Close Encounters and E.T. director makes major UFO admission

Aliens have long been a fascination of the legendary filmmaker.

Spielberg has been fascinated by extraterrestrials for decades. On top of the aforementioned movies, his debut feature film from 1964 (now lost), Firelight, was about alien abductions.

Aliens also play a major role in several of his later works. Examples include 2005's War of the Worlds, 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and his latest film, Disclosure Day, which is in cinemas now and stars Ireland's own Eve Hewson.

The legendary filmmaker said: "Well, it was just that things had been percolating. There had been so many more videos backing up eyewitness testimony and creating more credibility among the witness base once the smartphone came into real existence with the iPhone. Once you went from the BlackBerry to that, everything kind of changed.

"Long before that [New York Times] story, people were starting to come forward. The witnesses have been coming forward ever since Roswell. I mean, Hollywood made a lot of movies about UFOs, in those days called flying saucers… This was in the 50s, early 50s.

"It's not that everything started in 2017… The New York Times, when Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean wrote their story... All of a sudden, because it was the New York Times, because they gave the story such prominence, everybody suddenly started to wake up from the malaise of the National Enquirer sensationalised reportage about UFOs for the last 80 years.

"Suddenly, this was an august paper, perhaps one of the greatest papers, giving us this information.

"But I really feel that things started to get into the mainstream. And then after that, there were a lot of documentaries being made, and I saw all of them, every doc made about this.

"You can't make a doc unless people come forward. Now it's not under oath. You're giving testimony to a documentary crew, but a lot of people from Congress, from the military, started coming forward."

Despite this, Spielberg told The Daily he did not talk to any of those whistleblowers in preparation for Disclosure Day.

"I actually purposely stayed away from that… because I wrote a story," he explained. "My story is a science fiction story, but the foundation upon which I built my science fiction story is a very, very credible foundation just based on everything that I've absorbed over many, many decades, but especially over the last, I would say, decade."

As for the classic design of the aliens that feature in his new film, Spielberg told The Daily: "I had to base our aliens on what people have reported who claim to have had close encounters with the third kind.

"There is a consistency in the reporting. There is circumstantial evidence from tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people who have claimed, not just in America but all over the world, to have seen something or met people who have seen things.

"Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind [is] you go back, and you investigate what Doctor [John E.] Mack investigated himself from Harvard. He went to Zimbabwe to the aerial school where 65 school children saw a craft land and saw beings come out of that craft. They all described the eyes that were completely hypnotic, and the eyes were wrap-around eyes like Ray-Ban's, from the sides of the head, almost touching.

"That is something that is completely part of ufology. The whole mythology, if you don't believe it, or the science if you do, of what these off-world entities appear like."

Spielberg also described the "incredible plethora of visual documentation" about aliens as "compelling and convincing."

Describing how his attitude on the topic has changed since he made Close Encounters back in the '70s, he said: "I was of a mind to state: 'Seeing is believing.'

"I don't understand why [aliens] haven't come to me yet. I feel like their agent. And yet, I haven't even seen 10% of flyovers," he joked.

"However, having said that, I now believe the believers."

Also on the press tour for Disclosure Day, Spielberg denied that Disclosure Day was made in collaboration with "deep state factions" that may be hoping to expose an alien cover-up.

"Am I starting to believe that? Yes, I am. However, I made this movie independent of any influence except what I know and what I've been following for the last seven decades."

Host Sean Fennessey responded: "So, you're saying you didn't do it with them, but maybe they have a point?"

Spielberg said back, laughing: "Perhaps, they do."

JOE can check out JOE's enthusiastic review for Disclosure Day right here.