It isn't all UFO documentaries for me - indeed, as I explain almost everytime I get interviewed, the films I've made about the UFO phenomenon are only a small part of my resume.
Currently, besides Beyond Best Evidence, my company is developing a couple of feature films. I've mentioned the first, Doing Time, here before (it's based on the scifi play I co-wrote with the late Mac Tonnies in 2007). It's taken a back-seat at the moment as we press forward with the other one, a supernatural thriller called The Grey Wall.
Here is the synopsis for The Grey Wall:
The Grey Wall is a supernatural love story about two people who have to find their way out of the purgatory they have created for themselves.
On the surface, Sarah and Sam seem like the perfect young couple. But when Sarah gets her big break as an aspiring actress and begins to spend less time with Sam, he begins to wonder whether he’s good enough for her, particularly as he’s stuck in a dead-end job at a collection agency. Events develop which lead Sarah and Sam into a maelstrom of betrayal and mistrust.
Things take a supernatural turn with the appearance of Lawrence and Lorelei, two supporting characters in Sarah’s play who reveal themselves to be much more than they appear. The world that Sarah and Sam believe to be real is turned upside down, and everything they thought they knew about their lives, and each other, comes unraveled, as the evil Lorelei uses her mysterious powers to set them against each other. Meanwhile, Lawrence offers cryptic advice and help, but refuses to become directly involved for his own reasons.
Ultimately, Sarah and Sam arrive at a moment of truth, where they’ll have to look beyond the “grey wall” of the anger and hurt that they have built between themselves, to once again believe in each other and their love in order to find their way “home”.
If they don’t, Lorelei and an eternal darkness are waiting for them…
Beyond Best Evidence is probably the last film I'll make about UFOs, assuming we raise the money we need. One should never say "never", of course, but there are a lot of other things that I want to do, and at the moment I can't imagine anything about UFOs after I'm done Beyond Best Evidence that would be interesting enough to warrant the year or so that it takes to make a good film.
Paul Kimball
4 comments:
Hiya Paul, looking at longevity in the business, you're doing the right thing by starting to leave the UFO subject behind. Being 'that guy with the UFO movies' could be limiting and it's a rare person who makes a good living out of 'the field.'
Off the top of my head, there's maybe 5 people and none of them are making movies. Bad odds!
Good luck with the other movies; I'll look forward to seeing them.
The Grey Wall seems very interesting :)
And as far as UFO-related ideas that might be interesting to portray in the big screen: I'm currently finishing Rich Dolan and Bryce Zabel's A.D.; one of the most interesting things about it is the small fictional snippets that they add at the end of each chapter, so the reader can start to understand how something as monumental as the Big D would affect every aspect of human society, from the great historical events that will get aired in the news and recorded in books, to the small every-day stories of all the billions of anonymous families that will have to cope with that new reality.
I think the latter is fertile ground for a small independent film-maker aiming to develop a Sci-Fi movie with an intelligent story.
I'm not talking about a bombastic film with oodles of Sci-Fi eye-candy that ends up rotting your brain —God knows Hollywood has subjected us to plenty of THAT— I'm talking about stories told from a human level about what it would mean to have the certainty that we are not alone. And how would society try to regain a modicum of normalcy once that paradigmatic bomb finally starts to set in —after all, like the authors propose, chances are very likely that many of us would not be able to afford staying glued to our TVs watching the news unfold.
Granted, we've already had the short that subsequently spawned District 9. But that film didn't really explored the psychological angle of Disclosure.
What happens for example, in a post-Contact world when people start to suspect their neighbors might be half aliens?
Hi Kandinsky,
Oh, I've never been trying to make a living out of "the field" - I make money to make films, and some of them have been about UFOs, but I've always kept my personal interest in the paranormal separate from my business interests. The former in no way informs the latter - sometimes, when a project makes sense, they meet, but that's it.
Indeed, the last thing that anyone would ever want to be known as, I hope, is "the UFO filmmaker" or the "ghost filmmaker". ;-)
Paul
Hi RPJ,
I've read AD and someday I'll have to write a review like I promised Bryce when he gave it to me, but my short take is that it's all fiction - if there really is an alien presense on Earth (and has been a coverup, etc., for all these years), and the news broke, then all hell would break lose in a way not imagined by Zabel and Dolan. Their book is charming and quaint in its optimism, and probably would make a good sci-fi movie the way sci-fi movies are usually understood, because it's really all about us, with the aliens as peripheral characters, but in the end it bears almost no resemblance to what I am certain the actual reality would be.
Paul
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