You Can't Tell the People

I (Herr Direktor speaking) have just finished Georgina Bruni's brilliant account of the Rendlesham Forest Incident, You Can't Tell the People. The title comes from the Great Bitch Thatcher who, when Bruni asked her/it about what she/it knew about UFOs, replied 'You've got to get your facts right, and you can't tell the people.'

The Rendlesham Forest Incident is legendary as being the 'British Roswell', and is generally taken to be a sighting by several USAF men on a night patrol in Rendlesham Forest, which is just outside the former USAF/NATO bases at RAF Bentwaters and Woodbridge in Suffolk. The story goes that, on 27 December 1980, these guys saw lights in Rendlesham Forest and decided to investigate, and apparently they saw a craft land amongst the trees.

Sceptics decry the whole thing as either a deliberate hoax, or that the men saw the nearby Orford Ness lighthouse.

Georgina Bruni demolishes the lighthouse theory in You Can't Tell the People, and also the rest of the sceptics' arguments that somehow everyone was mistaken. (Why aren't sceptics ever sceptical about scepticism?!)

She gets people to talk for the first time, and reveals that there was not one incident, but FOUR, the first beginning late on Christmas Day 1980, and with UFO activity occurring for the next three nights after that. If that is not enough, on the third or fourth night there was a major incident, during which the famous 'Rendlesham Tape' was recorded. This was a tape recording made by the Deputy Base Commander at Woodbridge, Lt. Col. Halt, as events unfolded in the forest. Only 18 minutes of Halt's more than 5 hours of tape have ever been made public, and Bruni states that Halt will NEVER release the remaining material. This was the night during which something not only landed, but was also witnessed not only by Halt, but also by at least 50 military personnel, some of whom seem to have been brainwashed afterwards so that they would either forget about it and/or provide disinformation.

The most disturbing aspect of the book is, however, not the possibility that something very strange occurred during Xmas Week 1980, but the sheer lengths that the British and - more importantly - the Americans went to to cover it up. It struck me yesterday that the cover-up is not so much about aliens / extraterrestrials / ultraterrestrials, but about the fact that if they admitted that something had actually happened, they would lose face. It's all about maintaining one's authority. And, heaven forbid, should the CIA and their cohorts in Area 51 ever lose that.

Mr Smith Goes to the Fatherland

The film has just been invited to participate in the Co-Production Meetings at this year's Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival in November. What this basically means is that we sit around a table with interested financiers and get them to write a cheque. Or at least hand over all their Lupins. (We shall of course be travelling there via the Lupin Express.)

Interestingly, this news came through on Friday (19th), the same day that Mr Screenwriter and I appeared in the Western Daily Press, on Geoff Ward's Mysterious West page, standing in front of a caravan in a slightly bemused sort of way, in which we appeal for financing. I mean we appeal for financing in the article, not the caravan, which probably wouldn't get us very far. Then again, maybe come the next Bank Holiday, we could be on Weston sea front in it doing a sponsored scare-small-children-and-hurl-abuse-at-Daily-Mail-readers in order to get the film afloat. Well, perhaps forget the small children. Just line the other fuckers up and we'll be off...

Yes, They're Out There (But not in Cumbria)

Just when you thought that you were making a film that people might not believe was actually true, this appears in the Daily Telegraph (that's the 'London, England' Telegraph for our friends across the Pond):

http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/09/nufo09.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/09/ixhome.html

I've not seen any Shadow People in my bedroom recently, but I will post as soon as I have 'an encounter'.

He Lives!

No posts for a while, due to the fact that His Nibs and I have been very busy; more so than usual. Nick's been writing a novel, and I've been writing a book about Tarkovsky. Oh, the things one has to do for money!

But today, as I was struggling with my chapter on Solaris, I received an email of quite tumultuous importance. It seems that the real life Mr Smith is.... wait for it.... STILL ALIVE and STILL IN WESTON-SUPER-MARE!

I had convinced myself that he had either committed suicide or been detained indefinitely by the mental health people, but no, he liveth!

Although our film is only inspired by the real Mr S, we don't want to allows ourselves to be vulnerable to exploiting someone's life without offering them any financial reward. So a great deal of poetic license needs to be used, methinks. The last thing we want is a man who makes David Icke look normal harrassing us for appropriating his life's work for artistic purposes (which of course we aren't, being nice and middle class as we are).

But, again, as with the discovery that the original caravan site still exists, I can't help but think that this is another good omen. I wonder if the Greys and the Nordics are aware that the real Smith is still very much in the land of the living?