The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Is That A UFO I See In The Pandemic Sky?

Episode Date: April 15, 2021

New statistics are showing that there have been more UFO sightings reported in the year since the pandemic started.  Why?  And a feature interview with respected film and theatre director about his new movie starring Benedict Cumberbatch in the role of a British spy during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Dominic Cooke joins us.  Plus which is the best passport to carry? Hint: we are not number one.

Hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the latest episode of The Bridge, and in just a couple of moments we'll be asking the question, is that a UFO? Like you, I have been so grateful and so thankful for frontline workers during the COVID crisis. Let's just talk about the frontline workers at SickKids, which is one of the world's best children's hospitals. SickKids doctors also work behind the scenes on incredible breakthroughs to help our kids and generations to come. Listen to their inspiring stories in a new season of the popular podcast called SickKids Versus. Each episode explores a major SickKids discovery, like, well, a virus-fighting supermole super molecule or a cure for hard-to-treat cancers. Just visit SickKidsFoundation.com slash podcast or search SickKids versus and spell versus VS. So SickKids VS. You'll be amazed at what you learn. And hello there once again, Peter Mansbridge here.

And, you know, ever since I was a kid, I've always been fascinated by this topic of unidentified flying objects. Most kids are, right? You hear about it and you think, you start looking at the sky and you go, wow, could there be something up there from another world? And if there is, am I ever going to see it? Well, I've got an interesting story for you. First of all, if you're lucky enough in the summer months, wherever you are in Canada, or wherever you are anywhere in the world listening, and I've had a

lot of letters this week for some reason, emails from listeners to the bridge who are in Europe and in Asia and elsewhere. But anyway, if you're wherever you may be, if in the summer months you get the opportunity to get away from the city, or if you live away from the city, you know what I'm going to say. You know what it's like to be, you know, say you've got access to a cottage. And you go down in the dark at night, at midnight, and you lie there looking up at the sky, and you see a sky you don't see any other time of year, especially if you live in a city, because you see it all in its splendor. You see the stars, and you see the planets.

You see the moon. You see it all. And it's pretty incredible. And every once in a while, you see something either blinking or clearly moving. You know, it may be the International Space Station. It may be a satellite. It may be just a commercial airliner. But of course, the further up you look, it's those things that go around in space.

And your imagination starts to play tricks on you sometimes. You see a falling star and you wonder, was that a falling star or was that a UFO? But it's usually at those times, right? When you're away from the city, you're not affected by the big lights of the big city that kind of destroy your vision of the sky. And I've spent some pretty fascinating summer nights looking up at the sky, seeing that kind of action.

Well, where are you heading with this, Mr. Mansbridge? Well, here's where I'm heading. Apparently, in the last year since the pandemic started, and there have been the move on the part of some people away from the cities into the country, if they have access to a home in the country, they've taken that opportunity. People who've opened up cottages they normally keep closed for the winter figured out a way to keep them heated and they've been staying there remotely working but also benefiting from that night sky. And as a result, say the experts, reports of UFOs have gone up considerably. Because people are seeing things they wouldn't normally see,

obviously, in the city. Now, should we be taking all this seriously? These reports of UFOs Now, should we be taking all this seriously? These reports of UFOs increasing in the last year? Well, I'll tell you who is taking it seriously. dollar appropriations package that was signed by Donald Trump late last year. It actually included a provision that the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence collaborate on a UFO report and release it to the public. There's no indication that that direction is being changed by the new administration. It's still there.

And Peter Davenport told the New York Times last week, he told them it's encouraging to many of us in the field of ufology that the government is willing to confirm that they are aware of these circumstances, that they are conceding that people are reporting these events. Who's Peter Davenport, you ask? Well, he's the director of what's known as NUFORC, or NUFORC, N-U-F-O-R-C, and that's the National Unidentified Flying Object Reporting Center. So, you know, clearly people are taking this seriously

mr davenport and his peers are quick to point out this is i'm reading from the new york times that any uptick in sightings does not mean a spike in flying saucers unidentified flying objects are just that airborne phenomena that have not been identified. The vast majority of sightings called into the reporting center are swiftly determined to be things like birds or bats or satellites, planes or drones. A number of sightings in northern Idaho last year were quickly identified as satellites launched by SpaceX, Elon Musk's private space company, which launched a number, large number of small internet satellites that were temporarily visible from the ground after they reached orbit.

So there's lots of stuff up there that they know about. Only a small fraction of reports scrutinized by New Force, which is based in Washington state, are truly not identifiable. That proportion has not changed, even as more calls have poured in, according to the director. So they've been getting a lot more calls in this last year of the pandemic. But those calls have not really changed the proportion of incidents that are determined to be truly unidentified. So we're getting close to the summer again. And for those who aren't in the country right now,

get ready to get, you know, get ready to lie down on the dock if you've got access to one. Not all of us do. But often, you know, you can just drive outside of the city to the city limits, find an area, park, or what have you, and you'll get somewhat the same effect. Not exactly the same, but somewhat the same. Okay, all week I've been telling you that I had something special for today, and it is kind of special, certainly special for me.

An opportunity to talk to somebody in the entertainment business about what I found to be an especially interesting film. So we'll do that deals in movie reviews. And I don't plan on getting into that particular area. But, you know, I'm, as some of you know, I'm kind of like, I'm a history buff. I love history. And for the most part, I love kind of the history of the 20th century, the last century.

And one of the things that's always fascinated me because I lived through it as a kid at high school was the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Those 13 days in October, when the world seemed perched on the edge of war, nuclear war. And we were all, we were all scared. A lot of schools did test drills and kids under desks and all of that.

We thought it could very well happen. Well, the story has been told over and over again about that face-off between JFK, John Kennedy, and Nikita Khrushchev, which eventually ended in the two sides stepping back. You know, the common perception is that Khrushchev blinked to Kennedy's threats, where it's a little more complicated than that. But I'm not going to go into the full story, but clearly the Soviets were trying to put nuclear missiles in Cuba within very close range of the United States.

And when the White House found out about it, they said, no, that's not going to happen. And we're willing to go to war to ensure it doesn't happen. And so that launched us into this 13 days of high tension with these missiles coming aboard ships across the Atlantic towards Cuba and the Americans initiating a blockade of the Cuban island. Now, the story has basically always been told that way. U.S., Soviets, back and forth,

high-level secret negotiations. Well, there actually is another part to the story. It may be a smaller part, but it's no less intriguing. It's about a British businessman. Okay? A British businessman who had never been involved in anything remotely like, you know, spying. That was not his game.

But was somebody who traveled often into the Eastern Bloc countries. And the Americans and the British Secret Service decided, you know, if we can just get him to get us some information about what the Soviets are up to. And this is in the lead up to the missile crisis. This is before they knew about the missile crisis. Now, this British businessman's name was Greville Wynne. Well, this movie called The Courier is about Greville Wynne, and it's about this story.

And I really found it interesting. This is not going to be a blockbuster. This is not going to be a blockbuster. This is not Batman. But it is, if you like history, and if you like recent history, and you like to learn things that actually did happen, then you might want to watch this movie. It's in circulation now,

both in theaters and digitally. So you can look for it. I'm not going to pump it any more than that. So I had the opportunity to talk to the director. The star of the movie is Benedict Cumberbatch. And Rachel Brosnan is the female lead. Cumberbatch is Cumberbatch.

She's like, I'm a huge admirer of his work. But in any movie, you better have a good director and a good writer. And the director in this case is a fellow by the name of Dominic Cook. Now, Dominic Cook is mainly known for his theater work, directing in theater. And he's a big musical guy. But he has transitioned occasionally into film work as well. And this is his product. So I had the opportunity to talk to him.

He was at his home just outside London, England. And, well, here's the conversation. So this film was ready for audiences more than a year ago but you know obviously the pandemic got in the way how frustrating is that for a director to have to wait for that audience reaction it's profoundly frustrating and strange in a way that it's been strange for everyone this last year i mean you're in uncharted territory and one of the things I've discovered is how much energy it takes to sort of reimagine, uh,

something happening and then reimagining happening again. So for example, with this, it's been like, we've had about five release dates and you sort of like get your, you can get your head into, right. Okay.

Well, that'll be okay. We'll open then. And you're sort of geared up to that. So in the end I've sort of let it go and sort of waited to see what's going to happen. And actually, I'm quite pleased that we've sort of landed now. It feels like a good moment. There's not a lot else out there. I think whilst the film is quite dark, it's also about loyalty and about sort of true heroism and those quite uplifting ideas

that people sort of we all need something don't we at the moment we sure do we need something positive yeah i think it may have landed at the right moment did you ever have doubts during that year about you know maybe i should have done this or that a little differently or anything like that i'm always i never i'm happy i would love to have gone back and shot a few more days on this absolutely but you know there's enough of it i'm pleased with that i can sort of walk away yeah that happens and um but i don't think that's particularly because of the pandemic i mean we have more time obviously to reflect on that i think i just stopped believing it was ever going to come out at one point it's then none of us, we're all in this world when none of us really know

what the hell is going to happen. So we're all in that state in different ways. I'm old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. And, you know, I thought I knew the story pretty well. Now I was in North America,

so I was getting, you know, the American spin more or less. But for the most part, I did not know this story. I did not know the story spin uh more or less but for the most part i did not know this story i did not know the story of the courier um does that surprise you or is it generally just not as well known as it will be once you see this film yeah no it's not well known and it's not well known in the uk although it was so at the time uh when when came back to the uk it was. So at the time, when Wynne came back to the UK, it was a huge headline story. And it was a big story for a few years until MI6 said, hey, stop going on chat shows and talking

about what you did to Russia to grab a win, because we are a secret service. And if you don't stop it, we're going to withdraw the pension we've given you so i think there are very concrete reasons why the story sort of disappeared and um you know he he was in a really difficult position because he he was doing that partly because a lot of his business had dried up because most of it was in the eastern block and they weren't going to welcome them back after this so um yeah so so it did fall away but if you speak to people of a certain age in this country they all know who he was what was the greatest challenge in telling telling the story i think the greatest challenge in telling any period movie to try and honour what it was actually like to be alive at that time

you know because we imagine we know what it was and I certainly knew from my grandparents I've got two sort of sides to my family and there's one side that I would call the real British side and I knew from them

that what that sort of incredibly reserved, uptight sort of way of being, formal way of being was. And I, you know, for people like Jessie Buckley, who's like in her twenties, I mean, she's got no connection with that. Although I have to say she did, she didn't need much help to find it. But I do think generally speaking, it's quite hard for people from our time where what is prized is authenticity and telling it like it is that awful phrase, which is the exact opposite of what people who'd have grown up in the UK at this time would have believed, you know, where decorum and restraint was everything. And I think it's quite hard for an actor to get into that,

but also be very emotionally alive inside, you know, because you need that. So I think in a way for all of us, that was the hardest thing and just in terms of sort of making it feel like real people. Well, you know, Canadians are certainly aware of Benedict Cumberbatch and watching him in this film,

I know you've worked with him before on stage as well, I think. Yeah. Tell us about that experience with working, you know, with one of clearly the finest actors in the world today on this particular film. Well, I totally agree with you. I think he is one of the finest. And there are so many good actors,

but he's certainly one of the finest I've worked with. And at least I came into this film with a certain amount of knowledge about how he works and how his brain works. Because I think one of the jobs of the director is whatever your sort of overall approach to acting and storytelling is you have to adapt to what that person is and what they need in that moment and so i came in sort of knowing that in a way there are two areas that benedict really sort of leads from one is instinct he's he's actually very i mean he's a university educated guy he's very bright but i think his real sort of strength is from his sort

of amazingly intuitive instinctive response to the moment and on screen uh he comes up with the most amazing stuff i mean he's brilliant and you have to sort of be there to support that and not get in the way too much can you give me an example of that of how that works because obviously you have an idea in your mind as the director of how you want a scene to unfold and yet you've got this incredibly talented actor who is willing to take it not necessarily in a different direction but in a way that you weren't thinking yeah i mean i think of course it's more about moments really i mean actually the one i the one there's one actually which is not about this is when we did rich the third way he suddenly sort of he pulls

things out in moments that you're not expecting and so so i would always give um i would always give not give any notes for the first few takes with Benedict. Just let him, let himself correct and let him find the next version of it. And he does that brilliantly. And then what happens is I will then, if I feel something's missing, I'll give him something.

I'll give him some sort of shape and push him to be. I think one of the things that I was doing a lot was sort of trying to sort of get him to show less, to show you to hide more stuff and not to reveal what was going on inside and just to trust that the script would do that work for him. I think there was one scene which is set in a campsite. Bizarrely, it's about five minutes from where we are now where i live um and um he sort of the character is under huge pressure and he would he sort of breaks sort of breaks at one point i had to go at his little son. And then there was one take where he just went absolutely insane,

which I think is probably the take we used in the end. And it's sort of one of those moments where you go, you know, where did that come from? That came from somewhere extraordinary. And that happens a lot with Benedict. You know, other actors are much more sort of there's so there are as many styles of acting and ways of approaching it as there are actors but but some i would say someone like rachel who was also absolutely delightful rachel brosnahan is meticulously planned that

doesn't mean she's not alive and it doesn't mean she can't take notes she does but she's very much done the homework she She's so thorough. And she turns up on set really having charted brilliantly where the character is. And when you put it together, you have even more appreciation of what she's done because she knows how to tell a story. Yeah, and they're also doing different things.

You've sort of got to find a way of navigating that but if they're as good as those people i go halfway there at least i've only got a couple of minutes left so let me just ask you a couple of questions one is about is about you listen you're an accomplished director on theater and in film um and i i've often wondered when I see those who make the transition back and forth between the two platforms, really, about what you take from one to use in the other. They are very different. And yet to direct both, that must be a real challenge. Well, I've loved coming into film film which i've only really done in my 50s and i think i feel so privileged to be able to have to learn something new i say that i am a

slight cheat because my dad was in movies um which is one of the reasons why i didn't want to do it he was a film editor and i did work sort of helping him out in the summer holidays and i realized when i started that i actually have absorbed more than I knew. I think what's more interesting is how similar they are. But the basic sort of elemental heart of dramatic storytelling is the same. And, you know, the principles of sort of driving things forward, of really telling stories through sort of interaction between characters is the same. Obviously, the biggest difference between theatre and film is you have a camera. And that's brilliant. for a theatre director who has sat squirming in the back row of countless theatres,

asking myself why I do it, because the show has disappeared completely since a week ago when you last saw it. It's not in your control, whereas the joy of a camera is you have this tool for telling the story. And with Sean Bobbitt, my fantastic cinematographer, we sort of have this shared view that filmmaking... Well, Alfred Hitchcock said filmmaking never recovered from the invention of sound.

And I know what he was talking about, because before that, they had to use the camera to tell the story. And we sort of worked on a principle on this in the previous film I did uh of using you know shooting the story in the camera not just doing head and shoulder shots not just doing mid mid shot long shot this traditional way of storytelling doing it in minimal setups but actually using the camera and for me that is such a great gift you've got this tool where you can get right into someone's

face or not you want to see them in the context of where they are and understand their wider situation it's brilliant and then you have editing where you can take out the bits you don't like you don't have to sit there in the back row going oh my god what are they doing now so let me ask just stop doing it so let me ask you this then as the final question because one of your next projects is playing off one of your greatest accomplishments and that of course was follies on stage and you are now going to try and do follies on film now simply on stage is a challenge enough any anything film um my gosh how are you looking at that or tell me about it yeah um yeah it's so funny i sort of started it and start oh it's a really long story we don't have time to

go into now but basically um i thought when i started the process of putting the script together that you know james goldman who wrote the book of putting the script together that, you know, James Goldman, who wrote the book of follies was essentially a screenwriter. I mean, he wrote some great plays, but he, he was,

and I always felt when I was doing follies, this is more of a film script than a stage script because it's very fragmented. It's short scenes. And I thought, oh, well, this is,

this is sort of a natural, this will naturally translate to the screen. And actually a lot of the reference points that Sondheim and Goldman used were Hollywood cinema. They were the musicals because they were too young for the actual Ziegfeld volumes. So they watched the sort of

classic, you know, era of Hollywood musicals and that was where the Ziegfeld volumes sort of progressed. That aesthetic moved into that realm. So there are elements of it that are very filmic, but it has been a challenge. I have to say that I don't know if we've got a long way to go,

but the script is now finally feeling like a film. So we'll see. We'll see. Well, your film, The Courier, certainly feels like a film. I enjoyed it immensely, and I congratulate you on that. And I wish you luck with Follies and whatever else is in front of you. Thanks so much, Peter. Dominic Cook, talking to the bridge from his home just outside London. The film is called The Courier.

You can find it out there now, either in a theater. Well, I guess theaters, they can't be open now, not with the lockdowns in place, but who knows with some of these lockdowns. But you can certainly find it digitally. And if you do, I hope you enjoy it. But I hope you enjoyed the conversation as well. I should explain one little part at the end.

I got carried you know, I got carried away a little bit because I've always been fascinated when I've talked to Colm Fior about this because he's one of the best stage actors in North America, if not the world. Colm Fior, who lives here in Stratford. He's also

a great film actor and he's been in many films, but about the difference between one and the other and he's talked about a number of things and including the sense that you get an immediate response when you're on stage um from an audience as opposed to what happens when you're filming where it could be um you know take after take after take and you're not getting that kind of immediate response um so that was one thing among others that Colm talked about. But what I thought I should explain to you about what Dominic Cook

was saying there, the role of the director now, and ignore me if you know this already, but the role of the director in theater productions is basically to get the thing organized. You know, it has a role in picking those who are involved in the presentation, but then does the rehearsal period. And that's where most of these productions are really hammered into place. And once it starts, after the opening, the director kind of disappears,

is off to other projects in other cities with other actors on other plays. But will come back occasionally to check in and see how the production is doing. So that's what he was talking about when he said, you know, I craft these things and it's the way I want it. And then I may come back a week or two weeks or a month later, and I sit there in row 30 at the back watching the production, and you know what? It ain't the same as the way I left it. They've kind of, you know, the actors have kind of developed their own show,

and they've changed parts that I thought were really important. And, you know, so that's a frustration in the role of the director. Now, this obviously doesn't happen all the time, but on the times it does happen, it's something that the directors keep in mind about the experience. Anyway, I thank Dominic Cook for his time in our little chat, and I do wish him luck on his film, The Courier. That's probably going to wrap it up for today.

There's one other little thing I'll tell you about. This is a potpourri day, usually Thursdays, and I did see something here that's kind of interesting. There's this group called Henley and Partners. They're an international group. One of the things they do every year is they rank passports of countries around the world. And they tell you who has the best passport. So how do you make that determination? Well, if you're Emily and partners,

what you're looking at is where can you get into in terms of other countries without the need for extra visas or what have you, which passport gives you that particular ability. And so anyway, they go through them all, like dozens and dozens and dozens of countries. And they come up with a formula which allows them to rank. And I won't, you know, I won't go through how they make that formula up to come up with their rankings. I'll just give you the rankings, the top 10, because Canada is in that top 10.

Now, there are a lot of ties on each position. So, in effect, I think we're like 35th or something, but we're tied for ninth place out of the top 10. So, which country, based on the little I've told you about how they rank these things, do you think is number one and alone in the number one position? Do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Japan is number one. Japan's number one, Singapore's number two.

Tied for third are South Korea and Germany. Number four, there's four countries tied for fourth. Italy, Finland, Spain, Luxembourg. Now, you kind of keep moving down this list before you get anything anywhere near some of the countries most traditionally tied to us. In fifth place, Denmark, Austria. In sixth place, Sweden, France, Ireland.

Now in seventh place, aside from Switzerland, you've got the United States, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and New Zealand. That's tied for seventh. In having the passport that you want to have to help you, if you're a frequent traveler and you go to a lot of different countries, some of which normally need visas to get into, these are the passports that help you get around that. So already I've got one of those. I've got a UK passport because I was born in the United Kingdom and you get to have that forever. So do your children if they apply for them.

So UK, US tied for seventh. In eighth place, you had Norway, Greece, Malta, and the Czech Republic. Ninth. This is the place for us. We're tied for ninth with Australia, Canada and Australia. Ninth place. Then you get into 10, Slovakia, Lithuania, Hungary. So we're in nine.

Now there's a piece of useless information for you that you could find only at the bridge on Potpourri Day, Thursday of this week. right couple reminders later today on sirius xm channel 167 canada talks our weekly good talk 5 p.m eastern you can access. I still get letters saying, you know, I don't want to subscribe to Sirius. It's free for a month. You get four one-hour editions of Good Talk. That's Chantal Hebert, Bruce Anderson, and myself. And the people who've been listening are saying really nice things about Good Talk. And we enjoy doing it.

And we hope that you can enjoy listening to it. Just go to SiriusXM.ca slash Peter Mansbridge. You'll see the offer there. All you got to do is give your email. You don't have to give any credit card information or anything. You get a month free. Anyway, if you're so inclined. So that's good talk later today,

where we'll include coverage of the Conservatives' climate change plan. Very interesting, especially after their convention a couple of weeks ago. So we'll talk about that and a variety of other things. It's one hour,

so there's lots of room for discussion. And we look forward to giving it to you. Tomorrow is the weekend special, so if you have some thoughts about anything, don't be shy, send them along. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. I am Peter Mansbridge.

Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again, well, later this afternoon if you listen to Good talk or tomorrow in 24 hours