Tuesday, May 02, 2006

I watched "Did Aliens Build the Pyramids?"

Guess what? I'm not in it!

Plenty of true believers, including a woman who "channels" a sagely alien chick named Sasha, but not a second of the footage taken of me last August in New Mexico.





Instead, we're treated to scads of stock footage from cheesy 50s saucer flicks. More disconcerting, lots of close-ups of David Hatcher Childress trying to look thoughtful and the obligatory pop-in by Seth Shostak. "Did Aliens Build the Pyramids?" isn't a badly produced bit of fluff, but fluff it is.

And while I don't know why I wasn't included, I suspect it's because I refused to make any sweeping, declarative statements. Once again, rote dismissal and eager belief steal the show, leaving the viewer with no indication that the issue of planetary SETI is infinitely more nuanced than what the typical television viewer has been trained to expect.

That's entertainment.

4 comments:

Paul Kimball said...

Welcome to my world.

Paul

Mac said...

I'm mad; I gave them a good showing and tried to point out that this is a delicate field, not a matter of regurgitating adolescent "government cover-up" claims. They didn't want that. They wanted believers.

Paul, show mercy!

Paul Kimball said...

Mac:

While I liked the Peter Jennings UFO special, one of the things I was disappointed with is that they gave screen time to Art Bell (Art Bell??) but didn't use interviews with people like Dr. Peter Sturrock and Dick Hall.

Then again, I shot five days worth of footage about chupacrabras last year for the Fields of Fear film, and I haven't used any of it - not because it's bad stuff (it isn't), but because it just didn't fit the story as it shaped up once we got into the editing suite. That's what often happens, because that's where a documentary is really written.

The same thing probably happened to you.

Paul

Paul Kimball said...

Wait a second... you're not going to make any sweeping, declarative statements??

Oh well. I can fix that in post! :-)

Paul