On the evening of November 10th 1975 Travis Walton awoke near Heber, Arizona... And entered history of Ufology forever
The list
In the history of Ufology,
arguably the five most famous cases or incidents that occurred on the territory
of the United States could be chronologically listed like this:
1st – 1947 Kenneth Arnold’s
flying saucer report
2nd – 1947 Roswell UFO crash
3rd - 1961 Barney and Betty Hill abduction
4th – 1975 Travis Walton abduction
5th – 1997 Phoenix Lights
In
this blog entry we will concentrate on the fourth one. One of the most famous
cases of alleged alien abduction. And it is hard to say which one is more
famous, the 1961 Barney and Betty Hill abduction or this one.
As
far as these five most prominent UFO cases go, when looking at them
geographically it is interesting to note that the state of Arizona gave us two
of them, and when
you count in the Roswell incident total of three of them are originating from the American Southwest.
Skeptics
tend to point out that the Southwest is a geographical region chock full
of mountain ranges, dense forests, inhospitable deserts, mesas… In few words;
full of hidden and remote areas where secret military bases and installations
are built. The likes of Dugway, Area 51, White Sands, Dulce, etc.
The skeptics claim that both Roswell
and Phoenix Lights incidents can be simply explained by that fact.
And as we will discuss later, even the Walton Incident to a certain extent.
When it comes to Kenneth Arnold’s UFO report and the Hill abduction, skeptics
tend to believe these are just outright hoaxes and blatant lies, concocted by
small number of witnesses.
So
how did I become interested in the Walton Incident? What brought me to it?
2012 Xcom game
One of my favorite video games, one of the best I played in my life, is the original
1994 version of Xcom. Known as either “UFO: Enemy Unknown” in Europe or “Xcom:
UFO Defense” in US. Or just 1994 Xcom for short.
It
is considered, if not overall the best game of the 90s, then at least the best
strategy game of that decade. Reviewers are still placing it near the top
lists of best games, and indeed, it really is one
of the most regarded games in history of video gaming.
In
2012 Firaxis remade a new version suitable for the new high definition age. The
age when video gaming has gone mainstream, no longer confined to the rooms and
basements inhabited by geeks and nerds.
Leading
up to it’s release though, there was a perceived danger that the legendary
video game franchise will be revived by 2K Marin as a ghastly first person shooter set in
the 60s. Danger which was most eloquently presented by Spoony One’s infamous
“Betrayal!” rant at E3 2010 Expo.
Luckily
for the fans of the franchise, myself obviously being one of them, Firaxis
people stepped in to save the day and do a proper re-boot and a remake worthy
of it’s famed original. Fans let a sigh of relief, knowing that the way things
are these days, the whole endeavor could have ended up much, much worse.
The quote
2012
Xcom game opens with a powerful quote by one of the Big Three writers of Sci
Fi, British and Sri Lankan writer Arthur C. Clark:
“Two possibilities exist. Either we are
alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”
Basically
what Clark was saying to the legions of fascinated stargazers, romanticizing
human kind’s first contact with extra terrestrial life forms, is; we could be
screwed either way. Which is exactly how aliens in the 2012 Xcom video game
turn out to be. They have arrived. But not to be our friends.
After
I started playing the 2012 Xcom game, it took me some time to digest the game’s
logic and go through the learning curve, but once I got the basics of it… I was
hooked. The graphics, the game play, the story… Wow.
It
took 18 long years, but it was worth it.
UFO bug
While playing the 2012 Xcom game I caught a UFO bug. It rekindled my general interest in UFOs and possibility of extra terestrial life. For several months over late 2012 and early 2013 I was in that UFO haze.
During
which I started watching the entire series of “The X-Files” from the very
beginning, from those awesome early season episodes until the later part in the
series when things seem to revolve around agent Scully’s childbirth. Also, I
watched “UFO Hunters” where they seem to uncover a lot of dirt but not much
smoking gun evidence… To more scientifically driven shows such as History
Channel’s excellent series “The Universe”.
Then
various Sci Fi movies, such as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. In
addition, I scoured the internet for UFO related photos, articles, videos…
Fire in the Sky
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And
with a more critical eye for it, because I saw the movie once before, years
back, when the Internet was still in it’s infancy, meaning the very late 90s,
on a rental VHS tape. Remember those?
That
time I took it as pure entertainment which was well worth the rental fee if my
memory serves me well. This time… The experience is described in the review
underneath. In short; it is still very entertaining.
Going
back to the Walton Incident…
Blasting away across the Universe
Yes,
I believe in it. Since in that strictly legalistic sense humans have set the
precedent. Therefore the possibility of other life forms existing in the
Universe. It is the science behind the space travel that gives me pause.
To summarize; I have a much harder time believing in extra terrestrials visiting
us, as oppose to them existing elsewhere in space to begin with.
Because
space travel is not a picnic. From finding an appropriate power source, to
mounting it on a space craft, to blasting away across the galaxy at or close to
the speed of light and traversing hundreds if not thousands of light years.
Look,
we can spend hours and hours debating space travel, but the fact is the more
education one possesses, the more science gets in the way of space travel
possibility. I mean… It is possible, but is it probable?
Our beautiful nuclear reactor
My
response is; Hello! Hello! We live next to a giant nuclear reactor! Gazillion
of times more powerful every split second than both nuclear explosions on
Earth in 1945 combined!
Without
that magnetic field shielding us, the skimpily dressed sunbathers frolicking
around the World’s beautiful beaches would be fried in a mater of seconds. In
fact, even with that protective shield, prolonged exposure to the Sun can be
harmful, by burning the skin at best, to causing melanoma, or sun cancer spots,
at worst.
Even
with the protective shield, the Sun has a way of showing who is the big boss in
our solar system. That there is only one biggest star around that shares all
the spotlight and it isn’t Beyonce or Justin Beiber.
Eventually
though, our Sun will became a faded and aged star. Billions of years from now,
the Sun will run out of it’s nuclear fuel, it’s x factor. It will start cooling
off and expanding as it does so. It will turn into a dimly lit red giant
gobbling up planet Earth.
But
never to fear, because most likely our demise will come sooner than that.
Because as the Sun increases in size, it will still be a bright and hot source
of light from the Earth’s perspective. It will burn us all off in the process
and turn our planet into what is now either Mercury, a barren, overcooked rock,
or Venus, an overheated, toxic, uninhabitable version of the Earth.
Black budgets
Military
budgets that could conceivably produce all sorts of ridiculous military
experimental aircraft that are later misinterpreted as extra terrestrial flying
machines by the untrained eyes.
Yes, indeed
they are, in that strictest sense of the word, Unidentified Flying Objects,
however they are terrestrial based rather then being from outer space. And a lot of them drew inspiration from Nazi Germany's own designs thanks to German scientists who were evacuated to the US in "Operation Paperclip".
Story
A very brief retelling of the Walton Incident would go something like this…
Then 22
year old Travis Walton, working as a team member of a logging crew headed by
his future brother-in-law Michael Rogers, gets abducted by a UFO on Turkey
Springs road, near Mogollon Rim, Arizona around 6pm on November 5th,
1975.
Five
days later, on November 10th, after eventually being returned
beside a highway just outside of Heber in northeast Arizona, as the alien
space craft speeds off into the Arizona skies at incredible velocity, Walton,
still dazed and confused, stumbles onto the road… and into the Ufology history
books.
His
claims of what really happened during those five days, and the claims of his
team members sighting a UFO in Apache-Sitgreaves National forest, remain controversial
to this day. Travis Walton and Michael Rogers to this day maintain they saw an
alien space craft, and none of the other five fellow loggers present that day
had ever recanted their story since 1975.
Yet,
as Neil deGrasse Tyson commented on this particular case, “I need more than
just an eyewitness account.”
On
the other side of the debate about the Walton Incident is the skeptic community
and their theory; that this whole story is just a cleverly executed hoax. One
of the most prominent of them, Phillip J. Klass even at one point lost his
temper on air of CNN’s Larry King Live show when debating Walton and Rogers,
while the two were on a publicity tour for the movie version of the event,
going so far to outright accuse them of being, “two god damn liars.”
Klass
was the main nemesis of Walton, who came up with a theory that the Walton
Incident is nothing more than a hoax that got out of hand, which Walton and
Rogers perpetuated in order to avoid financial penalties for not completing the
logging contract with the US Forestry Service in time, and to enact the ‘Act
of God’ clause.
Difference
Or
hallucinations brought on by drug use. Or by being in the state of hypnogogia,
that state between sleep and wakefulness. Or just plain hoaxes. Or due to
claimants being just outright drunk off their a***s. Some of them are just
blocked out memories of childhood abuse, and not alien visitations at all. Etc,
etc…
However those
same UFO proponents are adamant in believing that small percentage of UFO
abduction cases are indeed genuine. With Walton case being a prime example of
one of them.
What makes this
incident special, and it even boasts of it on the book cover relating to it, is
that this is one of the best documented UFO abduction cases while the alleged
alien abduction was still in progress. As oppose to law enforcement and UFO
investigators getting involved after the alleged alien abduction already
occurred and the abductee was returned.
So, there was
an extensive search and rescue operation carried out by state and local law
enforcements from several nearby towns in northeastern Arizona that early November
of 1975 that lasted for five days.
There was a
greater number of eyewitnesses to the supposed UFO abduction event than it is
usually found in these types of cases. Six eyewitnesses that at one point were
seriously staring down a murder charge for killing their coworker. Except the sheriff's department and the police had a hard time locating the body before
they could press charges.
Several days
into the whole event, when the media got whiff of the extraordinary claims and
the story, a media circus, comprising of news outlets from around the World,
descended on the small town of Snowflake, Arizona. The town where most of the
alleged UFO witnesses, and possible murder suspects, resided.
All of these
elements make up the story of the “Fire in the Sky”, making it feature in the
history of Ufology in a way that no other case had since. At least not one
involving alleged alien abduction.
Four possibilities exist
So…
After reading the book, watching the movie, You Tube and other videos,
articles, websites… What are we to make of the Walton Incident? Well, to
paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke, four possibilities exist:
a) It
is a hoax with all seven loggers in on the act.
b) It
is a hoax with only Walton and Rogers in on the act, while the rest of them
were somehow bamboozled into believing they were really seeing a UFO
c) The
“alien” space craft was actually a terrestrial based, secret US military
experimental craft being tested around Mogollon Rim, only to bump into the
loggers by accident. Surprised by them, the crew shot off some sort of laser
weapon at Walton, rendering him unconscious. Later on, while on board, Walton
hallucinated he was saying aliens due to injuries sustained.
d) It
is a true event.
Of course, Walton is adamant it is d). However, in
his book he leaves, albeit very briefly, open a possibility of the entire event
being c). Yet, he then goes into more far fetched theories about a possibility
of that space craft arriving from another dimension, parallel universes, etc.
The skeptics
and debunkers believe it is either a) or more likely b) since the loggers
are all still sticking to their story after so many years. If it really is a)
or b) there are still hopes that eventually one of them will make a deathbed
confession admitting to a hoax.
Perhaps we will
never know the truth of what happened that cold, early November night in 1975.
Until one of the loggers finally confesses or until it is ever revealed by high
ranking government officials that alien presence is real…
Some people
will remain skeptics, some will remain believers… However even skeptics might
catch themselves gazing up to the stars and wandering… What if? What if it really
is all true?
Book Review: “Fire in the Sky” (1996) by Travis Walton
1978 original edition, part 1
Couldn’t
even find it on Scribd as a PDF, which is something I don’t like doing, preferring to read books in paper format. The same format the Gutenberg bible
was published in. Even in PDF, I would love to get my hands on the original
1978 version as I’m left wandering how much it differs from this 1996 version I
am reviewing today.
Obviously,
the cover page is different and much more cartoonish looking than it is marketed
today. Ok… I’ll refer to the original edition a bit later, after we figure out
what we have in the version I red.
1996 follow up edition
The 1996
edition is the one that Travis Walton now holds to be the true and full account
of his experience. A much more improved book than the original one, according
to him. Ok… To begin with, this book doesn’t feel like it was written by a
lumberjack, or a logger that Walton is by profession.
No. It feels
like it is written by a holder of several PhDs. And I don’t mean that as an
offense or disrespect, but in a different way. There is sense of incongruence,
knowing his background is manual, non intellectual work.
However, that
is nothing to say that this alleged abduction or whatever it may be, didn’t
have a profound effect on Walton that changed his character forever. Causing
him to immerse himself into books and research to find answers to more
philosophically perplexing questions in our life.
Walton claims
he always had this intellectual streak about him, and his reckless, tough guy
persona was just a facade he was hiding behind for most of his youth. Walton
insists he wrote the book himself. The previous 1978 edition and this one too.
At first I was
suspecting a ghostwriter has lent a hand, when on inside the covers there was a
note saying “Fire in the Sky” written by Mike Kozak. So I thought; oh, that’s
the ghostwriters name.
Nope. Turns out
Mike Kozak was a truck driver on the movie set while the movie version was
being made. He is brother of Harley Jane Kozak, an actress I never heard of. Mike Kozak
had a momentary bout of inspiration to write out lyrics to a song, also titled
“Fire in the Sky”. So he wasn’t a ghostwriter like I originally thought.
Having red the
book cover to cover, maybe professionals have tidied it up a bit, but I fully
believe Walton’s heart and soul are in it. Speaking of covers…
Artistic talent
That iconic
image of a human figure, I guess representing Walton, being struck by a beam of
light? That was painted by none other then Michael Rogers himself, including
the illustrations inside the book, where the aliens and UFO are depicted.
Apparently,
Rogers was inspired to paint with uncanny ability not previously demonstrated
in his life. Michael Rogers, the foreman of the logging crew all of a sudden
displaying painting talent?
And
the illustrations plus the cover painting are professional grade material. They
are not amateurish work by any means. This gave me a moment of pause. Because
reading through the book, I didn’t give much thought to illustrations, thinking
“Marlowe and Company” most likely commissioned a professional illustrator
before the book was to be printed.
But
turns out the guy who was himself entangled in the events of this incident is
illustrating the book?
If
Michael Rogers was to admit, “Ok, ok… I drove up to Phoenix one day and hired a
professional illustrator to ghost paint these illustrations for me, and all I
did is sign my name to it… Sue me for wanting to earn a buck or two…”
That
would be more understandable and palatable than outright claiming he painted
the pictures and illustrations himself. Same paintings and illustrations that
were being offered as collectors items for purchase in the book. So, why do I
keep yammering on about these illustrations?
For
one, it somewhat validates Phillip J. Klass’ methodology of looking for the
financial motives behind various claims of supernatural experiences and UFO
visitations. The old, “follow the money” principle.
But
ok. Let’s give him that. The US is a place of free enterprise. He can paint
whatever he wants and then sell it to whomever wants to buy it. A fair and
square transaction, with no bearing on the UFO event itself.
However,
it opens another interesting speculation. Here is a crew of seven wood cutters,
yet two of them posses fairly decent creative talents. One for writing, the
other for painting. Is it possible their creative talents would also extend to
the ability to make up incredible stories about UFO abductions?
Maybe
that UFO story was an outlet to vent their pent up creative talent as a way to
escape the everyday drudgery of repetitive, uncreative, mundane day to day
harsh physical labor of cutting wood from 7am till 5pm?
It
was really hard not to ask such questions when first realizing two creative
artists were trapped in harsh reality of cutting wood all day.
My reality
Myself
also work in a logical, exact science kind of work place that albeit being much
more enjoyable and fun place to work as well as much less physically strenuous
then Walton’s, doesn’t leave much space for creativity. However, here in 21st
century, I have the good luck to expel my creativity right here on my little
Blogger based blog, backed up by a corporate juggernaut like Google.
The biggest
draw card, according to the stats Google offers me, is still the story of Mike
Kanonsri, the con man in Bangkok who pretends he is a stranded traveler to
scam out small amounts of money from naive fellow Westerners, that aren't worth
pursuing with police, but are hurtful as hell to ones pride.
Minor incongruence
Back in 1975
there weren’t that many options if you found yourself to be an artist trapped
inside a job as a lumberjack, your mind ticking away at thousand miles an hour.
The book and
the illustrations both came out in 1978. So from November 1975 until Walton’s
writing begins in 1977, there is about a year and a half or so? It seems to me
too short of a time span for somebody who claims to have gone through such a
mind rending experience.
There was this
incongruence I felt half way into the book that I couldn’t quite shake off. If
it was so traumatic and life changing, where you seek to forget… Why publish a
book about it so soon? There was this difficult to grasp feeling that something
just isn’t right. Almost as if he was seeking publicity and trying to capitalize on it. Congruence. Look up that word.
Yet, to be fair
to Walton, maybe he used his book as a therapeutic tool to process what he had
experienced. We have to give him that. Also, Walton claims he felt compelled to
write it to offer his side of the story. He has a valid point. He was, and
still is, accused as a hoaxer and a fraud, and he feels a strong compulsion to
defend himself, which is understandable.
Anyway, enough
about the cover and the general feel of it…. What about what’s inside? The
content?
It is divided into four parts
Part 1 – “The
Incident”. The Preface and up to page
35, leading up to the actual incident, Walton writes about his background,
logging and life in Snowflake, a small Mormon town situated in Arizona’s
northeastern part of the state.
He describes
how when Arizona is mentioned, the first thought many people have are the images
of baking hot deserts that dominate the southern part of the state and Phoenix,
the sprawling metropolis built in the middle of that desert.
Yet Snowflake
was founded near the slopes of the mountains capped by Mogollon Rim and the
woodland area of Apache-Sitgreaves National Forrest. It is in that forest
covering the mountains that the incident will take place.
Regardless of
it being a genuine UFO abduction or an elaborate hoax, the local law
enforcement, the UFO hunters and the media will be into it knee deep. Pages 36
– 87 cover the search for Walton while he was missing for five days. We could
class this part as covering events outside of the alleged spaceship, sort of
speak.
And then… The
heart of this book. Meat and potatoes. Travis on board the alien craft, covered
in pages 88 – 104. Only 16 pages devoted to what happened on the space ship.
You might think, ‘how come so brief?’ but think about it… He claims he can
recall two hours out of five days plus five hours he was missing, coming to
total of 125 hours.
If we were to
be nitpickers, that comes to 2 out of 125 missing hours, or 1.6 percent. He can’t recall what was happening with him for the other 98.4
percent of the time. Therefore 16 pages out of the book of 370 represents roughly 4.3 percent of the content, which is about the right measure.
And… As far as
UFO abduction encounters and alien tropes go, it is actually a pretty mundane
experience. There are no intense medical experiments while he’s strapped
to a nightmarish looking medical examination chair. Even some of the aliens
themselves are human looking in their appearance as oppose to featuring solely
the fabled greys alien types.
Some UFO
proponents might argue that the fact the experience on board the UFO is
anticlimactic and with no much drama, it might actually be the real thing and
not a product of a fertile imagination.
Part 2 – “Analysis”. Deals mostly with the immediate aftermath after aliens return him near Heber. Describes taking lie detector tests, dealing with the after shock of it all, hypnosis, etc., covering mid to late 70s.
Part 3 – “Latter Days”. Just like the title says, covers Walton’s life further on after the incident, the 80s and 90s.
It also covers
filming of the “Fire in the Sky” movie version of the event. Surprisingly, that
was the best part of the book! An all-American boy from rural Arizona meets the
gossipy, misbehaving Hollywood celebrities!
Some of
Walton’s observations are earnest and truly hilarious. Yes, the best part of
the book. This is where Walton lets loose a little and gives a wonderful and
enjoyable account about the making of the film.
Part 4 – “PJK” or Appendix. It has a single chapter titled PJK, which are the initials of Walton’s most ardent debunker and opponent; Phillip J Klass. From pages 285 – 370, representing 85 pages or %23 of the book, Walton lets Klass have it. Refuting him point by point with righteousness and zeal that is both envious and surprising. That’s nearly quarter of the book, just to respond to Klass.
Klass
Many of them
seem to be at each other’s throats, but public secret is that being so closely
concentrated in D.C. they also wine, dine, date and interact with each other on
a daily basis behind the scenes. Klass came from the background which knows
that Washington D.C. is a place where it is virtually impossible to keep a
secret.
Most things
eventually leak out in D.C., one way or the other. If there was a UFO
conspiracy, Klass would most likely become aware of it sooner or later. Even
the black budgets have people who know about them. And they know people. And so
forth.
It is one of
the facts that Walton uses against Klass, accusing him almost of being a part
of conspiracy to discredit and intimidate potential witnesses of extra
terrestrial contact. Klass died in August of 2005, and so far there hasn’t been
evidence of it and he remains highly regarded figure in the skeptic community.
Book verdict
So, what’s the
final verdict on this book? Well, to general public this might not be an easy
book to digest. At times it does seem to drag along, especially when Walton
starts philosophizing about life in general.
Or maybe it
just seems so because most of his reading audience expects this book to be
chock full of aliens, me included. Yet they are only featured on 16 pages. It
is mostly a piece of work that defends Walton’s claim of a UFO encounter,
rather than describing it or delving on it in immense detail.
However, if you
are a ufologist or someone completely into the whole UFO subject, a UFO fan, a
‘believer’ in a word, then this book is a must for you. It is a required
reading about one of most famous UFO incidents in the United States and its
aftermath. You will be fascinated by it all.
What really happened?
Walton sounds
genuine and convincing. It is difficult to shake off that feeling at times.
It is possible
that what the loggers really saw that day was an experimental, secret US
military aircraft on a test run. A black budget project, based somewhere in the
Southwest.
Wrongfully
believing they are in a deserted area of Turkey Springs, the crew of the
aircraft probably didn’t expect the loggers bumping into them either, and were
equally as surprised.
Once Walton recklessly jumped out of the car to run up to the aircraft to have a better look
at it, the crew members either panicked or felt they had no choice but to fire
off some sort of experimental laser at Walton to restrain him, while the rest
of the loggers started fleeing for their lives, driving down Turkey Springs
road like a bat out of hell.
After all, you
don’t expect for human beings to run towards what they believe to be a UFO, but
rather stay motionless in shock in disbelief until the supposed UFO disappears
or to start screaming and running away from it. The pilot of the craft Walton
encountered might really have thought there was no other way but to render
Walton unconscious with a weapon of sorts.
And the so
called aliens? Could be a product of Walton’s imagination thanks to mind
affected by injury. He could’ve hallucinated it all. Dream of it, while still
recovering from being lasered, on board the ship with the crew unsure what to
do with him.
It could be
that the three grey aliens were an act designed to result in Walton believing
he was in a UFO abduction story and to prevent him from blowing away a billion
dollar secret aircraft project. If he was alone it would be easier to get rid
of him.
If he was a
hunter, or similar, traipsing up the mountains, they could’ve arranged it so
his death looks like an accident. Fallen down a cliff, mauled by a mother bear
protecting it’s cub, accidental rifle discharge, etc. But there were six other
witnesses that managed to get away. Therefore the crew role playing the aliens aboard a UFO.
However after
Walton came to and panicked, displaying more surprising physical strength than
expected, the crew of the aircraft might have just decided to drop the alien
charade altogether. It is at that point that ‘humanoid’ aliens appeared, placed
the plastic mask over his face, making him unconscious and dropped him off near
Heber. After making sure he has finally recovered from the laser injuries of
course.
What the crew
of the secret US military aircraft misjudged though is the willingness of the
loggers to persist with their (in the strictest sense of that word again) UFO
story and it eventually getting out of hand after the media caught wind of it.
Again, the
theory of the secret US military aircraft rather than the extra terrestrial
space ship being at the root cause of the Walton Incident is the theory Travis
Walton is open too also, although not as nearly as believing it was a genuine
UFO from outer space.
1978 edition, part 2
So the 1996 edition
is at 370 pages, and twice the size of its 1978 predecessor, which is according
to Amazon, 181 page long in comparison. I’m guessing that once you remove the
part about the making of the movie, the “Latter Days” section of Part 3 as well
as the response to Klass’ debunking attempt in Part 4, you probably get the
original 1978 edition featuring that diamond type craft shooting a beam on its
cover.
Remember that
question; if something has changed %50 or more, is it still the same thing? The
1996 edition is a definitive one as far as Walton is concerned, since 1978
edition is a much thinner serving when Part 3 and 4 are removed.
Guess I’ll
never know due to the fact that prices for the original edition have reached ridiculous levels. The amazon buyers are aware of that too. Those who are
selling the book are probably all too aware of the original book’s intrinsic
value in the history of Ufology.
Walton
himself is aware of his now out of print books reaching unreasonable price
levels, especially the first one, probably driven by the resurgence of interest
into this case with the rise of the internet.Therefore I recommend you purchase the book directly from Walton’s own website if you just must have the hard copy version in your library rather than fueling the highway robbery on the Amazon. By purchasing the 1996 edition from him you’ll be more than well covered with all the facts and history regarding this case.
Film Review: “Fire in the Sky”, 1993 directed by Robert Lieberman
The film was
produced 18 years after the incident occurred and 15 years after Walton’s first
book was published. According to Walton, the film idea lingered for several
years in what is in film business referred to as ‘development hell’.
The main
creative engine behind it was it’s screen writer Tracy Thorme, who penned
several episodes on the Star Trek: The Next Generation amongst other things.
When Walton
finally learned that D.B. Sweeney is going to play him on the big screen, he
and his family held a little ‘D.B. Sweeney Festival’ in his house, trying to
figure out who this guy is, and they were pretty happy that he is a competent
actor.
Interestingly,
one of the reasons it took awhile to get this project off the ground is the
fact the movie was based on the actual claimed UFO abduction, rather than being
a product of a screenwriters imagination, with all sorts of far fetched UFO
folklore and alien tropes thrown into it.
Speaking of UFO
tropes and alien folklore… The creator of “The X-Files”, Chris Carter, hired
Robert Patrick, up until that point in the early 90s best known as the bad guy
from the “Terminator 2”, as special agent John Doggett on the series for Season
9 in 2001 – 2002, after David Duchovny opted to change career paths upon
completion of Season 8.
It was this
particular role of Michael Rogers in “Fire in the Sky” movie that Carter
watched that earned Patrick Robert the role of agent Doggett.
In fact, if the
movie wasn’t based on the book reviewed above, the whole thing would probably
produced sooner. Fortunately, Paramount decided to bite into it and commit to
the project. The story of how a lot of that went down is earnestly and
hilariously at times described in Part 3 of Walton’s book (see review above).
Because from
the film makers perspective the alleged UFO abduction event wasn’t that exciting,
things had to be drastically changed in certain respects. There were time
constraints, being around 90 or so minutes that the western audiences are used
to absorb a film material. There were dramatic reasons, especially in respect
of space ship scenes, making them more dramatic and interesting for the
audiences to view.
Is it a murder?
Also, the film
has a noticeable murder mystery angle to it, rather than outright sci-fi and
UFO flick. Which kind of makes sense when you think about it. Because
what is outrageous and fascinating in not only a movie about a guy claiming he
was on board of a spaceship, but a group of guys who are adamant in their
claims they have witnessed the event.
If you are your
run of the mill cop, the first thing you think when you are presented with a
story like this, by alleged witnesses no less, and you have a missing person,
is that you have a murder on your hand. Or at least a manslaughter.
A poker game
has gone out of hand. Or a tree was cut and it fell onto Walton, pulverizing
him. Or there was a free for all fight over something between the loggers and
Walton was stabbed to death by a knife in the chaos that ensued. Or any other
similar scenario. And the group of loggers, led by Michael Rogers, the
character who occupied most of the screen time, would concoct a story in an
attempt to cover everything up.
Especially
because their story was so unbelievable, the law officials, journalists and
even ordinary townsfolk would naturally gravitate towards a more prosaic explanation
for Walton’s disappearance. Murder or manslaughter. Rather than an alien
abduction.
Film verdict
The film is a
pretty good entertainment value as an art piece, even 20 years later. If we
were to snap it against the books timeline, the movie length covers pages 25 –
104. It doesn’t delve too much on the past years before the event nor years
after Walton returned. The likes of lie detector tests, hypnosis, etc.
It roughly
covers November 5th to 10th of 1975 plus a scene near the
end of the movie where D.B. Sweeney playing Walton remembers his time on board
the space ship.
Regardless of
what it says on DVD cover of the picture above, Walton claims the movie was
originally marketed as “inspired by” rather than “based on” true events, due to
creative changes.
There were some
practical changes too. Walton’s brothers Duane and Dan were rolled into one
character called ‘Don’. Also there were only six loggers depicted in the movie,
as oppose to seven that were there on November 5th, 1975.
One of them,
and I can’t remember which one, was supposedly so shocked by what he had
witnessed and experienced on that day, he outright disappeared in self
exclusion, cutting off all contact with the rest of the logging gang. Paramount
couldn’t track him down to sign his release agreement, therefore they couldn’t
depict him in the movie.
The movie
eventually made 5 million in the theatrical release and who knows how much in
video rentals in years afterwards. Blue Ray high definition version has not
been released yet, so I had to settle with the wide screen DVD version.
On the
interesting side note; for the fans of ‘Grand Theft Auto’ series, especially
the ‘Vice City’ (2002) installment… Fernando of ‘Fernando’s New Beginnings’
features in this movie, but I couldn’t figure out who he is.
Overall, “Fire
in the Sky” is a great entertainment, a product of a good job by actors and filmmakers who created it.
