Dark Skies is, finally, for real, and without qualification, coming out on DVD. It will be released by the Los Angeles based Shout! Factory on DVD on January 18, 2011. This coincides with the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. Fans will remember that JFK's assassination in the pilot episode is tied in to his interest in disclosing UFO reality in his second term.
Shout! Factory is a successful home video company that was originally started by an exodus of employees from Rhino Records. It has evolved into a premium supplier of content, including a full-line of classic TV series, like the recently released Max Headroom. Dark Skies is just the kind of product they love to bring to market -- an overlooked gem with passionate fans.
Dark Skies -- the 1996-1997 NBC UFO series -- is composed of twenty hours (18 one-hour episodes, and a two-hour pilot) that tells an epic story of suspense and danger, set against the colorful backdrop of the 1960s. The UFO cover-up unfolds from the point of view of John Loengard, a naive congressional staffer who comes to Washington D.C. to be a part of JFK's "New Frontier" but ends up reluctantly working for the secret organization Majestic-12 as an undercover operative from 1961-1967. Because of its period and the incredible set design and wardrobe, some fans consider it a forerunner of Mad Men, but with aliens!
On DVD, we believe that audiences will finally get to see the series the way its creators intended, free of the scheduling challenges it faced on its network run. Back in the pre-DVR mid-90s, Dark Skies was on Saturday nights, suffered numerous pre-emptions and spotty promotion that started great, then dropped off a cliff.
From the moment the series begins, however, you'll know you're in for a special ride. The main titles, for example, won the Emmy award the year the series debuted, and the pilot that was written by Brent Friedman and myself was nominated for a Writers Guild of America award in the "Outstanding Original Longform" category.
The Shout! Factory release will have all the episodes, mastered to be the highest possible quality. While the extras are being developed, they will be substantial, and I'll be involved in helping to make sure they meet the same high standards that all of us involved in the television series brought to that endeavor.
A special note to all the fans who have seen people try to rip them off over the years with bogus versions of bad quality. The two companies listed above are the only places to get the approved, high quality, with extras, version of this series. Do not buy it anywhere else or from anybody else. Shout! Factory and Medium Rare are the two companies to look to, depending on where you live, period.
First off, thanks for dropping by. As it turns out, I'll be on Coast-to-Coast AM with George Noory on Monday night, August 9 with UFO researchers Stan Friedman and Don Schmitt. They've got us slated to talk about "Hollywood and UFOs" in general, and specifically about a new film project, Majic Men.
Coast-to-Coast AM has monumental importance to the Disclosure movement, so this should be something to look forward to.
Along with my fellow producer Don Most, we have optioned both the life rights to Stanton Friedman and Donald Schmitt but also the book rights to Friedman's Top Secret/Majicand Schmitt's (along with Thomas Carey) Witness to Roswell.
From this we are now beginning to develop and find the right creative partnership to make Majic Men which will be the story behind the story of breaking the Roswell mystery into the open secret it is today. We hope to do for this story what All the President's Men did for Watergate and to use some of the same visual energy as was found in JFK. But with just enough humor to justify saying it's about two down-to-Earth guys who are breaking a story that is out-of-this-world. Lots more coming on this Monday...
There are some other highlights to look forward to in that show, however...
First,there will be a major announcement about Dark Skies, the NBC series I co-created with Brent V. Friedman in the 1990s. It told the story of the UFO mystery through the eyes of a young man recruited into Majestic-12 in 1961. The first season told his story (and the UFO cover-up's) until its final episode which took place in 1967 during the "Summer of Love" in San Francisco. I've been waiting years to say the words I'll get to say Monday night out loud and the fans who have written me so regularly about the series should be happy to hear them. Details, coming up on Coast-to-Coast -- a place that is close to my heart -- because during the production of the series I appeared twice on Art's show as his guest, and returned the favor by casting Art as member of the Majestic-12 control group.
Second, and this is very real and very immediate, the book that I am co-authoring with UFO historian Richard M. Dolan, A.D. After Disclosure: The People's Guide to Life After Contact, is nearly finished, and goes to the printer later this month and will be published by Keyhole Publishing on September 23. We believe that it is the first non-fiction book to be devoted entirely to discussing the impact that Disclosure will have on the world and how it will change everything: politics, military, economy, culture, industry, science, religion, media and particularly government. We have some breaking news about a bold new way that book will be presented to the public, too, and hopefully I'll be able to share that as well Monday night.
Richard Dolan and I met professionally when my company -- Stellar Productions -- optioned Richard's outstanding first two volumes of his UFO trilogy as the basis of a television series (UFOs and the National Security State). While that is still the plan, we realized we shared a mutual vision about the post-Disclosure world and we've thrown all our efforts into this coming book first.
If you join our Facebook page, however, that's where you'll find over 1300 like-minded people discussing this topic, links to this site and other places of interest, and discussion groups. You can click on the image in the right-hand sidebar and it'll take you right there.
Finally 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 have a second trailer, as well, this one uses the full "Need-to-Know" song complete with lyrics and some very interesting classic UFO photos.
Thanks for coming by. Here are a couple of other links you may want to check out:
The world is probably evenly divided now between those who were alive 41 years ago on July 20, 1969 when the Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility and those who weren't. I was. It was unforgettable, but not necessarily for the reasons you might think. As with 9/11, JFK's assassination, and the deaths of John Lennon and Michael Jackson, people's memories of these super-events are colored by where we were when they happened, what was going on in our own lives, and how we felt about the actual events. Where were you? For me, July 20 remains an important day -- not solely for the awe and accomplishment of the technological and spiritual acheivement of the moon landing -- but equally for the extreme personal impact it had on my young life.
Let's roll the time machine back four decades. It was 41-years-ago that Neil Armstrong made that little jump off the ladder from the lunar lander: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." The ghostly TV transmission had people glued to their sets around the world, blowing past barriers of nationalism and politics. And, up in the Pacific Northwest, it was also exactly 41-years-ago that I was fired from my first job. I have since been fired again, laid off, cancelled, and otherwise unemployed in a variety of ways, shapes and sizes and, as someone with great depth of experience in this area, I can tell you that Cat Stevens was correct when he wrote that oft-recorded song, "The First Cut Is the Deepest."
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.
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):
Yes, it's President's Day and I'm sure you're all taking advantage of the holiday to consider the great impact our presidents have had on the United States. Over at Movie Smackdown, we are very comfortable letting historians debate such details as to whether Woodrow Wilson was more naive than Jimmy Carter, or Teddy Roosevelt more charismatic than John Kennedy, or even whether Richard Nixon was more venal than George W. Bush. You see, we have our eye over here not on the real deal but the reel deal. Namely, which Presidents that exist only on the big screen have been our favorites? It's a pretty fine list with action heroes mingling with single hunks and even imposters. It also has some screen dopplegangers -- like which President did Bill Pullman remind you of when he was in that fighter jet? And when Morgan Freeman calmly tells us to keep our act together in the face of disaster he does seem a little like that current guy. Anyway, the polls are open!
LOG-LINE: After John Kennedy survives the attack at Dealey Plaza unharmed, the resulting investigation sets events in motion that tear apart his administration.
A few years ago, alternative history novelist Harry Turtledove and I worked on a proposal and the first three chapters of a novel that describes what we think might have happened after a Dallas where JFK lives.That site, with those chapters, is still up and published for your review here.
Historians love to speculate on this “what-if” scenario, wondering if magically the nation would have been spared the pain of Vietnam and even Watergate. They have missed the point.
If he’d gotten out of Dealey Plaza alive, John Kennedy might easily have suffered the same fate as his arch-nemesis Richard Nixon -- humiliation and removal from office.
With the eyes of the world on the United States and the media in a frenzy, with JFK himself alive and not a martyr, an immediate investigation would have been launched into who might have been interested in killing our popular American President. And the Kennedy brothers would have been hell-bent to ensure their political as well as their physical survival.
Starting with the Secret Service, the
blame-game would have taken on a life of its own, forcing explosive
revelations in mere months that have instead dribbled out over decades.
Kennedy’s reckless conduct would have become public: the lies about his
medical condition, contacts with mobsters, election money-laundering,
numerous attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, and even the hundreds
of high-risk sexual encounters that endangered Kennedy’s safety and, by
extension, our country’s security.
This alternative history novel covers
the period from the November 22, 1963 near-miss assassination attempt
of President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas through the events of early 1966
when the fate of John F. Kennedy was in the hands of 100 United States
Senators worried about their own careers in the next election.
I'll always remember October 7, 2001 but not the way you might think. It was a Sunday morning and we were about to do the Emmy Awards that day. As the newly elected chairman/CEO of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, I'd already been involved -- as my first challenge in office -- with the first cancelation ever of an Emmy broadcast. When the September 11 attacks happened, it had been a no-brainer to immediately postpone the planned September 16 show. I was putting on my running shoes, about to go for a quick spin to settle the nerves in anticipation of speaking to a worldwide audience of 90-million people that day, when the phone rang. The voice on the other end said, "Turn on your TV."
Bryce Zabel, ATAS CEO; Les Moonves, CBS President; Don Mischer, Emmy Producer (Photo by Mathew Imaging, Craig Mathew)
I turned on the TV in my home office and it was immediately apparent that America was at war in Afghanistan and that the Emmys probably weren't going to happen that day either. That photo above is the news conference that would be held hours later to postpone the Emmy Awards a second time! Even though I've been a CNN correspondent, this was the largest group of cameras I'd ever seen in a single location. The rule of thumb, of course, is that if you come to cover a story and the story's not happening, cover the reasons the story isn't happening and that story becomes your new story.
That morning we went through the motions or, as they like to call it, we did our "due diligence" and called nominees, agents, managers, network executives, everybody we could think of. It became clear that not only was the nation's attention focused on the beginning of war, post 9/11, but the very people we would expect to come to the Emmys were having grave doubts. They did not want to be seen as thinking that getting an award was as important as an issue of life-or-death.
So we gave over three-thousand gourmet dinners to homeless shelters, told the limo drivers not to come, asked the stars to put their tuxes and gowns back in the closets and told the media we'd think about what our future plans were.
The next day I appeared as a guest on "Politically Incorrect" and got in an argument with Bill Mahrer who said we should have just done them anyway. My feeling was (and is) that you don't want to be the host of a party that nobody wants to come to and that having the Emmys that day would have done serious damage to the Academy.
As it turned out, the third time was the charm. We did the Emmys on November 4, 2001 with Ellen DeGeneres hosting and going up against the seventh game of an exciting World Series. The whole show probably gets an asterisk in the history books.
Eight years later, I've been out of the Academy for years, moving on with my life, and a thousand nominees have come and gone. The war in Afghanistan is still with us.
Let's be glad that President Obama and his team are practicing their "due diligence" even as we speak.
Back on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin kicked up their own moon dust when they became the first human beings ever to walk (or bounce) on the Earth's Moon and the world's most trusted man summed it up, "Oh, boy." The world is probably evenly divided now between those who were alive when the Eagle landed in the Sea of Tranquility and those who weren't. I was. It was unforgettable, but not necessarily for the reasons you might think. As with 9/11, JFK's assassination, and the deaths of John Lennon and now Jackson, our memories of these super-events are colored by where we were when they happened, what was going on in our own lives, and how we felt about the actual events.
Where were you?
For me, July 20 remains an important day -- not solely for the awe and accomplishment of the technological and spiritual acheivement of the moon landing -- but equally for the extreme personal impact it had on my young life.
Let's roll the time machine back four decades. It was 40-years-ago that Neil Armstrong made that little jump off the ladder from the lunar lander:"That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." The ghostly TV transmission had people glued to their sets around the world, blowing past barriers of nationalism and politics. And, up in the Pacific Northwest, it was also exactly 40-years-ago that I was fired from my first job. I have since been fired again, laid off, cancelled, and otherwise unemployed in a variety of ways, shapes and sizes and, as someone with great depth of experience in this area, I can tell you that Cat Stevens was correct when he wrote that oft-recorded song, "The First Cut Is the Deepest."
If you remember The Wonder Years(that great TV series set in the 1960s starring Fred Savage), it'll help you appreciate the tone of what will follow. If you're too young to recall the 60s (when the series was set) or the 80s (when the series was filmed), then you'll have to settle for this shorthand. The series told the story of Kevin, a kid growing up during the time of Vietnam, hippies, civil rights and moon walks, all told with a gentle sense of humor. So, in this story, I'm Kevin. And Kevin's dad (Dan Lauria) had a gruff son-of-a-bitch exterior, always was pissed off, and never connected with his kids. Like my dad, Harvey, who was a high school teacher in Hillsboro, Oregon at the time. It had something to do with his being a part of the "Greatest Generation," having lived through the Great Depression and World War II. Like a lot of guys who had that experience, he was changed by it. It seems so much more understandable to me now than it did when I was a kid.
Anyway, back then, I was the youngest fry-cook in all of Washington County, having scammed my way into a job at the Arctic Circle Drive-In before I was strictly employment legal, I think, based on the fact that my older brother Alan had paved the way. It was a sweet deal -- I was making a full $1.35 an hour, up from my starting wage of $1.10 a year before. Do the math, that added up to a whole $10.80 a day and, if overtime was involved, man, that was serious bread. Of course, those burgers only cost nineteen cents, a quarter for a cheeseburger.
The boss was a tough immigrant -- a Basque from Spain -- named Mariano Bilbao and he was living (or working) the American dream. Work, work, work and, if you did that, life would be easier for your kids. His kid was just a baby, and Mariano was in full pay-the-dues mode to get ahead in time for his kid to have the good life he dreamed of.
When the schedule for the week of July 20 got posted, I got a sinking feeling because I had the night shift and, if all went according to plan, Neil Armstrong was going to be moon-walking while I was slinging burgers. At the time, I was very into the whole moon landing, even more (if possible) than the rest of the country. I'd actually tried to mimick a Gemini capsule with a refrigerator box a few years earlier in our basement until my mom made me come up and eat dinner. Plus, Harvey, being an American history teacher, made sure we all knew that history didn't come in any bigger size than this.
So I asked Mariano if I could trade shifts with someone. No. Maybe we could have a TV in the kitchen so we could watch with every other person within ten miles of a TV? No. A radio then, just to listen to hear in real time how it went? No.
Resigned to missing it all, I accepted my fate, strapped on my apron, and went to work. Being the boss, even Mariano was at home, of course, watching the moon-walk with his wife. Back at the grill, I was going insane because there was almost no business because everyone else in town was home watching TV. About thirty minutes before Armstrong was scheduled to set foot on the lunar surface, I snapped. I called my dad and told him I wanted to come home to see the moon walk. Would he come pick me up?
There was a long pause. I waited on the other end of the phone, knowing that The Lecture was coming. About responsibility, about sticking with your decisions, about not screwing up. Instead, he said, "You know you'll be fired?"
I said I knew. I waited again. Surely The Lecture was coming now. Another beat. "I'll be right down."
So my Dad drove down to the Arctic Circle Drive-In on Baseline Street in a moment of high drama in my young life. We went back home, gathered with the rest of the family around the TV set, held our breath with everyone else and watched Armstrong's ghostly image from the moon. It was the most exciting TV I had ever seen. Better than the Beatles on Ed Sullivan kind of TV, if you want to know the truth. Part of the attraction was the danger. These guys might die on live TV. Or they might sink into moon dust and never be heard from again. You never knew.
When it was over, dad said we had to go back to the restaurant and I had to face the music. I had done the crime, now I had to do the time. As I returned, it was clear that my co-workers had given me up to Mariano, who was there waiting for me and, man, was he pissed. He was a short guy with a fiery temper and his face was as red as I'd ever seen it.
Mariano fired me that night, as predicted. My dad told him he was missing a great worker and he was a small-minded man to not understand the importance of what was happening, and how this event had changed the world for everyone. Even teenage fry-cooks.
All I know is that my dad had never stood up for me quite like that before and never quite like that after. I remember July 20, 1969 as clearly today for turning in my greasy apron as I do for Armstrong and Aldrin doing the moonwalk. And I remember July 20 because it was also the day that my dad passed away back in 2001.
So -- that giant leap for mankind -- for me, it isn't about where I was when it happened -- but all about where I wasn't.
For those of you who experienced your own "Moonwalk Memory," please do leave your own personal stories in our comment section. Thanks!
How sad that the "way it is" tonight is that Walter Cronkite is no longer with us. Even sadder that he didn't make it three more days so he could have appreciated just how much we appreciated him all over again as we talked about the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing and how he was our worldwide tour guide.
In 2003, when I was Chairman/CEO of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences I had the rare honor of being able to introduce Walter Cronkite on the "live" primetime telecast. Everyone knew who he was -- that wasn't my job -- we brought him out by remembering his great work as a war correspondent and tying it in with the death of David Bloom. It went like this:
...I’m talking about the most personal news coverage ever seen during the Iraq war.
For the first time, on a mass scale, reporters – many of them TV reporters – were embedded with combat units, travelling with the soldiers, facing the same dangers, and reporting back home, often in real time, over satellites. We lost some of our own, too, including NBC’s David Bloom.
It was the immediacy of the TV pictures that made news by covering news. But there have been other brave reporters over the years, sending their coverage from the front lines to the home front, but none of them have been as distinguished through their careers in television as our next guest.
Ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome one of America’s original embedded reporters going back to World War II – Mister Walter Cronkite!
I'm still blown away that I got to make that introduction to so famous a man as Walter Cronkite. He was 86 years old that year, frail, and his voice faltered a bit from what it had been in its prime, but he walked out there strong, made his speech and every single person in the audience paid rapt attention. It was Walter Cronkite and he had earned that level of respect from everybody there.
So we're sorry to see Walter go... He had a great life. He made ours better. He was so infinitely cool, even to the end.
Recent Comments