Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever Matt Singer | Putnam | Oct. 2023 | 352 pages | ISBN: 9780593540152 | $29 Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert spent so long reviewing movies on television that, when Siskel died in 1999, I could not remember a time when I hadn’t watched them. They started their first review program six years before I was born (I’m 42), and as far back as I can remember, I can still picture my parents tuning in to hear about the newest movies—movies that, for the most part, they would only see on rented VHS tapes, months later. I tended to prefer Ebert to Siskel, not for any dramatic reason except that my local paper carried Ebert’s print reviews but not Siskel’s, so I felt like I understood his thinking more. Even when I was a teenager, Siskel & Ebert was still appointment viewing, and I recall setting extra time on the VCR to record the show when the local ABC affiliate’s sports coverage pushed it to odd hours of afternoon or overnight and we weren’t sure exactly when it would start.
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Grusch, who lives in California, previously received car service from a UFO documentary crew when he testified before a subcommittee of the House of Representatives this summer. With his documented support from wealthy, jet-setting ufologists like Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp and extreme popularity among UFO fanatics, Grusch should have had no trouble raising money for a flight to D.C. He could, for example, have started a GoFundMe, which probably would have raised the money in a few hours. Or he could have NewsNation or a documentary crew arrange travel while filming him. But, sadly, Grusch just won’t share the world-changing truths about the most earth-shattering revelation in human history because a senator from a state where Grusch doesn’t live won’t give him a free plane ticket. Amazing how often a die-hard commitment to bettering humanity through Disclosure (as Grusch claimed to the Washington Post recently) runs aground on the shores of minor inconvenience.
UPDATE: Grusch let it be known through anonymous “friends late Tuesday that he paid his own way in July and has the money to pay again, claiming that Gillibrand was “misinformed” about the reasons he had not yet spoken in a SCIF. The History Channel has canceled the semi-annual Alien Con after nearly a decade. A representative told New York Post journalist Steven Greenstreet that the company would instead focus on its Ancient Aliens and Secret of Skinwalker Ranch touring live shows because they make more money. “We make money on the tours,” a spokesperson for History’s parent company, A+E Networks, said. And of course they do. The traveling shows feature a few guys sitting in chairs, and even orthopedic chairs cost less than all the overhead that goes into putting on a full convention with all the trimmings, especially as the shows’ ratings decline and the incentive to travel a thousand miles to a convention declines. It’s much easier to get casually interested audiences to go to a local show.
Note: This essay is cross-posted in my Substack newsletter. This past weekend, Tom DeLonge, the punk rocker and UFO media entrepreneur, released his first feature film, Monsters of California, direct to streaming. DeLonge served as both director and co-writer of the film, which follows a teenage boy and his friends as they investigate conspiracies about aliens and the paranormal around San Diego only for the hero to achieve New Age enlightenment through realizing his place in the cosmos. Indifferently acted and roughly written, the movie is an amateurish production all the way around, the New Age equivalent of those Christian “movies” that badly approximate a Hollywood production. Like those evangelical films, Monsters also has a spiritual message, that all is consciousness, we are but specks a pantheistic tapestry, and that “advanced” aliens are our teachers and guides toward enlightenment.
This week, the Washington Post offered a thoughtful account of how so-called “UFO whistleblower” David Grusch ended up testifying before Congress. The story itself didn’t tell us much that we didn’t already know, but the new details were intriguing. First, there is the obvious: Grusch declined to sit for an interview with the Post and instead has devoted his time to largely uncritical UFO podcasts and YouTube channels. A serious man with serious evidence should, in theory, be sitting with the biggest media outlets to get his story out, especially when they offer. And yet, Grusch isn’t. Indeed, he has not really ventured outside of the small network of ufologists who know and work with one another.
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AuthorI am an author and researcher focusing on pop culture, science, and history. Bylines: New Republic, Esquire, Slate, etc. There's more about me in the About Jason tab. Newsletters
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