Your
Host Eamonn
The following is a transcript of the questions that were asked of Santilli and the others who appeared on the show. This is not a complete transcript. I'm making this information available to researchers as a way for them to have easy access to their words. And to the people who have not seen Part One of the planned 2 part series.
Eamonn: Who sold you the film?
Santilli: The cameraman.
Eamonn: What's his name?
Santilli: I'm not telling you.
Eamonn: Why not?
Santilli: Because, at the time, it was a promise, at the beginning that I wouldn't disclose his name and I never have.
Eamonn: So where do you fit into the whole operation?
Shoefield: I was actually with Ray in Cleveland and he disappeared for a couple of days. I didn't know where is was gone or what he was doing. And it turned out he went down to Florida to see the cameraman. I knew nothing of this at the time. And after the event, he told me where he'd been and what he'd seen.
Santilli: There were 22 reels of film, which probably ran for about 4 or 5 minutes each, they were very small reels.
Shoefield: I just remember how clear in his mind he was that this guy was real.
Santilli: You know, if you walk into someone's house, and you see the way they live, the pictures on the wall, you meet their wife, you have an absolute understanding, from the moment you walk through that door if they're genuine or not.
Eamonn: You didn't leave with the film that night?
Santilli: No.
Eamonn: Why not?
Santilli: He was a tough cookie.
Eamonn: So who long did it take you top negotiate the deal with him?
Santilli: About 2 years.. Eventually... We didn't have the cash at the time and it was... It's a subject which you can't really go to the bank and take a loan out for it. You know, it was just one of those things where, when the time was right, and we had the cash, we could then take the punt.
Eamonn: How much cash did you pay him? Can you disclose that?
Santilli: It wouldn't be proper for me to tell.
Eamonn: And was this a small amount of money? A medium amount? A large amount? A massive amount of money?
Santilli: In your terms not a lot of money.
Santilli: We gave that film to broadcasters purely on the condition that they investigate it. We didn't care if they said the film was genuine or not, I banked of broadcasters doing the professional job they do, in stirring up the public and investigating. I did bank on the fact that they would kick this into gear and they did.
Santilli: He opened the canisters in 1992 and for a period of two years... It had unfortunately, it had humidity and heat to deal with and the film just oxidized. It came off in your hand, as you looked at this film, you hands would be black.
Shoefield: I was in his office when the box arrived with all the film cans. The thing that sticks in my memory was the smell. And obviously it turned out we had a hell of a problem here.
Eamonn: So this business deal that took you two years to negotiate, suddenly had just crumbled in your fingers.
Santilli: That's why I'm not a good business man. It was a bad purchase.
Shoefield: I think Ray's other main concern was that he had raised the money, bought these, and very much from good faith and good memory, and unfortunately what turned up was not what he had seen in terms of the quality of the image.
Santilli: I didn't fake alien footage.
Eamonn: I didn't suggest you did...
Santilli: No... We restored it.
Eamonn: Restored it... Restored it from what?
Santilli: From very poor imagery, to something who've seen today that has become very famous. It's no different from someone restoring a work of art like the Mona Lisa or the Sistine Chapel.
Shoefield: Hoax would be your word, not mine.
Eamonn: What would you describe it as?
Shoefield: It was clearly a restoration of existing materials.
Eamonn: Clearly.
Shoefield: Clearly.
Shoefield: Something like this comes along once in a lifetime and I think we had a responsibility to take this message and what we've seen and deliver it to the public in the best way that we could. So although Ray was very tempted to walk away, and I didn't blame him, we decided fairly quickly to see if there was anyway we could make this work.
Eamonn: Who much of the original film survived?
Santilli: Of the physical film, all of it. But, The quality of it... dreadful, and a few frames here and there. And it was from those frames that we were able to reconstruct and restore.
Eamonn: So where did actually shoot your restoration? Was it in a studio? Was it in America? Was it in Britain, Where did it happen?
Santilli: It was in London. Just off of Camdone South. It was in a small flat. We'd converted a living room and that became the set for the autopsy. Materials came in from all over the world.
Eamonn: Who starred in your film?
Shoefield: I can't tell you all the people who appeared in it but... certainly...
Eamonn: Are you there?
Shoefield: Yes! I'm there and two or three other people. The suits were so uncomfortable and so had that we had to keep swapping around and you could only do it for so long.
Eamonn: Who owned the flat?
Santilli: The flat was owned by a member of the team. Or a family of the member of the team. It was an empty flat.
Eamonn: And when you were filming your reconstruction, how conceived were you that is was going to work?
Shoefield: I think the end results speak for itself. It's fantastic and maybe I should have had more faith in the people around me at the time because I just didn't know how it was going to turn out. But it was a marvelous, marvelous piece or work.
John Humphreys: I got a call from a friend of mine, he doesn't wish to be named at the moment. He asked me could I make something for a.. work for Gary and Ray? And I said yeah I would.
Eamonn: And that something turned out to be, you're telling me, the alien in the autopsy?
John Humphreys: Yeah.
Eamonn: How long did it take you to actually create the alien we saw in the film?
John Humphreys: About 3 1/2 weeks. Including sculpting, molding, casting, painting, preparing the effects.
Eamonn: Who's the doctor? Who carrying out the autopsy?
Santilli: That's John.
John Humphreys: I did the effects on the alien that I created.
John Humphreys: Your always worried on the day that it's not going to bleed right, it's going to look stupid, it's not going to look real, there's going to be some silly mistake, you can see what's being done. And so all that's going through your mind, all the time. So you're quite focused. But at the same time, you can't help but stop and have a laugh now and again, getting those outfits off that you couldn't breath in, at all, and get some air and a drink. Go and listen, catch up on some football on the radio in the back room, things like that. It was quite a fun atmosphere, really good fun.
Eamonn: How did you get the anatomy right? This thing bled.
John Humphreys: Yes, well that was the old butchers blood trick. You basically take a knife, put some blood on one side, turn it away from camera and then draw it, use it like a quill. And as you draw the knife across the surface, it looks as if it's bleeding. It couldn't be more simple.
Eamonn: This alien had brains, it had entrails...
John Humphreys: It had sheep's brains, and chicken entrails.
Shoefield: The smell was awful.
Santilli: The smell will live with me for ever.
Shoefield: It was horrendous.
John Humphreys: We got some sheep's brains and set them in jelly. And for the leg wound I used a sheep's knuckle joint.
Eamonn: Where did you get those from?
John Humphreys: From butchers in Smithfield Market near where I live. My mate Trevor.
Eamonn: So what about after filming? What did they do with the evidence? Then to keep this secret you have to dispose of the body. What happened there?
John Humphreys: The body was cut up into small bits and burnt.
Santilli: basically cut them up into small pieces in bin liners and spread them across London.
Eamonn: Bodies plural?
Santilli: Yes, we did two autopsy's, the first one went wrong.
Eamonn: What about the care and attention with the film making equipment. Say, the camera that you used?
Santilli: We went to a great deal of trouble to get the right camera, the correct film stock, and we went through a great deal of effort to get the right materials. And they couldn't look like antiques because 50 years ago, 60 years ago, these instruments, surgical instruments, they had to be new.
Eamonn: What are we seeing here?
Santilli: It's footage that has been termed Debris Footage. At the time of the crash, he not only filmed the autopsy but he had filmed the crash site itself, the removal of the bodies, and the removal of debris.
Eamonn: And you're saying that is original film? That survived?
Santilli: That did not survive. That was in the same state as the original footage, and what you see there is a re creation.
Eamonn: And John, were you behind the re creation of that?
John Humphreys: Yes, I made some of the debris footage, yeah.
Eamonn: Had you any interpretation or was there any guidance from Ray and Gary as to what you were supposed to be re creating? What purpose, what use it had? It seems very specific, I mean you got symbols there, you've got language there for instance.
John Humphreys: Some of the symbols were available to look at from stills that were provided.
Santilli: We're not expert enough to know the original hieroglyphic's were, and in fact the imagery wasn't that clearly defied for us to be able to emulate them.
Eamonn: The palm prints, what's that about?
Santilli: Yeah, (laughs) that was, probably a little bit of artistic license.
Eamonn: How much of the 1947 film was in the 1995 hoax?
Santilli: I'd say probably less than 5%.
Eamonn: Can you identify that 5%?
Santilli: I think as you go through it, as you watch carefully, you can see when it starts to fade out and light out and see flares coming, I thinks it's... yeah.
Eamonn: How many reels of the original film have you got?
Santilli: I took 22 reels off the original cameraman, and that's what we brought back to London..
Eamonn: And where is that film now?
Santilli: The film now, for the most part, is in Germany.
Santilli: I supposed in hindsight, being as exact as it is, we can look at all of this now and maybe say that maybe we were a touchy responsible to do what we did. And maybe we should have just taken the original film and just put it out there. We weren't, I wasn't involved in the world of Ufology, my concern were strictly commercial at the time because it was a great opportunity. And I was looking at footage which was really a difficult sell, and I thought, well, if were going to make any money out of it, then we need to find a different answer, which is why we restored it.
Santilli: I use the example of the Italian Job or Ocean's 11. You know, but it was like that. Everyone had a valuable contribution, it was a military exercise. And, right the way through, from start to finish, it went through flawless.
Eamonn: Well Ray, it's been some experience. And it's a story that's not over yet. Any regrets? Any thing you'd do differently?
Santilli: The regret is that the original film didn't survive.
Shoefield: I'm certainly proud that we were able to bring something of that magnitude to the world in a form that they could understand. And it's something that tell me that there is life from other planets.
Eamonn: You say that now you're telling the truth about the hoax...
Santilli: ... it's not a hoax, it's a restoration.
Eamonn: You might be telling the truth about the hoax about the restoration. This could go on forever.
Santilli: Yeah great. Long may it continue.
END