the researchers in Australia and, you know, Randall Nickerson, their case in Africa, people, Marco Real in South America.

I mean, it just goes on and on. People in China, people in Russia that I met with. I mean, it just, this is the culmination of all of these, the work and dedication of so many researchers in this field. And I would like to tip my hat to each and every one of them, And people like yourself, you know, open minds. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. And this is the culmination of a lot of people's hard work and dedication. And the success of this film is really the success for all of us.

I couldn't put it better myself. We all win when it comes to this film being out. We really do. And I mean, besides being a fan of your work, James, in general, I have to say, like, so many eyes are now on this film. so many people within the government are watching this film. And it gives us hope. It gives us hope that we have the Senate Intelligence Committee drafting bills about UFOs. We have a UFO task force being created in the Pentagon, all because of the diligent work

being done by independent UFO researchers and organizations. And you're a big part of that. So my last question for you, do you have any hope of the future of, UFO studies, maybe from a governmental angle. But if not, yeah, do you think we're ever going to find out what's going on? I know unequivocally that there's something very big that's imminent. And I know that for a fact. I think it's going to come to the form of either a statement or something of that nature

and sit tight for that. And I'm very confident that's about as all as I'm going to reveal. but that's it's imminent and I just I can't say if it's one week two it's three weeks but it is I've been told it's imminent we will leave it at that man I can't ask for a better way to wrap this up with hope with hope that we're going to get something so last question of course where can we find the phenomenon in everything you're up to James oh thank you so you can go to the website which is oh by the way your audience something is really really really helpful if you guys can rate us on Rotten Tomatoes and iTunes, it's incredibly helpful. It really does take that extra time and just

give us a quick little rating, maybe a little blurb. You don't even have to do that. You can just do it, hit the stars, whatever you feel the film is worthy of. And that's incredibly helpful. And our website, which has all the links. And again, I'll remind your audience that if you want to buy the film, I think it's like $12.99 or something like that, get it from iTunes or Vimeo because you get three hours, three hours of bonus material, which is really cool. Stuff that didn't make the movie, an interview with Story Musgrave, who piloted the space shuttle, incredible epiphanies that he had, really, really cool stuff. And again, www.

Thephenomenonfilm.com. www. Thephenomenonfilm.com. And that has all different links where the film's available. Perfect. Oh, I know what I'm doing tonight. Three more hours of James Fox coming my way with some bourbon for sure. And like you said, Edgar Mitchell and Story Musgrave, but we didn't even touch on the astronaut aspect. So go get that on Vimeo, watch the extra footage. And all I could say, man, is while the world seems like it might be kind of falling apart, it's stuff like this. We're living in the most exciting Europe of UFOs we've ever had. So if there's any light at the end of the tunnel, I think it's the lights coming from those things above. And I can't wait to see what you do next, what happens with this topic. And I have to thank you for coming on Somewhere in the Skies. Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate all that you do as well. So thank you.

And thank to your audience for listening to me, Jabberon, for like two hours. Somewhere in the Skies is produced by Third Kind Productions in association with the Entertainment One podcast network. Greetings everyone Ryan Sprague, your host of Somewhere in the Skies. For over seven years and more than 400 episodes, the Summer in the Skies podcast has always been free to listen to, but it's not free to create.

So we offer several ways to help support our efforts and get rewards in return. If you listen to the podcast on Apple, you can click the subscribe button at the top of your Summer in the Sky's feed to become a premium Apple subscriber. Or you can join our Patreon campaign with several tiers available. Both of these options give you the same benefits and rewards, add free episodes, early access to the main show, and bonus episodes and content.

Help keep the lights on at the Summer in the Skies HQ and help us continue to grow by becoming a Patreon subscriber at patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Or by clicking the subscribe button at the top of your Apple Fills. feed. Thank you for your continued support. And keep looking up. I'm Chrissy Newton, host of Rebellisly Carious and Alien Encounters Factor Fiction on Discovery Plus. You are now somewhere in the skies. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. The one and only James Fox. He is going to be talking all about his new film moment of contact.

You can find it on all major streaming networks. We'll give those to you in the show notes as well. I had the amazing opportunity to see an advanced screener about a month or so ago. And it was really hard to keep my mouth shut about this one. So I'm glad we have them here today. I'm going to ask them some personal questions. But more importantly, we're going to ask your listener questions today for James as well. A lot has come forward. Since the movie premiered, we're going to talk about that too.

Without further ado, let's bring him in to talk all about moment of contact, James Fox. Welcome back, my man. That's such an intro. I really don't feel that I'm working. worthy of that. Thank you anyway. Of course, of course. You've been so gracious with your time.

You literally just ended doing a Reddit AMA and hopped over here with us at somewhere in the sky. So I don't know how you do it. I don't know how you're still standing. Gosh, well, it was, it was lots of stuff prior to that. I could share you. Yeah. But, hey, you know, it's the time.

And I want to obviously share my time as much as I can. I mean, this is the film coming. I mean, it's basically the result of 12 years. of research on my end. And Marco Leow, my producing partner, probably 15 to 17 on his end. It's crazy. And, you know, we thought the phenomenon was it. You were going to be done making films.

Lo and behold, you come out with this one. And I'm going to tell you, man, it hit me just as hard. We'll get into more specifics. But this was a very human story that you decided to tell this time. You know, phenomenon was such a sweeping in the best of ways, kind of overview of the entire phenomenon since the modern UFO history and before even. And very point by point, fact by fact,

here you cover one specific case in Brazil. So we really got to know the people involved and exactly what happened there or allegedly happened there. So I guess before we even talk about kind of what the film is, can you give us kind of the overview of the Varhina case? and how you got involved personally with this. I know it goes back quite a ways. Yeah, so I'll do how I got involved first.

Okay. And, well, I'll make the distinction, something that we put a tagline on, you know, moment of contact, the Roswell of Brazil. The one advantage of this case is that it happened in 1996, and the vast majority of firsthand,

eyewitness accounts or people are still alive, which makes it much easier to investigate. Obviously, you still had the intimidation aspect of witnesses and tampering with witnesses. So they were reluctant to want to come forward, and that took a lot of digging and a lot of work. But I was making out of the blue in the late 90s. Funny enough, I'd heard about Rua, probably maybe a year or two prior to that. And I dismissed it very quickly. And I was working on my first film, UFOs, 50 years of denial on the topic of UFOs. And I had a connection to Stephen Spielberg by this woman named Janet Yang.

And I thought I was just naive enough to think that, you know, Steven Spielberg was going to grant me an interview. on the topic of UFOs because I'm doing film on UFOs, you know. And of course, he said no. But he did tell Janet, hey, you should look into this case. And Rua, this alleged landing case. And, of course, I dismissed that immediately because my old position is like, I don't believe that you can have a mass sighting,

particularly in broad daylight and the whole world not know about it. So I just can't wrap my mind around that. So I dismissed that. Probably about two years later, I was working on out of the blue, my co-producer, Tim Coleman, coincidentally got a credit in the film, even though he didn't do anything because he's the one who introduced me to this case.

And he called me and he goes, I told you about that case of the late 90s and you laughed at me. I said, yeah, I did laugh at you. I didn't believe it. And I had a really hard time believing it, you know, and it took me a long time. So anyway, I heard about it in the late 90s.

I was making out of the blue. I dismissed it that fast. Didn't give it another moment's thought, didn't ask a single question, didn't read an, not even a article. One, two, a one, two, three, four. Give me a break, give me a break. Break me off a piece of that kid cat bar. Make me a break.

Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar. Give me a break that Kit Kat bar. Have a break. Have a Kit Kat. Fast forward probably 2010 or it might have been 2011. I'm going to Brazil for I know what I saw. I did a film with Leslie Kane on a national press club event. We did it in 2007 where we flew in 14 military and government officials from seven countries

and pushing for further government transparency on the topic. I ended up making a movie about it. It's called I Know What I Saw. and I got invited to Brazil, a place called Bedouibi, to the south, and just give a presentation, just to join this conference. And I got a phone call from this guy, Jeff Saganzky, who's been incredibly influential behind the scenes, you know, just high up executive in the entertainment industry.

And he's just quietly been like pulling strings for me over the years, and I've been so grateful. And so I have a lot of respect for him. And he goes, oh, you're going to Brazil? you got to look into the Virginia case. And I was like, oh, God, not this case. And I thought to myself, you mean the one where the aliens were walking around the town and Broad Daylight Witness?

I was like, sure, Jeff, I'll look into that. Click, no intentions of looking into it. I mean, that was the last I thought of it. Jumped on the plane, flew to Brazil. And at this conference, I happened to meet a couple of witnesses secondhand, some researchers. And that kind of, I guess, started to pique my interest a bit. And then since then I've been to Brazil.

four times, roughly a month each time, digging into the case, had boots on the ground with Marco Laos, partner with him. And I mean, we're, we've stuck our teeth into this case. Like I said, me, 11, 12 years, Marco, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 years. I mean, long time, Marco a long time. And he heard about it when he was a kid in Brazil. I was going to put this case in. I was going to try to squeeze it into the phenomenon.

And I actually had a translator. And I'd shot in Brazil a number of times. And I edited this whole sequence together. At the end of the day, I was like, this case is a very complex case. There are a lot of moving parts, a lot of different witnesses, a lot of pieces of the puzzle.

I can't do this case justice in the phenomenon. So I deleted the entire thing, and I knew Marco was going to be devastated, all the work we'd done. And I said, Marco, I know you're not going to like to hear this, but I cut the entire case out of the phenomenon. He was like, oh, what do you mean? You know, we worked so hard. I was like, I know, but I feel like it deserves its own documentary. So that kind of got me back in the good graces with Marco again. And then I just kind of felt like unsettled business.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And at the end of the day, the fact that we waited, there were additional eyewitnesses, both civilian and military, that we managed to come forward that was unprecedented. And really made the case. found people that had vanished for 26 years, for 18 years, or 10 years, people that Marco had been working on that knew they were part of the story, that just refused to come

forward, that would confirm for Marco, off the record, yeah, it happened, yeah, I was there, I'm never coming forward kind of thing, and Marco just kept working. I'm bless his heart, man, Marco's a force to be reckoned with. he deserves so much credit and all the other Brazilian UFO researchers prior to me, they deserve, they're in the credits of the movie. It speaks for itself. I could have never done this film without those guys. Amazing.

Yeah. And, you know, that's kind of where I think this stands apart. You know, we're so used to hearing all these stories from the U.S. You've got everything going on with the Pentagon, the Tic Tacs, the Roswell, blah, blah, blah. But then you have this extremely compelling case in Brazil, which actually has a very rich history when it comes to UFOs that a lot of people don't know about. And you do cover the history of UFOs in Brazil in a very efficient and eloquent way. I was wondering, James, would you mind kind of running us through some of those other key moments in Brazilian UFO history for us? Yes.

So when I was with Jacques Valet and Gary Nolan in that, what do you want to, I call it a laboratory. We, Jacques had all these pieces of evidence in the lab with Gary Nolan in Silicon Valley. And Jacques is walking around with the evidence like this, right? Cradling is like when I said, Jack, like seriously? What do you? You know, like this whole time he said, this stuff has a strange way of disappearing. And some of those bits of evidence was from Ubutuba, 1957, I believe, from Tinias Beach. Anyway, it's in the film.

According to eyewitness testimony, I guess something exploded. There were shrapnel and bits of this stuff scattered on a beach and in the water. And bits of those were recovered. And there turned out to be inexplicable, I guess. isotopes or magnesium, some form of, you have to talk to a science about this magnesium that doesn't form naturally here on Earth, apparently. So I have not personally done the analysis, but truly inexplicable so far. Then we have 1977, which went on for quite some time, commonly referred to as operasone

plateau, coloris incident, where you had. testimony, you had joint participation with U.S. and Brazilian Air Force, tons of photographic evidence. You have objects apparently that were coming out of the water. We haven't received those photographic evidence yet. And also there were these strange objects that were shooting beams of light down at people. Quite scary. And that went on for quite some time, a year, two years, not sure, but a long time.

Then you have UFOs 1986 over Sao Paulo, Brazil, where you had like a dozen UFOs, and jets were scrambled to intercept that were picked up on radar and visually seen, and that was over Sao Paulo. And you had a press conference where the Brazilian Air Force came forward and said, these things are real. Their pilots talked about it openly. They released cockpit recordings, very, very compelling. And then 10 years later, you get this account of a UFO crash.

and a week later in the town of Virginia, roughly 12 to 15 miles away, reports both from civilian and military and fire department of these strange beings. And they were captured. And then ultimately the American's involvement. Right. Well, let's kind of run through the case in terms of some of the people that you interviewed. Again, the fact that you are able to track down this many people is just a testament to you, to your Brazilian researchers and in everyone.

It was amazing. You were able to find these people 25, 30 years later, which is amazing. And one of those people was Carlos Desoza. This was one of the people who actually saw the craft as it was allegedly crashing. Probably one of the most powerful and emotional moments in the film for me personally, seeing this guy relive it and remembering finally where the location was. We won't go into too much detail on that, but it was very powerful, man. So could you tell us a little about Carlos and, yeah, his whole involvement with all of this?

So you had witnesses in the town of Virginia, just on the outskirts of Virginia. Oralina and Yorico de Frittes, two farmers, married couple. They're middle of the night. Their animals are going bonkers trying to figure out what's going on. they look out the window, there's this cigar-shaped object about the size of a school bus, big school bus with a gash in the side of it. And they said there was a weird white vapor coming out the back side of it, and it was just kind of all over the place, moving very slowly, and they kept expecting it to crash. It looked like it was going to crash. They watched it for about 45 minutes.

Carlos DeSauza is a history professor in Sao Paulo. He was traveling up from Sao Paulo to the state of Minas Gerais on the 13, well he left on the evening of the 12th. He was driving late into the night and then right around 5 o'clock in the morning at dusk he sees, he's on the freeway, he's just

I don't know, 15, 20 miles outside of Virginia. He's in the state of Minnesota ice. He's going to meet with some fellow ultralight pilots. They're going to go fly ultralights together. And that's one of the reasons why he remembers the date so well. And he sees this object in this guy not very high off the freeway that looked like it was in trouble. Never once did he think extraterrestrial, UFO, he didn't know.

Maybe it was some kind of weird, you know, experiment or some secret military thing. He didn't know. But he saw it like it was going down and it went down and he didn't actually see it hit the ground. But he saw it where it was unequivocally going to hit the ground. went down and he didn't see the actual impact, but he saw. So he turned off the freeway. He drove up to this farm called Maillini Farm, and he comes upon a debris field, at least the size of a football field, if not larger, of scattered metallic metal debris.

And a large section of the cigar-shaped object, metallic, still intact. There's nobody there. He thinks he's thinking, God, whoever was flying that thing, they're in trouble. There's probably people that are hurt. What can I do to come help? He jumps out of his car. He picks up one of these pieces of the metal that were scattered everywhere. He said it was about maybe this big.

And he said he could crumple it in his hands. He said it was so light that you could barely feel it in your hands. And he crumpled it up. And when he released it, it regained its form, which was fascinating. And just as this was happening, and he said the smell was almost bucking. hold his knees of ammonia and sulfur. He grabbed his shirt and he held his shirt over his mouth like this when he was trying to breathe and his eyes were watering. He said it was the strongest thing he'd ever

smelled in his life. Just as this was happening, military trucks from the opposite direction that he had driven into Marilini Farm came from the military base, Eza. And they pointed rifles at him, ordered him to leave. I'm just giving you the truncated version. He freaked out. He never thought, again, he wasn't thinking like extra, you know, he just, he didn't know what was going on. He didn't have time to process.

He gets in the car. He takes off. He gets a few miles down the road. He's just, he's trembling. He's trying to process what happened. He goes to this cafe, gas station gets out and he has a coffee. He's getting some gas. He comes out of the coffee shop.

and then this unmarked vehicle, like a black, dark blue or black Opala, he calls it, American vehicle pulls into the, with two men in suits, no license plates, and basically threaten him. You didn't see anything. You know, your name is Carlos Osaza. You live here. This is your wife's name, your children. You know, talk about what you saw.

Things are going to get really weird. And that's kind of what he gave one statement on camera, a couple months later. later to a guy named Claudio Kovo, who's a Brazilian UFO researcher as well as an engineer, and he gave one on-camera statement, then he vanished for 26 years. Excuse me. So his, his, his, his, I remember telling, we, we had a small clip of Carlos's, um, testimony from 1996. It was grainy and deteriorated and just unusually.

quite honestly. The audio is diabolical. And fortunately, with the help of fellow Brazilian UFO researchers, his daughter, Cynthia Kovo, we were able to open up his archives and get access to that original interview that he'd done 26 years later. Marco and some other Brazilian researchers, because I said to Marco, we don't have a story if we don't have Carlos. We've got to find this guy. So they found him and they ultimately convinced him to come forward for the first time in 26 years, and it's all on camera with us. Yeah. Very, very powerful moment, for sure.

One of the other people that you met, which was very surprising, was the mayor of Arhemia. Like, talk about officialdom. Would this case? Tell us what that was like. Couldn't believe it. If we walk up, I mean, I'm going, Marco, you're saying that the current mayor, Mayor Verje, the current guy, not. retired the current guy we're going to go into the mayor's office you know with police and everything

around yes he's going to you know and i didn't know what he was going to say but to have the mayor of virginia confirm the case that he believes it happened that there was a cover-up uh was a first time as far as i know first time in history yeah yeah yeah it was pretty incredible just in just to hear him say yes we take this very seriously something happened, the military was involved. And it's become such a culture, a big part of the culture in Varhina. I mean, look at the town hall. Look at these saucer shaped buildings. It reminds me so much of like the McDonald's in Roswell, right?

Crazy, right? Yeah. Remember in Roswell, they've got these signs at hotels that say, come crash with us? Yeah. Yeah. So funny. It's so silly. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. Well, I mean, gosh, the chat is going nuts here. Everyone wants to ask you about the photos, the videos. We'll get there, guys. We will get there.

We've got a couple super chats here, so thank you guys. Really appreciate that. Love the film, James. Who has the video? We'll get there. We'll get there. Let's talk about, because I do want to get these listener questions, James. Kind of the next pivotal

part of the film, at least for me, and that was the three women. That becomes sort of iconic with this case as witnesses. This is to not the craft, but one, again, one of the creatures. We must stress, apparently there's more than one creature, one dead, one alive, and supposedly they saw the alive one. So would you mind telling us a little about these three women and what it was like speaking to them?

Going from left to right at the top, you've got Volkiria. She was 14 at the time. This is January 20th, 1996. Roughly three, excuse me, three to three 30 in the afternoon. In the middle, you've got Liliana. and you've got, and Liliani and Volkiria, one in the middle and one on the left, their sisters, 14 and 16, and then you've got Katia on the far right. She's 21 years old at the time of the incident.

They were taking a shortcut through a little field. There was a cinder block wall with some graffiti on it. They were noticing walking through the kind of tall grass. The picture below is the exact location where this incident took. place 26 years prior. In fact, the picture above is probably pretty close to it too. And they see what they initially were looking at this thing that was kind of frozen. It was in this position. I don't know if you can see me in the field. Well, well, there you go. You can see the drawing right there. It's sitting against the center block wall just like that, except it's not looking at them.

It's looking down. And it wasn't moving. They thought, what on earth are we looking at? and one of the girls let out a kind of like a, like Yelp, like, at which point, the creature, the being, whatever you want to call it, turns its head and makes direct eye contact with the girls. Lillianni grabs her sister, Volkiria, who's 14, and yanks her out of there and they run. Okay, this is after a brief moment of eye contact. Katya, who's 21, remains frozen. between eight and 10 feet away from this being, locked eyes on it. Okay.

The two other girls and sisters run away. They get about 60 to 100 feet away, realize that they'd left Katia behind. So Liliani turns back, who's 16, and runs and grabs Katya. Now, when I was speaking to the girls in the field at the exact location where this encounter occurred, I said when you locked eyes on this being during that moment of contact,

then I thought to myself, now wait a minute, that's a good title. Put me there. I want to be there. I want you to put me in that place. What did you feel? What did you see?

Was there any communication? I want to be there. And that's when she said. It was telling me that it was scared. It was feeble, weak, scared, and it wanted help. And then Liliani grabbed her by the arm and yanked Katia out of there, and they ran off and they went home to the mother of the two sisters and told her, we think we saw the devil.

They never said E.T. Never said alien. We think we saw the devil. And so the mother is like, let's go back. and the two sisters were like, we are not going back, and Katte didn't want to go back either. She ultimately convinced Katia to going back. They jumped in this truck and they drove back to the location.

The stench was there. There were footprints of this creature, which she describes in great detail and even draws for us, but the creature was gone. Man, yeah, it's quite a story they have to tell. I love this idea, too, of it not being alien. You know, it really is like the lens in which you view the experience. if you're religious, maybe you would look at it as demonic, especially with those red eyes,

which is very unique in these cases. You know, otherwise it looks kind of like a gray, except it's brownish color, but those those deep red eyes just really, really catch you off guard. So, for sure. Yeah, I've never heard an account of anything like it, you know, before. And especially, like, you think about, you think about an encounter, you know, and I've been getting, I knew that my credibility would take a hit and I get it. Like I totally understand people's reluctance. I'm not out here trying to, you know, convince anyone of something. I totally get it.

But I'm hearing people like, oh, you're saying it's an alien and how do you know it's extra trust? So I'm like, did I say that? I've not said that. All I'm doing is providing a platform where the witnesses can share what he or she saw. That's it. You can draw your own conclusions. I wasn't there. I don't know what it was. I can conclude maybe it was in a spacecraft and, you know,

connect the dots. But we're not making any conclusions here. We're not making any definitive statements, any conclusions. it appears to be consistent with a UFO crash and beings recovered. That's what appears to have happened. But until we have further and a capture, I'm convinced that something got captured, there was something out there that was captured. In fact, the military witness, military ex called it.

It was explained to him that it was super, supernatural. Right. Something supernatural. I don't know why that always stuck in my head, super natural. He didn't say E.T. He didn't call it a creature. He just called it supernatural. Yep. That gave me shivers. Military X. Let's go there, James. A lot of images here. This was the other big part of the movie. A really interesting journey you guys took. And this is with Marco Cherisi, the kind of tragic story in this entire affair, an officer who supposedly died.

from this event. Well, he definitely died. Yeah, yeah. Most definitely died from this event. Yeah, can you kind of run us through the people we're looking at here? You see the military man with the hat, with the cat, what do you call it, the helmet? His name is Marco Trees. He and another gentleman right around 5 o'clock p.m., which is roughly two hours.

It could have been 5.30, but it's right around 5, 5.30 p.m. the same day. January 20th, two or three blocks away from where the girls stated that they encountered this strange creature. He's on patrol with a guy named Eric Lopes, who's also a military officer, police officer, and Marco Treesey. Eric Lopes is behind the wheel. Marco's in the passenger seat. They're on the lookout for something unusual. That's all they knew. Not that a UFO crashed, not that there's an alien running around, something unusual. They see some. something come across the front of their car. Eric Lope slams the brakes on. Marco jumps out, grabs this thing with his bare hands, didn't put up much of a fight, it was weak, puts it on his

lap in the back seat, off they go. They initially went to a clinic. Apparently the doctor came out and said, I don't know what the heck that thing is, get it out of here. And then they went to a regional hospital, and that's where they dropped it up. And Marco apparently had this oily stuff all over his body. And he got rubbing alcohol. And apparently he was rubbing this rubbing alcohol, trying to clean himself of this, this oily, sticky smell that was on him. He got a little gash. It speculated, but it's probably the case that he got it when he captured this thing, just a little, just a little cut. And he got an infection. Within a few weeks, he went to the ER. The doctor did everything he could to save him.

Dr. Cesario that we interviewed on camera, you see with the white shirt next to him on the top right, and he died. He said he had a complete immune system failure. He threw the kitchen sink at him. Nothing was responding. He never seen anything like it 25 years prior or 26 years after. And, you know, we had the death certificate of Marco Trees. We did an interview with the doctor who confirms that he felt that he really was involved.

he did encounter this thing, and that he revealed certain aspects of the story because in an effort to have transparency with the doctor who was trying to save his life, he was telling him the truth. And Dr. Cesario talks a little bit about that on camera. But then we interview Marco's sister, who's Marta Tavares,

who's down holding the photograph of her brother and the death certificate. And she explained to us she asked her brother while he was lying in the hospital not like a day or so away from dying is this story true did you really grab this extraterrestrial thing or being and he said to her something to the order of

this is going to be one of the biggest stories and there's lots more that's going to come out and then he died and then Marco Treesie's mother also Marta Tomorrow's mother had a visit according to her daughter on camera from the military, Brazilian military, who said that

confirmed that it did happen, and that if the truth came out, society would collapse. And that's the justification that they gave the mother of the deceased soldier who died. A cautionary tale in so many respects to, I mean, it's crazy. What about military X? I know this is, you know, we won't give away too much. It is a very compelling part of the film as well. but who was this and how was he involved, if you don't mind me asking? Yeah, so he'd been a target for 26 years.

Let's see what I can reveal here. Let's just sort of see here. There were a number of witnesses who worked with Brazilian UFO researchers and ultimately gave an on-camera statement right after the incident that was never to be released. It was an insurance policy that if anything happened to those witnesses, those taped evidence would be released to the general public. And I had seen that taped evidence,

and I desperately was trying to get my hand. I understood why it wasn't to be released, and it was very frustrating as a researcher myself and a filmmaker that here. I have this stuff, a friend of mine has it in his possession and I can't use it. So this military person, this military person had been, had been on our, on our radar for some time, but it was impossible to reach. And when Marco Lael finally did reach him, oh my God, it's like the scene out of a movie,

how the whole thing went down. He was paranoid that Marco was intelligence coming after him to find out what he, you know. And long story short, I think it took eight months, nine months, 10 months just to get a meeting with him. They did. They met. And then for some, and he kept saying, when we came to Brazil, Marco Liao kept preaching out to him and he kept saying, no, I'm never coming forward. No, I'm not going to happen.

All the money in the world, not going to happen. No. And then I said, let's just get, maybe we can just see if we can go meet with him. And to our surprise, he agreed to that. And we met at one location. Then he got in our car and took us to another location. and we came out, he had somebody with him, and we talked just about life in general, talked a little bit about my father, my career a little bit, and then we talked very briefly

about the incident, and then that was it. Didn't agree to go on camera, none of that, and then a couple days later, we kept kind of following up, and he started to think about it, and it was like, maybe, maybe, maybe, and he was having some troubles, anyway, at home, and I think we probably had a maybe a two-hour window where he was like, okay, I'll do this. You know, he's terrified that, you know, that window's going to close and they're going to get cold feet. But we took our chances. We drove four hours and went and it was all just totally up in the, I mean, the whole thing was so precarious, you know. It's like we're going up there. We didn't have a meeting place. He was like, I'm not going to meet you in any public place at all. If I'm seeing

with any Americans or any cameras, my life is over. Like he was so, paranoid about it. So I was like, well, gosh, why don't we just get a hotel room? And then he can just walk into the hotel room. We snuck in all of our gear to the hotel room. And at any moment, thinking that if he arrived, when we were trying to take our gear in that we had all hidden with blankets and towels and we're trying to get our gear in and we go up to the, we go up to the guy at the hotel, it's like two o'clock in the afternoon. And he's like, yeah, can I help you? And we're like, yeah, you got a hotel room. He's like, yeah, sure, I got this room. I got that room. We'll take it. Well, don't you want to know the price? No, we'll take it. How about this?

decide no we'll take it right now how do we do it like just if he was looking at it's like okay interesting what what do you got under those towels there he's just like unloading the cars with all this gear with like towels over the gear and pillows oh no walking into the place i think i'm not telling you i'm not kidding that guy was looking at us like what the hell are they doing in there honestly in the back of my mind i was thinking he probably thought we were going to shoot a porno in there i was hey you said it i wasn't going to say i never i didn't i I just, I just, the look on the guy's face, you know, I was like, we don't have time to talk. I had minutes before this other guy was his witness going to show up.

And if he saw us out there with all the gear, I know he was going to turn around and leave. So we're wasting to get all the stuff in there. And then, then I'm hearing, you know, Dave, my DP, and he's going, James, you know, these cameras are, the lenses are too long. We can't, this room isn't big enough. Like, I saw, I just said, Dave, I said, work it out. Just figure it out. Figure it out. This is it.

filmmaking now you know and then the guy comes and uh and it was the most incredible experience of my life yeah very very powerful how many people do you know that allegedly drove what could be an alien around i mean because i don't know i i can't name one no it's crazy and i i mean look you know that's what i i believe that happened to Can I prove it? No. Am I going to sit there to scream from the hilltops? That's what happened?

No, of course not. But I believe, I absolutely believe his testimony. In fact, I believe everyone's testimony. Not one person came to us. We dug, you know, again, I can't give enough praise to the fellow Brazilian UFO researchers, particularly Marco Laos, my producing partner. This film wouldn't exist without their, you know, decades-long efforts. And again, no witnesses came to us. It was such a challenge every one of them.

Years. Yeah. Yeah, I know. It's crazy. Well, and talk about like seeking people out. We won't give away. This is probably the most dramatic part of the film. But you didn't, you ran into some actually some trouble in, in, trying to interview one of these people, life-threatening, if I may say so. Anything you want to share on that, James? If not, I want to leave it to the viewers. I get it. I have no problem to share. What I can share is Marta Tavares, seen here down in the middle with holding up the two photographs,

the one death certificate and her brother. She kept saying to me, even back in 2014, Eric Lopes, Eric Lopes, Eric Lopes. Eric Lopes, Eric Lopes. He's the only living survivor of the second capture with my brother in the car. The family couldn't get a statement from him. All the researchers couldn't get a statement from him. He had gone completely dark for 26 years. He was the last living person, the only living person that was witness to the alleged second capture with Marker Treesie, which ultimately led to his death. I kept asking since 2013, like, why can't anybody find this guy? Like, where is he?

So we asked the mayor, this guy's got access, he's got power. Hey, he said, if there's anything I can do to help you out, let me know. I said, yeah, can you find this guy, Eric Lopes? A couple days later, he found him. So I met and he, that the mayor didn't come, but the mayor connected us with, who was a former police sergeant and the police sergeant's son, who's now a lawyer, used to be a politician in Virginia. When we were standing down in the town square or just outside the town square, cars were driving by, waving, beeping, honking. The guy was famous everywhere in Virginia, homolo.

And they met with us, gave us a brief interview on camera, and they said, we will escort you to Eric Lopes's house. house. From there, you guys take over. Getting in our cars, we're all ready to go. We're going to follow this black Mercedes. And kind of the last minute, I don't know, I always listen to this little voice in my head, you know, it's like, you know what? You better stop, wait a minute, just take pause, jump out with the translator and tell Homlo, ask Homelow, would he mind actually not just dropping us off at this guy's house, but actually escorting us up to his front door. At which point he said, yeah, I was literally, did it in the middle of the road. We were just about to leave.

And I jumped out and I asked him. And he said, yes, he would. Thank God he did. I honestly believe that there's a high probability that I probably would have been shot just walking up there by myself without him. Because he was threatening to shoot everybody multiple times. And the crazy part was that nobody, at the time, it was kind of a chaotic moment. nobody translated in the field what was happening what this guy was saying like bullets are about to start flying that kind of thing

and he was leaning up in the window looking down on us and I was just trying to figure out what the hell was going on like who was this guy was this air globes was it not airclopes you know Dave the cameraman was trying to zoom his camera into the guy's face but they had the wrong lens but the guy can't kept looking at Dave like this. Like, don't, don't you think, don't, don't film me. Doing this to Dave. And then he was telling everyone who's about to get shot, which I found out later. Well, I'm looking at this guy's face that you don't see in the scene. And I look at this face and I said to myself, I've never seen a face like this before.

Not the bone structure, not the skin color, but the tension. the, I've yet to find a word to describe it. If you can imagine someone harboring something so extraordinary, something so, such a deep, deep secret, and the toll that had on him, that's what it looked like. When I saw his eyes and I looked at his face, it was like, oh my God, I've never seen the face like this before.

Like you could tell like he's had this burden on his shoulders, something, some deep, dark secret, then you could see it in his face. It's all I can say, man. You can see it in this guy's face. And he said to us as we walked up, and again, I didn't realize this at the time. If you're here to talk about the ET,

you know, he's never going to say anything. He referred to himself in the third person until I, and then he kept talking about those guns, bullets are going to start flying. We're going to kick you out of here with bullets. And then I kept saying, like, you know, will Eric Lopes, ever give a statement. Will he ever talk to anybody? We'll ever give a statement kind of thing.

And then he says, I am Eric Lopes. And you guys are about to get in some serious trouble right now. Yeah. And I remember I looked over at Homolo and Homolo had his eight-year-old son standing next to him, eight, nine, ten years old. And Homolo looked at me and he went, turn me Nado, like that. And the look, even though I don't speak Portuguese and he doesn't speak English, that look, that look to me, let's get the F out of here and we get the F out of here right now. Yeah. I was like, okay, okay, let's go. You know, and off we went.

Crazy, yeah. Again, just harboring these things for so long, this is what the military and government in Brazil did to these poor people. And, you know, it's shades of Roswell, again, threatening people and telling them we know everything about your family. We could bury you out, you know, in the Brazilian, wilderness and no one will ever find you, that sort of thing. It's crazy, man. You even have archival footage of, I believe it was one of the higher-ups in the Brazilian

either Air Force or Army saying, like, we will not comment further on this. We're not hiding anything. You believe the archival footage that we found? It was crazy, yeah. Like, talking about this event. I didn't know that existed. Does that not speak volumes? Just looking at that guy?

Oh, he was lying through his teeth. I mean, you can tell. No question, man. Yeah. Question. Yeah, I know. I know. You got to see it in the film, guys.

You got to see it in the film. I got the goosebumps. Just like the whole thing, man, you know. I just, yeah, it's crazy. It was crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. And it was the only time in production where I was, I mean, I got a little spooked in, in Texas when I was meeting. with Ricky Sorrels during the, that case, I think it was 2008 at Stephenville, Texas.

Ricky Sorrels was being harassed by the military. Stop talking about what you saw, that kind of thing. We were trying to get an interview with Ricky Sorrel's at the time. We saw like unmarked, like vehicles pull into his drive, you know, I got a little spooked then. Ricky was spooked. That was it. Only time. This time, I was, we all were.

we were all spooked. We were all spooked. That was pretty scary. And then we were about to meet with other additional witnesses or witnesses that we had just met with. And that's when the military base, Eza, which is the base of operations for this whole thing, that's when they started making phone calls,

according to the people that were about to meet with, and they said steer clear of us, disappear, don't come near us. And it was like creepy phone calls. like, hey, how you doing so-and-so? I won't say their name. How you doing? Are you still living at this address? How's the family?

And yeah, we understand there's an American documentary film crew. Have you reached out to you? Did you meet with them or talk with them at all? Okay. All right, well, anyway, we wish you well. Yeah, that kind of thing. Yeah, I'm sure. Wow.

That's crazy, man. Not like don't meet with them or not like we're going to harm you. No, none of that. Just leave between the line. Yeah, absolutely. Well, hey, I've got some listener questions if you're willing to stick around. Absolutely. Okay.

All right. I won't keep you too long. I'm on a podcast. Give me one sec. Yeah, of course. Of course. I'm going to get my listener questions here together, guys. If you do have a question for James, please feel free to put it in the chat here, guys.

Super chat. Super stickers are open if you want to help out the show. show. I've got a couple of those start here. We've got a couple from our Patreon members and from Twitter. So again, James answered some of these in a Reddit AMA earlier today, guys. So I would highly suggest going over there and checking that out if you haven't yet. But yeah, James, our first listener question comes from Diego, one of our Patreon subscribers. And he wants to know, in your opinion, James, with everything going on in the disclosure process, how soon do you think acceptance of ETI will reach the majority of the general population.

You think we're close? You know, it's a very good question. I just know that I got a call from one of my, you know, kind of insider people who said, you have no idea your timing on this film. You have no. I said, what do you mean? Just sit tight. You have no idea your timing on this film.

And I'm thinking to myself, well, the film is about an alleged UFO crash and bodies recovered. So is there a statement coming out that's going to confirm potentially these types of cases? They didn't tell me. But I'm eagerly anticipating. But I'm also, you know, I'm also acutely aware that we are pushing the envelope here. And we're implying that the United States was involved. I'm not implying the military people and the flight control officers in Burroup.

Brazil, they're the ones that told us the Americans were involved. I didn't know. I had no idea. In fact, I didn't even touch on that. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, I just, I asked, well, what happened after this? You dropped it off here?

Then what happened? Espesex's military base in Campinas. You went from, you went from the town of Virginia. Then you went to as a military base. And then as a military base, the next day, to Espasex's military base in Campinas. Then what happened? It's like, oh, we did a study and the Americans flew in and took it all. Really?

And then we talked to the flight control people that said they had confirmation that the United States Air Force plane flew in on the 22nd of January, which is the exact time they dropped it off at Campinas. And a United States Air Force without authorization from the Brazilian government lands in Campinas. Pretty compelling stuff to me. Do you think we're going to find out more about America's involvement in this case? In the last couple of days, two people have come out of the woodworks confirming this case and photographic evidence of this case. And more is coming out.

I guarantee you it's coming. I know it is because people are like the hell with it. I've been sitting on this for 26 years. This is potentially the biggest story since Roswell. And I don't care anymore. Okay. Well, let's go there then. You mentioned photographic evidence.

People are saying there's video of this, photographs. Have you seen any of this? Will we ever see it? What do you think, James? I think the likelihood of us seeing it is high. I have spoken directly with three people that I have zero doubt. They're telling me the truth. That have seen it.

I'll say something hypothetically here, in vivid detail that just because you locate something, it doesn't necessarily mean you can get your hands on it, even with a large dollar reward. And the compensation is strictly because there's high level of risk involved. There's people out there that have just eyewitness testimony that they're terrified. You imagine eyewitness testimony coupled with hard evidence like that, how terrified you'd be?

So believe me, we're working on it. believe me, we are working on it. And believe me, there's no one on the planet that wants this more than I do. I love that. And hey, we've got the UIP report coming out next week of all things as well. So who knows where that's going to lead and who else that might empower or inspire to come forward with their involvement in this case or many others. So, hey, that's all I need. You're giving us hope, man.

Yeah, well, okay. So Nathan, Nathan on Twitter asks, this is a good one. Going back to kind of Calores in a lot of the earlier cases in Brazil, any idea why Brazilian UFO seem to be particularly violent? Why are these UFOs in Brazil crashing? Why are they trying to shoot down planes? What do you think, what makes Brazil like such a violent place for UFO encounters? Any thoughts or theories on that?

Look, Calaris, a couple of cases in a couple of incidents in Calaris with these beams of light tagging people. For me, it's the only time I've heard of those cases. I have not heard of the UFO shooting down any planes in Brazil. The 1986 encounters over Sao Paulo, I guess the night of UFOs over Brazil, commonly referred to, it's 1986. It was not a hostile encounter. The airplanes that were scrambled to intercept did not get shot down. There was no hostility exhibited.

The pilots just said we were unable to get these things. There are testimony coming out now that we're the ones that shot at the UFO that crashed. That gash had had in the side. I'm not stating this because I don't know. But some Brazilian UFO researchers who've been digging into this case since 1996 are claiming that the American shot at it. Oh, interesting. That's why we were involved on that. But these are people that would have access to high-level Brazilian,

military, I can confirm that, that are stating that it was known that the Americans is the one that shot at it. Because it had a huge, according to the eyewitnesses, it had a huge gash in the back of it. It was in trouble and it had white weird vapor coming out the back of it. Not like a smoke from a fire. White. Interesting. Yeah, again, that right there could explain why America was involved.

It reminds me of the Tehran UFO incident. You're like, why did the U.S. get so? heavily involved, and it's because we were leasing our planes to Tehran at the time, and we wanted to know what was out maneuvering our own planes up there. So it would make sense if America was the one to shoot this thing down and why they would become involved and why they had carp launch the minute they got on Brazilian. I would love some Americans that were involved to come forward. Look, you know what?

This is the first step. This documentary is the first step of highlighting this case, in the United States and around the world like it's never been highlighted. I mean, there have been other very little reporting on this case in America. Most like seasoned researchers know very little about this case, myself included, you know? Yeah, same. You know, I knew the basics like every other UFO researcher. Creature, red eyes, something crashed.

That's it. There's a UFO in the middle of the town. End of story. And then here you come with an hour and 40 minutes of. like witnesses and military and I'm just like holy shit man like this thing goes way deeper than I ever thought it's crazy uh I know um wow uh well okay last listener question from the people I have here uh that submitted beforehand James um let's see here do do do why does James think UFOs travel so far to basically crash on earth Tony asks this it feels like they crash here more

frequently than airplanes. Yeah, why do you think all these things are crashing if they're so highly advanced? Again, we did touch on maybe it was shot down, but in general, what do you have seen the UFOs crash? I personally have not researched that many UFO crashes, and I have no idea how many crashes there have been or haven't been. I have no idea where these things come from. I have no idea if they're interplanetary. I have no idea if they're interdimensional. I have no idea if they're time travelers. I have no. idea what they are or where they come from. And I have no idea why they crashed or why they crashed. And I have no idea how many cases, how many credible cases there are. Because I've

personally, I've done some research into Roswell and I've done extensive research, quite pretty extensive research into Virginia. And that's it. I mean, I've heard of other cases, but I don't know anything about them. Certainly nothing I can comment on intelligently. That's fair. That's fair. I'm sorry. I wish I could give you a better answer, man. I just don't know. No, no.

We'd rather get your honest answer than, you know, I know everything about every UFO crash. That's the last thing we need in this field. Let's be completely honest. This is really cool. In fact, I know nothing. I know less today than I did 30 years ago. Excuse me. Safest answer you could give for sure.

Where did I see this comment? This is pretty cool. Hold on. Oh, here we go. Literally just watched the movie last night with my dad. We're both Jameses, by the way. We enjoyed it. I love hearing that. Like, families are watching this film together.

I dream of the day. Like, I finally have a kid and I can sit them down and put up through your entire portfolio of films and be like, this is where we were at in the, you know, in 2022 and then see what a brave new world it is then. But, yeah, pretty cool. Oh, yeah. Thank you. I love hearing accounts. You know, I've said this before and I will continue saying this. I really hope people realize that I'm not out there trying to get people to join my cult. You know, like you must believe. I really hope people know that about me. I'm fascinated. I'm curious. I like to ask lots of questions. I'd like to get more answers. I'd like to get more answers. and I share my investigations publicly through my documentaries, and that's it. You know, I feel like people are entitled to this information. I feel like people, like myself included, have not been, like the governments have not been transparent and quite quite the opposite.

And I feel like if true, it's one of the most significant events of the 20th century, 21st century too. I mean, 20th century, you know. Huge. I mean, I don't know. Look, if it was, I tell people, if, forget about whether it happened or it didn't happen. If it did happen, how significant of an event would this be? Just if it did.

And everyone's like, oh, my God, this would be huge. It would be the story we've all been waiting for. Well, I'm kind of convinced that it did. So, you know, hopefully more people will come forward and and validate and substantiate these these claims. Absolutely. And we're going to give your email address at the end here for anyone. If you happen to be listening or watching and have any further information on this case,

please reach out to James. Again, you're one of these filmmakers who, once the films out, your work isn't done. You continue to investigate and you continue to update us. I know you have plans on releasing some exclusive, content related to this case as well. At least that's what I've heard, the rumors. But the last listener question, James, I want to ask you here is you've made this claim on several interviews and whatnot.

And I'd be curious to you. Can you expound upon walking among us? You've said this in a couple interviews in the past that you think it's possible there could be ETs walking among us. Is this something you believe or is this something you've heard from people you've interviewed? I knew that kind of got away from me a little bit. No, I don't believe it. I don't not believe it, but I'd have to see some evidence.

I'm just sharing my time with Robert Bigelow. And I had lunch with him back in I think it was like 2009. It might have been 2010 of the latest. It was right after I finished my film, I know what I saw. And he invited me to have lunch with him. Excuse me, I'm drinking this bubbly, sparkling water. And it's like, Oh, yo.

Anyway, whatever. I love those. And he was the one that talked about, the studies that had been done, is what he was telling me. I'm not saying I believe it or I don't believe it. It's what he's telling me. And I think Bigelow would be in a better position than I am to make these statements. He was saying that they've done some studies and that they determined the level of impact

that the story would have if they had full disclosure, yada, yada. And he said that, you know, the economy would collapse and religions would collapse and you have any idea. You know, and I was like, you know, he goes, and then he said they're walking among us. What exactly he meant by that? I don't know what, you know, do I believe it? No. Have I seen evidence of it? No.

Do I think it's impossible? No. I believe that these things are piloted. They're under intelligence control. Is it possible? I guess it's possible. But I certainly, I don't believe it just because he said. it. And I've shared that story and people are like, James thinks you're walking among us.

No, I don't. That's not what I think. This is what I was told from Robert Bigelow. Awesome. Thank you for clearing that up. I think that put a lot of people's minds that. He's like, he's losing it. James is losing it. No, no, I don't believe that. But at the same time, when someone like Bigelow says something like that, like people stand up and listen, they're like, I can't sit there and say definitively that's not the case. Certainly, I have seen zero evidence to suggest that's the case. However, one thing I've learned in this field is you can't eliminate every time I say this is impossible, I've been proven wrong. So I'm going to leave a 0-0-0-0-0-0-0-1 and say, maybe, maybe, but I don't believe it. Fair enough. Fair enough. I love it.

Um, last thing I want to touch on before we let you go here, James. Um, we've got right here, the movie had a big screen. Uh, what would you call it? Premiere debut? Yeah. You finally got to see your film on the big screen. I know something you wanted to the phenomenal. It was so exciting.

Like the highlight of Robert Salas showed up. He was like my hero. You know, he showed up. And it was, you know, um, Donnie, uh, who's been a, Donnie Chang, he's been an executive producer on the phenomenon. He's been kind of behind the scenes, keeping things alive during the phenomenon, because that went through a whole, oh, my God, I won't bore your audience with the details. But there were times when I was completely broke and people were coming after me and people

were, we were parting ways and had just rough. I remember, yeah. Very rough. Very rough. Very rough. You're being like, I don't think I can go on. Oh, I don't even like talking about it. Anyway, we got through it.

And then Donnie is also an executive producer on this film, one of the executive producers. And we found out through 1091 that we were not going to have, there was not going to be a premiere. And Donnie's like, what do you mean he was not going to be a premiere? And this other guy who's also an executive producer, and he's like, what are you talking about? How can we not have a premiere? We got robbed from the phenomenon. here we've got this golden opportunity. You know, what do you mean we're not having a premiere?

I said, well, there's no budget, blah, blah, blah. And then this other guy, Percy, who, Percy T, who, I don't know if there's a photograph of him down here or not, he was, he had organized some screenings of the phenomenon in Memphis, the Regal and all these other cinema chain. But, you know, COVID was happening. It was just very, very difficult. And he found out that we're not having a premiere,

and he was all upset. And so long story short, Percy T. gets the theater. He secures LA Live Theater. It's a long story, but we secured it. Then Donnie finds out, oh, well, we got the theater. Well, we have to go all out. We got to have pizzazz. We got to have the red carpet.

We got to have, you know. And so, you know, I said, Donnie, I don't have the bandwidth. I can't do it. I've got so much other things going on. I said, you take the reins. and you organize it. And so he made this fun at Pazaz. He had the red carpet.

He had the backdrop. He had the lights and the cameras. And he had some women dressed in these fun suits. And we had the after party. And it was just fun. It was just fun. And it was a big celebration for it was the first time of my life I ever got to premiere like that. It was a huge screen in L.A.

My God, the sound system was phenomenal. Just to see the whole thing on a big screen and very nicely attended. and some nice Q&A at the end of it. Then we went to an after party, which was just a few blocks down the street. And it was just tons of fun, man. It was just fun and a celebration. Right, which again, like I think people forget,

this is a very serious case. And a lot of UFOs is very serious. But if you can't have a good time, like, what the hell's the point? Honestly, you're talking about such weird shit. Like, you've got to laugh at it. I could not agree more. You know, look, if you, if you,

Listen to the end credits on the movie. There's this very serious. And I'm like, I'm like, hey, do you think that smell would make it very good proof? Yeah, that one got. Or you've laughed. I was like, you know what, if you can't have a little fun and be lighthearted, a little bit of levity and fun, what's the point, man? What's the point? I love that.

I absolutely love it. Yeah. Well, James, I mean, dude, you continue to knock it out of the park. I mean, this film, again, a lot different from the phenomenon, took a very human approach, which is something I personally appreciate as someone who exclusively interviews witnesses in the aftermath of an event on their life. That's what you covered. Some of these people didn't talk for 27 years. And then they unload on you.

And it's just like, I think it was even Carlos in the film. He was like, oh, James, thank you. He's like, you have no idea the weight that's been lifted off of me. That's beautiful. His brother lives in New Jersey. And his brother told me he speaks fluent English. He moved here years ago. And he said, you know, I didn't believe my brother.

None of us really did. We all kind of made fun of him. And I said, well, your brother was a witness to an extraordinary event. And he's been shouldering that for all these time. And imagine just disappearing and just wanting it to go away. Yeah. You can't take the laughter, the ridicule, you know what I mean? I mean, I understand where it comes from, but just imagine having to, like, live with that.

Yeah. And you and I have interviewed hundreds of people who have held that in for so long. And then when they finally get it off their chest and realize, oh, I'm not the only one. Like, I mean, for Carlos, it's enough to see that other people witness the craft and saw creatures. Like, that's enough for him to be like, okay, like I didn't misidentify this. Something truly anomalous happened. And it's being covered up by our government in Brazil. So, again, just the vindication you gave to a lot of different people in the film, I think,

is closure enough for many of them. At least I hope so. Well, I was told that when they had the screening, they had a couple of premieres in Brazil, that a lot of the researchers and the witnesses were bawling their eyes out at the end of it. Yeah. Just waiting. so long for that vindication, waiting so long for that cooperation, you know, when someone's cooperated by other witnesses that lends credibility, credence to their testimony.

You imagine what a relief that would be. I can't imagine. I mean, well, and this kind of confirms it for me. Thank you to estimate for the $10 donation. This documentary reaffirmed my curiosity for the subject. what a compelling case. Thank you, James. I mean, that wraps it up right there, man.

I mean, you've reaffirmed and you've solidified that this case truly deserves a place in UFO history. And it's immortalized now in film. I mean, we do. I think we have to thank you for that. Oh, thank you. We'll thank Marco LeHalle and all the other Brazilian researchers, too, because, you know, those guys did extraordinary research in the field for much longer than me, although I worked on quite some time.

And I think that this is, I believe, in my heart. This is just the beginning. I believe there's going to be, you're going to see a lot more involvement, witness involvement coming forward. I'm anticipating that in the coming weeks, months, years. Absolutely. I want to see that video. Give me that video, man. I know. Believe me. Like I said, just if you guys don't think there's anyone on the planet that wants it more than me, you better think again. Right. And I know there is some money involved. If anyone has, has any further leads. We shout out to James.

It's just for the video of the Virginia E.T. guy, not for other video. This is, this is a big report for just the Virginia videotape photographic evidence. There you go, guys. Don't be sent to James videos of the UFO in your backyard. Last thing. Really helpful. Really helpful. If you guys could take a moment and rate the film.

on Vimeo, on iTunes, Amazon, the algorithms. It's tremendously helpful for us. If you liked it, even if you don't like it, but if you like it particularly, please rate it. Yep. Huge. It helps independent filmmakers. So, so much, guys. Get it up there.

Get it featured on all of these platforms. It truly deserves to be seen. So James, man, I know you've got to get going. You've got other interviews. You've got a full day ahead of you. So I will let you go. I'm going to debrief with the audience here for just a little bit. But last question, we've got your Twitter handle below.

I just showed where the movie is available. But not question, but any last words you want to give the audience before we let you go here. Yeah, just know that I'm constantly updating everybody on Twitter as often as I can. There's more things to come, I'm told, within the next 48. hours. So sit tight. And I'll post it on Twitter. Amazing. Next 48 hours, guys. It's going to be an exciting time. Fingers crossed. Highly probable. Yes. I love it. Awesome. My man. I will let you go. Thank you so much for your time tonight. Thank you so much. All right. We'll talk soon. Bye.

The Somewhere in the Sky's podcast is part of the Lionsgate Sound Network. Please take a moment to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever possible. Thank you for listening. I'm Ryan Sprang. And I'm Andrew Sanford. And we love pro wrestling. It's the best. Headlocks, elbow drops. Scathing promos and chair shots.

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Help keep the lights on at the Summer in the Skies HQ. And help us continue to grow by becoming a Patreon subscriber at patreon.com slash somewhere skies. Or by clicking the subscribe button at the top of your Apple feed. Thank you for your continued support. And keep looking up. Hi, this is Bryce Sable. I'm the co-host of Neat to Know with Ross Colthart,

but I'll tell you something. I've been somewhere in the skies many times, and it's a great place to be. So without any further introduction, here is Somewhere in the Skies. This is Somewhere in the Skies with Ryan Sprague. I'm glad you saw the film. Yes. And that you had a cameo appearance. I got to the spot.

You know, that was cool. It was, let's start there, James. Guys, I'm with James Fox, filmmaker of the phenomenon moment of contact. many films before that, but we're going to be talking today about his brand new film, The Program. But let's start there, James. We had the opportunity to actually hike up in the hills of Calvin Scotland. With a drone.

Oh, man, that was an adventure and experience. When we went with former RAF press officer, Craig Lindsay. Remember the car ride with Craig Lindsay, how awesome that was? I will never forget that. And I was wondering if any of that would make it into the film because you as a filmmaker, you're always filming. And I remember you actually had a camera on us when we were talking. But I did. And I really, sometimes I look back on things and I think, why didn't I put that in there?

Well, you can only put so much in. Like, that's the curse of being a filmmaker. You could only put so much stuff in. And I had it kind of mapped out in my head. I mean, I do everything kind of by the seat of my pants. anybody who's worked with me in the field's like, geez, this is a pretty unusual style of filmmaking. You're just winging it.

But the thing about that is, is that I'm legitimately in the field documenting what's happening while it's happening. I'm not staging things, right? So when I'm learning about things, you're actually seeing me learn about cases and, and legislation and all that stuff, you know? So I think that's one of the reasons why,

people seem to like the documentaries because they're not staged. It's very real. Right. And, you know, we were talking off air. I'm filming my first documentary, directly inspired by words you gave me while you were here in Scotland. And I would have to agree. Like, as I was filming, things were happening. People I was interviewing were like, you should talk to this person.

Or, oh, you didn't hear about that. You need to go pursue that. And it's amazing. you can go in with an idea about what the film is going to be about. And then it'll completely change, like you said, the more you interview people, things were evolving in the world of UFOs as you were filming the program.

You were able to get a lot of that in. But yeah, let's talk about that. Well, I finished a rough cut, and I wasn't terribly, I'm never really pleased with a rough cut, right? You got to get somewhere, right? And so I got the rough cut done. I'm looking at it.

I'm like, I really need some fresh. eyeballs on this. And there are some updates. There are additional people coming forward. So, you know, all right, time out, you know, stop editing. Let me walk away from this film for a little bit. Let me bring in some fresh eyeballs. Like Mungia came on board. He's a great guy. Super technically savvy and creative and just a wonderful, hard working guy, man. He really, to put in like 17-hour days. Anyway, and I went and did some additional filming. I went to DC. I went to Pennsylvania. Then there was a guy that had just stepped down from his position, Kirk McConnell, Senate Armed Service Committee, who was contemplating coming forward. And so,

long story short, I ended up flying him in from DC to right here, where we are now, where I'm sitting, and conducted an interview with him. Very last minute, last minute. You know, and then we were also waiting on additional information that was coming in about the Calvin 1990 Calvin UFO case, right and we managed thank you david clark to get uh riot um richard greaves who was one of the workers in the in the kitchen uh with the alleged photographers so our witness and felt was amazing it was the last thing that we squeezed in at the very last minute that we were not anticipating happening and it was just in my opinion it's one of the best moments in the whole movie yeah so i mean we won't give away what you were able to uncover uh when it comes to the

Calvin case and the primary witnesses and what happened with that. We'll let people see that for themselves. But when you said that to me, I was pretty stunned. People have been looking for these guys forever. And again, we'll leave it up to the viewer to decide. But yeah, if this is what is actually happening and what you've uncovered is real, we are one step closer to finding. the original witnesses. So I love, I have their names now. I don't think I'm going to reveal them publicly, but I have both their names.

And I remember the quote that Richard Greaves gives. It's just like, I think I want to make a t-shirt. He goes, I made boge stig, they made toast. You remember that? He's like, I work with them in the kitchen. I made boge d'igs, they made toast. Trust me, man. That accent, I hear that accent every day and it never gets easier.

But yeah, some awesome stuff on Calvin. But let's rewind a little bit. Now, it's called the program. So for those watching, listening, let's kind of summarize what that is, why you chose to use that title. What kind of sets this apart from something like the phenomenon, which was like this broad, sweeping, historical look at the entire topic. of UFOs when it comes to government involvement, personal witnesses. And now fast forward to 2024. And now we're having UFO hearings and we're learning some pretty sensational and bold claims by people. So what is the program in your words? So I always like have to have a working

title. And the title usually comes to me in the edit room. And I kept hearing Intel folks talk about the program. Oh, I knew about the program or oh, he was involved with the program. or if I told you what I knew about the program and I was like, the program, hmm, I really like that. It's catchy. Of course, there are other things out there called the program as well. That's inevitably, you can't, you can't

copyright a title, right? But there's other titles out there for out of the blue. I've seen other things out there for I know what I saw. So be it, you know, it's a shared title. But the program came because of the fact that several people within the film kept referring to it as the program. And that's, I guess, the involvement with the UAP phenomenon.

Or, yeah, UFOs. So the program, you know, we had this most recent UFO hearing where Michael Schellenberger, a freelance journalist, came forward and said that he learned about something called Immaculate Constellation. You know, could this be the program? Could other things be considered the program? We just don't know. You know, in the public, we know so little about.

what these Kladenstein programs could actually be. But for you, as the filmmaker, as you're interviewing these insiders, you had Christopher Mellon in the movie, Dr. Gary Nolan, who's actually studied possible remnants of these craft that have said to have come from these programs. I mean, my head was spinning with the people that you were interviewing in this thing. So in your opinion, can does what Michael Schellenberger,

what he brought forward with Immacula Constellation, does what you uncovered lend any credence to what he's claiming before the halls of Congress? So right before, right before coming on, your show, just 10 minutes, 10 minutes ago,

I was in correspondence on Signal with an individual who appears in the film as Navy X. Navy X's has set NavyX reached out to me right after I went and did that NASA stunt I basically got into NASA that's a story in itself we could say that for a later date but got into NASA and it was all publicized it was broadcast live

and after that you know that stunt I get a message from a gentleman who's contemplating coming forward, but wants to do it anonymously. We met, we went on and did the interview, and he, this individual revealed that there is a database of high-resolution 4K imagery of UAP coming down from space, coming in and out of the oceans,

performing, exhibiting a technology that's just light years advanced from anything that we have now or certainly, you know, didn't have 80 years ago, you know, the objects that don't have any wing, or any way to tell, don't make any noise, no air disturbance, have the ability to hover, accelerate from a standstill, out of the sight, the blink of an eye, transmedium, go underwater, come out, right? So it's atmosphere, up in the atmosphere, or up in space. And so he described, and he gave as much details as he could as to where these can be found for members of Congress,

people that are looking for this type of data. And so when I heard about Immaculate Constellation, which, you know, it made kind of sense to me because I've heard from numerous intel folks that stuff does exist. It's one of the things that I dress within the movie. So whether that has the name Immaculate Constellation or not, I don't know. Michael Schellenberger, I trust his instincts and his journalistic integrity. So, and I know that there are members of Congress that know who that individual is. They vetted him. So it could very well be Immaculate Constellation. But again, know. Yeah. But we do know there's a body of much better data, sensory data, overhead collection data, satellite imagery, that things of that nature. That's one of the things that we really

wanted to hammer home because you see, you know, people within the scientific community like Neil de Grosse Tyson, you know, mocking the lack of better data. And it's frustrating for those who are talking to people on the inside that say, yes, it exists, but it's classified and we can't release it. Right. Well, okay. So you talked about NASA. I remember watching the live stream of their UAP study group press conference. And then, you know, they asked for questions for the audience. And then boom, there's James Fox.

One of the first up to ask a question. You were able to film it, get it in your documentary as well. And you had like even the director of NASA at the time. Yeah. You were literally interacting with him. It was amazing. What was that like? Yeah.

It was fantastic. You know, it's funny. I got thrown off a little bit because I was trying to get in. I had somebody put me on the press list, but I wasn't really press. And I had this old press badge that I used when I was filming pretty slick, that documentary on the BP oil spill back in 2010. And I looked like so much younger. This little game game, it's totally expired.

But I was like, you know, at a distance, if it's just, you know, attached to your hip, you just kind of glance at it. Okay, maybe that's going to be cool kind of thing. But there's this guy who looked like he worked with NASA, but he was armed. He had a gun and he was quite aggressively, like, trying to screen me. And I was trying to get all the gear.

It was all very chaotic that was going to start. And I had tripods of camera gear and trying to get through security and the metal detectors and I'm having to strip my body and take things out of my pockets. But this guy was like, I remember thinking, this guy's like my damn shadow. Like every time I move, he's right there. like asking me questions, well, who are you with?

Like, what organization are you with? And I was thinking to myself, this guy just doesn't want me in there for some reason. He just, I don't know. And then finally the woman who had the roster, she's like, Mr. Fox is on the list. He's on the list. Brian Bender, with formerly with Politico,

had made some phone calls and pulled some strings and got me in there. Thank you, Brian Bender. And so reluctantly, but I could see that guy when I was on stage, kind of looking at me. And I'm, you know, I'm going after Bill Nelson, the head of NASA, right? I mean, it's like, you know, hey, how can you say what something isn't when you don't know what it is?

You know, and then what's the plan? What's the plan for telling the public? Is there one? Because you can't be studying the unidentified anomalous phenomena. You can't be studying UFOs, right, in an official capacity and not pre-preparing if it leads to some of these are. originate from non-human intelligence that prepare to how to tell the public, who does that?

Who does that? Who job is that? And they don't have a plan. They clearly don't have a plan. But it's kind of funny. He's like, you bet your boots, you remember? You bet your boots. I'm seeing some teetsters coming out of this movie. I'm thinking poach stags and toast. You bet your boots?

I don't know. It doesn't have to. You know, absolutely, man. You have to in this topic. Even when, you know, the content itself and the implication is very serious, like if we're, if we can't laugh at the ridiculous nature sometimes of the phenomena itself and the culture that sprung up around it, people like us, even. If you can't laugh at yourself, what the hell is the point in my opinion? I couldn't, I could not agree more. I actually shared a funny story yesterday on one of the podcasts because I was in my late 20s and I just landed in an interview with Edgar Mitchell. Apollo 14, six man to walk on the moon. And I mean,

it was a huge moment in my career. You could imagine, right? Here I am sitting down with a guy who walked on the moon at his home in Florida. And it was funny. It was two things,

very memorable. One was, I said to him, and I had written countless letters, letters, because I didn't have, I don't think we had email. Maybe we just started having email.

But any case, I'm, for years, I was trying to get interviews with him. My God, I couldn't believe it. And I just got denied. denied, denied, denied, deny. And then finally he met with me. And I said to him while we were shooting

some B-roll walking out in the past year, I said, um, Dr. Mitchell, you know what ultimately caused you to decide to finally meet with me? I was expecting some profound, you know, answer. He was impressed with this or that. And he goes, well, you know, James, I realized you just weren't going away. But then we go, we sit down and he's like, he said, well, Mr. James, what would you me to wear. And before I had a chance to filter what came out of my mouth, I said, how about a pink nighty? And I was like, oh my God, I can't believe I just said that. It was over. And then he just roared with laughter and he fell out. And I thought, thank God this guy. That's memory, you know, because I just put in my mouth of pink night. I always say that. That's pretty good, man.

Yeah, add to the credibility factor. He had a great sense of humor about it. I got to end to the guy. Anyway, yeah. So, you know, yeah, we can laugh about it. I'm sure you've got some great stories behind the scenes of filming some of these interviews. But you have some interviews that are exclusive, people who've never been filmed, been on camera before talking about this topic. You mentioned one of them earlier, someone from the Armed Services Committee,

Um, but, I've gone on camera before. Yeah, right, right. So tell us a little about some of the people in the movie who we should really be paying attention to. Well, I would say Len Val Logan. Um, he was part of the task force. I think it was when it was the task force. I don't think it was, I don't think it was part of Arrow. I think it was Jay Stratton and the UAP task force post, um, uh, post eight tip. But don't quote me on that, but he was definitely part of the task force with Jay Stratton. he'd never come forward before as far as yeah no he's definitely never been on camera before um kirk mccannell and he you know look he says i'll do the best i can and say as much as i can

without violating my security oath i you know i have to be very careful and in fact i had to take the segments they appear in and they had to be approved right so he had to he had to have it approved as did, you know, Jason Sands and, you know, Kirk McConnell, he was very careful on what he said on camera. He said as much as he could say without fear of retribution. Kirk McConnell said at Armed Service Committee. He started in 2017 sticking his teeth into it. He had high-level clearances. And, you know, and he talks about in the film, that's why I can say it, he has sat down along with members of the Senate with first handers.

I think it was like, I don't know, 10, maybe 8, 10 to 12. I don't have an exact number, but somewhere around there, first handers. And he says so in the film. I think these people have high-level clearances, credible, you know, either active, both active and retired. That's kind of a big deal. I mean, he's putting his neck out. Huge deal.

Well, Jason's a lot of people. I knew that there are going to be certain people within the community. They're going to criticize me for including Jason Sands. But I did a lot of stuff, a lot of digging behind the scenes. I did as best I could, you know, to verify his credentials to prove that he is who he says he was. And he was where he says he was, right? I even got his ex-wife. And I actually kept saying, look, I need photographs of you in the military.

And I kept not getting them. And I finally said, what's going on here? And he goes, oh, there my ex, kind of my ex, kind of my ex, and she's got them in, they're in boxes up in the attic and she's going to have to go dig it. Ah, I said, well, tell her $200 per scanned image. And I had him six hours later. So money talks, baby. Money talks, you know, and I had to have them.

You got to have them. Yeah. I met with people on the inside, current, that vouched for him and said, look, you know, probably suffering from PTSD, but he is who he says he is. He was where he says he was. We vetted him thoroughly. and he's even mentioned names of classified programs that he knew. So don't throw, I just, you know, so I stuck by his side,

and he's willing to take a lie detector test publicly, and he's willing to testify under oath, provided he's given immunity to verify, to give the details necessary to verify his claims. So there we have it. So, okay, one of the biggest, I think, issues are things we run up against when it comes to the program per se is you have people testifying before Congress, Elizondo, the claims by a whistleblower to Schellenberger, the individuals you've spoken to.

And it seems like, James, every time it comes back to, well, who are these people, where's the location where the craft are being hidden or stored or worked on? what are the locations of these programs and whatnot. It's always, I could talk about that in a skiff or a classified setting. So that seems to be like the big roadblock right now is like this idea of this mythological skiff that everyone talks about. And people like George Knapp have claimed, I've been in a skiff. Like I've literally been in a skiff with these people.

Why can't members of Congress get in there and do it? to further their investigation into the claims being brought to them. So, like, what do you make of this whole, like, I don't want to say it's, like, a way out of it, like saying, oh, I could talk about that in a SCIF, and then they can never actually get in the SCIF to talk to these people. I don't think the SCF's going to solve it because, look, let's say you get Thomas Monheim, the current ICIG, the intelligence community, Inspector General, into a SCF, and he reveals the street addresses. Now, now what? It's still classified.

So what a member is going to Congress may be possibly leak it out, then you don't have provenance. I think what needs to happen is that the firsthanders need to be provided whistleblower protections, real protections where they feel secure and safe and immunity to disclose in a public setting, just like we did with David Grush, but allowing them to relinquish all the information, street addresses, who has it, which agencies, which, you know, subcontractors, and that name. In my opinion, that's what needs to happen. Okay. And so executive branch, I would have, because I've asked that. And I've also asked like, where are they hiding this so-called unacknowledged special access program, right? And the best I can get, well, well, if it does exist, it's probably under the DOE,

Department of Energy, because that's the least amount of oversight. Yeah. So that's where it would be, right? But look, it's frustrating. People feel like things aren't happening fast enough, but I have to remind people, just look at where we've come since 2017, right? We've got a couple people, Intel folks, testify under oath publicly. That does a crash retrieval program. Let's not forget that. I don't think you can overstate the significance of that. Testified under oath, okay, that it exists. So there are

consequences for lying to Congress, particularly under oath, I mean, potential prison time. But we should take that allegation very seriously, and we should keep the pressure. on, keep supporting our elected officials, both parties, and while they keep digging. And, you know, try to get, you know, love the Trump administration or don't like the Trump administration. I think that they're more likely to possibly wave the magic wand and provide some level of immunity to these firsthand witnesses, which what, in my opinion, needs to happen. So this really lay, like you said, in the executive branch and policy making, you know, You stress in the film this, what do you call it?

The Disclosure Act that's been trying to get passed and whatnot through the efforts of people like Schumer and whatnot. Right. On the Senate, pass and the Senate fail. Yeah. Right. So basically what you're saying is like it has to come to a law that's going to protect these people in order for them to come forward. Yeah, so I'm sorry, I got sidetracked earlier on. I was going to mention there's an individual who appears in the film under, it's Navy X.

And this individual is putting together a statement. We were going over it just 15, 20 minutes ago anonymously on, it's a very compelling statement. And it's going to be released on my X account on the day of the film release on the 16th of December, basically explaining, you know, why this individual is doing what he's doing, why he's fearful for his safety, where some of this material is, what this individual has seen, and basically why he's coming forward anonymously.

It's very compelling. It's several paragraphs, and it really explains a lot of things within, the fear factor that is real, the consequences for violating their security oaths, I guess is real. And yeah, so it explains a lot of it. And it's frustrating.

It's frustrating for filmmakers, myself. It's frustrating for the general public. When you hear all these people's yelling at, like, I'd go to jail if I told you what I know. Excuse me. It's like, hey, why can't we have a blanket protection somehow and really? Because if what these people are saying is true, this is the biggest story of the millennium.

I mean, ever, really, right? So it merits further investigation. and it merits the efforts of our elected officials to try to provide immunity for these whistleblowers. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see what happens. It's an interesting time, especially when you have like these people testifying before the House and then, you know, Arrow testifying before the Senate. And they're kind of going up against one another in terms of who knows what, what can be proven, what can't be proven. So what do you think of Arrow and what the Liberans do? Very interesting. I'm glad you brought that up because I think about how much background I gave you on this.

But basically I had an opportunity right after I attended the first congressional hearings I got to attend after 30 years waiting for that. And a lot of people were like, oh, it was a big nothing burger. Well, you know, it was pretty exciting nonetheless. I was pretty happy to be there. Pretty happy to see people testify under oath. Pretty happy to see the rear admiral, Tim Galadette,

and, you know, Lou testify under oath about the existence of a crash retrieval program. Pretty big deal. But the next day, Kirk McConnell had arranged a meeting with me in a skiff with the new head of Arrow. And there was another gentleman,

Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Kevin Ryan, I think his last name was. I don't look into that. But in any case, John Kosklaowski is the new head of Arrow. And I got in there, and I was thinking to myself like, this is crazy.

I'm in a skiff with the head of Arrow. And so I said, hey, you guys, guys got to throw us a bone here. You know, we're not going away. And sure, the vast majority of these cites can be explained away in conventional terms. But, you know, there's a residual 10, 15, 20% that clearly defies a conventional explanation. And we're probably dealing with non-human intelligence.

And nobody scoffed or denied or anything like that. You looked at me and he goes, James, I can't part my own hair without approval from the DO. and you can quote me on that. And I thought to myself, I thought about that for a while. So basically what he's saying is Congress puts him in charge of digging through the various intelligence agencies

and finding out what they know and yet the DOD, which is part of the executive branch, tells him what he can and cannot say. So that doesn't seem like a very, really? Why is that? Why is that structured that way? But that's what he said.

It's interesting, Because you had at the Senate hearing, you had Susan Goff, the Pentagon spokesperson, next to the head of arrow, like I in him the whole time, the freaking lasers in the back of his head. And then at the House hearing, you had members of Congress like Jared Moskowitz saying, we were told today not to ask you specific questions. So it's like, who's pulling the strings above everyone here? And I got to say something really cool that I was just blown away by. and this was told to me by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Kevin. And he goes, you can't work for Arrow. It's a prerequisite to watch the phenomenon before you come work for Arrow.

And then he goes, God, that case at the end in Africa, I said, you mean the landing case? Wow. What? It's like the training manual for Arrow now, this. This is amazing. This is amazing. Yeah. It's pretty cool.

So just to clarify, did you go into the skiff? I did. I did. I went into the skiff. Yes. Just like in the movies. Yeah. It was crazy.

Yeah. And I had to like do a 48 hour background check. Then I had to go through all this like security metal detector. Then I went through this like glass, like this glass tube thing, almost like in a Star Trek movie where the door opens on one side. And you walk in and then. It opens on the other side. You walk through. And then I had to get rid of all anything electronic.

Leave it out on a on top of a little locker. Can't open this. And it's all with buttons and everything on it. Oh yeah. No cameras. No cell phone. Nothing, man. Boom.

I'm inside. And there are whole operations for error are inside a skiff. And I was, I walked down this hallway. And it's sorry, my camera's moving. I hate that. I need to turn that feature off. But I'm walking down this hall. I'm working on this hallway with the guy from Air Force Office Special Investigations, AFOSI,

and he stops and, you know, wait here and he's doing something. And to my left, there's a door open and there's a table with like maybe five people sitting at the table talking and I just couldn't help myself. I just kind of turned over and I started tuning it in to what they're saying. They're all sitting down at this, this table. And then somebody gets up and they walk over and close the door to my fishies. Oh, man. I couldn't help myself.

He's like, here, you went in there. I was in there and look over. I was, you know, dude, what's being said. And, yeah, it was pretty funny. And then I went to do another room with the two of them for like 15, 20 minutes, maybe 45 minutes with the head of arrow hung out for 15, 20 minutes, and he had to go.

And then I hung out with the other guy at the Air Force Office Special Investigations. I was asking him about Manit Black. Who are they? What agency are they from? Are you looking into it? You need to look into this case, that case. Like, here's where I think you could find some.

Yeah, it was pretty cool. Please tell me you asked about Doty. I did not. I did what. Sorry. It's all right. Next time. next time.

Yeah. But I do have, I do have their, I have one of their numbers. I text with them. Wow. You know, but I still am I said, you got to throw us a bone. You can't, we're not going anywhere. Yeah. This is not going to go away.

It's not going away. Yeah. Absolutely, man. Well, and see, that's the frustration right in there. You were in a skiff. Why can't these members of Congress get in there to interview these people? It just, this conundrum just, it baffles me. I don't get it.

Look, they didn't reveal anything. classified. And the fact that I met in a skip, I mean, I don't, I don't know, could they have classified? I don't know if they could have or not. I mean, I did a lot of the talking, you know, but when I started talking about NHI and I clearly was like, you know this is where this is going, right? You know that, right? You know, and that's what he just said. Like, I can't part my hair without the DOD approving it. Yeah. See, and that makes me think they wanted to, they wanted information from you, not the other way around. They're gathering intel from the people who are, you know, investigating these things, making films about them.

I told them stuff, and there's one particular bit of evidence that I've been digging up. Look, people are getting frustrated because they're, you know, the Varsignia case. We talked about photographic evidence. You know, I've been going after that for a couple of years now. I don't give up. Like, I've been going after quietly, and again, I have to say thank you to David Clark on the Calvin UFO photograph. I mean, it's been like quietly in and out for 20 years. I've been kind of making inquiries about that, you know,

pastoring Nick Pope about it. Great interview we gave, by the way, on that case, isn't it? That was interesting. Yeah. How we sort of framed the whole experience in real time. I waited 20 years for that moment, you know, and going to the spot. So I'm also been trying to track down footage of a launch at Vanderburg Air Force Base. I've been on it for about 10 years now, maybe 12 years.

And I know the individual that has it. And so I've been working that angle for a while and talking with, it was basically a launch. I think it was in September of 1964 Vanderburg Air Force Base, quite similar to what Robert Jacobs talks about with that object. It circles the tip of the Atlas rocket, shoots beams, the lights at it. This particular footage that I'm going after has, I think, two or three objects circling the tip of an Atlas rocket

traveling in roughly 8,000 miles an hour taken in 1964 but it doesn't shoot beams according to the people that have seen it and the individual who has it it doesn't shoot beams of light but it does circle and it's two different camera angles one close and one further away

showing exactly the same thing so they've totally eliminated any possibility of lens flare or things of that nature but it's pretty impressive stuff and they kind of want my help to go after it and I did say to them if I help you get it it can't disappear. Like, I'm going to get a copy and you'll get a copy.

So, oh, yeah, yeah, okay. So we're working together in tandem on it. Interesting. Well, okay. Yeah, we'll see. And they lie about it. I'm going to call them out. Yeah.

And I told them that. Like, you're not going to make this go down a black hole because I can give you a thousand cases right here right now about how this stuff has an uncanny ability to vanish. Mm-hmm. Well, on that, I do want to, I know we got to wrap things up shortly. But 10 minutes So I've got to walk my dog

And then I've got to go to my dad bod class To middle age dudes and older Get together and work out And make fun of each other And bump iron And it's really fun It's good for my mental state to health So I don't

I don't need it A top priority You're gonna need it for the next few weeks My friend, that's for sure Black Hole video I have to ask you this When we were in the car You played a voicemail for me

I won't name the individual, but people will know who it is about a certain video. Will we ever see that video from, okay, well, everyone knows at this point. Is Logan Paul ever going to drop this best video ever on us? What's going on? I had another guy come to my house. He probably wouldn't want me to mention his name, and I can't remember his name off the bat. Right here, came to this table right there, about a year ago. Something like that, maybe less.

And he has the video. And so he showed it to me. I said, well, could I take a video up? Uh-uh. And it was very degraded. And it was edited. It seemed like somebody had edited. It wasn't a, it was kind of chopped up and degraded.

I mean, it definitely showed the disc, you know, doing the wobble that I'd remember crystal clear and the paranoia for them inside the car and the light over the top of the car, all that. But it was kind of edited and just. chopped up and it was really degraded. And I was like, God, this is, and he said that he was going to, he had contacted Chuck Clark and he was going to have it enhanced with the latest software to get rid of all the dropout for preservation purposes.

And then I said, okay, well, do you think it'll get released at that point? He goes, well, my first step is to get it enhanced and then we'll see what happens. So I haven't forgotten about it. I'm still going to try. I won't ever give up on it. It's at one point or another, I'm sure Chuck Clark. Oh, and one more thing I'll say about it is that I went, I was on a tour at a conference, actually with, um, uh, uh, um, fade to black. Oh, Jimmy Church.

Yeah, Jimmy Church. And we were on a conference. We took buses from Las Vegas out to Area 51 as part of the tour. And, um, we got to little Aitle Inn and we hung out there for three hours and we had food and drinks and whatever. And, um, I met the, again, and I've known her for decades. the daughter of the woman who owned it. I think it was Pat. Joe and Pat used to own it. Pat's still around. Joe passed. And Pat's daughter, I talked to her about that footage because Chuck Clark lived like a couple hundred yards away from the little alien in a double wide for probably 20 years.

Of course, he had that footage and everybody knew about it. Everyone's seen it. And so I said to her, like, why is there so much secrecy around who shot it? Like, what, what's the big deal? Why don't they come forward. And we talked and she was very kind of, she remembered me and knew who I was, but she was kind of standing off and then she looked at me and she goes, do you really think we're that stupid that we're not going to make a digital copy of it? She said, there's reasons why that individual didn't come forward. No, she, I, yeah, there was reasons why and you wouldn't tell me. And I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, but I won't, I haven't given up on it. I haven't given up on going after 80 footage.

Sometimes it's a while. I don't know. Yeah. Welcome to Uphology. Welcome to Uphology. I mean, look how long it took for the Calvin UFO photograph to serve us. Oh, my gosh, for it.

34 years, 33 years. And completely by happenstance. Like, it was in his desk the whole time. Oh, God. It's crazy how these things work. Oh, well, let's talk briefly. You had Gary McKinnon in the movie. I know you were, I think you were with him the day before you met up with me, right?

Yeah, probably. Yeah. Probably. Wasn't that great? That was so cool to hear from him again so many years later and And the talk about it was going to take his own life before you go Rod in a war in prison? Yeah.

That's intense. Yeah. So what do you make of his claims in the broader picture of the program? Well, it certainly aligns with the research that we've done and the intel officers telling us about so-called immaculate constellation, right? If there's some sort of program that has all this high-resolution, 4K data. Right.

Satellite collection data, all the sensory data. It's got to be somewhere. We've talked to numerous people that have seen it, you know, most of whom are willing to take a lie detector test that it does exist. So why not? Gary McKinn, his claims,

he's never changed his claims. He saw one image. It was very impressive of an object that didn't, that looked like it was not of this earth. And then also the officers, the non-terrestrial officer, What the hell is that? That's weird.

What are those guys? Are those like astronauts? Right. Because non-terrestrial officers? Or are they something else? Yeah. You know, I remember thinking, you know, look, one of the things, the place where I'm at now after 30 years is I've finally gotten to a place where I go,

James, I know this sounds crazy. You hear about different aspects of the phenomenon. that you just had this knee-jerk reaction and go, that's impossible. There's no way in hell that happened. I've gone beyond that. Now I have to say, James, take a moment, suspend judgment, and at least consider this maybe a possibility.

Maybe this did happen. And dig a little further. Don't just reject it. So that's where I'm at right now. I started thinking about Jason Sand's encounter in the desert. Yeah, it's pretty, again, if true, like that's a pretty, nuts out. He's willing to take a public lie detector test.

He has the names of the other officers that were on duty that day. We have a date. We have a location. We have names. Let's dig into it. Prove or disprove that. Let's let let the world know about it. And let's dig deeper on that one.

Because if that really happened, wow. It's, yeah. It's one for the age. for sure. Yeah, I was like, man. It was incredible. I'm going to look at James. I've got just a couple questions from Twitter here really quick. I'll just pick one. I'll pick the greatest hit here. My favorite color is dark blue. Next question.

Heine's X says, what's up, James Fox? Let me see here. Oh, here's a good one. Brian Jacobi asked, what is the biggest frustration? about going through the conventional route, a.k.a. Congress politicians. What can us normal people do to push the topic forward? What us normal people can do, myself included on that, is to support our elected officials, bipartisan effort to push for more transparency. They need to hear from us that we want answers,

and they have our support. I can't overstate how significant that is. Cool. Let me see here. We talked about, oh, you posted on X today. You were looking for the J. Edgar Hoover. What's going on with that? What are you looking to? A friend of mine was asking me about it. And I was like, oh, yeah, I know where that is. And did a little quick search. It's like, why can I find this? And then I remember thinking, you know what? That's a pretty significant document. We're talking about crash retrieval stuff. the former head of the FBI in his own handwriting, right? Because I featured this document in out of the blue decades ago, says, okay, perfect, thank you.

This is excellent. So look, if we could just figure out what that, it's some people say L.A. Or is it SW? What is that? Because if that's SW, it could be the Southwest, which would mean could be Roswell. Because he talks about it.

And look at the date. It's July 15. that's just a week or so after the army would have grabbed it, right? Right. Because that's when Roswell happened. So this, in my opinion, because it's not typed, it's in his own handwriting. It's an official document from Jay Edgar Hoover. And I know it's old, obviously.

And I know it's been reported on, obviously. But let's do some analysis and find out what that says. Because if it's, if it's L.A. that I'm just stumped. But if it's S.W, it could be Southwest, which would be. being Roswell, which is pretty significant. Like, let's not just throw this out because it's old and it has been reported on the past. As far as I'm concerned, it's never really, we haven't gotten to the bottom of it. Yeah.

It's interesting. Yeah, yeah, I was grabbed it and wouldn't let us have it for cursory examination. We must insist upon full access to discs recovered. This is a week or so after Roswell, 1947. Like, come on, man. If this is in a smoking and gun document, if we can just figure out, out somebody needs to do some analysis work on that and find out what because he says for instance in the something case the army grabbed it wouldn't let us have for cursory examination one week or so

after roswell 10 days after roswell whatever that is like wow right yeah it's crazy um and it could be no more appropriate than for your new film coming out it's super relevant right now i mean it's a relevant document i know it's old and i know it's been reported on but nobody's really got in the bottom of it. What case is he talking about? If that's in Southwest, then that's bingo, right? Yep. Exactly. So anyway, yeah. I'd like to see, just bring it to people's

attention. I think it's relevant, very relevant. It would be crash retrieval, confirmation in the former head of the FBI's own handwriting, right? It's better than typing. It's in his handwriting. It could be analyzed. We should figure out what that is. I want to know your thoughts.

What's going on in New Jersey? man like between the uk and new jersey is this war of the worlds what's what's happening i i wish i had definitive answers and i don't i have a friend of mine who lives in new jersey called me yesterday alessie and he goes he actually was with me in virginia brazil a couple of years ago filming for a moment of contact and he calls me up and i totally trust this guy and he goes hey i live here they're flying over my house i said well tell me what are you seen he goes they're the size of an

SUV and they make noise, but they're hovering and they're this and they're that. I go, they're making noise. Yeah, they're making noise, but their loiter time is hours as opposed to minutes. Now, I fly pretty advanced drones. I mean, relatively within the, you know, I mean, I fly, you know, for my movies, right? But I'm lucky to get 20 minutes flight time, maybe 25. I'm really lucky under the right conditions. These things are up for hours. And in some instances, I've heard relatively credible reports of F-16s over more sensitive. airspace like military bases, you know, going after them and then just out maneuvering an F-16. Is that really true?

Because that's true. You're talking about potentially conventional propulsion, but highly advanced. So I don't know. I don't know what to think. It's really crazy. And the silence from the executive branch is deafening, really. I mean, they're saying, don't worry. You have nothing to fear?

Really? But you don't know what they are? That doesn't make sense either. The Pentagon liberal. Nothing to see here, folks. Nothing to see here, folks. They said that it's not U.S. tech and that it's, what did they say? Not U.S. tech and it's not Iran because one of the New Jersey reps said that he heard that it was Iranian technology and they were able to deny that. But then they also said, this is not U.S. tech either.

They're giving horrible explanations. They're making matters worse. Yes. Because why don't you just follow one of them back wherever it goes? Follow it. Yeah. Like it makes me think they know. It really makes me think they know. And let's just say we know what they are.

Don't worry about it. It's okay. But they don't say that either. Yeah. So I'm highly dubious. You know, come on. I know, man. And he's like, yeah, sorry, go ahead.

No, I don't want to end with a drone question. Yeah. So I guess my. big question for you is, what happens next? The film is coming out December 16th. What is the biggest thing people should pay attention to with the film? And where is this all heading as we go into 2025 with the UFO issue? Well, I think it's really important to keep the pressure on. I think we really are living in unprecedented times right now. It's happening. There's a culmination, right and it's got the attention of Congress

starting to get the attention of the American public in fact globally remember the implications are for all of humanity not just the United States right this is this is far-reaching global implications and it potentially could be the biggest story in modern history and I think we need to keep the pressure on keep supporting the congressional effort to hold the Intel

community's feet to the fire, keep demanding answers, and don't let up. Now it's not the time to let up. I want to say that this is the most independent production I've ever done. Start to finish. We have no distributor.

We're doing this entirely on our own. I had to borrow a quarter of a million dollars just to pay to get it released. It's a long story, but there's a lot of there's just a lot of expenditures, PR companies, you know, running ad-fiface.

I'm doing basically exactly what my distributor used to do. Like when I put out the phenomenon, everything's the same. The people that acquire the film aren't going to see anything different. It's just that we're all paid out of pocket. We have no distribution company. We have an aggregator who posted up on the film hub, but that's it. We do everything. So it's the first time in the history of all my films that has been that independent.

The film's coming out on Amazon, iTunes, Apple, Vimeo. It's going to be expensive for the first two weeks. It's purchase only. I know. So it's going to be $20. And if you can't afford the $20, I totally get it. Sit tight and we will make it available for rent at the end of this month. We're trying to recoup. We're about a million dollars in debt right now.

People wanted me to set up a GoFundMe. I refuse to do that unless I'm in a foreign prison somewhere. And I do not have the ability to get myself out. Then you can set up a GoFundMe. I'm not accepting free money. But if you guys want to fund me and you want to help, buy it in the next two weeks. And if not, wait until it's available to rent. And I do appreciate all of your support.

I really, I really mean that. Yeah, yeah. If you want to see me, my sweaty ass hiking up a hill with James Fox, who's in way better shape than I'll ever be. Yeah, you can see me for like half a second there. But hey, I'm not arguing. You're on the tree too. No.

Yes, yes. You're up the tree. Yes. You're in a number of times. That was me in one of your camera guys. So I can say that I was in a reenactor of one of the Calvin UFO witnesses. You know what? You're going to get an Academy Award for that. That was, your acting was phenomenal.

When you stood there under the tree and knelt down, that's an Academy Award right there. I'd like to thank my mom, all of my supporters for this award. No, I'm kidding. It was such a pleasure doing that with you. Like, it's a memory I will hold dear forever. Keep me posted on your documentary on the Shag Harbor and let me know how I can help out. Absolutely. I will. And thank you.

I know you got to get going, James. I can't wait for it to come out. Like you said, we'll have links to everything in the show notes for where you guys can find the film. And good luck with the release, my friend. Thanks so much. Thanks for joining us. Bye, everybody. The Somewhere in the Sky's podcast is part of the Lionsgate Sound Network.

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