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Chapter 1: What is the main theme of Disclosure Day?
People have a right to know the truth. It belongs to seven billion people. What is it? You wouldn't believe me if I told you. So I'm gonna show you.
What are you gonna do?
Full disclosure, to the whole world. All at once.
This is StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And today, we've got some special brewing. Oh, yeah. We're going to talk about Disclosure Day. Not just in the abstract, but I've got with me here the one, the only, Steven Spielberg. It's his story, and he directed it.
Chapter 2: How did Steven Spielberg's early experiences shape his interest in aliens?
But we also have the writer, David Koepp, who not only wrote Disclosure Day, but wrote many other science fiction films, not only in collaboration with Steven, but also of his own. So we know this episode is going to serve your geek underbelly. And that's coming right up on StarTalk. Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
on to the podcast. We did a little bit of homework, and I did not know that your first student film was called Firelight, about aliens.
Yeah, it was called Firelight. I made it an eight millimeter, on eight millimeter film. I was 17 years old. I was in high school. So you, aliens have just been a thing. Well, it was more about UFOs. And it wasn't peace-loving aliens.
Chapter 3: What role does empathy play in storytelling for alien encounters?
The first one I did was much more of the formulaic, you know, monogram movie exploitation. But it was in an area of interest ever since I was a kid.
And, I mean, why wouldn't it be? Because everybody's interested in aliens at some point. But you have the power to bring it to life on levels that no one could have imagined before.
It's not really so much my interest in aliens. It's been my interest in the unknown. And the feeling I've had for a very long time, having been a consumer of everything involving the unknown. Not the unknown a million light years from here, but the unknown right here. And it's always been something that's really interested me. And I've always wondered if the unknown is known
by a very small group of people, the injustice of not everyone knowing what they know is kind of what drives me, especially to tell this story of Disclosure Day.
It never occurred to me to think of people left out as being the consequence of an injustice.
And inequity maybe is a better word for it.
No, but still, I'm applauding the term because when it's an injustice, you want to correct that as a viewer.
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Chapter 4: How does the film address the public's right to know about extraterrestrial life?
You want to right the wrong, and you clearly established that in Disclosure Day. I mean, that was the greatest feeling any of us had as we watched this. A question that I've always had as a director is, What is the value of the eyes of whatever it is you're looking into?
Not only in Disclosure Day, was there a lot of eye contact from animal to non-human animals to human animals, 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.
That is the word of the day.
That is the key word of the day. But aliens tend to, as we now think of them, they all have big eyes, and eyes seem to matter. Can you just speak a little bit as a director? And let me throw in the mix the eye contact with a velociraptor, right? 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 that you're making eye contact with something that's going to eat you. So not only as a source of fear, but as a potential source of empathy.
How does that feel to you? Well, with human beings, eyes are the mirrors of the soul.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of the New York Times article on UFOs for Disclosure Day?
And to animals, I guess, eyes are the mirrors of the appetite. But they both serve a similar purpose. They both give a kind of satiation. And I think everything is in the eyes. It's in the eyes. It's from anything, any movie experience anybody's ever had. It's all about the eyes. E.T. 's eyes in my film was critically important. The design of those eyes were critically important.
It's a little bit harder with what people report when they report non-human entities, there's no iris or pupil. I never thought about that. They're never drawn with anything inside the eye. No, but there are other things happening when people have close encounters of the third kind, which is how that sort of defines itself, that there is something that is also a psychic process.
Chapter 6: How does the film's portrayal of aliens differ from traditional depictions?
part of looking into an eye of a non-human, as has been reported, and still feeling something without needing the pupil or the iris.
So in Disclosure Day, because they actually had an alien, I always felt like what's the need to even disclose any video if you've got the alien? What do you need the video for?
You need the context. Oh. You've got to have 80 years of context. Okay. You've got to be able to, he steals 80 years of the truth that has been hidden from the public and even from the government because, you know, it's very hard for elected officials to keep secrets. But in a way, contracted, you know, deep state contract companies, contracted companies, they're pretty good at keeping secrets.
There's not a lot of leaks from the big tech companies or even— Unless there's a mutiny, as in Disclosure Day. And there have been whistleblowers that went to the House Intelligence Committee and gave their testimony. you know, Grush, Fravor, and Ryan. Sworn under oath, yeah. Sworn under oath.
Chapter 7: What ethical questions arise from the concept of alien disclosure?
In 2023, yeah. In 2023, in front of Congress and the American public.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So that's quite the setup for this movie, but presumably the movie was percolating even before then, right? It takes time to make a movie. It does. Were those testimonies the trigger for this whole idea?
The trigger for the whole idea was the New York Times article.
Right, that article that came out in the New York Times in 2017.
Yes, yes. And that was the trigger for me, which was the first time we ever heard the term tic-tac being used instead of UFO. Because first it was UFO, and then it was tic-tac, and then we hear something called UAP. It's all confusing. You know, unidentified anomalous phenomenon.
Who are they fooling?
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Chapter 8: What future possibilities does Spielberg envision after Disclosure Day?
They're talking about UFOs. I like UFOs. Can we go back to UFOs? Who are they fooling?
Please. Please. Completely. Yeah. I remember speaking of a Tic Tac at the time, and a few weeks later at my office, a whole crate of Tic Tacs showed up.
Oh, my God.
Free advertising for them. I just had questions about the story. You know, all the places are mentioned. We've heard tension occur in all of the, you know, Korea and Russia and Ukraine. And so that's kind of this buildup behind the disclosure because that's the backdrop. That's the landscape on which this is unfolding.
Yeah. What was your goal there? Well, my goal was not to lay it on thick. My goal was to suggest that there was something approaching critical mass happening in the world that at least was bringing back the word DEFCON.
Yes, yes.
And that, you know, people tend to take these things in their stride. I remember during the Cuban Missile Crisis, I was in high school, and when it was hitting the television, my parents went to a dinner party, and I was home with my three sisters worrying about the world ending. My parents weren't worried about that during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
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 which has something to do with the timing Of Disclosure Day.
Yeah. And it's coincidence, surely, that the government is releasing files right around when you've got your movie coming out. That is complete coincidence. Unless you have access.
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