Rating my UFO Documentaries

All of my UFO-related documentaries are now freely available on-line through various distributors (or you can pay to download them or buy DVDs if you want). An old friend and I were having a beer the other night and asked me how I would rate my own films. I thought about it, and originally posted at my Facebook page my ratings for all of my old docs, but I've winnowed them down to just the UFO ones here (as with allmusic.com's record ratings, out of 5 stars).

I still consider the Friedman film to be the best documentary I ever made on any subject, and I think Fields of Fear isn't bad, either (although it suffered from having a smaller budget and therefore less production value). Others may rate them higher, or they may rate them lower, but I've tried to be as objective as I can be, and this is where they fall for me.

Paul Kimball

Stan Friedman - Space Aliens and the Bible

Stan Friedman talks to Rev. Barry Downing about why space aliens might be here, and how the Bible might factor into it, in this short excerpt from footage shot in 2001 in Irvine, California for my documentary Stanton T. Friedman is Real. This is raw "fly on the wall" footage so at one point you can actually hear my director of photography Findlay Muir talking to the sound guy John Rosborough about a camera move.

Paul Kimball

Friedman on Sagan, NASA, Project Blue Book, space exploration

Over the past couple of years, I posted several clips from a pre-interview I conducted with Stan Friedman in 2000 (while researching the documentary Stanton T. Friedman is Real), but I finally got around to putting them all into one video this past weekend.

Stan discusses a number of subjects, including Carl Sagan, Project Blue Book, space travel, and NASA.

Paul Kimball

Before Stan Friedman, there was...

... Frank Edwards!

For the story of how Frank Edwards is directly responsible for Stan's introduction to the UFO subject, see my film Stanton T. Friedman is Real.

Paul Kimball

Karl Pflock - Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe (Part I)

Karl Pflock was a good friend of mine, who left us far too soon in 2006, after a courageous battle with ALS. I first met Karl in 2001 when I interviewed him in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for the documentary Stanton T. Friedman is Real. I flew Karl up from his home in New Mexico, because I was going to be in Cedar Rapids interviewing Kevin Randle, and I was trying to stay on budget, something documentary filmmakers are always required to keep in mind. Karl and I hit it off immediately (as I did with Kevin, who remains a friend), and stayed in touch in the years after, corresponding frequently, and meeting again on a couple of occasions, including in 2003 when I interviewed him at his home in Placitas for Aztec: 1948. He told me once that he had considered going to law school when he was younger, and perhaps he saw a little bit of the road he might have taken in me; I admired him for his service to his country, and his open-minded and even-handed scepticism when it came to the UFO phenomenon. In the years since, I have come to appreciate the position his intellectual honesty put him in, because I take the same approach, and have generally gotten the same reaction - caught between the true believer deep blue sea on the one hand, and the disbeliever devil on the other.

In this first part of that interview I conducted ten years ago, Karl talks about his background, the sociology of ufology, and the Roswell case and the will to believe (and not believe). Given that the interview was for a film about Stan Friedman, Karl makes particular reference to Stan, but he goes far beyond just talking about Stan, because I always try and get as much into an interview as possible (usually much to the chagrin of my production manager, who tries to keep me on schedule), partly because I like to get as much information as possible (one never knows when one might want to use it), but mostly because when I have the chance to talk to someone like Karl, or Kevin, or Stan, I just want to keep the conversation going.

Paul Kimball

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Vaughn Rees - The Skeptic Strikes Back

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This is a sequence of excerpts from an interview I conducted with skeptic Vaughn Rees of the Center for Inquiry - West in 2001 at the MUFON Symposium in Irvine, California, for the documentary Stanton T. Friedman is Real. While I wanted to talk to Vaughn about Stan in particular, we also touched upon a wide range of subjects, including Steven Greer and his Disclosure Movement, the Billy Meier hoax (Rees had a long-running battle with the Meier-ites and Michael Horn in the early 2000s), the nature of skepticism and science, the problems with UFO research, and why people still believe in the paranormal. Unlike past episodes in this series from the 2001 interviews for Stanton T. Friedman is Real, there are no contemporary introductory comments by me - instead, I’ve left some of my questions recorded nine years ago during the interview in the episode.

Paul Kimball

Stanton Friedman interview - Part I (Roswell)

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The first in a series of excerpts from a 11 1/2 hour long interview I conducted with Stan Friedman on September 12th and 13th, 2001, in Fredericton, New Brunswick, for the film Stanton T. Friedman is Real.

In this segment, Stan talks about how he discovered the Roswell case, and gives a breakdown of why he thinks it was the crash of two alien spacecraft in 1947.

Paul Kimball

Stanton T. Friedman IS Real!

My first documentary as a writer / director, made for Space and Bravo in 2001, released in 2002, about UFO researcher Stan Friedman.

Paul Kimball

Stan Friedman on "working under security"

This is one of my favourite Stan stories. It didn't make it into Stanton T. Friedman is Real, but here it is from the 2000 pre-interview.

Incidentally, I always give my cameraman similar instructions with respect to taking care of the camera.

Paul Kimball

Stan Friedman - Refuting the arguments against UFOs

I recorded a lengthy pre-interview with Stan Friedman in Halifax back in 2000 for the development phase of the documentary Stanton T. Friedman is Real, which we took into production in 2001. In this segment, I asked Stan to imagine himself on the other side of the UFO fence, i.e. as a person trying to poke holes in his various arguments.

Paul Kimball