UFO Spotters in the News Again

While we wait until the end of time for funding to make Gulf Breeze, here is a piece I spotted this morning on the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19702652

UFOs Back in the UK News

The UK government have released more UFO files.

Rendlesham Files "Missing"

Oh dear, the silly old MOD have "lost" a lot of files relating to the Rendlesham Forest incident. However could that have happened? More info here.

And get Georgina Bruni's excellent book on the whole affair (minus "losing" the files) by clicking on the link below.

Rudloe Manor Closes

The MOD have apparently scrapped their UFO research department. For many years this was based at RAF Rudloe Manor in Wiltshire, with an additional office in Northumberland Avenue in Whitehall. An era ends. And it also worryingly paves the way for the Greys - sorry, I meant the Tories - to take over. Run for the hills!

More info here.

Vatican considers possibility of alien life

Vatican considers possibility of alien life

Lost sheep indeed...

UFO spotted over Weston caravan site!

A UFO has been spotted over a Weston caravan site! Yes, our film really isn't fiction at all! Let us hope such vindication will lead to some start-up funding so that we can get the film up and running at last...

You can watch exclusive video footage of the sighting here.

Cambs Flap

A newsflash whilst we work on the new version of the script: UFOs have been spotted over Cambridgeshire. Go here for more details.
Always nice to have reality - whatever that is - reflect the film you're trying to make.

A New Script

As you might be able to tell from the newly added Twitter updates, things are afoot once more. The 'UFO film' mentioned in the updates - I refuse to call them tweets - is of course our very own Mr Smith, and we are currently working on a new draft of the script in an attempt to get it all going again once Folie a Deux is finished, which should be June or July.

As I may have mentioned, 2009 has been a bumper year for sightings. I wonder how many people have been anally probed? Let's hope the Greys pay a visit to Simon Heffer soon.

UFO Filmed Over Somerset Caravan Park

A video has just been posted online that shows a UFO - of the classic 'cigar' variety - over Brean caravan park, a mere mile or so from where I live, and only a few miles from the caravan park where the real life Mr Smith used to live.

There's a link to the footage here.

Our film is not fiction, I tell ye! In fact it's very reassuring to know that our little story is making national headlines - and we hope the publicity could work in Mr Smith's favour.... Stay tuned for the Mothership landing.

BTW, if you haven't read it, I can recommend Georia Bruni's You Can't Tell the People, which tackles the Rendlesham Forest incident admirably.

And for those of a more philosophical disposition, there's always Patrick Harpur's brilliant Daimonic Reality, which puts forward what can only be described as the Neo-Platonic Theory (and not many people do that). One of the best books every written about the nature of reality.... and lights in the sky. Or cigars, even.

Rumblings

There are rumblings. Not many, but some. Does the beast live? I know not. But things are afoot. (Let's hope it's not a club foot, either.)

Waiting for the Man (in Black?)

It has been rather a long time since I posted anything here. This is due to a number of factors: the various interested parties in Smith have all fallen off the map; only one producer has mentioned the project to me (in late 2006), and hoped that the film would still happen.

In order to not go mad while being told that people will get back to us, we decided that the best thing to do was to go off and make another feature, this time with our own resources that we could control from start to finish. This is Folie à Deux, which is now in post-production, and you can read about it here.

I have also been busy writing a book. On the subject of which, you may like to avail yourselves of copies of the following:

You Can't Tell the People: The Definitive Account of the Rendlesham Forest UFO Mystery

Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld

The Mothman Prophecies

The Warminster Triangle

The Welsh Triangle

I have also discovered someone who has a copy of a lengthy MOD document on UFOs, which I must investigate. (In fact, there's also quite a good book on the MOD and UFOs, Out of the Shadows: UFOs, the Establishment and Official Cover Up. A bit too skeptical for my liking, being something of a confirmed Patrick Harpur fan.)

More anon.

Truth Stranger Than Fiction etc

Just when I worry that no one will believe that people like Smith and his sidekick Nigel actually exist, this appears in the Grauniad:

The next saucer to Shoeburyness leaves from platform 5 ...
Alok JhaMonday March 13, 2006 The Guardian

"We're getting there." That was the motto of British Rail in its 1980s heyday. But how they thought they might get there will come as a surprise to even diehard trainspotters: a decade earlier engineers had patented plans to transport passengers by nuclear-powered flying saucer, writes Alok Jha .

The plans for the space vehicle were discovered on the website of the European Patent Office by a student. "I thought it must be a joke at first," he said, electing to stay anonymous. "It's the sort of thing you only read about in science fiction books."

His discovery shows that in 1973 an inventor, Charles Osmond Frederick, patented the design for a craft powered by laser-controlled thermonuclear fusion. Designed to reach high speeds in space, it was meant to move us around the globe and even to other planets.

Its "lifting platform" was designed for the British Railways Board and the patent was filed under the name of Jensen and Son. The disc would have had a flat, slightly concave underside, the patent said. "A controlled thermonuclear fusion reaction is ignited by one or more pulsed laser beams produced by lasers and reflected or focused on to a central reaction zone on the underside of the platform."

Unsurprisingly, space scientists have thrown cold water on the designs. Michel van Baal, of the European Space Agency, said the craft would need an "unbelievable amount of energy" to fly. "I have had a look at the plans, and they don't look very serious to me at all."

Patents can be taken out for any type of invention without the need for a working example. Inventors can even patent designs for machines that are physically impossible to build. The patent described a power source that "would enable very high velocities to be attained in a space vehicle, and in fact the prolonged acceleration of the vehicle may in some circumstances be used to simulate gravity". Papers filed with the patent also show detailed cross-sections of the proposed space vehicle and a view of the underside. Dr Van Baal said Mr Frederick's design was based on a fusion process that did not yet exist.

Thermonuclear fusion is seen as a potentially near limitless supply of energy and governments around the world have invested billions in developing it. The latest effort is a joint international experimental nuclear reactor, called Iter, which will fuse a form of heavy water to release energy. Theoretically at least. Unfortunately, any commercial application of the technology is still at least 50 years away, even according to the scientists who believe it could work one day.
Colin Pillinger, the space scientist who led the doomed Beagle 2 mission to Mars, said: "I think the plans are fascinating; it really looks like a flying saucer. Quite what British Rail had in mind I have no idea. It is very unusual ... if I hadn't seen the documents I wouldn't have believed it."
The student said: "The flying saucer looks just like something out of a science fiction comic. It's amazing that British Rail actually developed these plans. They obviously believed people would be transported around space to different planets in the future. Who knows, maybe in the next 50 years they will be proved right."

Unfortunately for Mr Frederick, the flying saucer idea never took off, and the patent has now lapsed.

Berlin

A quick trip to the Berlin Film Festival has seen Smith get possibly a new producer on board. Yours truly also discovered a rather good Irish pub, almost next door to which was a splendid pizzeria. And yes, I did actually see a film as well. More news when we have some...

I took these photos in Weston yesterday as part of a portfolio of images of sample locations for the film that is being sent out to interested parties. This just about sums up English seaside towns in the winter.

Things Are Afoot

Just a quickie to say that honing the script continues and the search for finance... sorry, I meant the Holy Grail, continues.

The UK Film Council have the project now, and we are also presenting it next week at the Co-Production Meetings at the Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival. This will be my third visit to Mannheim, and my second time at the Meetings. The first time I had a project selected, a sadly had a producer who did nothing with it. This time I am happy to report that my producer is the brilliant Andre Bennett - who has worked with the likes of Atom Egoyan and Guy Maddin (to say nothing of distributing Tarkovsky and Angelopoulos). Andre's experience at raising money for independent features is proving invaluable. In addition, several UK production outfits are also interested in the film.

When not at the Meetings (17 in 3 days), I will be relaxing by drinking heavily, mainly at Stars, the cocktail bar that floats over the Stadhaus (where the festival takes place) like an airship. Or at least that's the feeling I always get when I'm there. I'm sure this is something to do with the strength of their cocktails. All of them are named after movie stars from the so-called Golden Age of Movies (golden age of American crap if you ask me). I am partial to Fred Astaires. Two of those and you're flying. It's the nearest I want to get to Smith's state of mind.

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?

The PR Campaign Marches Ever Onward

I was invited onto the Morning Programme with Jo Phillips on BBC Somerset Sound on Monday morning, where I was subjected to something known as 'The Questionnaire'. This basically involved being put in the Comfy Chair, suffering a little prodding with soft cushions and being left there until elevenses.

But I did manage to plug the film, which Jo found fascinating. She made an appeal on our behalf over the airwaves for entrepreneurial support. Cash, in other words.

And there is considerable interest from the Western Daily Press in doing a piece about our travails in getting the project off the ground. Well, it seems to be off the ground, hovering a few feet above it in fact, like a marsh flare (which Herr Screenwriter and I once captured on video) or, come to think of it, a bad smell. I'd better go and open the windows...