Somewhere in the Skies - They Worked with STEVEN SPIELBERG... Here's Their Review of DISCLOSURE DAY

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

Ryan is joined by Hollywood insiders, screenwriters, and Sound, Light & Frequency podcast hosts Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman for an in-depth, spoiler-filled review of Disclosure Day, the latest from legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Having both worked with Spielberg and spent years exploring the intersection of Hollywood, science fiction, and the UFO phenomenon, Bryce and Brent bring unique insider perspectives to one of the year's most talked-about films. Together, they break down the film's themes, performances, visual storytelling, and its handling of UFO disclosure, government secrecy, and extraterrestrial contact. The discussion explores how Disclosure Day compares to Spielberg's iconic alien films, including Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and War of the Worlds, while examining the real-life UFO cases, historical references, and hidden easter eggs woven throughout the movie. Where does Disclosure Day rank among Spielberg's greatest science-fiction films? Does it succeed as a UFO disclosure movie? And how accurately does it reflect decades of UFO history and research? Join us for a passionate, honest, and detailed conversation as we unpack every major moment, reveal our favorite scenes, debate its biggest surprises, and determine where Spielberg's newest alien outing stands in the pantheon of UFO cinema. Subscribe to Sound, Light & Frequency: https://soundlightfrequency.com/ Join us at ANOMACON on September 12th: http://www.anomacon.com Send us a voicemail: https://www.speakpipe.com/SomewhereSkiesPod Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ Substack: https://ryansprague.substack.com/ All socials and books: https://linktr.ee/somewhereskiespod Follow Suzanne on X: https://x.com/csuzannelanders Email: [e-mail] Opening theme song by Septembryo Closing song by Per Kiilstofte Copyright © 2026 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. ⁠#DisclosureDay⁠ ⁠#StevenSpielberg⁠ ⁠#Aliens ⁠⁠#UAP⁠ ⁠#AlienMovies⁠ ⁠#CloseEncounters⁠ ⁠#MovieReview⁠ ⁠#BryceZabel⁠ ⁠#BrentFriedman⁠ ⁠#SciFiMovies⁠ ⁠#FilmAnalysis⁠ ⁠#MoviePodcast⁠ ⁠#Disclosure⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You live your whole life and then in one second you learn what it's like for primal terror to swallow you. Mind and body. He was standing in the hallway, lit only on his left side by the bulb. Just as he appeared in the photograph I'd found, he was very small, much shorter than his brother, my father, Eric. The family had said he'd always been boy-faced and a bit skinny, now standing there. He looked old and sick as well, but he looked angry too. Not for a moment that I think he was alive, and some terrible mistake had been made. I knew instinctively that he was not really there, that I was looking at Herman in the depleted physical state he had died in.

He was wrong, he said again, his whole body trembling slightly. He jabbed his finger toward me, almost in tears. I could have been a chemist. I had the grades. I think I tried to speak then, but it was stable. Uncle Herman kept his finger pointed in a threatening way, as if it were up to me to change the past. He turned with creaky slowness

and took a couple of steps deeper into the hallway, toward the kitchen, leaving all light behind him, becoming a silhouette. He turned back just before he reached the threshold of the other room. His face was a black blur, but his voice was still clear. There's a fourth body, you know.

He said, voice, hoarse. Shovel still in the shed. Knife Point Horror. Tales of supernatural suspense written, produced and narrated by Soren Narnia. Now transmitting from Spectrevision Radio, anywhere you hear podcasts. Hey guys, Ryan Sprague here from somewhere in the skies.

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There's nothing to hide at all. Welcome to Somewhere in the Skies Live. I am your host, Ryan Sprague, and we have a very special show for you guys tonight. We're actually simulcasting on another YouTube channel right now, and that is the brand new Somewhere on the Screen Podcast. For those of you who don't know, I have taken the keys for my good friends, Nick Westemeyer and Chris Moss filmmakers in New York City. And I am now in charge of driving somewhere on the screen off a cliff.

It is a movie review and analysis podcast. We're streaming over there tonight. What better way to start and kick things off over there than of a review of Disclosure Day with our crossover special guests for tonight from the Sound Light and Frequency podcast from Need to Know. you know them you love them they are hollywood insiders and our ufo enthusiast friends to say the least so tonight we will be breaking down a very spoiler heavy review of stephen spielberg's disclosure day have you guys seen it yet i would hope so or don't watch this yet i'm warning you right now we're going to be giving away everything tonight we're going to break it down as a ufo movie we're going to

break it down as a Hollywood movie, as a Spielberg movie, and everything in between. And both of these gentlemen joining us tonight have worked with Steven Spielberg in one capacity or another. So I'm really, really excited to talk to them a little about that before we start the review. But yeah, this is going to be a lot of fun. Reviews have been very passionate. I will put it that way for this movie. So yeah, let's not waste any more time. We have the live chat going on. all night. Super chats open. If you guys want to throw us some support, we'll put your questions, your comments up here. And hopefully we can, yeah, make you guys a part of this review tonight with our very special guests, Bryce Sable and Brent Friedman. So without further ado,

let's bring them in. Here we go. Welcome, gentlemen. Hey, it's great to be with you. We're both coming to you from Austin, Texas. Yes. Yes. Brett, how are you, man? I'm doing well. It's to be here. As we talked about before we started the show, it's been a minute since we last talked, and yet it only feels like a minute. It really does. I think I was in Osaka last time I talked to you guys, which is crazy. We had talked about this movie coming out, and now it's out. And we won't give away too much about where you guys are, why you are where you are, unless you want to talk about that. But Bryce, I know for you, Brent, maybe you too. You had some pretty unique experiences seeing Disclosure Day.

Is that something you could share or not? Of course. Well, I started seeing a screening, I believe on the same day you saw it, which, although given your time zone, maybe they were different days. But on June 8th, I saw it at a screening, a professional screening in Las Vegas. And my seatmate next to me was George Knapp, which was it doesn't get a lot better. hang out with George Knapp to watch a Spielberg UFO movie. That's high drama. And then Brent and I have come to Austin because we've recorded something with Jesse Michaels on American Alchemy, which is not out yet.

So you've got the scoop, my friend. And literally on the night that I got here, I saw Disclosure Day at the local IMAX here in Austin with Jeff. by my side, which was because Brent was still flying in. And it was so great because the IMAX screening had a live stream from Stephen Spielberg and Emily Blunt, who were a believe in a court, but they were speaking live to every IMAX theater in North America. So that was a, and it was an interview before the screening. So I've seen it twice, but so is Brent. I've seen what was your experience? Yes, yes.

So I didn't have any special screenings or celebrities sitting next to me. I saw it with the general public. I saw it the way probably most of your audience saw it, was just going to a theater. But I did see it twice. I saw it once on Thursday night at a late night screening with some work colleagues. And then, as Bryce mentioned, I flew into Austin on Friday, got here a little too late to join Bryce and Jesse and his producer.

So I went and saw it by myself. Well, actually, I saw it in a fairly packed house here in Austin at the Alamo Draft House on a big HDR screen. And it was quite impressive. I mean, it was impressive the first time, but seeing a movie on HDR, I don't know that I'd done that before. And it was pretty amazing. Cool, cool. Yeah. So, I mean, I was heartbroken.

I had the opportunity. I was invited to go see a advanced screening in New York City through, I believe it was through, I believe it was through. Amblin or the marketing people and because they thought I still lived there and I was like gutted I was like oh my God I wanted to do I was ready to fly I that's what I was going to say I bet you

considered at least briefly hmm what if I did on a plane yeah yeah I really tell us about your screening experience yeah so I ended up seeing it here in Edinburgh Scotland where I live and it was at a every man theater have you guys ever been to one of those in the UK

So it's one of those really fancy ones where, like, you go in and, um, it's beautiful lobbies and all that. And then you sit down and they take your order and they bring you in like a five course meal, bottle of champagne, whatever. You're sitting couches and they introduce the movie. You know, they have an actual human being come in and be like, you are seeing this by this. And so it was a really kind of elevated. I wish I'd seen the IMAX version, first and foremost. But for the version, for the experience I did have, it was excellent. I mean, I'm curious what they serve you for food in Scotland for your classy movie.

What did you eat? What was that? I had some haggis, Bryce. I had a nice one of these guys, which I'm drinking tonight. It's called a Charles Finale's Farm Brewery here in Scotland. So, yeah, it was a really good. experience and I couldn't ask for more for seeing a Steven Spielberg UFO movie. So yeah. I'm having a little disclosure day envy because Bryce had celebrities and you had a five-course meal

in a fancy theater. I had HR, but it just doesn't compare. So you at least get on Brent. I mean, you must have something. Yeah, I had, let me, I had chicken tenders with some comeback sauce. There you go. There you go. I love it. I'll say this. Five-star Haggis is more like a two-star meal anywhere else. I'll just put it that way. I'll put it that way, guys. Well, okay. So, I mean, the buzz was huge for this thing. Inside the UFO community and outside as well. I mean, they have done an incredible job of marketing this film in a very ambiguous way. I mean, we had buses, you know, going every five minutes up and down Edinburgh with Disclosure Day, plastered. all over them. The trailers were very kind of mysterious leading up to this. You add Spielberg, even being in the trailers himself, talking about this stuff. So before we even get to the movie

itself, what did you make of kind of the pre-buzz for this thing when you first heard about it and then leading up to like the week before it opened? Well, I think that the one thing that we'll probably all three agree on is that it was kind of unprecedented. to have the director in the final trailer. So that's one thing. And I believe that the reason this is such an event culturally right now, Brian, is that two things. First, Spielberg went out and called this movie Disclosure Day. Now, maybe the average human being doesn't actually know exactly what disclosure refers to,

but everybody in your audience and our audience knows disclosure has a euphological meaning as the moment when we finally own up to the fact that we're not alone and that they're not just out there in the universe someplace, but they're here with us. So Spielberg got everybody's appetite wet with that. But the other thing he did, as he did in that last trailer, and I saw dozens of his interviews, and particularly in the live interview before the IMAX, he kept saying over and over that Close Encounters was his speculative work. But this one, was true. And true is a big word, because if you say something is true, you must have reason to say that, which plays into all of the thematic stuff about, well, has Spielberg been given

inside knowledge or any of that stuff? And if a guy is going to say it's true, I mean, if I had just read a bunch of stuff, I'd say, I believe it to be true. I don't know that I would say it is true, but he has been saying it is true. Yeah. And not only that, he said it multiple times. It's not like he had a gaff. Like when Obama said, oh, their aliens are real. And then he kind of walked it back. Stielberg has doubled down on it over and over again through this whole, you know, hype buildup over months. And, you know, I got the impression that what was going to happen was he wasn't obviously making a documentary, right? that would be, he already did that with age of disclosure. He was involved in that in some capacity, I think.

This was a Hollywood movie. So as with Bryce and I, when we made dark skies, it was truth under the cover of fiction. So my anticipation was I'm going to see a movie that has some truth in it because Steven Spielberg himself is telling me that's what's in the movie, but it's going to be presented under the cover of fiction. That was my impression going in. That was my expectation the first night that I sat in the theater. Brian, and I think that expectation was big for a lot of us, you know, that you guys have covered on your show so much of like, what does Spielberg know?

Was he given any information to disseminate to the public through the media, through Hollywood? And, you know, you guys bounce those questions around a lot in your conversations over at your podcast. And I think for a lot of us who are like, okay, we're going to get some nuggets, some Easter eggs in here of the stuff that he wants disclosed to the public. Or these things he brought up in interviews. There was one interview I saw him do where he brought up the Pascagoula alien abduction. And I'm like, that's deep. That's not just Betty and Barney Hill. That's not Roswell.

That's like a pretty obscure. It's a deep cut. It's a deep cut. It's too bad he didn't bring up Calvin. That would have brought it all home. Exactly. You don't worry about that, man. The fact that this movie opened with a wrestling match,

that's all I needed to know it was made for me. In fact, you know, I was going to try to pull off that Brent and I were missing a chance to be at the White House for the UFC fight tonight. But we canceled to be with you, but that wouldn't be credible. So we're here because we want to be here. Sometimes you just have to settle, Bryce. I promise we'll get into the movie, guys.

But for some of our audience who may not know this, you both have ostensibly worked with Spielberg at different times. Is that something you could briefly run us through each of your personal experiences before we dive into Disclosure Day? Bryce, I guess we'll start with. Absolutely. Brent and I each have our own little separate Spielberg connection although we did have one at dark skies, which we don't need to go into right now.

It's a longer story. But I did write a first pass of a video game called Ghost in the Machine that Spielberg wanted written and had a meeting with him there. But the credit most people remember is that I worked for like nine months on the Taken miniseries and had multiple meetings. I think we had three meetings. with him during that time and talked to UFOs for hours, right? So that was certainly very intriguing and certainly a lifetime memory. But the actual memory of my Spielberg connection literally goes to

when I was the chairman of the TV Academy in 2002 when he was, he and Tom Hanks were nominated for Band of Brothers. And they came to me and said, who do you want to sit with? And I said, do I get to pick? And they go, you the chairman. I said, what about? Spielberg and Hanks. And they said, sure. So I ended up, my wife and I, Jackie and I ended up sitting with Tom Hanks and Stephen Spielberg and their spouses at the Emmys that year when they won for Banna Brothers. That was very special. However, UFOs, I have to say, I mean, part of me wanted to say, well, Stephen, as long as we're here during the commercial breaks, I was just wondering if, but I thought that would be a bridge too far. So we kept it non-UFO at that time. But yeah,

So we've had our connections. Brent has a very specific one himself. I'll turn it over to him. Well, yes, and I'm going to wrap it around so that, Bryce, you can remember talking about one other one that you had, which is my connection was, first, I was asked to come in and kind of audition for the show taken, which I wasn't able to do because I had a deal at something. I stole the job from you. Yes. And so, but then years later in, I think 2006, I was working at Electronic Arts, which was a big game company. They have a studio in L.A. and I was working on a team that, ironically, his oldest son, Max, was part of our development team. And then, lo and behold,

I learned a few months later that Stephen himself had a development deal at Electronic Arts. and he was developing a game with the code name LMNO, and that game was one which the way the studio worked, they moved teams occasionally to come and sit in on other projects and give objective feedback. So several times I came in and worked with Stephen on his LMNO game, offering objective insights and feedback, and it was quite wonderful to brainstorm with them several times.

But here's the interesting thing. I'm just going to put this out there. You know what the plot of the game was? It was about a young woman who is human but has alien gifts that allow her to read people's minds and do the whole hand-wavy, you know, this is not that these are not the droids you're looking for, and basically use the power of empathy through telepathy to navigate through the world. And why does she need to navigate?

Because a bunch of government goons are chasing her, trying to capture her because she's a unique specimen on earth. Oh, come on. This was 20 years ago. This was 20 years ago. And this was clearly an idea, a character, a storyline that he was already very interested in. Now, the game never got made. It was very hard to translate.

It's a cool concept. Very hard to translate that into game mechanics. Like, what do I do? How do I make this happen on the stick? So it never got out of the development phase. But it actually connects back in several. ways now to Bryce, the other Steve's field. Well, if you think about it, by the way,

Taken ends with Dakota Fanning being a hybrid who has enhanced mental capability. So that, of course, is what is going on in Disclosure Day with the character played by Emily Blunt, Margaret Fairchild, who is the Kansas City weathercaster. So he's been playing around with the idea of humans getting enhanced. powers and so forth. And by the way, since we are in a spoiler-free environment, as you said, I think that my, well, first of all, I think all of us have had our own reactions. Brent and I had the opportunity to actually observe this thing twice in a very short period of time. And one of the things that I would say is that night after seeing it with George Knapp,

we went out and had a beer afterwards, thinking that the two of us would sort of like have this very interesting back and forth about what was we just saw. But both of us at the time said, you know, I need some more time to process this. I mean, we wanted to have that conversation,

but neither one of the, you know, he liked it, I think the first time more than I did on first wash. But both of us were like, I'm going to have to sit with this a little bit because the movie is trying to do several things, as you pointed out in your introduction, it's trying to succeed as a summer blockbuster. You know, that's probably job one from the studio's point of view. Job two is trying

to succeed as something that is bringing disclosure closer to fruition or whatever. Now, when I saw it with Jesse Michaels, I turned to him thinking he would have the same reaction, of course, that I had had with George Knapp, which is, yeah, I'm going to have to say, but I turn to him and said, well, what's your take? He said, I loved it. Yep. Yeah, I saw that on social media. Yeah, he was not, no complications to, I loved it. And by the point we're at now, Brent and I have discussed it enough, and I'm sure you have thought about it enough. You start to, you start to have opinions. And I think my opinions are evolving them to be candid. They're not the same as they were night one.

They're not the same as they were three days ago. And it's where they're going to end up. But I'm in motion on this film right now. Yeah. And I think that's good because, you know, I left Bryce like you rather frustrated after seeing the movie. I do believe I think I owe it to myself as a UFO person to go see it again. I think I kind of, yeah, we'll dive into that. What I think is important, I'm going to give a little synopsis of the movie.

You should. You should. And then we'll kind of do what you did on your mini review of like UFO stuff. We'll dig into that. And then obviously the more movie-making aspect of it and what you guys thought of it as a film. But let's give this little brief synopsis here. We have cybersecurity expert Daniel Kellner, who was played by Josh O'Connor. discovers undeniable proof that extraterrestrial life has been secretly known by powerful organizations for decades.

He risks everything to expose the truth. At the same time, Kansas City meteorologist Margaret Fairchild begins experiencing bizarre psychic phenomena after a mysterious encounter connected to the same hidden secret. As both become targets of a vast cover-up operation, they are drawn together on a race across America that could change humanity forever. The question is no longer whether we are alone. It is whether the world is ready to know the truth. So that's the elevator pitch. That's kind of what the overall plot of this thing was. We had, this is obviously guys directed by Steven Spielberg,

but you've got Josh O'Connor, Emily Blunt, as kind of our main protagonist. You got Colin Firth as our main antagonist. And then you've got Coleman Domingo, who was probably my favorite character in this entire movie and one of the best performances in my opinion. How he was written, we'll get into a little bit more. But yeah, that was kind of our main cast of this thing,

the main idea of what the movie was about. So I have some interesting facts for you guys about how this movie is doing. it is on track for a $94 million worldwide opening. Domestically 45 million worldwide almost 50 million. So I mean, that's pretty darn good when I think the budget was around $115 million or something like that. So it's doing very well. It's getting butts in the seats, which I think is really cool. And I actually did this little comparison here for opening weekend showdown.

And if you take into consideration inflation, it's pretty much on par with the opening of close encounters of the third kind, which I found pretty interesting. Yeah, yeah. So those are some little tidbits going into this review. People are seeing it. What people thought about it and what the UFO community thinks about it. I think that's where we should go next for sure. So where should we start? I guess with the UFO stuff,

we all had expectations going in of how deep they would get into that. Like we said, Spielberg's pretty knowledgeable. But Spielberg was not the writer of this movie. So I guess let's start there. UFO-wise, where should we start? It's interesting. That is correct that in the actual screen credits,

David Kep, who has worked with Spielberg on the Jurassic Park films and also wrote War of the Worlds with him, is the listed writer. And he is. He is the guy that type, fade in and went through and wrote a script. But let's also remember that Stephen Spielberg, in this case, supposedly on his iPad, typed up 55 single-spaced pages and basically delivered it to David Kep and said, What do you think, my friend? And, you know, kept being no fool, said, I think it's brilliant. Let's make a movie here. So I think you really, other than the artifact or the, of how the Writers Guild is going to ascribe a credit on something,

you really got to say this is co-written by these two guys in terms of the creative way that it came to be. That's all. Just a little aside. But even still, the first words, the idea. the vision was Stevens. Yes. If you put it all on paper, he came to David. David came on board and they collaborated, right?

That's a common process in Hollywood. But this story was Stevens singularly. And as we just talked about, this is a character journey that he had been thinking about and trying to explore in different permutations for decades. So it felt like a very personal story in that regard, right? This is one that he'd been wanting to tell for a long, time. I think there's some interesting parallels to close encounters, right? People were always saying, is this the sequel, the unofficial sequel to close encounters? Philosophically, maybe in some ways,

but there's also a lot of interesting structural comparisons that you could make to close encounters, all leading to a storylines leading to an event, right, that is going to change the world. Now, and it didn't change the entire world, but it certainly changed the characters in close encounters. And in this, you know, you have even a shot that reminded me of close encounters where at the end in the TV studio, you have the Jane character, Daniel's girlfriend, pushing through the crowd trying to get closer to Daniel, just like Melinda Dillon did in close encounters up on the rooftop trying to get to Roy Neary. So there's a number of things that you start to feel like, oh, this had a lot of similarities, and yet they were two very distinctly different movies. Right. I think I read a interview where Kep said, this is not a direct sequel, it's a spiritual sequel. I love that, Brian.

I think you're right. Although, Ryan, wouldn't it? Just as a mental excursion, I think it would have been extremely interesting to actually see the actual sequel because close encounters, Roy Neri gets on a ship. Yeah. Especially goes away. Right, right. I really kind of wonder what happened to him, you know. Where did these space brothers take him?

And how long has he been gone and what happened to him? And that would have all been fascinating. But you're right. This is a spiritual sequel. I would say that. The one thing that I would, that hits me is it is nice to say, well, let's, let's talk about the euphological. Then we'll review it as a movie.

The truth is they're so intermixed because part of the problem for me is I went in, like a lot of people going, wow, Spielberg says it's the truth. It's called Disclosure Day. Bring it on. Okay? And so there you are sitting in your seat and you're like, oh, my God. And then a UFC fighter, whatever it was, it takes place first. And that's fine.

I mean, that was an interesting way for things to get started. No problem with that. But you realize very quickly in this film that you're in for a chase faster than you're in for a revelation. You are not getting instant revelation. In fact, you're not instantly into hardcore uphology. You're into a hardcore chase. And I think one of the things candidly is Spielberg is a world-class director.

He's the most popular director ever. So, you know, I'm not trying to take anything away from him. But the chase itself, because so many people have done these high action films, and it's an art form in its own right now, the idea that you can see. I mean, think of the born identity. I mean, think of that level of quality. So he basically ceded the territory that he might have ordinarily had,

which is I'm the only guy that can really talk about what UFOs are all about. And instead competed on the racetrack of a chase, which lots of people have been successfully able to do. And there are some moments in the chase that take you out of the film because you're slapping your head and going, what? What is this guy doing? So I think that that competes a little bit with trying to get your brain into what he's really trying to say is his message.

Yeah. So I want to go back to something you mentioned, Ryan, because I think it's a really important word, if not framing device, for our entire conversation, which is expectations. So there's two sets of expectations that, for instance, the third. of us brought to the movie. Now, the general public is bringing one expectation, like, entertain me, right? And very specifically, if you're calling your movie Disclosure Day, then when I get to the end of the movie, do I feel like that was earned? Like that I just saw a move, forget about whether I'm invested emotionally in actual disclosure. Do I feel like this movie

showed me how Disclosure Day would come about, right? Just on that level. So there's that expectation, does the title and the promise of the movie get paid off in the end? I think we can talk about that in a moment. But then there's the additional layer where when you come in and you, as Bryce said, you think there might be actual truth in this, there might be actual disclosure, then you're trying to watch the movie on that level as well. So for all of us, we're watching it through two competing lenses, right? Because for the movie to be successful just in and of itself, movie, it just needs to show that here's a plausible way in which disclosure might come about, whether you believe that to be true or not.

Then for us, though, we have to come out of it and say, did I feel like I actually got disclosed to? Right? Those are two different issues. So let me just start the first conversation, which is, was it successful in making you believe this is how disclosure would come about? Okay. The very specific question in there is who's disclosing in this movie?

I asked Bryce this earlier. I'm going to ask you, Ryan. Okay. Who's disclosing in this movie? Who's disclosing? Think hard, Ryan, and make sure you get it right because I screwed it up, and it's a trick question. Okay, okay.

I would say the extraterrestrial presence. intelligence. Bingo. Right. Are you taking notes? Yeah. I understand what you're saying. Yeah.

I mean, yeah, yeah. I mean, the information obtained that sets off this chase, that's not disclosure per se. But the act, yeah, I get what you're saying. We'll dive into it as we get to do. There's something else going on here, though,

because it's a movie called Disclosure Day. So it exists on the meta level of, is the actual making of a film helping disclosure? Is it part of Disclosure Day, which is very meta? But then the movie itself lives in the world where Dolan and I wrote that book, A.D. after disclosure, where we were trying to talk to ourselves about how will disclosure actually happen? Well, I would argue, we always said, is it a hard cut or is it a slow dissolve, right? Well, the Disclosure Day movie is the hard cut version, right?

Wherever we are and then boom, here comes the multiple terabyte dump of photos and videos and even exposure to an alien body. But in reality, the reality we live in today, we are living in a world of slow, dissolved disclosure. And we have been roughly since 2017. and I don't think, and I think that you would have to argue that the meta part of the movie exists as just one of the lynch pins in the slow disclosure. We've been getting White House disclosure of documents, we've got whistleblowers, we've got Congress involved with asking people, you know, with bringing in testimony and demanding more evidence. And so the movie that Spielberg's done outside of the, you know, on the meta level, is a punctuation.

point to what we're already living in. And I would think, let me put it this way, I believe that whoever's in charge, whether it was at what point of Majestic 12 or something like that, now we have this cutout in the movie of Private Enterprise, known as Wardex. And the thing is, they're not particularly good at their job in this. No, they are not. Okay? And I think that that's what disqualifies Disclosure Day as a film about how a disclosure event can happen a little bit.

Because there are so many points in the movie where a really motivated and competent Wardex would have just, I don't know, they were willing to use lethal force before. And they were certainly trying to do it now. They just put a bullet through the guy, been better shots or showed up. earlier or seen him sticking up on them or any of the things they just weren't as good they were not as good as i expect the real people who are in charge actually are yeah good good good yeah i mean they were bumbling at well but there was one point where daniel our character who's kind of this amalgamation of uap whistleblowers whether it's like a david grush or a elizando j strat and i kind of rolled them all up into a disclosure ball and that's the

That's kind of what Daniel represented to me. He worked for Wardex. He was sick of the truth being with health in the public. I'm going to take it all. And then you've got our private company, or as David Grush would say, private contractors are the ones with all the stuff, the craft, the information and stuff. So that was a good deep cut, I think Spielberg did, was showing that this isn't the military. and the U.S. government, per se, holding the information from you, they've basically outsourced it to this corporation to do that, to hold the secrets.

So that was pretty, I liked that. I thought that was a good way to go with it. You know, and Ryan, one of the things that I think we have to acknowledge here is that Spielberg says it's the truth, right? And my first viewing, I watched it and said, is it the truth? Are there really two chosen people? And then what about all these other abductees? What about Betty and Barney and Travis Walton and Whitley Streber and the hundreds of thousands of others?

Do they think that it's just two people? Well, then what are they for, right? The second time I watched it, I said, okay, that's maybe what he would argue is that's my story points. That's just my, that's my fable of disclosure that I'm telling. what are the deeper truths that he's actually telling? And I would say he's gone back to, and I agree with him, what was the tagline of close encounters? We are not alone. That's what set the world on fire. Somebody said those words out loud, and they had not been said out loud in that way ever before. So major kudos to Spielberg, the young Spielberg for doing that. That is still his truth.

of Disclosure Day. So on the meta level, the larger level, I don't know if that's meta, but on the larger level, the truth that he's talking about is, one, we are not alone. Two, it's not the government per se that's got all this stuff. It's migrated into private contractors, right? And three, these aliens have their own agenda as well. And but the only part where, so on those three, I sort of agree with them all. The fourth part, is there's only one kind of alien, the gray in this movie. Right. I'm part company with him on that.

I do not think that's the truth. I think that's a misfire if you're going to look at just basic, hardcore, high-concept truth. I don't buy that one. Everything I've seen, and I'm sure you've got, I'd love to see you guys if you disagree, but it sure looks to me like if there's one, there's three. If there's three, there's a dozen.

You know, there's more than one out there. Yeah. Well, I agree with everything you guys just said, but I'm going to steer the conversation in a slightly different direction now. So when we talk about truth, I want to bring up something that Bryce and I have talked about on our podcast, Sound Light and Frequency, and I think, Ryan, we even talked about it in a previous episode with you. I was disclosed to when I was 18 by a government official named John Harrington, who was part of the Reagan administration in the 80s. And two things, I'm not going to go into the whole conversation, but two things he said to me, which are critical to our kind of analysis of this movie. One was when I asked him why the public didn't know, right? Well, why was this truth not being

foretold, I mean, told to the general population? And he said to me, in 1981, we are a God-fearing country. And if you take away religion, it will unravel everything. And that is going to unravel then the global economy because people are going to lose their belief and their purpose. And we need people to go to work. And that's the control mechanism that keeps order on the planet. That was the general conceit. So at the end of our conversation, I said to him, well, when do you think we will ever know the truth? When will disclosure ever happen? And he said, I don't know, maybe in our lifetime, but only if it has to. Okay. Okay. That's real. That happened. A person in the know who became Secretary of Energy in Reagan's second term and was connected to the Navy. So if you know

anything about euophology, those are some real kind of like nexus points. So he says all of that to me. Now look at the movie. What's happening in the movie? What's the backdrop of the movie? World War III. It's a whole DEFCOM 2 level threat with North Korea. So why is Disclosure Day happening? Because it has to, right?

Yes. And by the way, to the question I asked you, who's bringing about disclosure? Well, it's the alien itself, right? The alien itself behind the scenes to the breakaway group within Wardex, is the one that influenced the character that you like, Hugo, played by Coleman Domingo, to hire Josh O'Connor, whose name is Daniel in the movie, to become part of Wardex. Why? Not just because he was a talented hacker, but because he was an experiencer

who was going to be activated to become one of the two ambassadors with Emily Blunt, Margaret, in the movie. So all of this disclosure is happening behind the scenes. We don't learn all of this until much later in the movie because an alien has looked at planet Earth where it is living currently and seeing World War III approaching and saying we have to have disclosure now to save the human race. That is how and why disclosure is happening in this movie. Interesting. Can I share rarely a good point. Yeah. I want to share one thing with you guys.

this is hilarious because it kind of has to do with what you said. I think both of these experiencers were activated for different reasons. I love the way you kind of phrase that, Brent. And that's why we're only following these two is because, you know, and I also agree with Bryce and his mini review that like really two experiencers from America are the only ones that are going to disclose the truth about it. But this is what happened. So you have this scene in the beginning with Emily Blunt,

who I'm sure we will sing her praises throughout this review. There's a moment where she's in her apartment with her boyfriend and a bird flies into the window. They have this weird kind of moment with the bird and then boom, she starts speaking Russian. She's never spoken Russian in her life. Later, she ends up speaking Korean, I believe it was, at one point as well. So whatever these things that are happening, they're triggering her to speak other languages, I'm not kidding you. After seeing the movie, I come home to my apartment,

where I always leave my window slightly ajar for air circulation. I come in and on my coffee table is a pigeon, just sitting on the coffee table. And it took, being a partner, like, it took us 20 minutes to get this thing out of the apartment. It shit everywhere. I had to wash everything. And I was speaking, I was saying things.

I've never said in my life. But not in Korean, no. Not in Korean. More just our families at that point. But I was like, you can't make this stuff up. I come home with a bird in my apartment. I think you've been chosen, Ryan.

I think you've better be prepared. The thing is, you brought something up that I just, I want to put out there because my first reaction, and I think I did say this to George Knapp over that beer, although it was tentatively said at the time because I was still trying to think through it. I was going, you know, it reminds me of and then I went, I know.

It feels like a Marvel origin movie for a person that gets superpowers. She's triggered. She doesn't know what her past is, but suddenly she can speak Korean, she can speak Russian, she can speak alien. She is able to turn invisible

and have other people do, as, you know, Brent said the, I guess, the Obi-1 Kenobi thing, right? Nothing to see here. And she's able to read minds. She's a supreme empath. And these are superpowers. She has turned into a superhero in this thing. And so on first glance, I found that I was a little wanting in that. I felt like, and for one very good reason,

And I think, I don't actually think that's what the reality of contact is. I don't think the Earth is about to be turned into a planet full of super-powered people by an alien race. I could be wrong, but that just doesn't seem like it to me. So I had to, in order to embrace the film for what it's trying to do, I had to write off all that stuff in my head and go, that's Spielberg finding a vehicle to deliver his, you know, deliver his truth. And that's why I started focusing on the larger truth, just so I could say, you know, I don't want to, if this is a big cultural moment and other people whose opinion I care about are saying, well, I found a lot to like in it.

Then I need to say, okay, let me be empathic for a moment. Let me try to understand what they're seeing in it that I'm not yet seeing in it. And so that's how I've sort of rationalized where I'm coming out on this thing. Just sort of say, other people are seeing a slightly different movie than I saw. Yeah. And why is it? And then I'll disclose with this thought. But there's nothing unusual about that.

The one thing you know working in Hollywood and having things that you make turned into film or television is that you put something out there into the world. And it doesn't matter what you thought it was about. the audience will tell you what it's about. They will watch it, and they will tell you what should be thought of about your project. And certainly, that's been true for everything I've ever done. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, please, Brian.

No, go ahead. You first. Oh, no. I just, you know, since we were talking about all the stuff with the character that Emily Blunt played, Margaret, it. I found it really, I kept going back to Jacques Valet. I don't know if you guys felt, I feel like that's where a lot of Spielberg got his research in terms of her powers, her abilities, what the aliens imparted to her as an experiencer, you know, this whole idea of like the control system, consciousness. And yeah, yeah, just kind of being able to like manipulate perception. There's one point in the movie where she can literally make you think you're seeing a dead family member or, you know, your son or she knows that,

hey, I know your husband was abusive. You should call the cops. Like, just do it. Like, she can read minds. She can see the future. She has all these superpowers, Bryce, as you put it. And it did remind me a lot of what Jacques Valet has said there at the years of like this control system. It feels very, it feels, though, like a, uh, By the way, it's raining like hell outside here in Austin right now. I'm looking out my window. Interesting. Well, okay, I produced a TV series called The Crow Stairway to Heaven a few years back.

And The Crow had those abilities, too, to make people see things that weren't there. So it felt very much superheroish to do all that at the end because I really, as I look at the phenomenon, I do agree with you about Jacques Valet. I mean, obviously, he's saying there's more here than nuts and bolts, and there's way more here than meets the eye. I do agree with that. But I have, even in my deepest valet dive, I haven't actually felt that that's something he's uncovered, that there are those of us out here who can make people see things that they don't, that aren't really existing. I'm just not sure that's what the phenomenon is about, but I can be wrong. Well, on that point, I'm going to offer a slightly contrarian point.

to view here because because here's the thing the first time I saw the movie as we all experienced I had expectations I wanted it to work on two levels I wanted to be a great blockbuster and I wanted to feel like I was getting some truth that I had been promised by Steven Spielberg that there would be actual disclosure happening so there was a lot of cognitive dissonance in that first movie because I was kind of saying well there's things I'm not liking about the movie itself as a summer blockbuster And then there's, where's the disclosure? And so by the end, I was like, it was the whole experience bad or were there, like, what happened?

I really, as you said, Bryce, I needed a beer to process the whole thing. I didn't a couple of days. The second time I saw the movie, I thought, okay, expectations, put them to the side. Now I just want to evaluate the movie. And then afterwards, I'll sit back and think, okay, looking through kind of the entire film, the narrative, what pieces of disclosure could I extract? I wanted to try and just think about it as a movie. Here's the thing.

If you take literally what we just talked about, which is that, wait a minute, so the aliens can give you all of these incredible powers and you become like a superhero? Do we believe that? Does that what we think is going to happen? No. But if you think about it metaphorically, right,

as a summer blockbuster, where it seems like every other movie is about superheroes, then that's something maybe that the audience could relate to. So let's take broad strokes and give a woman a very powerful set of tools, right, side tools essentially, because she's going to need them to help navigate through this chase that she's going through where everyone's trying to stop her and the Josh O'Connor Daniel character. So there is a lot of plot contrivances and a lot of things you would see in a superhero movie, right? But isn't that the parlance of Hollywood today? So take that for a moment.

now step back and say, okay, well, what's the message behind that, though? What is really being said? If I don't take it literally, if I take it metaphorically, it's that these aliens are going to upgrade humanity. And specifically, how are they going to upgrade it? Well, you'll get some side powers, but the real thing that you're going to be upgraded with is empathy. Spielberg said this many times leading up.

Empathy is a superpower. And so, and why do the characters in this movie, need to be empathetic, but also what's the message within the movie that's trying to be disseminated? It's a world on the brink of World War III. So what do humans need to do? They need to wake up and become more empathetic. They need to think about others. And if I start a war, I'm going to kill millions of innocent people. I don't want to do that, right? So if somehow humanity could be upgraded with their ability to be more empathetic, it would tone down and dial down all of the hostilities in the world. But here's the interesting thing. Here's the thing that even after I was willing to kind of

look at the movie with this fresh set of eyes the second time and show a little grace in terms of interpreting it, there's still something that doesn't sit quite right with me, which is if the message of the movie is, as they say, that remember the, here's the thing, remember the little clickety-clack thing that she says at the beginning that Margaret says, well, she's the newscaster and it was in the first trailer and everyone went, what's that? And then later, Josh O'Connor's character says, I understand that. And what the truth is, don't be afraid of what you don't know. So it's like basically don't fear the unknown.

Don't fear the other. Don't fear us, the aliens, just because we're eight foot tall and look scary. Don't be scared of us. We're here to help humanity. That's what's being conveyed, correct? Don't fear what you don't know. What you don't understand. But it was some of the reason.

Don't fear what you don't understand. But now think about what is being conveyed with these powers being bestowed. And even in that scene I just talked about, what is happening? Behind the scenes, you have an alien that's far more powerful and advanced than any human on the planet that is able to jump into through their consciousness, Emily Blunt's character while she's giving a newscast and speak through her without her permission. Well, that's called possession. So now you're into something where, okay, so the aliens can do this.

The aliens are saying this is for our own good. But we might have to take possession of you. We might have to get in and change, rewrite your DNA. And even the scene that they show it happened to the 10-year-old kids is pretty harrowing. One of the kids is crying, right? So it's a little traumatizing. So the message is if you would allow us, as this alien race and trust that we are benevolent and have only your best interests at heart,

we will put you through a pretty harrowing process, probably be traumatic for some of you, but we're going to upgrade you and make you more empathetic so that you can then jump into each other, right, or that we can jump into you. And when I think about all of those things, when I think about the fact that they then give the humans these three devices, which we can talk about later, why three, why three, and whatever. The three devices are essentially training wheels. So before you become, get all of the alien powers

where you can just do it with your mind, you can use one of these things to literally take control of another person, just as the Colin Firth character does, Scanlon, in the middle of the movie, takes control of Daniel's girlfriend named Jane, gets her to literally puppet her to the point where she picks up a knife

and she is going to kill, someone. Yeah. How can you not read that as demonic possession? Metaphorically. But also look at her eyes in that scene. Very much. I mean, I've seen that in a lot of horror films. Right. It was scary. Yeah. You know what it reminds me of, guys, there's that one line in arrival, you know, where you have a linguist being the one who's kind of our antagonist. And she says, like, The, we need to know the language because otherwise this tool is either a tool or it's a weapon. And I think you're right, Brent, like these devices, they've imparted that abilities and whatnot through these devices to Emily Blunt's character. But then Colin Firth has a piece of it too.

They can be used for vastly different things. Yeah. It's unsettling. And like you said, the whole possession thing, which I would love to talk to you guys about, dovetelling off of possession, the religious. Yes. That was next on my list too. That was next on my list.

That was pretty interesting. So yeah, let's go there. What are you doing? Ryan, you kick it off. I mean, you obviously have some thoughts about this, as I know Bryce and I do as well. But it is a big component of the movie. And it spills over into real life in some interesting ways, too. So please, T us up.

I think I know what you're going to bring up. Suzanne, our co-host and I. covered this story last week where this priest in my hometown originally from my hometown of Syracuse, New York, was fired by the Archbishop for commenting on UFOs, aliens, and how they could possibly be demonic. This is a big story. He got let go by the Archdiocese for going out in public and saying that UFOs and aliens are demonic, crazy stuff.

Saying that they are demonic. That's interesting. Because this thing's all about the Catholic Church in Spielberg's movie. And the Catholic Church, although there's been a little bit of back and forth on it, but generally speaking, the Catholic Church has historically seemed to be saying, hey, it's a gigantic universe and God is in charge of all of it. And he could make other people, which is why they have the Catholic nun, basically saying, why would he make a place this big just for us?

Yeah. So I loved this part of the movie. I thought it gave a very, because it is what a lot of the audience is going to be thinking. And I'm sure, you know, and Bryce, you you tackle this in your book as well. How will religion react to something this profound? And I love how this character in the movie, who was once going to become a nun, you know, went to her superior, as it were, and asked, like, because I did the same thing. I went to confession when I was an altar boy as a kid. I went to confession because I had just had a UFO sighting. I was starting to read books by Stanton Friedman and all this stuff. And I'm like, oh, aliens. Like, is this okay? Am I allowed to believe in this? So I went to confession and asked through the partition of my priest.

I am obsessed with aliens and I want to keep looking into this and I believe in it. Is this okay? story for another time. He said, yep. He basically said what this nun said in the movie. So I'm glad that it was kind of on the same page. You know, this character in the movie asks, like, is it okay? Like, what if I told you aliens were real?

Well, I got another question for you. What if Spielberg, instead of saying, I'm going to focus on a Catholic-centric point of view on religion, What if he'd focused instead on the Christian, the evangelical Christian community? Because a lot of them think it's angels and demons. Yes. They're not as open-minded as the Catholic nun in this movie. And in fact, we've got some evidence that there are factions within the Pentagon. And throughout the UFO cover-up, who are strongly like, hey, angels and demons.

And in fact, Brent, you remember this? Because when you and I first met, your wife was my assistant. I was working on a show called Mantis. And there was a guy named Coleman Luck who was a friend of mine there. And he knew more about UFOs than anybody I knew. and knew more than you and me at the time combined. He was so knowledgeable you could bring up anything. But he would just laugh when you mentioned they might be ET.

Because he would just say, no, no, no, that they're demons. You're going to learn soon enough. Yeah. Well, so, Ryan, I found, I found Spielberg's very explicit inclusion of religion in this movie, one of his boldest moves, right? I wasn't expecting that. That was completely beyond my expectations that he would go that literal, right?

Where he has a Catholic nun, right? So I thought the film would have spirituality in the same way that I could find some hints of it in close encounters of the third kind, but not so overtly as in this movie. But there's two interesting things we need to talk about. One is in the lead-up to the movie, Spielberg said a number of times

that some religious people are going to have to adjust their beliefs in order to accept the truth of his movie. Now, what beliefs is he talking about? Right. And yet he's trying to accommodate, you know, the Catholic Church at least, by having a nun saying,

oh, why would God have made the universe just for us? So that was very like, okay, bring it on, whatever the story is. So I think that's a fascinating thing to talk about first and ask ourselves, well, what was Spielberg really trying to say about religion? But then the other thing I just want to throw in and let you guys kick it around is, as this is happening in the movie, in the lead-up, it wasn't just the story about the archbishop that was canceled

because he said angels and demons, if you remember when the Trump administration was getting ready to release some documents, they dispatched a handful of Congress people to go talk to pastors in the train. Yes. To prepare them for what was coming down the pipeline because it was going to be very difficult for their flocks to accept the truth. How does all of this connect together? that's i totally forgot about that mysterious meeting amongst pastors yeah interesting stuff um yeah i liked it and i like the fact that like you know she this character of jane she asks the mother the

the uh nun you know will this change my faith that should it change my faith in god she says i don't think you're oh ever going to have an absence of faith in God. I think you have a, it's the faith in humanity that you're losing. That was a great one. I loved that. I loved that. Yeah, like, kudos to David Cope on that one, if he wrote that one. There's other lines that I took a lot of issue with. We'll get there. I'd love to, I'd love to, I'd love you to throw out right now a line that you took a lot of issue with, because I, I, we're leaning a little positive here for people that we are taken aback by some of the things in the film.

So I think we should throw a little shade on it too at the same time. So what do you go? And I saw this giant, like eight-foot hairy creature just run across the road. She was claiming a man was talking to her through the sound machine. If there are any spirits in this room, please give us a sign that you are here. And as soon as he finished that sentence, the door to the bedroom slammed shut and the candle blew up. and now the room is pitch black. As it walked, it walked like an ape, but human though too awesome.

But as they move towards us, they grew in height and slenderized and became distorted. We are the hollow sky podcast. And welcome to the hollow cult. Join us every Monday for Tales of the Strange and Unusual, wherever you listen to podcast. And remember, stay safe, stay weird. Okay, I'll make mind brief because I'd rather hear from you guys as professional screenwriters. You know, I'm a playwright. Like, I went into this movie, like, whenever I see a movie, I have that curse of like,

I'm not just enjoying the movie. I'm analyzing the editing, the pacing, the structure of the scene, the third act. But for me, dialogue is everything to me as a part. playwright. And there, I would say my favorite character was Coleman Domingo, yet he is the one who got the most, I would say shortcomings when it came to dialogue. I took issue with almost every line this man had Hugo, the character of Hugo, when it came to talking about UFOs. I hate to say it, but you had this beautiful scene that could have been really good between Hugo who left Wordex, this corporation, to be a part of this splinter group that's going to disclose the truth and Colin Firth,

the head of the corporation. And they have this sit-down, remote viewing sit-down, I should say, I should throw that in there, because that's crazy. But of the 80-year campaign needs to end, and this and that. And then he starts, it was just word vomit of the most surface level UFO stuff. And I just was like, oh my God, this is so like, I think I said in my mini review,

they Googled UFOs and wrote that dialogue into whatever came up on the first page. I hate talking ill of other writers because clearly like this man has earned his place at the pantheon of filmmaking and working with Spielberg. But it was almost every line spoken about UFO facts that I took issue with

because they just seemed so forced and so Wikipedia-ish to me personally. So that's my little quam when it comes to the time. You know, it's funny that you are a man of two points here. One is he's your favorite character, but you took issue with everything he said. Yeah, it's a little contradictory. It was my least favorite character. I didn't find his performance that compelling. You know, my favorite performance, obviously, Emily Blunt is, you know, pretty darn good in this thing.

And she's obviously a very talented actress and she really brought it. And she even made up the alien clicking sound. Right. It's not AI and that was not special effects. She was actually doing that. So, I mean, I couldn't do that. So that's a great work, Emily. I didn't, and let's define again who Coleman Domingo is.

There's a breakaway group called Wardex who is managing the secret. But within the breakaway group, Coleman Domingo, who you see here, is inside a sub-breakaway group, right, that's trying not to manage the secret, but to get the secret out. So there's a lot of different currents going on here. but he just didn't he didn't strike me as formidable enough with a plan that was formidable enough to stand up to the real secret keepers but obviously that's how he's portrayed in this thing but I don't have a lot of things I mean I was cringing with a lot of things that he said but I wasn't as dialed in as you to actually remember them I don't remember I put them all

out of my head I don't remember them right now yeah yeah yeah what did you think Brent well So I, with regards to the Hugo Coleman Domingo character, I'm kind of in the middle. He wasn't my favorite character. He wasn't the character I hated the most, as I think, you know, Bryce seemed to say. I didn't like a lot of his dialogue. I like that actor. So he kind of drew me in. I like the idea of that role.

But he came across to me as too much of like a guardian angel character or something. And with how stressful everything was, he always had like this. slight benevolent smile on his face, which I felt was like tone deaf to the situation. Brent, I'm with you 100%. That is my opinion. I did find that's what it earthed me. But go ahead. But I'm going to focus on a different character because as a screenwriter, my pet peeve was the bad guy. Now you want to say, oh, you're talking about Scanlan. Forget about Scanlan for a moment. Scanlan was an administrator. The real bad guy in this movie was Boyd. Boyd was his second in command, his

That's right, yeah. And ruthless. What was, what did Boyd do the whole time? Even when Scanlon had been like, ah, let them go, Boyd did not let them go. Boyd is the one who pushed them into the train, tried to kill them, and then drove alongside the train, was shooting them as they're hanging off the train. Void was the person at the end, even when Scanlan kind of accepted that all was happening, Boyd stopped off. I'm so mad. Right. And from a screenwriting standpoint, what motivated him? What was his big philosophical issue, right? Was it that for instance, here's a contrivance. You're going to find out, oh, well, Scanlon's one year from retiring. And the guess who's going to inherit the head of Wardex? It's Boyd. But if all of this goes away, now Boyd's losing his job.

okay well that's dumb but at least it would have been like a reason you know what the only reason in the whole movie is and when i say this you're going to go oh i forgot about that when josh o'connor when the daniel character early on in the movie is put into like what looks like checkmate he's caught at that it's right at the very beginning in the beginning right after the the the uh the the wrestling match which you already he's brought out they have his girlfriend he's going to trade all of the material that he stole for the girlfriend, right? They go through, okay, all the media is here, great. Where's that little device? We want the device that was stolen, but he's holding it. Josh is holding it in his back pocket. And he ends up using it and the threat of it to get his girlfriend and the media and get away. Now, when I say this, you're going to be really pissed off.

At the end of that scene, Josh O'Connor gets away and Scanlon walks over to Boyd and goes, he works in an office and look what he just did to you. Now, nothing else is said about Boyd in the whole movie, but that slight is enough to propel them to all of the dastardly deeds he does the rest of the movie. From the certain standpoint, I'm like, no, like, that is so mustache twirley, kind of one-on, villain 101. That was one of my biggest peeves with not just that character,

but the whole movie. Okay. I'm glad you said that because, again, it's, I think what the movie was missing, and maybe it was just scenes that were cut, moments that were cut. Like, we all know what that's like. You got to kill your babies.

But there, one aspect of the entire movie, as Brent, you pointed out, what the movie is actually about empathy and this and that. The biggest aspect that did not land for me, and I almost forgot about, was the impending World War III. I do not think they covered this enough

to warrant disclosure being a possible resolution to what could be the end of the world. There's that one scene where they're running away, they go to this gas station and people are hoarding for food.

It was very pandemic-y and like, and I was like, why are these people freaking out? What's going on? I'm like, Emily Blunt was seen on TV doing some weird clicking noises, but that's not going to drive the world crazy.

This local meteorologist doing something weird on TV. Like, why are they freaking out? And then I'm like, oh, my God, oh, yeah, there's this backstory of an impending World War III. That completely went to the back burner. And not only did it go to the back burner, but I remember, first of all, I agree with you, by the way, there was no hint of that panic until that scene.

And that was a little jarring. But at the same time, let's take a look at it from the Uber level of UFO history. What do we know that Spielberg knows himself, which is these devices that they're going to tell everybody about and show them all the video of have been routinely hovering over nuclear bases and power plants. and they've demonstrated they know how to turn stuff on and turn it off. Well, why was the alien plan, since as we've discussed, this was about an alien plan, why was the alien plan dependent on a couple of chosen people not getting their heads blown off by hundreds of agents firing at them? Why didn't the aliens just turn off the nukes?

They've spent 79 years figuring out where our nukes are. they know where they are. They've hovered over most of them around the world. They've been able to observe the world for nearly eight decades. So I guess that's one little, it's nitpicky, but it is like, okay, if you're going to do a movie called Disclosure Day, but you're going to cherry pick which part of uphology is going to be invoked in the movie, but which parts aren't, but that's a little unsatisfying to me because I spend all my time trying to say, there's so many things out there. How do I reconcile all this

madness? How do I make sense of abductions and crop circles? And speaking of crop circles, why was there a crop circle? You know, why was Daniel out there and they made a crop circle while he was there? Why? Who was it for? Very random. It didn't do anything. So I don't know. There were a lot I want to throw something at you, Ryan, because Brent and I have discussed it. So we need to hear your take first before we weigh in on this. And it is kind of important. The very last thing said in the film is, remember, granddaddy gray gets out of the wheelchair, you know, the big eight-foot gray.

And he reaches over and he's huddling with Josh and Emily. and things are whispered from first the gray to Josh and then from Josh to Emily. And then Emily gets up, goes over to the news set, looks in the camera and says, listen. And we fade to black. And to movie. What's that all about? Why is that the message of the film? So I might be cheating a little because obviously.

like you guys, I went and started looking at interviews that the writer did on this and stuff like that. I will answer you with one of the biggest criticisms I will have of this movie. And Spielberg, I hate to say this. Close Encounters, I just did my first episode and video on my new show, the movie one, on Close Encounters being a masterpiece, in my opinion, in terms of a U.F. phone movie. Except, except he did this in both movies, Close Encounters and Disclosure

Day. It went a little too far and showed a little too much. I thought that in close encounters when we saw all the aliens and I thought that again when they wheeled out, literally wheeled out

an ancient alien in a wheelchair to impart this message that she then said, listen, I did not want to see the alien, Bryce, at all. I think it should have stayed behind the partition. Maybe we see Emily Blunt react to it, and that's it. But the aliens could mind-read anyway.

Why didn't he have to, why didn't he just mind-melt with them and tell them the message? There were so many of those little things. The other big part is, and our good friend and colleague, Andy McGreling, of that UFO podcast. He said the same thing. He said, you know, it should have ended. And I, like, this is the like writer in me being like, she inhales cut to blah.

I didn't even want to hear the word, listen. Because I know, I know what David kept was going for. Well, what wasn't going for? In his, in your opinion, what did listen mean, whether in your head or the audience or David kept enlighten us? What's listen all about? I think there's two ways that could go. Listen is a very good way to get someone to just listen instead of just like droning on and on and on and on.

People will now listen to whatever she's going to say next. And maybe she does start speaking the alien language. Maybe it unlocks something in everyone's minds and they can now understand this language of the universe or something like that. Or maybe that's all she says is listen. And if we all did that more, we wouldn't be in this situation. North Korea would it be fighting with South Korea or Russia or the United States in Russia or this war and that war. Like if we listened more, you know, like this could solve all these problems. But then I also take a lot of issue with the agency of human beings and these aliens doing these things to us.

I understand like the potential of us destroying our planet could happen. Maybe they feel like, okay, enough's enough. We're getting involved. But I just, I took so much issue with the final moments of the movie, which is the most important part of many movies, one could argue. And I think it's the biggest part that people are having a problem with with this movie. Some people love it and some people absolutely hate it. There were people laughing in my theater at that last moment. There were people crying.

Yeah. I know for a fact, Suzanne, it found it very powerful and emotional. I found it powerful. But the way these final moments of Disclosure Day are hitting people is so intriguing to me. Yeah. How different it is. So maybe that's the beauty of it. I don't know.

What do you guys think? I blabbed way too long. Well, I'm going to take the contrarian point of view again here for a moment, just for the sake of discourse. The first time I saw it, I had exactly that same reason. reaction. I was just, I was like, wait, what? I was frustrated. It annoyed me. It just, it was not what I, it was not the ending I wanted, like clearly. And, and then, as I mentioned already, when I watched the second time, I tried to just put all of that aside and just watch the movie. And something hit me the second time I saw it, a greater awareness. Now, I can't say for sure that this was the

intention of the filmmakers. So I'm going to go out on a limb and give them credit for maybe something they didn't intend. But I felt like given everything about the movie we've talked about, that it's a summer blockbuster, but it had all of this contextual wrapper of importance to actual disclosure, right? At the very end, I thought, well, what do people always say? They show me the saucers. Bryce even made a video out of that, which is great. But then the next thing is, or just bring an alien, just show me an alien. Just show it out, literally. Pull it out. And then now I have disclosure. Why can't that happen? You keep saying you have them in all these Air Force bases. Just bring it. So what does he do? He rolls out an alien, right?

The awkwardness of it being an old alien that's like an old man standing from a rocking chair was that was something that made me snicker the first time I saw it. So it wasn't the best presentation of that idea. And the fact that as you guys just talked about, why does he have to impart a message and there's all this whispering going on? Like I thought the aliens were much more powerful than that. Put all of that aside. Emily Blunt stands up and looks directly at the camera,

not just to the audience in the movie, but to us in the theaters, to everyone else and says, listen. Okay. Well, what's happening in the course of her speech? You're not seeing it in that shot, but you've seen it many times in that last sequence. There is big screen with all of these different monitors and there's all of these videos of disclosure happening. What's happening in our real world right now? On the screen, there's all of these, Bryce, I remember I walked into Bryce's hotel room and there was images from the newest release on Friday night, the new tranche, right? That's the world we're living in right now, the world where

disclosure is happening, right? So what I took away from it was, okay, you just had a fun blockbuster like movie ride and at the end it felt like the movie was passing the baton through the screen and saying now in the real world, I want you to listen. I want you to just listen to what's happening all around you because it's very much what's all happening all around. You know what? There was a convergence. It was like reality and the movie collided in that last movie, in that last moment. And granted, we don't have an alien, but who's to say that doesn't happen next week? We're right on the precipice of disclosure, right? With all of those movies, those monitors showing all of the media that's being released, right? And Bryce made a great point

the night, which is like, yeah, but all of the stuff that was in the movies look good. And the stuff we're getting is all this black and white nonsense. True, yes. But again, we're still in that same process. Somehow the reality and the fantasy were blurring in that last scene. And when she broke the fourth wall and looked at the audience out in the theaters and said, listen, my feeling was, oh, that's the message. Get ready because in the real world, disclosure day is happening. Yeah, I, Brent, I doubt that David Kep actually thought of that interpretation when he wrote it.

I think interviews, he's implied other things, but that's how it play. You are correct. It felt like that whether it was intended or not intended, her saying that looking directly into the camera was, in fact, showing us her looking through the camera to her audience, but it played on the other level of also looking through the camera. I just had one thought, and you know, as we're getting toward the end here, but if you think about Spielberg's career, close encounters, he does not take Roy Neri onto the craft, right? And what happened in 1980 is he wanted to shoot a couple other scenes, like those desert scenes, I think, that weren't in the first or something wasn't in the original. He wanted to shoot stuff, and the studio said, yeah, but you got to take him on board. the ship and that was the devil's deal with the devil he made he would get money to shoot other things but he would take him on board the ship and then later when he got to do a director's cut

he cut that scene because it never sat right that he went in but at the end of the day stephen spielberg is one of the most commercial directors we've had his you know most he's had some you know there's everybody's got hits runs and errors but but he's had a lot of hits because he's a very commercial artist and a very good one. So I just wonder if somehow in his mind it was playing on him that what did people really want? In close encounters, they wanted to see the ship. And here, maybe what he was thinking is they just want to see the alien, man. They don't want to see video of an alien.

The escalation, if the first thing that he shows is Jackie Gleason, and getting to look at an alien. The second thing he shows is an alien being sort of tortured by medical assistance. The escalation isn't to more images of that on the screen. The only payoff escalation is, show me the alien. So that's what he did, that he felt like at the end of the day, maybe he thought, I got to do it, man. That's just, that's the way the business works.

Got to give them what they need. And I will say also, Brent, I really winced the first time. And so, Ryan, I'm with you. I mean, there's just something. Because first of all, the problem is we all have in our head what the aliens are supposed to look like. Yeah. We have in our head. But we're all different.

We've seen Gray's describe. We've seen a Whitley-Strieber's gray on the cover of Communion. But then we've seen, you know, the alien. gray has become a cartoon. We've seen the alien gray portrayed as Paul, voiced by Seth Rogan. There's a lot of different alien grays out there. And Brent, you and I have done it in dark skies. I did it in my movie official denial. Everybody's taken a crack at the alien. So on come Spielberg. He is the guy we most want to see what he thinks an alien looks like. But once he does it, it may not match what's in your head. And so I think some people, particularly some of

my friends that have no clue what an alien should or should not look like, they may accept it more because it's part of the movie, but for people who think about it and obsess about it like all of us have, and many of the people in your audience, Ryan, have their own images. So there's a cognitive dissonance when Spielberg shows you exactly what one could look like. And it's not healthy and it's super big. Yeah. Well, yeah, we all had expectations. And I think that that was the, no matter what he did, it was going to, you know, not appease

everyone. And the fact that it was just an alien gray, people were probably like, oh, really? That's it. But like, I think the big thing I took away from this was I wanted, I wanted your book, Bryce, like, I wanted to see the public's reaction to Disclosure Day, but that's not what this movie is. It is Disclosure Day in the lead up to that. Do you think there'll be an sequel where we will see that? I would love that.

I don't think it's going to happen unless I'd like to write that one. Rick, pick up the reins and do it. You and I'd like to write that one right now. I just, Brian, there's just one thing I want to say. Not that I think Stephen Spielberg is watching us right now, but he might be. And if he was, and for the people, you know, everybody, this is a Rorschach test, as we said. There's a lot of people in your audience react in one way or the other. And I just want to make clear that what Ryan and Brent and I have done is what you're supposed to do with when you're presented with art, you discuss it, you dissect it, you criticize it, you praise it, whatever.

at the end of the day though what I would say if I was sitting down Steven Spielberg right now I'd say you've made a very important film it doesn't matter that we have our little picky things about it or even bigger things but no one can take away

that it's an important film and it took creative guts for him to make it and it's important that he did it whether he did it because there was some grand master plan where the Trump administration is releasing documents at the same time his movie comes out, or he just decided it's time for me, who knows, but I'm glad he did. Because the result that he got by making this, whether it was everybody's perfect film or not,

is that lots of people are talking about this now. The three of us who are informed are talking about it, your audience who is informed is listening to it. But I've got the majority, the large majority of my friends aren't tuned into this. But most of them are going to see Disclosure Day. Probably 90% of my friends who don't pay attention to this issue when I talk about it. They don't listen to our podcast, Brent. They don't listen, you know, you don't know who Ross Colthard or Richard Dolan are who we've talked.

They don't know any of this. They don't pay attention when I talk about it, but they'll pay attention when Spielberg talks about it. And I know that's true because some of those people are already texting me saying, wow, I just saw a disclosure day. What should I think about this in essence? So a good thing that's happened, Ryan. It's a good thing that you had us on. We appreciate it. And thank you for that.

Oh, my pleasure, guys. Well, yeah, I'll say my last thing here and we'll wrap it up. But I think, Brent, going back to the listen thing, the last line of the movie, for me, what I took most from this movie, not just that Spielberg is interested in UFOs and creating his own fantasy idea of disclosure. But this was a love letter to experiencers for me. I think that they're seen and now they will be heard. there's all this talk that at these congressional UFO hearings, it's all about the videos and the military pilots and these trained observers having UFO encounters.

Everyone's like, okay, cool, when is it time for like, you know, Joe Schmo and the alien abductees and the experiencers, the first time that term has probably been used in a major motion picture in terms of the term experiencer screen memory was another big one in the movie too. like Spielberg is introducing people to this language that we have known for so long and now the public is going to know what it is and look into it. So for me, it showed me this overall message of have empathy. When you hear someone had a UFO sighting or says that they came into contact with some sort of non-human intelligence, you can't, you can't laugh it off anymore.

I mean, you simply can't. You have to just listen. You might not believe it, but at least try to listen. So end of the day for me, this really gave experiencers a place in this conversation and a place I think we will continue to have the conversation after. And it's getting people to go to the movie theaters again. And that's almost just as important for the three of us at least, right? Although Ryan beautifully said about experiencers. Yeah.

Beautifully said. because even though Spielberg had a kid getting abducted in close encounters, and even though in Taken, it was about people, it had people being abducted. It never really caught. Yeah. Right? Like people talk about close encounters, but they rarely mention the kid gets abducted. That's just not part of it.

So what you're really pointing out is that this time, it's the central part of his film. They are the heroes. They're the heroes of the story, right? Right. No, I love that interpretation. It's really powerful. Yeah. Thank you.

Awesome, guys. Well, did we miss anything? Anything you wanted to throw in that before we have to do it again, I know. Yeah. Thank you. Listen, our pleasure. Thank you for having us on. We do appreciate it.

Of course. We did a poll. Let's see what, before I let you guys go. And then we'll promote the podcast, obviously. The poll was, how would you rate Disclosure Day out of, 71 votes. 30% said they gave it an A, 32% a B, 15% C, 23% D. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. It is very provided. I think so. It's a polarizing film and you've just proved it with your polar. Yeah, I think so. I think you're right.

Well, guys, tell us what comes next for Soundlight and Frequency. I'm loving the last episode you did on War of the World. Oh, baby, I'm watching that tonight. I love that movie, and it's been a while. We so appreciate your support. One thing I would just say is that there's two ways that people can, well, first of all, as I always say, if you want to hear a podcast, just go wherever you get your podcast. But that means, in essence, for you as well as us, Apple and Spotify and IHeard and Pandora and all those places. But we have a little website called Soundlight Frequency. So there's no and or comment.

Sound light. There it is. Soundlightfrequency.com. And you can actually listen to it there and actually see some of the videos. But we also put all our videos at Hollywood UFOs.com, just so people can see them. There's two different experiences, as you know. One of them is watching a show and one of them is listening to a show. They're both unique and they're both fun. And we have been, well, we're honored that people pay attention to it and have said nice things about it.

And we are at the halfway point, Ryan. We've just recorded our halfway episode. And we like to think it's an active investigation into how Hollywood and UFOs have been dealt with. And what we tried to do is exactly what we're doing here. Disclosure Day was meant to be the men. middle ground of this thing allows us that demarcation line. And now we're going to try to take it home where we tie all these threads together. And final thing I would say is if you want to please us, start with number one and work your way through. But you're welcome wherever you want to dip your toe in the water. Yeah. I think Emily Blunt said it best. Listen. I love that. That's great. Hey, thanks so much, my friend. I appreciate it. Thank you so much, guys. You can go ahead. head and head out. I'm going to do a little deeper.

Absolutely. You should. Thank your audience, too. We love you guys. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Talk to you soon. All right, guys. Wow. I could not think of two better people to have on, just for a movie review, but of Disclosure Day. So, you know, I went in like I was going to really attack this movie. I was so frustrated. it. But I think after hearing other people's thoughts

on it and kind of looking at it more as a thought experiment, that really helped. I love some of the references in the movie like Kexberg, the Kexberg UFO crash, the screen memories, you know,

the obviously the Roswell thing. The one thing I didn't bring up with these guys was, you know, in the trailers and stuff, Spielberg even said, Nothing from the third act of this movie have you seen in marketing or in any trailers. So get ready. And then literally all the UFO stuff in the trailer, you know that UFO coming out of the clouds, the pilot flying by the UFO, the Roswell archival footage.

All of that was in the final few moments of the third act of the movie. All the UFO stuff was in the last two minutes of the movie when they disclosed everything. So it was a little weird. and how they marketed this thing, maybe a little deceptive, as it were. But hey, you know, that's what movie marketing is all about. But I hope you guys took something from this tonight. I hope we didn't sour your perception

or your plans on seeing the movie. While we're critical, all three of us clearly agree that you should see this movie. Again, there are so many conversations happening after the movie, which is the point of any movie. And like we said, if you are a witness or an experiencer, like, this was for you. This movie was for you. It wasn't for the people who believe in an official disclosure by the government because

I personally don't think that's going to happen. Clearly, our characters in the movie didn't think that either. They had to do it from a splinter cell and from the grassroots up. So that's how I think true disclosure is going to. happen um if you haven't read the book by brice sabel and richard dolan at a d after disclosure i almost see that as the sequel to this movie so i really hope that someday that could be the sequel to this movie if they work with spielberg or not i hope they can get the rights to disclosure day two after disclosure the day after disclosure literally there's your title i'm going to trademark that in just about

10 minutes. But yeah, brilliant observations and analysis by those two. So thank you to Bryce and to Brent for that. Thank you to Suzanne for holding it down in the chat tonight. It was incredible. Thank you guys. I knew I would be checking it that much because once you have a conversation going with film people, we will never, ever shut up.

But I did want to give a special show. Shout out to Beanie for the Super Chat. Great show. Thank you so much. Thank you guys. Thank you to all of you for being here tonight. Regulars, a lot of people watching. We had over 300 of you watching tonight.

We need part two. Yes, I do agree with that. Any last thoughts or comments, guys, on Disclosure Day? You let me know in the chat. If you want to throw in the super chat, right now I'll be sure to do that. But I wasn't going to do this. but I feel like I have to because again,

this was a love letter to experiences of which both Suzanne and I are. Are you comfortable coming on for a couple minutes? You sure? Okay. I'm going to bring her right because I want her thoughts. I want her thoughts because she, you know,

she told me this got pretty heavy for her towards the end of the movie and whatnot. But let's bring her in. All right, guys. Let's bring in Suzanne because I want to get her thoughts on this as well. How is? How is everyone?

Boy, this chat. My gosh, you guys. This was old school chat tonight with going rapid fire. Oh my God. I couldn't keep up with it. I could not keep up with it. Thank you.

I don't either. Your guess is I didn't. That's the problem. That's the problem. What did you think? What did you think of our kind of review of it? And then give us your thoughts on the movie.

That's a big, broad sweeping question, but wherever you want to start. Okay, well, here's what I think. I think it's probably a double watch for most people. One of the things that I'm decent at is going into a theater or starting a movie just as a watcher, not as a podcast person or UFO researcher. And so literally as I was walking into the theater yesterday, it's like set it aside, you're going as an experiencer. Read what the message was from an experiencer perspective. And you guys, I was a big cry baby. I mean, I could not at times get the tears stopped. And I felt like by the end of it, I kind of want to tear up now. It's so stupid. But that's what movies do. That's what they're supposed to do. I guess so. I felt like as an

experiencer, that an experiencer's story got told with truthfulness. That's how it felt to me. Now, I can tell you here in New Mexico where this topic is wide open, you're not going to run into a lot of skepticism here. Too much has happened here. Socorro, Farmington, Los Alamos, Roswell, you're not going to, it's just not a normal place. People were clapping and crying. and at the end of the theater, they would not leave the theater until the final credit rolled. And so I felt like it really touched that audience as well, even though I know the vast majority of them are not experiencers in all likelihood. So do I need to watch it again from a movie critic perspective?

I do. I need to put a different hat on in order to really analyze the good points that you guys made today. but I also had several interactions, you know, online with other experiencers and the reaction was the same. Right. It was heartfelt. See, and at the end of the day, that's all that truly matters. Like, again, the beauty of film, of theater, of art in general. You have art hanging on the wall behind you.

I have art behind me. I know you wouldn't really consider this art, but it's hard. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Like, it's interpretation and it's meant to evoke. feeling that art is feeling and emotion spilled onto a canvas, onto a movie screen, onto a stage, into a song. Like, that's what art is. And, you know, Stephen Spielberg is an artist. He always has been. Always will be. And you know, and I think, again, you can look at this movie from a

movie standpoint. You can look at it as a UFO movie standpoint. And that's the beauty of it. I look forward to going back and watching it more as just a movie itself i think i went in you know being like i want you to make every inside baseball easter egg joke like there was one point where a character's name was nathan twining the twining memo from roswell and all that stuff i love that again the screen memories um the kexburgh UFO crash and stuff i have a question for you but um there was one part in the movie where I could tell everyone in my audience that is where they got emotional. I even saw people around me like covering their eyes and that is how the aliens were handled in terms of like during the Roswell thing and the autopsy alien autopsy or whatever they were doing to it.

Like it gave this idea that we have done nothing but torture these alive aliens. And I kind of took a problem. with that. Like, first of all, we're dealing with one race of aliens, apparently, with Spielberg, the alien grace, that's it. There's no, nothing else, apparently, in terms of his world he's created with Disclosure Day. But then, like, all the scenes were of us doing really horrible things to these aliens. Do you agree with that? Or how do you think they handled that? I do. And I think, Ryan, that that was part of the message around the words. empathy that were used so often.

So they're showing you a platform, they're platforming where empathy is not being applied and then ending the movie with an empathy message, which I also think is really important. I think it plays on two audiences too, not just for those of us who have had somewhat positive experiences. It's not as scary, well, it might be scary in the moment just because it's so odd to us,

but they're not being hateful. But I also thought that the word empathy and perhaps to some extent the word listen, they also played into what I think that the religious population needs to hear. Keep your heart in the right place. Don't go to the fear mongering. And so I very much appreciated it from that perspective.

And of course, you and I were talking earlier, the whole platform that he set up for the religious communities, I found very touching and powerful. There is a way to, you know, keep your religion and your beliefs intact and allow for beings other than ourselves. Beautifully put. I like that. Yeah. I want to give credit, I don't have her name, I apologize, but the other newscaster that they started showing at the end there when all the very video started playing in succession and she is reacting to them in real time and she's like speechless she doesn't know and she's trying to find the words and she did such a good job

of portraying what would it be like to be like Emily Blunt's character is a whole different universe she is literally disclosing what the aliens want to impart this is a news anchor reacting in real time to what is being shown in And I thought she did such a wonderful job of how this could play out if it were broadcast and nobody knew what was coming up next. You would be like, oh my God. Wait, is this real? Wait, I'm getting word that this is declassified and it is authenticated real by the government.

This isn't AI. It's not special effects. It's not a prank. Oh, my God. Okay. So they just, that poor alien or oh my God, that like it. The immediacy of the disclosure at the end was very well done. I thought so too.

And it brought back for me and probably for you, those moments of my first experience where the brain is grappling with the data rolling in in front of us. And you don't, for those few moments, know what to do with it. It took some of us a little longer, like 40 years, to try to figure out what to do with that. But I thought it was such a powerful display of what many of us have felt on the front end, except on a larger scale because this is like confirmation.

This is not a denial. She did not get the opportunity to play the mind games and give the minds that we give ourselves in tough situations. She had a process in real time. Right. It wasn't a narrative of a mass media, corporate media thing. It wasn't one person like you or me in a particular area having a single person experience. This was a huge experience across an entire planet. And she just happened to be on film for it.

Right. Can you imagine? Oh, this is the day I get called in to fill in or something. But, you know, for her, just for that one anchor that we saw, there were. thousands all over America and across the world. Right. In her shoes as well as this story trickles out to the entire world. So that was interesting.

I like, and, you know, again, I think I was like, well, how was the public reacting? I want to see what's going on. But that's not the point of the movie. It's the lead up to Disclosure Day. Spielberg said, this is a chase movie. It's a race for information and getting that information out. What happens next? That's for you guys to imagine.

I'm done imagining. I've imagined disclosure day. You imagine what comes next. So yeah. I don't know, Ryan, did you, you all were so busy. You probably didn't see this really interesting discussion in the chat about what looked like bad, CGI, dear, Fox. And so it was interesting to watch, you know, yes, they were clearly identifiable as not real. But in my mind at the time, what I thought was, they want to make sure the uninitiated audience knows that what they're seeing is not real, sort of a nod to the screen memory, because you know he had the money and the capability to make them perfect. Thank you. You know? I'm sorry. No, you're funny.

The message was subtle, I thought. But for those of us who hear memory stories, I thought, oh, he's giving a little nod to that. I agree. I watch a lot of movie YouTube reviewers and stuff and just the reviews in general were all saying why were the animals so poorly

CGII? This is Steven Spielberg. It should be the best special effects out there. I don't think it was a budgetary thing. I don't think it was like a rush CGI thing. I think you're right. I think they went with this sort of uncanny valley almost magical, mystical, dreamlike. There's the word I'm looking for.

Dreamlike interpretation of these animals, because they're not. Like you mentioned, they are not animals. The cardinal was not an animal. The deer was not an animal. That was not a forest and a house that Emily Blunt was going into as a child. It was a craft. It was an alien. And we should mention, when they panned down to where the deer hooves were, they pan down once, it's deer hooves. They pan down again. again, it's tridactal footprints of what is presumably an alien.

So I loved that moment. I did too. And I think those subtleties, that's the part of the movie meant for those of us who research and study this. We get it. Because you're getting Easter eggs as you go. And I'm not sure they were for the regular audience. Because other than, well, those were clearly not real. They're going to leave that there.

You and I know what a screen memory is. You and I know what experiencers tell us about those screen memories in their worlds. So I just thought it was very interesting. The footprints, yes, you know, always glamorous, absolutely. That's another one of those Easter eggs that we know very clearly what it means. Exactly, yeah. What else did I want to ask you? Oh, let's go to the end.

How do you think they did? Did you like that they showed the alien? wheeled out the alien and showed it, did you like that Emily Blunt had a last line? Like, what were your thoughts? What were your impressions? Okay.

Because here's what I think has to happen as part of actual disclosure. This is certainly not Spielberg's job. Maybe it is. I don't know. Maybe, you know, if you want to go conspiracy theory, maybe it was. But I think desensitizing

Americans to a more normalized interaction with non-human intelligence and giving it a face and a body and the unusual things, the unusual skin so different from our own, I think that and this. And to somehow weave that in, I thought was so smart. They are not going to look like us. They are not going to talk like us. And so letting the larger audience have a little glimpse.

And then, of course, those of us in the field, it makes perfect sense to us. And then for her last line, listen. Oh, my gosh, absolutely. I think that was a nod to the experiencers. I also think it was a nod to listen to the garbage coming from the top historically. I could see the play on many levels of the word, listen. And I think that we're free based on our experiences to interpret how we want to, what that means. So what did you think?

Did you like it, dislike it? I did not like it at first. Like I said, maybe it was my theater. There were some people who laughed right at the end there. There were some people like, oh, like really. You need to come watch it in New Mexico. But, you know, and there were people crying, like you said. I think, and that's, again, that's the sign of, I want to say good writing, but it's a sign of knowing when you've showed your hand and when to stop, when to quit.

I think they should have quit a little earlier. I would like to have just seen her. Again, I have these, as writers, you visualize these things. And then it's up to the director and actors to personify it. I wanted her to turn to the camera, deep breath, cut to black. So we don't even get the word listen. But now, after hearing what Brent had to say, I completely have changed my mind. I like the listening because it can mean all these different things, you know.

It's multi-layered and it's there for each listener to deal with, you know. Right. In so many different ways. Hypothetical for you. Okay. I guess, too. do you think she says anything else after personally do you think she says anything after listen um and what do you think happens after this gosh you know how much i want a sequel so so i want a sequel

so badly that um i can't see straight and it's clouding in my judgment i don't think that was that it's actually the setup for a sequel though when i when i put my rational brain back on it. I think it was sort of a directive to the audience to pay better attention. Does something come after it? I don't know because, you know, maybe this is just a lawyer thing, but sometimes more words get in your way of your message. And fewer words have a broader meaning and hit a broader audience. And that's how I took the word, listen. So I'm not sure something was supposed to come after. Yeah. That's fair. I love that. Yeah, again, this is like the beauty of movies.

Like, we have these conversations, both euphologically and religiously, spiritually, like whatever, you know, existentially. So, again, this movie is tracking to be a major success. It's going to make its money back. It's going to make money. It's doing incredible overseas, which I was not expecting for a very American-centric UFO disclosure movie. but it's doing amazing across the world. It hasn't even opened in some countries. Japan's not getting it until October. I heard from two friends over there.

I saw Darren Vickers post that. It's like that's a long haul to wait on this movie. I told him disclosure might actually happen before the movie comes out over there. They could happen. We don't know. Who knows? That's the, again, who knows? Thank you to ontological shock.

I bet you liked the ending better than the ending of Nicholas Cage's knowing movie. Oh boy. That was a rough movie for anyone who's seen it. Yeah, for sure. But yeah, I think this, will this go down as like the best Steven Spielberg

movie? No, not in my personal opinion. Will it go down in like his top five? I don't even know about that, Suzanne, from a filmmaking standpoint and overall cultural impact in movie making. But I think it'll be a very important movie

movie to look back on as disclosure evolves and as more of the world begins to accept these things that we have seen with our own eyes and that we talk about and we think about constantly. And maybe it will take a alien presence to make us all come back together again. And that unifying experience that I think the movie was really trying to get at. I think so too. And to reprioritize. Reprioritized. Very good wording.

I loved it. I'm loving it more as I talk about it, which I think is so important. I had this problem with the horror movie weapons that came out last year. It was huge, major success.

But I think also your experience paints your perception of a movie too. I went at a 10 a.m. Matinee to see a horror movie. I had some woman sit next to me and take out a full meal and she came in late, started eating.

She was talking to me during the movie. Like, God, did you just see that? I'm like, yeah, I saw that. I'm watching the movie. You and my oldest son. He can hardly stand to go to the theater at a regular theater time because the people drive him insane.

No, I go at 10 in the morning and that's what you know, the diehards are there, but apparently she was one of them. And they're not going to chat with you theoretically. But I gave that movie weapons a horrible review right after. And then everyone was like, what? Come on. Go see. it again and I did I went back the next day and I saw it and I my rating skyrocketed after that because

I actually sat with it and watched it for that reason so I think I'm going to go do that again there's a 940 a.m. showing of disclosure day here tomorrow I think I'm going to do it. Go do it and just set everything you know aside and let it roll over you. I'll submit you probably won't be able to set your personal experience aside as you do that work those mechanics But I think you might feel differently if you're able to leave sort of our podcasting stuff to the side and all the research you do. Absolutely. I'm just going to go in and just experience it. Exactly.

Let it be. Yeah. When your expectations are gone, you can just like enjoy it and escape. This is a summer movie. It's a blockbuster movie they call them. It's entertainment. Stephen Spielberg has never been the heaviest, most cerebral filmmaker out there. But he does ask big questions.

He makes a damn fine film. One of the biggest questions you can ever ask. Exactly. wrapped up in a pretty damn good movie. I agree. I'll put it that way. I want to hear from you when you get out tomorrow. Absolutely.

You know you will. But guys, we want to hear from you. Let us know, not just in the live chat, because we're going to be hopping off in a second. But in the comments below this video, put your reviews of Disclosure Day. Continue the conversation there. Like Emily Blunt in the set in the movie, let's listen to. Yeah, let's listen. And have that conversation.

So comments below, this will be going up on the podcast very shortly. So in the Spotify comments, talk all about what you thought about disclosure day as well. And yeah, we have an episode dropping in just a couple hours with Patrick Armstrong from Vetted. He's coming on the show. to talk about psionics yeah uh summoning in UFOs with your mind so a lot to do with what we saw in disclosure day in some ways so exactly um a very prevalent conversation and a film you guys should check out it's called psionics the minds that summon UFOs so check out our interview tomorrow with Patrick and be sure to watch the movie at cyanics dot film um but i think that's all i got susan you got

anything before we get on a thing glad glad to see everybody in the the chat today. Chat did really well. We had to take a couple of people out, but everybody did really well helping with that. It's bound to happen. Passionate bunch. Passionate bunch. Awesome. Awesome. Well, we're going to get out here again, our special thanks to Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman. Be sure to check out their podcast, Soundlight and Frequency, wherever you get podcasts and need to know. Bryce is still doing Need to Know as well with Richard Dolan. So check those out. If you can, guys, right now. go to somewhere on the screen. That's my brand new movie review podcast.

It's right here on YouTube. It's on Apple, Spotify. But if you can do me a favor, head on over here on YouTube to somewhere on the screen. And subscribe, please. I would greatly appreciate that. We're going to be having fun over there. It's not UFO-centric. I'm going to be doing dramas, comedies, romance movies, film noir, horror movies, you name it, Suzanne.

be covering it over there. So I'm already working on episode two, which I'll give a little spoiler. Something near and dear to my heart, musicals. Oh, me too. Me too. Count me in. I'm actually going to be doing a whole analysis of the 2005 film adaptation of Rent, the big musical from the 90s, Rent, the rock musical. I've seen that musical like 30 times. It was my favorite Broadway. 65,300 times. If you take the reference. You were right on.

I, you know, I'm going to do a fun video that compares the Broadway musical, the whole story behind that. It's a very, very interesting kind of tragic story about Jonathan Larson, the creator of the musical. And also the film adaptation, which a lot of the original Broadway actors were a part of the movie as well. We might even have one. of the original Broadway cast members on the show to talk about it.

Well, press my fingers. Yep. I'm working on that right now. But yes, guys, if you can, please head on it over to somewhere on the screen on YouTube. And be sure to subscribe like the first video. The first video is my review and analysis of close encounters of the third kind. Oh, one of my favorites. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you. I see we already have people going over and subscribing things. Yeah. Yeah. This is my way of- There's a spray, too, Andrew Berger. Oh, that'd be a good one to come.

That'd be a great one. Yeah. I loved that movie. That was a really good movie. John Travolta playing the mom was a little weird. Yeah. Oh, but I love it. I'm willing to go along with all that.

You know, that didn't bother me a bit. No. Yeah, yeah. Stretch your imagination for sure. Yeah. And didn't Divine do the first mother in the original? I believe so. Divine.

Yeah. Yeah, I think she was the, I think you're right. She was the mother. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, we're going to be covering all sorts of stuff over there. I'm super excited. It's going to be fun.

Yep. I head to Nova Scotia in three days. So for the live streams, I'll keep you guys posted on when we're going to do them. We're going to try to keep it here on Sundays. We've moved back to Sundays from our quick temporary Friday pivot. But we'll see. We'll see what happens for sure as that unfolds. And I get my filming schedule.

I'm going over there to do. Absolutely. film my ghost hunting show. So we'll keep you guys posted on social media and all of that stuff. But cool. I think that's it. Great. Yeah.

Let's get out of here, Suzanne. Everybody have a great night. Guys, thank you. Yeah. This is so fun. Again, special thanks to our super chatters and everyone. Like, subscribe, do all that YouTubey stuff, podcasty stuff. We appreciate that.

And we will leave you with our mantra. As always, keep your feet on the ground, but never stop searching. supper in the skies. And listen. There's nothing to hide. There's nothing to hide at all. Hey all. All it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfar.

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