Spyros  Melaris Interview

                  

 

ADRIAN

Well, first of all, this is an interview conducted on Wednesday afternoon at three on the 10th of May between Spyros Melaris and Adrian Sington. Spyros, first of all can you just tell me the background, how it was you came across Ray and Gary in the first place?

 

SPYROS

Yeah… I was an independent producer/director working out of a very small studio in West Hampstead at the time and I had a TV crew that I was taking out to Cannes. There are a number of TV and multimedia festivals in Cannes on regular intervals and I believe the one that we’re talking about was either mipcom or midem. And when you take out a crew to Cannes obviously everyone the world is there; TV, film, music companies, so the likelihood of them wanting to hire us to do a separate job… another job…  was very, very high. So what I did was, before I left, it was… em about an hour before I actually got on the plane, I sent… I believe it was three faxes. One was to EMI, one was to Warner Brothers… oh not Warner Brothers it was paramount I think and the other one was to Ray Santilli. And the reason Ray caught my eye was because he was local to me and I thought well…

 

                        ADRIAN

What here in London?

 

                        SPYROS                      

In London. I felt there may be some synergy if he needs a film crew.  I got two replies from the three, one was from EMI would I film on their yacht and the other one was from Ray who basically said, ‘I don’t need anything done in Cannes but you’re local and we can do stuff together we should have lunch.’ So we arranged to have a lunch before we went…

 

                        ADRIAN

So this is when, which year are we talking about?

 

                        SPYROS

Oh this was 1990… I believe it was late ‘94 I think it was October/November ’94 and eh… we arranged to meet for lunch. And the first time I cancelled, the second time Ray cancelled and he said, ‘Well look why don’t we do it in Cannes?’ Why don’t we meet in Cannes? And when we’re there we’ll talk to each other, call me on the mobile and we can meet up.’

I arrived that evening, and I can’t remember what day it was or anything, with my assistant at the time who was an Austrian girl who at the time was very short to say the least, very rude lady. We arrived in Cannes and I said, ‘what do you want to eat? And she says… the crew were fed up with her and said, ‘Look we’re going to go over there and do our own thing.’ I said, ‘What do you want to eat?’ She said, ‘I don’t care, you decide.’ I said, ‘Alright how about Italian?’ ‘Don’t like Italian.’ ‘What about Chinese?’ ‘Don’t like Chinese.’ ‘What about seafood?’ ‘I don’t want to try seafood.’ And I said, ‘Well you pick what do you want? Get whatever you want.’ Right so… I said, ‘What about pizza?’ ‘I like pizza.’ And in the end I was like, ‘We’re going in there’ and I just pointed at a restaurant and walked straight into the restaurant. We sat down and opposite me… there was a long table with lots of people and directly opposite me at this table there was an American guy from one of the TV companies in America, very loud American guy. And at the end of the evening he said to me, ‘Well here’s my card’ and he says, ‘How do you say your name is it Spyro, is it Spearo?’ I said, ‘It’s Spyros’ and he said, ‘Oh good’ and I gave him my card. And as soon as I said Spyros the guy sitting next to him who were having there own conversation looked at me and said, ‘Spyros’. And I recognised the voice and I said, ‘Ray?’ And he’d been sitting there all night. So the restaurant emptied and Ray and I were the last people there all the chairs where on the tables, the people had mopped the floors, the back they were cleaning up and we’re still sitting there with a bottle of wine…

 

                        ADRIAN

I’ve been in that position with Ray a number of times.

                  

                        SPYROS

Yeah and we were talking about everything you can imagine and eventually it got round to, ‘I’ve got some film that I need to make into documentaries and it needs a bit of tidying up.’ And he said, ‘What level of security do you have at your studio?’ And I thought well that’s an odd question and I said, ‘Well what do you mean? I’ve got an alarm.’ He said, ‘Well the material’s very sensitive I need it so it’s kept safe so nobody can get to it.’ He said, ‘One frame is worth £20,000.’ ‘What’s this then?’ you know…

 

                        ADRIAN

Got your attention.

 

                        SPYROS

I’m thinking is this the assassination of Kennedy what is this? So I said to him, ‘What is it?’ And he said, ‘If I tell you promise you won’t laugh?’ And so I said, ‘Ok.’ And he said, ‘It’s the autopsy of an alien’. And I said, ‘What a foreign person?’ And he said, ‘No, an alien being from another place another planet.’ And I said, ‘Oh come on Ray’ you know and he said, ‘No really.’ He told me the story. And he said, ‘I’ve got this film’ and he said, ‘it’s very delicate.’ He said, ‘Anyone that knows you’ve got it is going to come and break in and take it.’ He said, ‘And I need to know that one: I can trust you (because you can sell the story you can do stuff without me)

Secondly: he said, ‘I need to know you can do the job.’

‘So what’s involved?’

‘I need you to take the film. I need to you to turn in into video because it’s on real 16mm film. And then I need you to clean it up and then I need you to make a documentary from it and anywhere I’ll sell it around the world they’ll ask you for the footage I’ll make sure you get to make a documentary and you’re the master of the key if you like.’ So I said, ‘We’ve only just met how do you know that I am trustworthy?’ He says, ‘I’m going to sign you to a contract and make it watertight so that you can’t.’ He said, ‘But I’m not a bad judge of character.’ And I said, ‘Ok well you’re not a bad judge of character.’ and I said to him, ‘So what?’

‘So when we go back I’ll show you the footage and you can tell me what you think.’ Anyway this went on for a while didn’t get any footage didn’t get to see any footage.

 

                        ADRIAN

Oh really so you came back and there was some time past?

 

                        SPYROS

It took a little while but it was because he was waiting for the meaty stuff to arrive apparently it was more than the reel and it was all… Anyway cut a long story short a distraught Ray phoned me up and he said, ‘I’ve got the stuff back…’ He said, ‘And it’s terrible condition, it’s really bad condition.’ He said, ‘I haven’t got enough…’

 

                        ADRIAN

So when he had the conversation with you in Cannes as far as he was concerned the footage was Kosher

 

                        SPYROS

And it was clean…

 

                        ADRIAN

And it was clean. So when he said he wanted you to clean it up? What did he mean?

 

                        SPYROS

He meant he wanted me to take away the tail trails, the trailers and just make a good script. Cos it comes… when you shoot film it comes in very small reels, 50 foot reel, and then it’s spliced together now often what happens is it’ll be spliced together with the…

 

                        ADRIAN

Right I’m with you.

 

                        SPYROS

And then it’s just a big blank. So he says, ‘When it comes back I just want you to go through it and make it watchable.’ So he recited to me what he saw in America and he was gonna get that footage, very enthusiastic, totally believed it was real.

 

                        ADRIAN

Right, right.

 

                        SPYROS

And his very words at the time and I never forget the words he used which were, ‘I don’t know what’s on that film but it’s going to make us a lot of money.’ And I said to him, ‘What do you mean you don’t know what it is?’ ‘I don’t know what it is.’ He said, ‘I find it hard to believe it’s an alien.’ And he said, ‘It might be a deformed human, it might be a special effect, it might be whatever it is, it’s going to make us money.’  And I said to him, ‘Well if it’s a special effect it’s not going to be worth anything.’ And he said, ‘No they couldn’t do this in 1947.’ And I said, ‘How do you know it’s 47?’ And he said, ‘Well I had it checked I wouldn’t buy it until I knew it was 47.’ So I said, ‘You’re right, Hammer House of Horrors were making crap films in ‘68 so, you know, so in ‘47.

 

                        ADRIAN

Kensington Gore.

 

                        SPYROS

So I said, ‘I’m intrigued.’ And I said to him, ‘I can give you the level of satisfaction security you want.’ And I said, ‘I’d love to do the job.’

 

                        ADRIAN

Was it here?

 

                        SPYROS

No, no, no I didn’t own this place at the time it was this place in West Hampstead. So when he phoned me up and he said, ‘I finally got some footage back and stuff and he said, ‘I’m very disappointed.’ He said, ‘I don’t know what to do?’ And I said, ‘What?’ ‘It’s not watchable.’ And I said to him, ‘But you said it was this and it was that and the other.’ He said, ‘You need to come have a look.’ So I went along watched the stuff and it was flash frames of something recognisable and I said to him, ‘Ray we can’t do it on this machine because if you take those frames to the projector the bulbs going to burn the cell.

 

                        ADRIAN

Oh I see tell him to stop it.

 

                        SPYROS

It has to run though you can’t stop it you’ll burn the cell, but I saw an image, now as an editor I see frames you know. I can watch a film and it be one frame, pow, I see it you know focally I see it.  But that’s what we do that’s our job. I didn’t say anything I said there is images on the floor on the film, I said what’s happened is it’s oxidised… 

 

                        ADRIAN

And that’s quite common is it for a film stock?

 

                        SPYROS

It really depends on what film stock it is. Some film blows up into flames. That’s why it’s kept in metal containers over time they can become combustible. So you open the can and the air hits it and it bursts into flames.

 

                        ADRIAN

Really? What’s it made…?

 

                        SPYROS

Phosphorous.

 

                        ADRIAN

Ah I see.

 

                        SPYROS

And it can go up quite dramatically like a bomb you know.

 

                        ADRIAN

So this is particularly the case on older film?

 

                        SPYROS

Yeah, yeah it depends on the certain make-up of film. You got phosphorus, you got silver compound, you add them all together in fact what could happen is just a bit of a jolt could set it off.

 

                        ADRIAN

Really?

 

                        SPYROS

So what happened with Ray’s stuff it was flaking it deteriorated quite badly. And I said to Ray, ‘Right what we’ve got to do is not run it through the machines anymore what we’ve got to do is Telecine it put it through a projector and actually video the output. So we can see what’s there. Then we can freeze-frame and look at the frame.’

 

                        ADRIAN

So how does that work? Telecine it?

 

                        SPYROS

All that happens is you put it through a projector and instead of going onto a screen it goes through a tube and that tube is attached to a camera and you actually film what comes off the Telecine.

 

                        ADRIAN       

Right so there is a slight deterioration in the quality of the image?

 

                        SPYROS

It’s pretty good. I mean that… Telecine image is pretty good. So that’s what we did. And we managed to retrieve some images, very compelling images and at that point I remember I was looking at it and I was thinking… because I did believe it was real. I was looking at it and I’m thinking how would I recreate this if I had to recreate it and I’m going through it and I was looking at it and I’m thinking. Now there was a sequence of images on another reel, which actually showed moving images. And when you got a moving image you’ve got tell, tell signs, various tell, tell signs, that I didn’t see. For instance if it was a made prop you would see all sorts of give away signs, they weren’t there. So I’m looking at it and I’m thinking that’s a still again the other thing as well that I remember was, etched in my mind was how scary the image was because every alien you’ve ever seen an image of before is quite a jokey image, is quite a Mickey Mousey kind of you know… and this was so eerie because it looked sinister it looked like someone’s dead here, right this is someone that’s died, it’s someone that’s real and this is not a good thing.

 

                        ADRIAN

And what were these images of?

 

                        SPYROS

It was… what you know as the alien autopsy, that was pretty much what we saw… now we had to make up what might have been on this side and what might have been over here because we couldn’t see.

 

                        ADRIAN

When you saw that? When you first saw it, the first time you saw it in your studio in West Hampstead. You must have been blown away?

 

                        SPYROS

Totally blown away and the whole time…

 

                        ADRIAN

Who else was with you?

 

                        SPYROS

At the time it was just Ray and the whole time I was saying to Ray “How much did you pay for this Ray?” he said “oh that doesn’t matter right now, it’s not important.” I said to him, “Well what if it isn’t real?” I said, “You might have got done, have you considered that?” He said, “No I went to the guys house I know the guys real.”

 

                        ADRIAN   

And the guy was the cameraman?

                       

                        SPYROS

Yea he said, “He’s definitely real.” He said, “What I saw there was this but moving and full.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

                        ADRIAN

How is it possible for him to see it?

 

                        SPYROS

 A lot of time whet by as I understand it the film was kept in damp conditions and hadn’t been looked after and I don’t even know, it even looks like water might had got into it. Although it was dry it didn’t look… you know when film is clean and flat this was buckled it felt like it had been in… It had been mistreated. But I’m looking at Ray and I’m looking at this and I’m thinking to myself well.. and he obviously had spent a lot of money and he had this face on him which was the end of the world had happened. Right and I’m looking at this amazing piece of footage and I said, “Ray look no one else has seen it right? Why don’t I recreate it?” He said, “You can’t.” So I said, “I can I can re-create this and no one will know.”  He said, “But it needs to stand up to all sort of tests, it needs to stand up to NASA who want to look at it, to Kodak who want to look at it, to all the experts, we’ve got the Queens pathologist lined up to look at it. We’ve got all sorts of people.” He said, “They have to look at it and it has to pass.” And I said, “Now I’m a magician.”

 

                        ADRIAN

Are you?

 

                        SPYROS

That’s one of my things.

 

                        ADRIAN

Literally?

 

                        SPYROS

Yeah. I said to him, “Ray this is my job.”

 

                        ADRIAN

This is you been put on this earth for this purpose

 

                        SPYROS

I said to him, “This is tailor made for me, I am in my own mind a talented film maker and on the other hand again in my own mind because I’m not going to say that I’m the best of this and that but I am.” And I said to him, “I can create the biggest illusion that any magician to be perpetrated on the world and they won’t know.” He said, “How will you do it?” I said, “That’s not your problem. I said, “What your problem is is can we get some money? I’m happy to just do it don’t want to make any money out of it.” I said to him, “Lets just do it, see if we can do it, the key to this is that we minimise the amount of people involved so that the secrecy level, that the security is high.” He said, “I don’t know, you see I’m nervous about this.” I said to him, “I tell you what we’ll do, lets do it and if we fail we’ll know we’ve failed right and we don’t release it.” I said, “But I can do this.” So he went off to Gary and he told Gary what’s happened and Gary said, “Never gonna get away with it.”

 

                        ADRIAN

Had you met Gary before?

 

                        SPYROS

No. “Never gonna get away with it, it can’t be done, how can you do it?” So they came back and they quizzed me and they said, “Look… we don’t believe it can be done.” So I said to them, “Look I’ve got a very, very good friend who is like my brother who I trust with my life, who I can bring in who can make the creature.” “Who is he?” I said, “It’s a guy called John Humphries, he has worked on lots of frontline movies he has worked on lots of frontline television I said you would have seen his work again and again and again. More importantly he is trustworthy, and we can work together.” So he said, “What would he want?” I said, “John will take what I give him, he’s my brother. But we’ll do this.” So they sat down and said, “Right we’ve got to bet, look we’ve got costumes, we’ve got props, we’ve got a set, we’ve got a creature, we’ve got to film it…  we’ve gotta dadadada. And at the end of it all we’ve got to make sure that all the experts in the world won’t ever know.” He said, “We can’t do that it ain’t gonna happen.” I said, “Look for the last time right I said I can do this, if you want me to do it Ray I will do it.” He said, “Well how do we position it?” I said, “Look we know it exists, we know it’s real. If I can make it look like that.” I said, “To him you’re not telling any lies.” I said to him, “We’ll present it as what it is and then we’ll tell the world what we’ve done.”  But I said to him, “That that’s the proof.”

 

                        ADRIAN

How many images were there?

 

                        SPYROS

We got I think in total about 2 and a bit minutes spread across the 2 minutes of… yea

 

                        ADRIAN

And where is that film now?

 

                        SPYROS

Ray’s got it. 

 

                        ADRIAN

Have you seen the movie? The alien autopsy movie?

 

                        SPYROS

Yea.

 

                        ADRIAN

Is this thing at the end, the sequence at the end? Is that the real film?

 

                        SPYROS

You know I can’t remember because I was actually appalled by the film. I left early and I can’t remember what was on it. My character was played by a Turkish kebab shop owner who does wedding videos on the weekend and I took that as an insult. Now it’s not Ray it’s not Gary it’s…

 

                        ADRIAN

Warner brothers

 

                        SPYROS

Warner brothers they made a comedy. But the reality is, the enormity… they said to me, “Do you want to be a part of this film.” I said, “No not in a million years.” I said, “Why would I want to do that? It’s just belittling the whole and…”

 

                        ADRIAN

So you and john Humphries sat down…

 

                        SPYROS

I sat down with john and I said, “John we’ve got these clips.” He said, “What is it?” And I said, “It’s an alien autopsy.” He said, “Yeah right.” I said to him, “John, whatever you think I’ve been there myself I’ve done all of it now, and that’s irrelevant. Whether it’s real, whether it’s a human being that’s deformed. We need to recreate this.” I said, “Now can we do it?” And he said, “Well yeah.” I said, “that’s what I think I think we can do this. The thing that you don’t realise is it has to be made a secret, nobody can know any aspect of it, nothing, not where the clock came from, not where… nothing. He said, “we can’t do that how are we gonna do that? it’s impossible.” I said, “it is possible. We just got to be very clever and it’s very much like, my training as a magician is there are a lot of techniques where you can involve people and they haven’t got a clue that they are part of it.”

 

                        ADRIAN

What when you should somebody a coin or something or?

 

                        SPYROS

But I don’t do that kind of magic, I do mostly mind magic. Nothing exists but I can have you think that I’ve just read your mind and I can also have you confirm it to five or six people who also think I read there mind in actual fact they’re all in on it. Nobody knows that you’re in on it only a little bit because you’ve genuinely seen magic and because I’ve pieced together a string of events you’re all sitting there giving testimony to what you’ve just seen in actual fact if you all cross-examined each other you’d break it down. And there’s ways of doing stuff. So the most difficult part of making this film was persuading everyone around me that it could be done.

 

                        ADRIAN

It’s weird isn’t it?

 

                        SPYROS

That was the most difficult thing.

 

                        ADRIAN

But you had enough images… because obviously the alien is key. You had enough images of the alien for you to be able to see the whole length of it? Or?

 

                        SPYROS

We had enough images to see enough of it to make an image. The long shot we couldn’t see any detail we could see where everything was. The close up shot showed us information like how many digits on the fingers and toes and all that sort of stuff. We saw images…

 

                        ADRIAN

Could Ray, do you think, have conned you before this point?

That film that you saw couldn’t have been faked?

 

                        SPYROS

No, not in a million years. First of all with all due respect to Ray, Ray couldn’t have the way or withal to make it. To con us. If he did why would he want us now to recreate what he’s created.

 

                        ADRIAN

Yeah you’re right it doesn’t make sense.

 

                        SPYROS

Doesn’t make sense, and he’s persuading me not to do it. He’s saying we can’t do it so what we going to do, I’m buggered that’s it I’m buggered. So what we did was, I sat down with John and I said, “Right. We’ve got… these are the pieces.” And I did a few sketches and I said, “Right this is what I think these frames look like from all these angles so when you’re looking here that’s what we’ve got in the room, when you’re looking here that’s what we’ve got in the room, so we’ve got to create a situation where a camera can do this and these images are pieced together in a 3 dimensional scenario.”

 

                        ADRIAN

Because presumably there are people still alive, who were in those days, who are still alive, who were in that room?

 

                        SPYROS

I’ve interviewed nearly 30 people as a filmmaker not the person that made this film. As another person I went to Roswell I took the girl who did the costumes and a bit of a research and stuff on the film. She went as a researcher for the documentary with me, with a crew. We went to Roswell and we interviewed nearly 30 people who were there, university lecturers, doctors, sergeants from the army.

 

                        ADRIAN

When you say there were there, do you mean in the room or they were in Roswell?

 

                        SPYROS

They were in Roswell when this happened. We showed them the film and we asked them to tell us about it. And some of them told us why they felt this film was fake. And then we showed them all the elements they were talking about. And then they in the same interview said, “I was mistaken I can now see why this is not, can’t be a fake.”

 

                        ADRIAN

What sort of things?

 

                        SPYROS

For instance the suits, they… one guy who happened to know about the fallout suits he basically said, “What they are wearing is a first generation fallout suit.” He said, “I only know about the existence of one of those today and that’s in the Roswell museum.” He said, “So we’ve got four at any one time in this film.” He said, “So either this was shot then when they were around or they’re not right. If they are not real.” He said, “I can’t see a method for them to breathe.” He said, “Now tell me that these are not real suits.” And we’ve done a lot of research total and consistent research and I never filmed shoes, boots…

 

                        ADRIAN

Because you didn’t know what they were wearing?

 

                        SPYROS

No because there would have been a tube coming out of the boot and that’s how they would have been breathing. So we didn’t want to go to that extent so as long as there wasn’t a tube so we simply said, “Is it possible that they were breathing through a tube in the boot?” and he said, “Well yes that’s possible.” And I said, “So why is this not real.” And he said, “Yeah you’re right.” He said, “That was done then that’s what they had.”

 

                        ADRIAN

But the suit that’s in Roswell you presumably saw that in museum?

 

                        SPYROS

I didn’t see it we found books.

 

                        ADRIAN

So you had reference of the suit it self?

 

                        SPYROS

My assistant yeah, my assistant did all the research throughout the whole film came back consistently with loads and loads of different things. And we said, “Right that’s the one we need to make it fits in the… it’s 1945.”

 

                        ADRIAN

And was it easy to make the suit?

 

                        SPYROS

It was a nightmare because… we should give the girl my assistant a name because we don’t want to expose her because she doesn’t want to be exposed so what should we call her?

 

                        ADRIAN

Michelle.

 

                        SPYROS

Let’s call her Michelle. Now Michelle had a sewing machine and she said look the material we had to use wouldn’t go through her sewing machine. So she said, “Look we’ll have to get a special jobby and a needle and a this and a that…” So we went in John Lewis and…

 

                        ADRIAN

A Haberdashery department.  

    

                        SPYROS

Yeah and we got the bits she needed and while we were there we started looking at material they had rolls of cloth and there was a lycra white, lycra metalized material that stretched but it looked like it wasn’t plastic so on film we’d get away with it, but a very modern material you know and it was quite thin. And I said to her you know, “Do you think you could stitch this?” And she said, “Probably em… I’ve never done it before I don’t know if it will tear I don’t know what… but we’ll try it.” So we bought enough of the material to make four suits because we’re not going to go back and we’re going to make it work. And we’ve gone back and she had no experience of cutting patterns. Now what are the chances of my parents owning a dress making factory many, many years ago in the seventies where I used to go on a Saturday and help pattern cutter, right. What are the chances of this? So I said to her, “Well I know how to do it, so this is what we’ve got to do” and I drew a pattern as we drew the pattern we laid all the stuff together and cut it in one go. Em and just laid it out. And we made the pattern together she stitched it and we made a window the whole thing, one piece suit, all the glove the sleeve all made one piece, quite a difficult job, right? Because you couldn’t have gaps otherwise the air would get out, you know. In the autopsy film with Ant and Dec if you look at it they’ve got a flap here where the helmet is separate from the thing well that wouldn’t work, right? Ours is completely one piece, and it was an exact copy of what would have happened in there. So that’s how we made the costumes. I sat down with John I said, “Right John this is what the alien looks like, here are the photos, this is what the sets going to look like, this is what we’re going to do.” Michelle came back with a thing that she uncovered which was an eye witness report which was that an alien had been dissected and they discovered that their internal organs were that of a fly, similar to a fly they weren’t human, and the sense behind it was, the metallics behind it was: That our innards wouldn’t stand up to the kind of speeds that they would have gone to. A fly or a cockroach you could do anything to it, it survives, so this is how it evolved. So we said, “OK well lets look at that.” So I said to John, “Right we’re going to create the innards to look like it could be an insect so if anyone that knows, that’s what they’re looking at now that person that doesn’t know it will just go top of both people’s heads. An expert will say this is not a human being, fair enough and someone in the know will say this is the insides of an insect now that happened there is a guy in Roswell that we interviewed who said, “The insides don’t resemble anything to do with a human cos they are like an insects and it takes amazing G force and a dadadada.” And that was great because we planted the seed and… Now the same guy his name was sergeant stone he was in the army, in the Roswell army in 1969. And he told us of a story where he’d seen this footage in an army airfield base in ‘69 and when he was caught over looking higher ranking officers watching the film he was taken away and he was I don’t know what you call it but debriefed basically he was interrogated and told that he hadn’t seen anything and it was, you know, he was then shipped to another unit and disgraced and made to be mental, told to be mental they basically made out that he was mental and put into an institution the whole thing so he wouldn’t talk and when he was finally shipped back and released he was given his governments highest award…

 

                        ADRIAN

How bizarre.

 

                        SPYROS

So the whole thing you know…

 

                        ADRIAN

Contradictory.

 

                        SPYROS

Contradictory. His son died in mysterious circumstances. All sorts of stuff happened to this guy and when you read between the lines he saw it. You know he actually broke down and cried on tape and everything you know. So it validates a lot of our suspicions whether it is real. Definitely something happened in 1947 in Roswell.

 

                        ADRIAN

You believe that?

 

                        SPYROS

Definitely. Listen I have spoken to people who are far more intelligent than you or I put together alright and I don’t know you very well but I’m telling you, I’m telling you these guys are super, super intelligent and you know university lecturers we’re talking about all sorts of and they saw something, it happened. So I made the mistake of talking to Loretta Procter who, Loretta Procter was the woman that lived next door to Matt Brazel who owned the range where the spaceship crashed, right. And the story goes Matt Brazel woke up in the middle of the night, there was a storm, and he went outside and he found a spaceship crashed on his range which is in the dessert and he went to his nearest neighbour to show her the bits of spaceship that had crashed. That’s the story right. I went out there, went to the range and his nearest neighbour is 20 miles, right, 20 miles. Now that story changes now for me it was ‘he went next door.’ Right 20 miles on horseback in a storm, now I went by small plane it took ages, now he went on horseback in a storm. I went and saw the lady that he visited and she was still there, I’m not sure she’s still there now but you know, it was some eleven years ago now. Loretta Procter and we sat down with her lovely lady very coherent not at all mental not at all old she was very with it and I made the mistake of saying to her, “Mrs Proctor could you please tell me why every time a UFO is sighted it is always in a small town in a America somewhere?” and she got very upset about that. And she said, “Let me tell you something you man.” She said, “We were the only place in the world that had the nuclear weapon. We fired the H bomb from Roswell to Hiroshima.” She said, “If you were an alien force that came down to earth where would you go? Where the action is or Brent cross?” She actually said Brent Cross and I said, “I didn’t know about the… I didn’t know that… it’s just we always it’s always the little you know, and I just wondered if it was something in the water, you know and she said, “I can see why it sounds ridiculous.” She said, “But there is a very good reason why they came here.” I said, “So what did he bring you? What did he show you?” And she told us about these materials that no one had seen before, you could rustle it all up and it all came out again. And it was all you know. And she said, “Today…” She said, “we have plastics that do that, We have crisp packets that do that, and it’s shiny on the inside you don’t print it, it’s shiny and you do that and it comes out clean again without wrinkles. In them days the nearest we had was foil and you do that and it stays there it comes back all wrinkled. She said, “We had stuff that was like balsa wood and we couldn’t cut it, with a razor or a knife you couldn’t cut it. And she said, “It was all sorts of material that we had never seen before.” And she said, “They were out of this world. They weren’t of our world.” So why did they keep it secret at the time? You know why didn’t they…? They said wanted to keep the technology for themselves. And she said, “And since then…” She said, “You’ll see… I think you’ll find that there’s lots of stuff that materialised it’s stuff that’s been described here…

 

                        ADRIAN

Interesting.

 

                        SPYROS

…was described in 47. So I met another guy and he told me again and he said to me, “Well I’m wearing something right now that came directly from what we learnt.” And he said, “Cos you’ll find that there was a metal you can crush up and it came back that he got into his garment. And he said “You can see I can bend things like this and it comes straight back.” Which he says is memory metal. He said we’ve got these now but he said in 1947 no one even thought about them. He said but they existed. 

 

                        ADRIAN

And you were making this documentary for…?

 

                        SPYROS

It was for us? It was just to see to make a documentary to see if we did get anything out of it, you know, and I’m glad I did it because it kind of reinforced a lot of stuff that I…

 

                        ADRIAN

Yeah, of course. And so ray wasn’t with you or anything?

 

                        SPYROS

No. So going back to how we made the documentary. The reason this worked and the secret to our success was because everyone involved were very close and multitasked I did the job of the director, set builder, set designer, costume designer, producer, prop maker I also acquired props so obviously I went off on buying trips and found stuff it had to be the right year…

 

                        ADRIAN

Yeah of course, the clock was one of the…

 

                        SPYROS

The clock yeah… loads of stuff and I’ll tell you a story about the clock in a minute but everything from filming it developing it, editing it. You know, this is the job of a crew.

 

                        ADRIAN

How did you get the right film stock for it?

 

                        SPYROS

Well what I did was I researched the film stock they would have used. Which would have been Kodak triple X or four x, super four x. And what we did was we found the equivalent modern stock that was available that fit the right camera. The camera that would have been used would have had a certain frame rate and it would have had certain features that for instance if you couldn’t have the right about of stock you know exposure stock on the camera that we were using if we had more because of the more modern camera an expert could tell, right if the frame rate was different an expert could tell, it was electronically driven and not a wind up they could tell. So I had to find a camera which was exactly the same as the one they would have used. So imagine my delight. When my friend Lance, Lance Aston phoned me up, he’s a pop promo, at the time he was a pop promo producer/ director and he phoned me up and he said, “Do you want to come and help me film this pop promo with this band? I want to film it, I want to shoot it on film as well as video and I’ll go buy a camera.” He said, “I’ll just find a camera on Portobello market.” And he said, “And we’ll just shoot some stuff and see if we can get some arty stuff out of it.” And he knew that I could work film. So I said, “Yeah I’d love to.” And that was it. Now Lance married to Marcella Detroit from ‘Shakespeares Sister’. I don’t know if you know the band?

 

                        ADRIAN

Yeah, yeah.

 

                        SPYROS

His sister’s Jay Aston who was in ‘Bucks Fizz.’ So it was quite a celebrity outfit/ Showbiz outfit and I turned up and he handed me this camera and I’d been looking at photos and photocopies of cameras for the last week looking for one and he handed me this camera and I was mesmerized by it. And I said to him, “Where did you get this?” He said “What? It’s no good?” I said to him, “No, no it’s great.” I said to him, “Where’d you get it?” He said, “At Portobello market.” So I said, “That’s fantastic.” I said to him, “I’ve wanted to play with one of these for a while.” I said, “Do you think I can borrow it after the shoot?” He said, “Yeah how long do you want it for?” I said, “A couple of weeks?” He said, “Yeah no problem.” So the whole time I was filming his job I am jumping through hoops and wanna phone Ray up. I wanna phone Ray and say I can’t believe dadada… you know, so anyways I’ve got this camera and it is exactly the right Ben and Howell exactly the same model that would have been used then and in them days what happened that they made them in, they were in camouflage green. And they were disposable, the idea of these cameras was that you went out into a war zone you filmed what you wanted took the reel out and threw the camera away.

 

                        ADRIAN

So there aren’t many left.

 

                        SPYROS

Right. So these cameras were disposable they weren’t made for you know and they were forever jamming cos the mechanism was cheap so what happened was in the original film, what you got was… the camera would go to flashes of white and…

 

                        ADRIAN

Oh I know… yeah.

             

                        SPYROS

And what would happen is the sprockets would actually be torn out because it jammed. The sprocket reel was turning around and cutting into the film rather than moving it along. So when you come to develop it, it runs through a machine. So it goes through the chemical and it comes out the other end developed. Ok, but when it goes through and it gets to a point where the sprockets are dead it starts to spin, wheel spin. And the film in the chemical is overexposed and it’s ruined. So when you’ve got that problem, these particular rolls, some of them had been done by hand. So you had to literally put it into a hand developing system where you reeled it by hand when it stopped turning you start to turn it by hand. If you go to rank they got a big mechanized thing and you can’t get near it. It’s all inside the machine. So this is the reason why the original Camera Man got to keep film back…

 

                        ADRIAN

Oh I see…

 

                        SPYROS

…because they couldn’t process it the conventional way he had to process it by hand. So he took it home.

 

                        ADRIAN

That’s interesting…

 

                        SPYROS

Now a lot of people didn’t realise that. Cos we asked the question how was he allowed to take this film?

 

                        ADRIAN

Yeah course. He stole it though, because he could.

 

                        SPYROS

Yeah. And what happened was he had nobody to answer to. The army air force became the army and the air force. And the people he was responsible to had disbanded.  So it was a need to know basis if you don’t mention it I can’t mention it. So he had the stuff he couldn’t mention it to anybody and nobody asked. So that’s why it was left with him.

 

                        ADRIAN

Oh that is interesting.

 

                        SPYROS

So knowing this, I knew the, you know, short comings of these cameras as it happened we didn’t get any jamming. Maybe the modern film stock is better quality…

 

                        ADRIAN

Yeah stronger or something…

 

                        SPYROS

Yeah, but anyway… I shot the promo, took it home, looked at the camera played with it a little bit. And then I had to buy film that was compatible for it. So the first thing I did was I took the camera, I went down to Fuji and I said… I didn’t want to go to Kodak because Kodak were already in the loop. And if somebody turned up and said “what do you think…?” So it was very important that I didn’t do that. So I went to Fuji thinking well there isn’t gonna be an American link you know. And I asked them, “Have you got any film that will work in this?” Now lance bought colour film, for his shoot. And I needed black and white. So… and I was prepared to buy the colour film and then convert it to black and white once it’s in the edit.

 

                        ADRIAN

Can you do that?

 

                        SPYROS

I can do that yeah. But eh…

 

                        ADRIAN

Wouldn’t an expert have been able to tell?

 

                        SPYROS

Maybe. And I don’t know how I would know so I thought they wouldn’t know but somebody maybe could. So I didn’t want to risk it.  In the end I found 30 rolls of film that was dated 1980 and it was no longer available and it was in perfect condition and I bought the whole lot. We used up from the 30 reels we used up 15. And luckily I didn’t use the rest because the first time we filmed it, it didn’t work. So we had to film it again.

         

                        ADRIAN

You mean it didn’t work?

 

                        SPYROS

We didn’t make a good film. So the first time we made a film it wasn’t good and Ray says, “You see I told you.” And I said, “Ray we’re gonna make another creature. Right we’re gonna leave it…”

 

                        ADRIAN

Oh I see the first creature didn’t look good enough. I see

 

                        SPYROS

Wasn’t good enough. Wasn’t good enough. And the thing was…

 

                        ADRIAN

So what was wrong with it?

 

                        SPYROS

The creature looked alright, what was wrong with it was that John (the sculpture) was playing the part of the surgeon.

And he…

 

                        ADRIAN

He didn’t look like a surgeon.

 

                        SPYROS

He didn’t look right and Michelle was saying the procedures are wrong. You wouldn’t do that in an autopsy, look just get the books out, that isn’t what you would do. You’ve made a mistake here, this will be found out. So we said, Right John take the book home, keep in touch with Michelle and learn the procedure. We’ve got to do this right. We’re going to come back with it tomorrow we’re going to clear up and we’re going to make a new creature and…

 

                        ADRIAN

You must have been gutted.

 

                        SPYROS

…go through it all again. So what we did was we left the creature on the autopsy table, there is blood and guts everywhere, right? Now you forget because you’re making a film, you forget how gory this looks, you know, and so that night I look round the corner before I put the light off, I looked at it, and I just remember thinking my god it looks disgusting, you know. Turned the light off, locked up and we left.

 

                        ADRIAN

This is your house or your…?

 

                        SPYROS

No was Michelle’s house right… she had a house which was being renovated and it was on… in the middle floor in this house in one of the big rooms. So we made the set within this room. That night there was a burglary.

 

                        ADRIAN

No!

 

                        SPYROS

Right, no word of a lie, somebody had broken in they’d gone through the building. Alright? Imagine this, nothing to see you know. They’ve opened the door and they’ve looked in there and they must have shit themselves right. They’ve seen, what looks like, a dead body cut to pieces right? And they’re just gone, right? Now it was never reported to the police they was no nothing… Somebody somewhere out there is telling the story right where they’ve gone in and seen this situation and we were complete… we said, “That’s it games up. Games up now.” If the police are called in, we’re going to have to say we are making a film they are gonna see the foo…, that’s it, it’s over, right? Nothing. So we waited. I said, “There’s no point in doing it now let’s just wait and see what happens.” I said to John, “You carry on making the next alien. Right?”

 

                        ADRIAN

So you were just going to use the same technique as you made on the first one?

 

                        SPYROS

Exactly the same thing.

 

                        ADRIAN

And how did you make it?

    

                        SPYROS

What happened was John first of all brought in his son who was I think seven at the time. But they are they are twins a boy and a girl. They’re just massive. The gene pool from the mother’s side, everyone is seven foot tall. So these kids at seven or eight years old were like twelve year olds. Anyway so his son come in, and he’d just be lying there and John first of all moulded Michael. And then what he did was he made a cast of Michael’s body. And then he sculpted clay over the top of it to create the new features and created the alien features…

 

                        ADRIAN

Brilliant.

 

 

…And to say brilliant the man is the most talented person you’ve ever met in your life. He is the most underrated…

 

                        ADRIAN

Oh no…

 

                        SPYROS

… Right because nobody… I don’t think anyone’s really appreciated. I think people appreciated him because he worked on Troy, he worked on Alexander, he worked on Rob Roy.

 

                        ADRIAN

Doing what?

 

                        SPYROS

Sculpting, sculpting special effects… Right so he’s worked for the best, major feature films. People know what he is worth but he’s never got recognition for it. He did Max Headroom, which was a person in the eighties, and it won a BAFTA and because people thought it was a computer-generated animation the person that did the lines behind Max Headroom won the BAFTA. John for a whole decade, for that whole decade in the eighties got nothing in recognition right. And in the second decade, nineties, alien autopsy John got no recognition. Two decades, two images that rocked the world right? And this man’s behind them and that’s just not fair.

 

                        ADRIAN

Has he made money?

 

                        SPYROS

John is an artist I think by default and I think it’s in the union rules you’re not allowed to make money if you’re an artist. He makes a living, he’s made money in the past, he’s never made what he’s worth.

 

                        ADRIAN

He’s made the alien.

 

                        SPYROS

Yeah. I’m hoping he’ll make some money now. But, as I say, I’ve worked in the film industry to TV, 25 years I’ve never met anyone with his talent. And as I say a key part of John, John helped me build the set. I helped him build the alien between us we created 30 people jobs on our own with Michelle. I mean what a team and to bring those people together to create this illusion…

 

                        ADRIAN

And was Ray involved in this bit of it?

 

                        SPYROS

Ray, Ray kept a keen eye over the whole proceedings he popped in…

 

                        ADRIAN

He was funding it I presume?

 

                        SPYROS

Sorry?

 

                        ADRIAN

He was funding it?

 

                        SPYROS

Yeah he actually got money from somewhere, em and it wasn’t anywhere near what it would have cost. I mean… we got paid… 

 

 

                        ADRIAN

OK…