Shadowing Practice: Steven Spielberg Believes in Aliens - Learn English Speaking with Video
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How would you draw the line between national security and the public's urge to know?
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I think the public's urge to know is more like a right to know.
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If the unknown is known by a very small group of people,
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the injustice of not everyone knowing what they know is kind
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of what drives me especially to tell the story of Disclosure Day.
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I am on much firmer ground now, certainly with all the circumstantial evidence that's out there for me to believe
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that you know they're here why do
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ufo sightings persist are at least some of them figments of our imagination
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or are we missing something in my latest book take me
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to your leader i actually explore what's possible in this universe given the universal laws of physics
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if the aliens are out there the laws of physics will dictate how they find us i also narrated the audiobook
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so i'm duly informed that the audiobook
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and the print version are available now wherever books are sold
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steven good to see you again good to see you thanks
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for coming on to the podcast uh we did a bit of homework
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and i did not know
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that your first student film was about aliens yeah it was
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called firelight i made it an eight millimeter on eight millimeter
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film i was 17 years old i was the i was in high school
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so you you aliens have just been a thing well it
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was it was more about ufos it was it was it was
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and it wasn't uh peace -loving uh aliens the first one i did was much more of the
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formulaic you know monogram movie exploitation and and
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but it was it was in an area of interest ever since I was a kid
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and I mean why wouldn't it be
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because everybody's interested in aliens at some point
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but you have the power to bring it to life on levels
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that no one could have imagined well it's not really
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so much my interest in aliens it's been my interest in the unknown and
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and the feeling I've had you know for a very long
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time having been a consumer of everything involving the unknown not
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the unknown you know you know a million light years from here
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but the unknown right here and it's always been something that's really interested me
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and I've always wondered you know you know
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if the unknown is known by a very small group of
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people the injustice of not everyone knowing what they know is
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kind of what drives me especially to tell the story of
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disclosure day it never occurred to me to think of people left out as being the consequence of an injustice
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and inequity maybe is a better word yeah no
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but still no i'm applauding the term because
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when it's an injustice you want to correct that as a viewer you want you want to right the wrong.
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And you clearly established that in Disclosure Day.
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I mean, it was, that was the greatest feeling any of us had as we, as we watched this.
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A question that I've always had as a director,
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what is the value of the eyes of whatever it is you're looking into?
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Not only in Disclosure Day was there a lot of eye contact from animal to, you know, non -human animal to human animal,
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but also human to human where you're kind of seeing into their soul imparting a bit of empathy, I guess, for lack of a better word there.
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That is the word.
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That is the word of the day.
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That is the key word of the day.
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But aliens tend to, as we now think of them, they all have big eyes and eyes seem to matter.
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Can you just speak a little bit as a director?
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And let me throw in the mix, the eye contact with the Velociraptor, right?
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I mean, at my museum, the Velociraptor is not much bigger than a big dog, but they were sort of pumped up in Jurassic Park so
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that you're making eye contact with something that's going to eat you.
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So not only as a source of fear, but as a potential source of empathy.
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How does that feel to you?
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Well, with human beings, you know, eyes are the mirrors of the soul and to animals, I guess, eyes are the mirrors or the appetite.
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But they both serve a similar purpose.
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Animals with teeth.
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They both give a kind of satiation.
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And I think everything is in the eyes.
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It's in the eyes.
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It's from anything you've, any movie experience anybody's ever had.
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It's all about the E .T.'s eyes in my film was critically important.
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The design of those eyes were critically important.
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It's a little bit harder with what people report when they report non -human entities.
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They there's no iris or pupil.
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So it's so I never thought about that It's never drawn with anything inside the eye No, but but but there are other things happening
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when people have close encounters of the third kind which is
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that that How that that that sort of you know defines itself?
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That there is something that is also a psychic part of looking into an eye of a non -human
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As has been reported and still feeling something without needing the pupil
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or the iris so uh in disclosure day uh
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because they actually had a an alien uh i always felt like what's the need to even disclose any video
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if you've got the alien what do you need the video
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for you need the context you've got to have 80 years
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of context okay you've got to be able to he steals 80 years of the truth
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that has been hidden from the public and even from the government
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because you know it's very hard for elected officials to keep secrets you know
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but in a way contracted you know you know deep state
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contract companies contracted companies they're pretty good at keeping secrets there's
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not a lot of leaks from the big tech companies
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or even unless there's a mutiny as in disclosure day and
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and there there have been whistleblowers
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that went to the uh you know house intelligence committee and it gave their testimony you know you know grush
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Fravor and Ryan sworn under oath 2023 in front of
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Congress and the American public
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so that's quite the setup for this movie
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but presumably the movie was percolating even before then it takes time to make a movie
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were those testimonies the trigger for this whole idea?
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the trigger for the whole idea was the New York Times article
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that article that came out in the New York Times in 2017 yes yes
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and that was that was the trigger for me
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which was the the first time we ever heard the term tic -tac being used instead of ufo
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because first it was ufo and then it was tic -tac
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and then we hear something called uap it's all confusing you
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know you know unidentified anomalous phenomenon it's who are they fooling
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they're talking about ufo can we go back to ufo please
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please completely I remembered speaking of a Tic -Tac at the time
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and a few weeks later at my office a whole crate of Tic -Tac showed up.
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So it's free advertising for them.
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I just had questions about the story.
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You know, all the places are mentioned.
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We've heard tension occur in all of the Korea and Russia and Ukraine.
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And so that's kind of this buildup behind the disclosure
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because that's the backdrop that's the landscape landscape on
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which this is unfolding yeah what were you what was your
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goal there well my goal was not to lay it on thick my goal was to suggest
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that there was something approaching critical mass happening in the world uh
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that at least was uh bringing back the word defcon yes you know
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and and that
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that you know we people tend to take these things in
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their stride i remember during the cuban missile crisis i was in high school and when it was hitting the tele, my parents went to a dinner party,
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and I was home with my three sisters worrying about the world ending.
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My parents weren't worried about that during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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And so there are people who aren't going to really be focused on the DEFCON situation, but there is a crisis happening in the world,
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which has something to do with the timing of Disclosure Day.
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Yeah, and it's coincidence, surely, that the government is releasing files right around when you've got your movie coming out.
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That is a complete coincidence.
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Unless you have access.
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I know, no, no. You can tell me.
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I won't tell anybody.
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No.
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My movie is not a holistic review of the entire UFO phenomenon as fed to me by any actors inside
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or outside the government.
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No, I've had no government contact about this at all.
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We're going to have quality time with your writer.
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You're a long -time partner in this.
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But let me just ask, what would you say of this movie is your imprimatur as director and storyteller?
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Well, I wrote the story.
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So I wrote it from scratch based on my deep interest in this subject
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and so much was starting to come out in 2017.
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All right.
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And I was very satisfied with Close Encounters, very satisfied having made E .T and then even War of the Worlds, which was more analogous to 9 -11 than to 8 -11 aliens,
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but when I saw that everybody that has a smartphone has been photographing and capturing some extraordinary things happening.
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We're crowdsourcing any possible alien invasion.
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It's incredible how much is out there right now.
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And some of it, yes, can be faked, but a lot of it I don't think is.
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And it just, my interest, I didn't think I would get interested again in this subject, And then when the 2017...
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New York Times article came out, I thought, well, you know, something's about to happen.
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May not be this year or next year, but something is going to happen.
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And I really would like this movie to be my summation story in my entire,
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I guess, filmography of UFOs and extraterrestrials.
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So let's explore empathy some more.
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Yes.
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Because that really mattered in this film.
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Yes, it does.
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Who trusts whom?
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Right.
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How and why?
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Trusting a stranger, complete stranger.
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So how did empathy land as a running theme?
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Well, because I've often, I've dwelled a lot about not just empathy, but the lack of empathy.
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And the feeling that empathy is sort of in short supply.
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It used to be a lot more taken for granted.
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And now you have to kind of find it, reach for it.
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The way the world's, our country's divided
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and the way people go to their silos and they stay with their groups and it's kind of like...
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Heels dug in?
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Heels dug in.
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It's sort of like sports too, you know, in that sense.
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It's not a lot of empathy between, you know, crowds competing against each other in any sporting event.
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Empathy is toward your team, toward your home team, but not toward the opposition.
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And so more and more we're having less and less common ground that we can find.
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And I do a lot of philanthropic work through our Hearthland Foundation trying to fund things
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that bring people of different ideologies and beliefs together, not to change their minds.
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I'm not interested in changing anybody's mind, just finding common ground so we can start joining together as opposed to separating further and further.
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Disclosure Day has a lot to do with that, and empathy is the key.
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So how would you draw the line between national security and the public, the public's urge to know?
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I think the public's urge to know is more like a right to know.
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And I think when, you know, you can always look back and look at all of the conspiracy theories and all of the urban myths.
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And you could look at all of the legends that haunt us constantly, that television shows are made from.
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It's great.
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It's great material.
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We have no entertainment material for us you know but
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when you look at it the one thing
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that hasn't changed the one thing that could be considered mythology
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which is uf ufology could be considered by some mythology but
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when you look at the consistency of the reporting how it's
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so consistent for 80 years you know um uh you know
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i i am on much firmer ground now certainly with all
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the circumstantial evidence that's out there for me to believe that you know they're here
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now empathy is something
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that the aliens in war the world did not have no they just came
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and they just want to slaughter with abandon yeah that was
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that was a 19th century book written by the great hg
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well i'm not blaming you no no i'm saying oh no
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but i'm just saying
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that i made a choice to you know to make it
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a very aggressive it was very dark a very dark film oh my gosh about about you know invasion and annihilation
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so genocide do you have any feelings well that's the wrong
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word do you have any thoughts on whether aliens would be sympathetic empathetic evil what might be their motives
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or their attitudes towards us just given your sense of the
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world well my my sense of The world is obviously already on film with close encounters.
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A benign non -human civilization coming here.
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And E .T.
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is as benign as you could possibly imagine any entity could be.
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And I believe that what's been going on is not something that we should fear.
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It's something that we should be very open to.
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In spite of how cinema has trained us to just completely believe in an evil aliens.
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I mean, that's just, that trope is with us.
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Yeah, if I hadn't made War of the Worlds, that was not in my filmography, I would say, well, I've been trying to train us too between three movies,
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but War of the Worlds kind of makes me a hypocrite.
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It totally undoes your line there.
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It undoes my good intentions, and yet I do have good intentions, and I am optimistic that whatever is interacting with us,
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whatever is here, out there, under the water, wherever it, and whoever knows the truth knows that this is not something,
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you know, that we need to flee and panic.
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There's going to be a lot of ontological shock if this ever gets announced.
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And the stuff that the government or the Pentagon has been releasing in drips
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and drabs is kind of hard to see what it is.
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But what they're releasing is not causing, going to cause any you know, social dislocation, because it's not enough.
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And nobody's coming out and making that big public announcement, they're here, they've been here, they've always been here.
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Short of that, there is no, you know, culture shock.
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But ontological shock happens when your fundamental beliefs of what you consider reality are shattered by a new world reality.
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And that was, of course, comically addressed in Men in Black yeah understanding of the world
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is changed that's right that's why they have to keep it quiet yeah yeah
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and they got that magic light thing they have the neuralyzer
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and of course neuralyzer neuralyzer
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and of course it could only happen in New York City a quick another element about empathy mm -hmm you expect
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everyone to want the government to disclose aliens no there are
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people who don't want the government to disclose any of this and and
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because it's not going to shake up our core truth of
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our core realities you just want to keep the rest of
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us in the dark yeah there are people who don't really want this disclosed not just government people
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but there are people in the country
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that would rather uh you know get the price of eggs down you know
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and not have to worry about all this
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but you know in america our movies are our culture they're they're our binding force among us
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so uh with disclosure day you've already disclosed the aliens I don't need the Pentagon anymore
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because Steven Spielberg has done so at least some people are surely gonna feel
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that well I've told a story that that
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that is is I told a story from my imagination based on credible things
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that I have seen and heard about and read for years
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but it did go through a process to be able to
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find a great story it said it's a chase film this
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is an action picture yes yes you need to put on a seat belt
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and a chest harness when this film starts
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and it shoots you kind of out of a cannon and
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and you got to really pay attention to keep up
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and don't go on your phones and
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and text other people you got to go see this movie
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wait until the movie's over before you talk to anybody watch the screen
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and that's very important to be able to comprehend it all
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but at the same time you know this is not a documentary this this this is a story
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but but you're you asked great questions
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because that's what you've done your whole career
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and you know you're one of the greatest uh uh science people
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that i know oh thank you i'm just trying to keep
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it real you do steven thank you thank you all right great to talk to you again
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when steven spielberg tells a story about aliens it tends to shape how the rest of us imagine them.
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His new film, Disclosure Day, taps into something that already feels like it's happening in real life.
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Because lately, aliens, or at least the possibility of them, seem to be showing up in the news more and more.
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But here's where things get tricky.
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Not all of these headlines are created equal.
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Some push bold claims while others take a more measured approach focusing on data and uncertainty.
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That's why we've been partnered with Ground News since 2024.
258
Their app
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and website give us a data -driven approach to reading the
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news by pulling articles from over 50 ,000 sources worldwide in one place.
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You can easily compare how different sources cover the same story and get a visual breakdown on the bias, reliability of a source, and who owns it.
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Take this recent story about the Pentagon releasing secret UFO files.
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If you scroll down to the headlines, you can quickly compare how it's being covered across 700 different sources.
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The LA Times leaves room for people to draw their own conclusions, while multiple sources on the right focus on the political implications and shock factor.
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Ground News Blindspot feed doesn't allow any of
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that to be missed by showing stories that are disproportionately reported by either side of the political spectrum.
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We've been partnered with Ground News since 2024 for their transparency and because they're fully subscriber funded.
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So there aren't corporate interests deciding what you can and can't see.
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If that's the kind of world you want to live in, you can get the same unlimited vantage plan we use for 40 % off at ground .news .startalk
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or by scanning the QR code on the screen.
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David, welcome to Startalk thank you great to be here yeah
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it's not often we get to hang out with a screenwriter well we keep to ourselves in our room
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because the actors get all the shine and the red carpets
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and but they're just speaking your words the on a good day
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if you're nice to them they'll do that you've got quite the the portfolio here, especially.
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in the geekiverse if i may going back to jurassic park we love it spider -man personally
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that was my favorite of all the spider -mans the first one
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if i may say yeah well thanks if i may say
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that you it's okay with me um the advantage of novelty
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and getting to tell how something started uh yeah is everything yeah
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and we got war of the world of course in the in the remake from 05 uh
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and And is Steven Spielberg your primary guy that you collaborate with, or are you freelancing and he just plucks you when he needs you?
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Well, we've done, I think this is nine or ten together, so that's quite a bit.
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Yeah, it's been a great collaboration.
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I've over 30 -some years since Jurassic Park.
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I have worked repeatedly with a few others, you know, Steven Soderbergh, Brian De Palma.
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And there's different aspects of yourself, and your interests that people are suited to.
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But Stephen's one, our interests most frequently line up.
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And could you correct something in my understanding, or at least highlight for me, when you're a screenwriter, you're not just writing the words people speak.
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Aren't you also conjuring the scene in which those words are communicated?
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Thanks for asking, Neil.
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Most certainly, yes, you are.
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The screenwriter's responsibility is everything an audience sees or hears.
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and i don't think people think
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that they think it's just what the the script line
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but you you're putting the image in front of us yeah
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and if you're writing a scene really well you're not using us
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so much dialogue you're using images visuals movies
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or visual experiences those are the powerful memories
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that we have from them in fact i've heard
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that you can always tell a first timer
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when they they put everything in the script they don't know how to use the visual medium yeah for all
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that it's worth yeah it's those things the things in audio
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we see the only things we can perceive in a movie
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are what we see in here those are the two senses we bring to a movie and
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so therefore where does the director come in uh the director
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come it depends the director can come in from the very beginning
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and ask you to start the director then comes in the
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good ones they can come in later after you've written the
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script the good ones don't just record what you wrote they interpret it
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so they will say things
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that look at your material from a different point of view
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i was i wrote this movie called snake eyes uh brian de palma directed
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and uh he asked me after one
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or two drafts can you make this first 15 pages so i can do it in one shot
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and i said no and he said okay give it a shot
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so i went and gave it a shot
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and rewrote it i never would have occurred to me i never would have imagined it
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that way i never would have interpreted it that way
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and that's what the director okay then that's a collaboration at its very very tension at first
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and then you resolve to something greater yeah then either would have been yeah
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so i with disclosure day as presumably existed with other films there's some mixture of science
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and fiction hence the word sci -fi science fiction how do you navigate
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that boundary i always want to get it right
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if i can i think anything
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that involves science i start the idea by doing as much
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research as i can possibly do talking to people is always better than the internet
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and certainly it's better than ai sources mean a human to
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human conversation actual conversation with a person well how novel yeah
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because then you'll come up with unexpected things and little character things
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and stuff um but i stop at a certain point
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because i now realize well okay now i have to write the story
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and the foremost responsibility of this movie is that it be entertaining.
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So I cannot let reality and truth intrude too much on entertainment.
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But then once I've written it, now there's another round of research.
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Let's make this as close to reality as we can.
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Okay, interesting.
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So the entertainment, because someone has to pay to see the movie and they want to do that willingly.
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Yeah, and it's not a documentary.
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It's not a documentary.
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And they understand that going in, so i don't feel like i'm misleading society they understand this is not a documentary
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but anything i do that's real and grounded in truth
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and reality and actual research works better
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so you have a little black book with your science consultants in there is
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that how that works yeah that kind of i i'd written a novel once
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that that i needed to talk to a microbiologist for
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and i wrote the whole novel and then i gave it to him
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and said now this i found one through friends and said listen As one does, it's on your microbiologist groups, okay?
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Easy to do.
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I said, read this.
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I want you to have a good laugh.
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And then I want you to please, if you're interested, work with me.
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Let's make it closer to reality.
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And he read it, and he called me and said, okay, well, it's not terrible.
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And I took that as huge praise.
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I was like, all right, then let's work on it.
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Okay, so that's good to know that that can happen.
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One of my great frustrations is to hear a creative person say, I didn't want reality to constrain my creative plot lines.
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And often, 80%, not 100 % of the time, 80 % of the time, had they known scientific reality more deeply,
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the plot could have even been strengthened.
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Yes.
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Rather than constrained.
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Exactly.
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Because the universe is often stranger than you have imagined.
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It's a pretty wondrous place, and life forms are pretty unusual and varied,
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and you can draw more from reality than you, it's better in reality, nature has come up with something more interesting than whatever's in your head, I guarantee.
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So the science advice can come in presumably at any phase of this, right?
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You want to get the story idea down, but then you touch it up as you go forward yeah
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well in this case there was a lot of research first
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because there's been there's been a lot there's a lot of material
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and you have access right then you have access
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and people do want to talk it doesn't hurt
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if you can say it's a Steven Spielberg movie then they
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really want to talk they actually return your phone call henceforth
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when we say it's a David Koepp movie
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that gets one kind of return phone call
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but a better one is it's a Spielberg movie
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so what is the process you go through as a screenwriter
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if you're starting with pre -existing material a novel war the
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world a very famous novel in fact it's already been made into a movie in 1951
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so what do you see as your role doing
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that a second time in a well -established piece of sci
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-fi well the first thing you want to do is reread it i'd read it as a kid
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and i knew the book well
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but i had not read it with the intention of making it into a movie
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so i read it again i didn't watch the george powell movie yet
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because i didn't want to remake
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that i wanted we were trying to reinterpret the book for for modern times um you reread the novel
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and start to think what applies what doesn't
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but you have to have an idea for how do i
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make this different from a book where everything is explicit
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and everything is said and you know what people think
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and you know what they feel
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and science can go on for pages how do i make this a movie experience
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and the big thing in
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that was limiting the point of view you have to have
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an idea our idea there was okay let's go from one person's point of view
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and if they don't see it we don't see it
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and observe that rule stringently for the whole movie that's brilliant
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because now i'm in suspense the whole time right
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and you know steven's done very well by suggesting more than he shows
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so if if that's a trademark it's a trademark it's born out of necessity
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which is what's what's brilliant about it is the famous stories about jaws
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and the shark not working right and it and it also didn't hurt
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that our main character we had tom cruise who was going
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to be an interesting person you want to watch anyway right
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so if you're going to restrict a point of view that's the rule do it with someone interesting right right
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so let's go to jurassic park for a moment okay i
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work at the museum natural history you you're a neighbor yeah
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and surely you've seen our velociraptor yes we have a fossil
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velociraptor on display it's not much bigger than a large dog
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in jurassic park okay it was sort of pumped up to be human -sized so
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that eye contact is a thing could you describe to me
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the role of eye contact in storytelling oh that's not where
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i thought you were going that's good well no i mean
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because it can be love
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or you could be the person's next meal yeah eyes are
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everything here particularly i mean one of the ideas behind jurassic
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park there's a you know there's the central brilliant creighton once
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in a lifetime idea of you know the preservation of the dna in amber
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which is fantastic um the other michael creighton yes yes the
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other idea is rearranging our place in the food chain
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that has worked in a couple of jaws notably
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and certainly jurassic park we love to think about that i think
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because it hits us in a very elemental place we used to hide in caves
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and worry about the cries of the tigers at night
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and you're bringing
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that back to life please yeah exactly let's tap into something
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yeah well that's how we know we've got your attention it's
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like you know how disney movies always kill a parent early on okay they grab grab those kids' attention
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and hold on to it.
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And I think I kind of - And the superheroes, they're all orphans, right?
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Yes.
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Yeah.
435
But you're quite right.
436
Eye contact is a vital part of that.
437
And I think the sequence, one of the sequences people really remember is when the great hunter is stalked and defeated
438
by the velociraptor that comes around the side of him.
439
And the thing we see
440
that reveals the velociraptor is the eye um eyes really uh are portals to everything okay
441
so you're affirming what i suspected is
442
that this is an important part of your of the intensity of a scene yeah yeah
443
i'm intrigued as you describe your access to our primal fears
444
and how you exploit that in the storytelling um but there are also perhaps other primal emotions that perhaps serve the
445
your storytelling needs in disclosure day empathy was an important piece of
446
that oh it's it's it's everything it was steven's notion which is embodied in a beautiful monologue coleman domingo delivers Oh,
447
don't condescend to me.
448
I'm listening to you, Noah.
449
Something I've learned quite a bit about.
450
From your friends?
451
Yes.
452
They regard empathy as an evolutionary advantage, as the foremost evolutionary advantage.
453
In fact, the core of animate existence.
454
Our rejection of this understanding is leading us to our extinction.
455
Empathy can be seen as the foremost necessary evolutionary quality.
456
It's another way, I think, of saying cooperation.
457
Any great human accomplishment is only done through cooperation.
458
You can go back to the agrarian revolution and say the idea
459
that we all must plant and harvest this stuff
460
and then help each other store it is what led to the massive explosion in population.
461
It's what led to the success of the human rights.
462
What we call civilization.
463
Civilization.
464
Building a bridge.
465
No one can do it unless we do it together.
466
And I think that that sometimes gets overlooked as a necessary next evolutionary step,
467
which is increased empathy, understanding others and working with others is the only thing
468
that will let us succeed and prevent our own destruction.
469
I don't want to speak for you and your craft, but the greatest of the villains are the ones that you have some feeling for in some way.
470
Otherwise, they're just, you know, kill them off.
471
That's what Mr. Spielberg is so good at, is insisting that every character is a character, even a villain.
472
Why are they a villain?
473
What is it that's pushing them?
474
They don't, please let no one twirl their mustache.
475
There's a scene in the movie that follows a massive train chase.
476
You see it in the trailer, so I'm not giving anything away.
477
It's thrilling.
478
It's great action filmmaking.
479
The traditional end of that scene is the release of They Escaped.
480
Oh, thank goodness.
481
But there's another scene that follows it, which is an incredibly emotional scene in the boxcar.
482
And that's Stephen, the early drafts of the script didn't have that scene.
483
And he said, but this is the most frightening thing that's ever happened to them in their entire lives.
484
There would be emotional fallout.
485
Can we see that?
486
And that's just being attuned to character.
487
I deeply remember that scene because it was wholly unexpected.
488
They drop into a boxcar.
489
It could have been anything.
490
and it's it's a quiet tender scene yeah emotionally violent uh inside
491
but there are people working together to try to resolve those feelings yeah
492
because at different times we're asking ourselves does the colin firth
493
character have it right is he protecting civilization whose side should we be on
494
and i can tell you that you know yes i want disclosure of course
495
but you can see where he's coming from he makes a
496
fair point we we have not traditionally done well with sudden dramatic cultural change
497
and we're not doing well right now
498
so speak to me again the importance of being able to sympathize
499
or empathize even with people branded as evil in a story
500
well you have to do your honest best to understand their point of view
501
and to actually believe it we we did an interesting process on this script where there were five main characters
502
and at one point we did a draft solely from the point of view of
503
that character i'm not saying we rewrote the entire script
504
so it's only them but thinking about every scene
505
and every moment only from their point of view and
506
that really helps you strengthen their arguments i believe i think colin's character is quite right about most of what he says.
507
He goes too far.
508
But I think he's right about what he says.
509
And I don't think if the action of the movie continued after the last moment of the movie, I don't think it's all peaches and cream.
510
I think there's a lot of tumult that's coming.
511
So given the points of view that we were treated to, really, because then at the end we'd make our own resolution right
512
and that's allowed i kept asking myself would my level of empathy for the aliens
513
because that's really what it came down to i just wonder suppose
514
that footage wasn't there and you just had sort of ufo sightings and maybe an alien
515
from a crashed saucer lifted onto a stretcher,
516
would we still feel as much as we did were it not for that just one squealing alien?
517
No, I don't think we would have.
518
And I think it's telling that that's, Josh's character says, that's the footage Hugo showed me to get me to agree to do this.
519
To join the mutiny.
520
And that means everything, because it's a great turn on every single thing we've always thought about aliens they're omnipotent right
521
because they can handle interstellar travel right uh they're they're gods they're they can do everything we can't
522
and they're invulnerable but no they're not and their ships can crash
523
and they can be injured and we can do terrible things
524
because we have kind of a history of doing terrible
525
because we're dicks sometimes okay sometimes yeah okay uh so okay
526
because that's i thought that i don't want to call it a turning point
527
but that was a key shift in the depth of my empathy
528
that i would have for the aliens now of course in et you know they grab them
529
and they they towards the end they want to operate them on them
530
and cut them open
531
or whatever they were going to do the medical doctors out of curiosity i suppose
532
but it's still once you've built a relationship with the character up until then that's just evil at
533
that level however in disclosure day we don't yet have a
534
relationship with the alien no we didn't look it in the eyes yet
535
so why did that work so well it's a I hadn't thought of it
536
that way until you you said it it's it's a really strong structural underpinning of the script
537
because it it subverted our expectations and it demanded
538
that we question things we had just taken for granted
539
and you see
540
but you see this kind of you know like this kind
541
of deep empathy is in spielberg's work all the way through i just as you were talking was thinking about jaws
542
and uh while the shark no one has sympathy for the jaws no
543
but it's it's no sympathy for sure
544
but it's presented as just doing what it does it's an
545
animal it needs to eat it needs to eat sleep
546
and make baby sharks and that's what it's doing you can't judge it for
547
that i just gotta deal with it yeah it's just being
548
a stay out of its lane you know it's just being
549
a shark yeah you can't can't blame a shark for being a shark
550
and maybe it's because we know the alien has intelligence yeah
551
and that's a threshold that above which we care about
552
or we resonate with you agree with that i think
553
so yeah i mean i think with some animals we kind of are kidding ourselves uh
554
that they don't have an intelligence where they might understand what's happening of course with
555
and the more we study animals the more intelligent we find out
556
that they are yeah my daughter who's a vegetarian would say we are all kidding ourselves
557
and we're horribly cruel so you'll never be as woke as your daughter no maybe not have you considered the possibility
558
that the evil alien trope which was not kept that was not what disclosure day was about but But we,
559
when we've encountered other humans of lower technological prowess,
560
it's never boded well in the whole era of colonization.
561
People were enslaved, killed, and so we imagine these evil aliens.
562
Would you agree that that might just be a mirror to ourselves?
563
Yeah, I think we're imputing our history onto them i think
564
we assume well the spaniards wiped out the aztecs therefore this is what's right on down
565
and that's just one of many examples that could be given
566
so for steven in multiple movies war the world's accepted to have an alien
567
that is not does not want to harm you this is
568
a little weird given the tropes we are fed yeah it's another way of thinking about it
569
which is uh But that's it.
570
And it's fairly consistent across his four movies where he's he's touched on the subject.
571
In three of the cases, maybe they are.
572
I don't know if they're benevolent or not, but they're certainly not malevolent.
573
And then in War of the Worlds, it's, you know, anything goes.
574
Yeah.
575
But that's just for diversity of viewpoint.
576
what do you think of people who are capable of great harm
577
but inside they think they're doing the right thing as a screenwriter what do you do about
578
that well you have to have the second part of what
579
you said you have to have the inside they think they're doing the right thing
580
and you you have to think of it from their point of view
581
and find real reasons to justify why that might be the right thing.
582
Why might they be correct?
583
Because in a
584
any good actor is going to come in well first of all your story's better
585
that way um but any good actors it gets two -dimensional right i mean yeah
586
and you're not really you stop paying attention you don't take the movie as seriously you're not as engaged okay
587
but any good actor is going to come in
588
and act like their character's lawyer
589
and they're going to say now you're not fairly representing my
590
client's interests here you better be right seriously absolutely oh my
591
gosh single -minded point of view i never thought about
592
that okay because this is that's their craft yeah
593
and they have to do it they have to stand at colin had to stand up there
594
and say these things right and find them believable
595
and justifiable genuinely for himself
596
so you have to write better material these days we're used
597
to getting things delivered on demand groceries a new gadget
598
or the latest book expanding your view of the universe
599
and now you can add t -mobile 5g home internet to
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602
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603
or going down a rabbit hole about exoplanets asteroids
604
or whatever's pulling your curiosity
605
and those online explorations are a lot easier with the fastest 5g home internet
606
so if you're moving into a new place
607
or just ready to upgrade your connection to something a little
608
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609
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610
if it's an option during checkout fastest according to ukla speed
611
test intelligence data second half 2025 all rights reserved now i
612
can't have been the only one to have immediately thought of the day the earth stood still oh yeah
613
when disclosure day comes and everyone has stopped
614
and is looking at their smartphone the world stopped all I
615
can think of was the day the earth stood still yeah
616
and were you thinking that as well I mean sure but
617
that is how it happens I mean that's what we all remember take the pivotal events in history
618
and remember where you were when we all do
619
and there are some things that happen that are
620
so consequential you stop everybody stops some reference that That movie's a landmark and I adore it.
621
And so some reference, not necessarily that you're consciously referring to those things, but you're not running away from it either.
622
You're not saying, well, we can't do that because Day of the Earth Stood Still did it.
623
Well, yes, because that's what would happen.
624
Because it would happen, yeah.
625
You're not just, you're both representing a reality.
626
You're not copying each other.
627
There's a separate reality that you're both trying to capture.
628
Yes.
629
And it was clearly manifest where on the front lines where people might have been ready to fight,
630
which is, of course, a persistent theme in the background of the entire film.
631
These are hotbed spots in the current news with Russia and Ukraine and Korea and, you know, South Korea, North Korea.
632
It's there.
633
And when Earth stood still, there were the soldiers looking at their smartphone own there's a moment
634
that everything stops and no matter who you are no matter who
635
and it it reminded was conveyed brilliantly good silently
636
and brilliantly yeah well a lot of the best things in movies are done without dialogue yeah
637
and it reminded me of uh who was the astronaut who
638
most of them actually when when they are in space
639
and they look back on at the earth there is an inevitable feeling of oh my goodness we're very small
640
and we're all in this together right the two layers of
641
that there's the overview effect
642
that the astronauts have gone into orbit have experienced then there's what i would i'd pump
643
that up a bit and call a cosmic perspective
644
when you're on the moon and the entire earth is there just adrift in darkness
645
that would be a full up cosmic perspective yeah
646
but you don't get that perspective unless you step out yes
647
and so our challenge is how do we get that to happen
648
but obviously we stay here on earth
649
so the whole movie you're treating us to chaos of the
650
world with familiar places we've seen in the news where there's conflict you didn't have to do
651
that but it was there so you're kind of setting us up to believe
652
that disclosure might remedy that i guess is
653
that was was this an explicit thought that you had that's an excellent speculation
654
and i hope
655
so what we wanted the end of this movie to be
656
was like somebody clapping their hands together in front of your face to say, hey.
657
Wake the fuck up and then in that moment.
658
What's next?
659
I would love to see what's next I have my own ideas about what's next, but the I smell sequel
660
Because you can't answer every single question All at once we
661
wanted the the whole notion of getting this what we've been
662
fighting the entire movie to do is to get this Information out get the truth out to people now.
663
What effect will that truth have?
664
It's a part of what you said earlier It's it's you
665
don't have to have the empathy for these extraterrestrials You don't have to have earth in such terrible chaos,
666
but that's what that's the purpose of the story And that's what makes us involve ourselves more Mm -hmm.
667
So I have just some some more
668
Sharpened technical questions
669
What's funny to me is no one has ever actually seen an alien
670
or brought forth an alien that we are aware of But we all know what aliens look like
671
i just find
672
that you can draw an alien with big eyes you know
673
bald head just once give me an alien with hair an alien is humanoid
674
that could be mammalian
675
and all mammals have hair give it like a nice hairdo
676
i'll tell you what really fascinates me we do have a
677
sort of universal perception of what we think aliens look like based in
678
and it's embedded it's embedded it's based on movies it's based
679
on lore it's based on what we think an interpretation of
680
our physical self here's what's interesting to me we can perceive what do we see between about 4 000
681
and 7 000 angstroms right
682
yeah that's what we can see uh what we can hear i don't know how many decibels
683
or but i know our dogs can hear more than we can
684
so we're 20 to 20 000 hertz thank you it's a nice it's very easy to remember
685
and dogs can hear higher pitches than 20 000 hertz
686
but not lower than 20 no not lower than 20 right you could
687
but great feel it because it becomes a pulse right right
688
so i asked the right guy so but those are fairly crude senses uh
689
so we invented some devices
690
that could help us see other things you know the telescope yes uh all the things we've invented
691
that is modern science The last hundred years, it's really gone far.
692
That is modern science.
693
But who's to say we certainly aren't still perceiving everything that exists around us?
694
We're perceiving a lot more with the help of our gizmos.
695
But who's to say these alien life forms don't exist in a form that we can't yet perceive?
696
I find that as the agnostic's most reasonable explanation for why things exist that I don't understand.
697
They sit outside of your sensory awareness.
698
They may well, and not just our sensory, but all the technical equipment that we have to perceive things.
699
So let me pick up on language for a moment.
700
So the lead character, Emily Blunt's character, speaks in a couple of different scenes.
701
One, fluent Russian.
702
Another one, fluent Korean.
703
And she's not self -aware of that.
704
She just thinks she's speaking.
705
Is this alien powers imbued within her that they gave her?
706
Can you give us some place to anchor what was going on there?
707
I think we see with Emily's character, when the bird appears, something happens.
708
They make eye contact.
709
They make eye contact, which is what it's all about.
710
And then she starts speaking in Russian in a way that she doesn't understand.
711
I think that notion that something is activated in her somehow
712
or given to her somehow that causes her to have these powers she doesn't even know she is implementing, that she's using.
713
And certainly we've seen in all the trailers, she is communicating in some sort of language that we understand that isn't based in the sounds that we know from Earth.
714
So I think it's a fair assumption that maybe this is coming from somewhere else.
715
This isn't coming from her elementary school.
716
This is coming from somewhere.
717
Some long forgotten Russian class you took.
718
Right.
719
This is from deep within or far without.
720
Ooh, I like that.
721
I liked that too as it came out.
722
You must be a writer.
723
Yeah, I was really happy with that one.
724
So I just like that because communication, we take for granted that we understand each other when we're speaking,
725
but half the world can't understand the other half of the world because we all speak different languages, is though we are the same species yeah
726
so that's just a well it gets the heart of empathy
727
and understanding how can you understand someone if you don't even know the words they make right
728
so she not only speaks korean and russian she speaks alien with these clicking noises
729
and i i loved it i i after i saw a screening i went home
730
and just started speaking that way to my family
731
and they're looking at me sure so so is
732
that like klingon is that a real language
733
that we can buy a book on and
734
and speak to each other at comic -con
735
or was it just some noises
736
that you just threw in at the god i hope somebody writes
737
that book and wants to learn how to do
738
that language we wanted to make a language that was based on sounds we don't normally hear in spoken communication,
739
but they still had to come from a human throat somehow or out of the human mouth.
740
So the idea was to create that language.
741
Then more interestingly, with Josh's character, we see that he hears or interprets those same sounds, but in terms of math.
742
Right, because he's math fluent.
743
He is math fluent.
744
And that is, you know, math is the language in which the universe was written and
745
so we wanted to create that language that was based on quasi -human sounds and math, which seemed to us like the best way we would,
746
the best and perhaps only way we could communicate with another species.
747
So how much thought was put into the actual sounds or were they just sort of random clicks?
748
Because if you put some thought into it, then some geek somewhere is going to write a whole dictionary.
749
Yeah.
750
Yeah, you know that's what's going to happen.
751
I do.
752
You'd have to ask Steven and Gary Rydstrom, the sound designer, who came up with it together, I'm afraid.
753
Okay, all right.
754
Clearly the movie had to address our modern understanding of what is true.
755
Is this person speaking the truth?
756
Is this video real?
757
Is it a deep fake?
758
Why should I believe this and not that?
759
The medium, the media vessel through which this was released was local news.
760
Is there some implicit or explicit statement being made there
761
that we kind of trust our local news people more than we might trust the anchor on a network news?
762
Was there any subtle thinking about that?
763
I think so.
764
You're not always conscious of what you're doing and how you're doing it.
765
But building the story, I think we certainly trust what is near to us and perhaps smaller and manageable and with someone we know.
766
Because that's the person reporting on news around the block from me.
767
Right.
768
Somebody's talking about what's happened in Chelsea.
769
Right.
770
I believe it because I can see they're standing in Chelsea and they know Chelsea, and so that's my neighborhood.
771
So I get that.
772
Chelsea's not a person.
773
It's a neighborhood in New York City that he just referred to.
774
Right.
775
The further it goes, the bigger it gets, the bigger the institution, the less we trust it.
776
And what I think is really interesting about this movie as a bookend to Close Encounters, the close encounters late 70s great deal of paranoia is the
777
government i think the government might be lying to us we
778
said in the 1970s in 2026 we say yeah watergate set
779
that up for us right nicely yeah well then
780
that very much grew out of that
781
that was the suspicion they might be lying to us now
782
it's 2026 oh we know they're lying to us we know
783
all y 'all are lying to us we want to know what is true we've gone further
784
and said you've been lying you've been lying you're busted We all know we don't believe a thing, but we're going to find out what's true.
785
And I think this movie's, from the first frame of the movie, there's this desperate urge to find out what's true, to get the information out.
786
But you accurately and justifiably represented the skepticism that people might have on their feed when they're looking at their smartphone.
787
Is this true or is it not?
788
Is it a deep fake?
789
You hear the questions being asked, the skepticism.
790
It's all legit.
791
It's what any of us would ask.
792
Yeah and then you see it in all the news outlets
793
and then people come they have the moment where they say oh my gosh well
794
and the the trick is we know of course there's skepticism
795
the trick is to have such an overwhelming uh amount of information
796
that it can no longer be denied right
797
so thanks for shedding some light from from your literary artistic skills my pleasure delightful to talk to And storytelling.
798
I mean, it's a, you know, I write books and I like to think I tell stories, but I'm not, it's not these kind of stories.
799
I mean, you're immersing a person in a world
800
and have them believe it and feel it and think it and possibly change them in a way for the better.
801
I mean, that's, you have the world in your palm of your hand, dude.
802
Anybody ever tell you that?
803
Movies do have a responsibility because we touch people, we reach them in an emotional, not just an intellectual way.
804
And emotions can be very powerful and very positive, and they can be very negative and dangerous.
805
Also be negative.
806
All right.
807
Well, thanks for being on StarTalk.
808
My pleasure.
809
I just heard you're a neighbor of the American Museum of Natural History.
810
This is true.
811
Four blocks away.
812
I'm going to find you.
813
i'm gonna find you at a coffee shop
814
and we'll drag you in for another interview
815
so this has been yet another episode of star talk disclosure day edition neil Degrass Tyson, your personal astrophysicist.
816
Keep looking up.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 816 sentences and 9462 words to shadow. The speech runs for 55:18. The speaker talks at a natural 171 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
- empathy /ˈɛmpəθi/ (noun) — Identification with or understanding of the thoughts, feelings, or emotional state of another person.
- disclosure /dɪsˈkləʊʒə(ɹ)/ (noun) — The act of revealing something.
- steven /ˈstiːvən/ (noun) — Voice, especially when loud or strong.
- script /skɹɪpt/ (noun) — A writing; a written document.
- documentary /ˌdɒk.jʊˈmɛn.tɹi/ (noun) — A film, TV program, publication etc. which presents a social, political, scientific or historical subject in a factual or informative manner.
- encounter /ɪnˈkaʊntɚ/ (verb) — To meet (someone) or find (something), especially unexpectedly.
- mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/ (noun) — An abstract representational system studying numbers, shapes, structures, quantitative change and relationships between them.
- urge /ɜːd͡ʒ/ (verb) — To press; to push; to drive; to impel; to force onward.
- disclose /dɪsˈkləʊz/ (verb) — To uncover; physically expose to view.
- shock /ʃɔk/ (noun) — A sudden, heavy impact.
- smartphone /ˈsmɑɹtfoʊn/ (noun) — A mobile phone with more advanced features and greater computing capacity than a feature phone.
- civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/ (noun) — An organized culture encompassing many communities, often on the scale of a nation or a people; a stage or system of social, political, or technical…
- jaw /d͡ʒɔː/ (noun) — One of the bones, usually bearing teeth, which form the framework of the mouth.
- evolutionary /ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/ (adjective) — Of or relating to the biological theory of evolution.
- injustice /ɪnˈd͡ʒʌs.tɪs/ (noun) — Absence of justice; unjustice.
Phrasal verbs you will hear
- look at (verb) — To observe or watch.
- think about /ˈθɪŋk əˌbaʊt/ (verb) — To ponder.
- come in /ˌkʌm ˈɪn/ (verb) — To enter.
- come from (verb) — To have as one's origin, birthplace or nationality.
- come out /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ (verb) — To be discovered; to be revealed.
- come up with (verb) — To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it.
- find out (verb) — To discover, as by asking or investigating.
- come out in (verb) — to be afflicted by (a visible disruption of the body)
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 219 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, they're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: empathy /ˈɛmpəθi/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, sympathy /ˈsɪm.pəθ.i/, mythology /mɪˈθɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, thick /θɪk/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: disclosure /dɪsˈkləʊʒə(ɹ)/, shock /ʃɔk/, civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, evolutionary /ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/, notion /ˈnoʊʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: documentary /ˌdɒk.jʊˈmɛn.tɹi/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, evolutionary /ˌiː.vəˈluː.ʃən.ɛɹ.i/, presumably /pɹɪˈzuːməbli/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like empathy, disclosure, steven.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | has been photographing · what's been going · I've been trying |
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to be · used to hide |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have just been · it's been · I've had |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is known · are sold · has been reported |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.