For What It's Worth

Dark Skies: The Emmy Winning Main Title Sequence

In anticipation of the January 18, 2011 U.S. release of Dark Skies on DVD, we've put together this YouTube of the main title sequence. This work won the Emmy award for designer Mike Jones in 1997 in the "Outstanding Main Title Design" category. The music was composed by Michael Hoenig, as well as the short samples we use in between the main titles and at the end on this video. Michael was nominated for an Emmy for his work on the series, too. His music could be scary and suspenseful when it needed to, but it was tragic and elegiac when it needed to be, and so beautiful. It helped the entire series rise to a new level.

It's interesting to listen to Michael's music and watch the three versions in a row: the first is the one we ended up with and includes the classic "History is a lie" line, followed by "John, someone's coming!" and gunfire. The second one is just the instrumental, what was constructed by the title designers, the way we thought we'd might do it until we added the voice-over. The third one is the first version of the voice-over, different delivery and not nearly as strong, I think, as the one we ended up with. 

Get Me To The Greek (2010) -vs- Almost Famous (2000)

For more film-on-film violence, join us at Movie Smackdown!

The Smackdown. Okay. So. Here's the thing. I'm a middle-aged woman. I'm not cool. I'm not hip. I probably never was. I don't drink or use drugs myself, and neither do my two daughters. Our straight-edge sobriety is not a decision based on religious convictions, I assure you, but I'll reserve my reasons for a more private forum than this one. My life has not been untouched by the ravages of drugs and alcohol. I have seen many lives destroyed, waylaid, and laid waste. While I've not had to wage any personal battles with personal demons, I've watched close-up as others struggle mightily to overcome theirs; many have lost the war. People I love have died, and I've witnessed the long-lasting repercussions of that profound loss on their families and friends firsthand. My record collection includes many examples of the blissfully enhanced and otherwise enlightened by-product of countless musicians' flagrant experimentation, immersion, and even tragic self-destruction. I'm grateful to have been spared myself and always saddened when another bright light bites the proverbial and inevitable dust. Here's the bottom line. While drugs, drink, and rock make up the very same Venn diagram, I'll just take the rock, thank you very much.

 

The Challenger. Producer and purveyor of the popular Zeitgeist Judd Apatow adds another crowd-pleasing link to his unbroken chain of box office behemoths with this unsubtle sequel to "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." Forgetting "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" was easy for me, but forgetting "Get Him To The Greek" will prove a lot harder to do. A record company junior exec (Jonah Hill) accompanies rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) to a comeback concert at Los Angeles' Greek Theater. There's a great movie somewhere in this rambunctious, raucous, high-spirited, heartfelt mess, and I'd love to recommend it, but it's buried in a terrifically disturbing pile of thoughtless, casual, careless, sloppy, dopey, drugged-out, barefaced evil.

A Tour of the Universe with A.D. AFTER DISCLOSURE

Our first promotional video has just debuted on Youtube and we want to invite you to give it a watch. The music is the trance-like instrumental background track of "Need-to-Know: The UFO Disclosure Song" as written and performed by Damian Valentine. The pictures come from the Hubble telescope.

We hope it will get you in the mood to read A.D. After Disclosure: The People's Guide to Life After Contact. We do know it has put both Rich and Bryce in the mood to write it!

Here are a couple of other links you may want to check out:

Bryce's YouTube Channel.

Rich's YouTube Channel.

The Song's MP3 on iTunes.

A.D. AFTER DISCLOSURE Announced at the National Press Club

My co-author, Richard Dolan, spoke on Monday, May 10 -- just two blocks away from the White House -- as part of the X-Conference held in Washington, D.C. He announced our book A.D. After Disclosure and even gave a plug to the song Need-to-Know: The UFO Disclosure Song. This video got an editing "upgrade" and has some fun stuff and easter eggs in it, so please check it out.

Feel free to embed this in your own blogs. By the way, both A.D. AFTER DISCLOSURE and NEED-TO-KNOW: THE UFO DISCLOSURE SONG both have their own Facebook pages. Join up if you're on Facebook, we'd love to have you!

"Need-to-Know" is on You Tube

There is a revised version of the video that just went up on You Tube and looks like it's getting a lot of traffic. But you don't even have to go yourself because For What It's Worth is a full-service blog, and we offer it to you below...

A Rock 'N' Roll Dream Come True

Bruce Sallan gave up a show biz career to parent his two boys and now writes about his experiences on "A Dad's Point-of-View" and is the house dad at "Mom Logic."

Last night, May 3, 2010, my son's dreams came true! He went to see his idol Chris Cornell at a benefit acoustic concert at The Roxy, on Sunset Blve, in Hollywood, California. With his girlfriend Logan, they pushed their way to the front of the crowd. Cornell was playing acoustic guitar with only a cello as back-up.

At a pause between songs, Arnie shouts out, "Hey, Chris, I have a question for you" and gets his attention, to which Chris asks, "Yes, what is it?" Arnie then shouts, "It's been my lifelong dream to jam on one song with you." Cornell says, "Well, what do you play and do you have a song in mind?" Arnie replies, "I've been playing guitar for 6 years and I want to play Fell On Black Days" at which point the crowd is shouting to Chris, "Let him, Let him!" 

Chris smiles, laughs, and says, "Why not? You could probably do it just as good as me." Arnie starts toward the stage, but Chris says "Wait until we get to the song." Arnie is convinced it's not going to happen. When it came time for Arnie's song, however, Cornell did ask Arnie to come on stage. By now, the crowd is getting into it and Logan is screaming her head off and trying to take pictures. 

NEED-TO-KNOW: The UFO Disclosure Song

Bottom line: At least some UFOs are real physical craft from some place that isn't here. A cross-section of people in and out of government know a lot more about what's really going on than they're letting on. That's just the truth of the matter.

Although my knowledge on the subject has definitely increased over the years, my passion to tell this story has been strong for decades. I've written a movie about this important issue ("Official Denial," Sci-Fi, now Sy-Fy) and created a series about it ("Dark Skies," NBC). Now -- and I realize this is slightly, as they say in Hollywood, "out of my wheelhouse" -- I've co-produced a song about it with my friends Cherish Alexander, Damian Valentine and my wife, Jackie Zabel.

It's called "Need-to-Know: The UFO Disclosure Song" and I'd like you to have a listen. It's a professionally produced song that makes the case for finally ending all the UFO secrecy we've been living with.

You can find it right now on iTunes, Amazon and eMusic. But first, the reason behind the song...

The issue that got hushed up by one generation and turned into an object of derision by another now demands to be heard straight up in ours.

The battle for UFO disclosure has been a political movement without a rallying standard for too long. To bring people together and create change, we need an anthem that gives voice to our feelings through the powerful medium of music. We need our "Blowin' in the Wind" and "We Shall Overcome."

Maybe it exists, but I hadn't ever heard such a song before in the way I needed to, so I rolled up my sleeves with some talented musician friends and we've done our best to provide one. It speaks to us, maybe it will speak to you.

There's a full site set-up where you can listen to a short clip, and there are links to, as I say, iTunes, Amazon and eMusic where you can get the full 4 minutes and 36 seconds of the song in its 256 kbps glory.

Those of us who worked on it for these past few months want you to hear it, then hopefully turn your friends on to it. If enough of us start talking to others about what it means, we may just change the world.

Like the song says, we're ready to be told and, yes, we do need-to-know. 

"Need-to-Know" features another knock-out performance by the extremely talented Los Angeles singer-songwriter Cherish Alexander. She and I first met and collaborated on the television series I developed and executive produced, "The Crow: Stairway to Heaven." Cherish and her band performed several important songs for that drama series. Her work was haunting and soulful, and it also rocked with power and passion. 

It made me think. Who better to bring the UFO disclosure anthem to life? When you hear her vocals on this one, you will see why she was my first and only choice.

Jackie and I co-wrote the lyrics to “Need-to-Know” and Cherish and music producer Damian Valentine gave them life in song. Damian really brought some intense mood to this party, giving us a hypnotic, trance-like power-drive.

For a parting shot, here's the "Wordle" for all the song lyrics (which you can read at the site):

 

We hope you like the work and spread the word. Check it out by going straight to iTunes, Amazon and eMusic, or stop by the site first: "Need-to-Know: The UFO Disclosure Song."

The World Sings, "All You Need Is Love"

Just fire this up and watch it. You won't be sorry.

Imagine This: John Lennon at 70

John Lennon would have been 70 years old this October 9 had he not been gunned down 30 years ago on December 8, 1980. No doubt last year he'd have been smiling, if he'd lived, to know that The Beatles Rock Band was kicking ass in homes across the country, and that those re-mastered Beatles CDs were, once again, burning up the charts. But that emotion has cooled, and it's thirty years, and there's not much comfort in that loss hitting such a definitive mark.

As a collector of news magazines, I note that both Time and Newsweek gave over their covers to Lennon's passing the week it happened. I've chosen Newsweek to focus on because it has that haunting portrait by Richard Avedon. Also, I had previewed the first Newsweek cover to feature the Beatles back in 1964 in an earlier post, and it's interesting to compare how the coverage changed in those intervening years.

Newsweek devoted twelve entire pages to the death of John Lennon in a special "pull-out" coverage. It contained a handful of separate articles entitled: "Death of a Beatle" which was the news coverage, "Lennon's Alter-Ego" about assassin Mark David Chapman, "Strawberry Fields Forever" about the influence of the Beatles, and "An Ex-Beatle 'Starting Over'" about Lennon's new emergence on the public scene after nearly five years of absence.

"Come together, he had once asked them in a song, and now they came, tens of thousands of them, to share their grief and shock at the news. John Lennon, once the cheeky wit and sardonic soul of the Beatles, whose music had touched a generation and enchanted the world, had been slain on his doorstep by a confused, suicidal young man who had apparently idolized him. Along New York's Central Park West and West 72nd Street, in front of the building where Lennon had lived and died, they stood for hours in tearful vigil, looking to each other and his music for comfort."

READY TO BELIEVE: Free MP3 of Obama Fight Song!

Last January, while we were still on strike as members of the Writers Guild of America, my wife Jackie and I sat down in a Los Angeles coffee shop with our good friend, musician Cherish Alexander.

Before the coffee was cold, we decided, improbably given the time frame -- as a couple of striking screenwriters and a singer-composer -- to write, produce and distribute the song you'll soon hear.  It happened over a five day period and we released it immediately before the California primary.

So far, "Ready to Believe" has cumulatively had its video versions viewed close to 100,000 times on YouTube.  Plus, it's available on iTunes.  You, however, don't have to buy it in the closing days of the 2008 campaign.  We want you to download it for free and to send it to your friends.

It was written to stand-up for Barack to the Clinton campaign's charges claiming he wasn't ready for the presidency.  We find that the need for this song is as solidly right-on today as it was last February (only Clinton is on the team now and the argument's being made by John McCain).  It needed rebuttal then, and it needs rebuttal now. 

Please give it a listen.  Click the link below to just hear it.  Otherwise,right-click to actually... we'll say it again... download "Ready to Believe" for free.  Again, you have our express permission to download it and to give it away. 

Download_Ready_to_Believe_Song.mp3

Some have asked for a PDF of the actual lyrics.  Here you are:

Download_Ready_to_Believe_Lyrics.pdf

Here's the You Tube version:

Please also visit the web-page of singer-composer Cherish Alexander (http://www.cherishalexander.com/ready_to_believe/) where all the goodies are also available.  She and fellow producer Damian Valentine did an awesome job with this project as you can hear for yourself.

We know the hour is late but if you support Barack Obama, we'd urge you to join us and expose as many people as you can to this song.  Especially Obama volunteers.  We've received a good deal of email from campaign workers who thought it was like an anthemic "fight song" for the cause.  That's certainly what we intended it to be.

Remember to vote.  Even if the polls say he's ahead, you have to vote.  Take nothing for granted. 

Still fired up and ready-to-go for Obama!

Cherish Alexander, Jackie Zabel, Bryce Zabel