The Paracast Newsletter
October 6, 2024
www.theparacast.com
Author and Movie Makeup Artist William Munns Reveals the Goods on the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot Film on The Paracast!
The Paracast is released every Sunday and available from our site, https://www.theparacast.com, your favorite podcast app, and the IRN Internet Radio Network. All episodes from 2022, 2023 and 2024 now feature better audio and fewer ads. We are also re-releasing some of our most popular classic episodes.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVEN'T SIGNED UP FOR THE PARACAST+ YET? PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARACAST+ SO YOU CAN SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE ULTIMATE PARACAST EXPERIENCE AT A SPECIAL LOW PRICE! We have another radio show and we’d love for you listen to it. So for a low subscription fee, you will receive access to an exclusive bonus podcast, After The Paracast, plus a special version of The Paracast with all the ads removed, when you join The Paracast+. We also offer a special RSS feed for easy updates of the latest episodes on your device. Episodes are now released 12-24 hours earlier. Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! For the easiest signup ever, please visit: https://www.theparacast.plus
This Week's Episode: Gene and cohost Tim Swartz present film makeup artist and creature maker William Munns. He has been fascinated all his life with cryptozoology, and in particular, Bigfoot, because of his work in films and with real apes. The most famous single piece of filmed material purported to be a Bigfoot is the Patterson-Gimlin film taken in 1967, and in the last 40 years, there has been an ongoing and still unresolved debate about whether the female figure seen in the film is a real primate of unknown species, or an ordinary human being wearing a fur suit. William put his research into a 2014 book called “When Roger Met Patty,” which details his analysis of the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film, addressing the question of hoax or fraud from the perspective of a professional makeup and creature effects designer, as well as the perspective of a vintage filmmaker. He started as a movie makeup artist when he was 20, and quickly gravitated toward the “creature” side of the field, doing prosthetics, masks, and makeup effects. William perfected doing film makeup and creatures were exacting in their nature, the kind of skills necessary for very realistic figures. He chose to expand his artistic range by applying the ultra-realistic techniques of film prosthetic work to the scientific discipline of reconstructing prehistoric creatures from fossil records, as well as exploring a new form of wildlife art, whereby living creatures were recreated with the highest museum taxidermy quality appearance, but without having to rely upon the skin, hide, fur or other remains of a dead animal to make the figure.
After The Paracast — Available exclusively for Paracast+ subscribers on October 6th: Film makeup artist and creature maker William Munns returns to talk in more detail with Gene and cohost Tim Swartz about his 2014 book, “When Roger Met Patty,” which details his analysis of the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film, addressing the question of hoax or fraud from the perspective of a professional makeup and creature effects designer, as well as the perspective of a vintage filmmaker. There will also be a discussion on the possible sources of Bigfoot appearances and, also, the techniques of creating ape costumes for films and TV shows. William began his professional life as a movie makeup artist when he was 20, and quickly gravitated toward the “creature” side of the field, doing prosthetics, masks, and makeup effects. He perfected doing film makeup and creatures were exacting in their nature, the kind of skills necessary for very realistic figures. He chose to expand his artistic range by applying the ultra-realistic techniques of film prosthetic work to the scientific discipline of reconstructing prehistoric creatures from fossil records, as well as exploring a new form of wildlife art, whereby living creatures were recreated with the highest museum taxidermy quality appearance, but without having to rely upon the skin, hide, fur or other remains of a dead animal to make the figure.
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums.
Disclosure Follies Revisited
By Gene Steinberg
If you can believe the hopes and dreams of UFO disclosure advocates over the years, the final revelations of the truth about the saucers are close. But no cigar. So close you could almost feel it, if you stretched your imagination.
In the 1950s, Major Donald E. Keyhoe pushed hard for the Silence Group to tell us its secrets. He even became took over a UFO club, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), and promised he was there to put them out of business as a result of the hoped for revelations.
Keyhoe was later ousted from NICAP because he was a poor manager, and the group went out of business some years later never having realized its goals.
UFO lobbyist Stephen Bassett has been at the game since the 1990s. He keeps giving us hopes and dreams that disclosure is just around the corner. But that corner is never turned.
The disclosure of a secret Pentagon UFO (make that UAP) program by The New York Times in 2017 made it seem ever more real. The story also made intelligence person Luis Elizondo famous for a little more than 15 minutes.
He became a fixture on cable news and reality shows covering UAPs. His recent book, “Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs,” even hit the very top of the vaunted Times best-seller list. At least for a week.
Then, as with films whose hype isn’t always realized, it dropped rapidly in hot potato fashion. That doesn’t mean nobody is buying it anymore. At Amazon, as of the time this column is being written, it was number one in these categories: UFOs, Unexplained Mysteries, and Astrophysics & Space Science. But among all books, it was stuck at 763.
This isn’t to say it’s a bad book or a poor seller. UFO books rarely achieve such high sales. Elizondo has suffered financially for his involvement in the field, he has a family to support, so he deserves to make a living at something he believes in.
At the same time, the entertainment industry has taken notice. Bassett has joined with Hollywood PR wiz Dan Harary and others involved in entertainment and the UFO field to create the Hollywood Disclosure Alliance. Even such long-time figures in the field as Richard Dolan, Nick Pope, filmmaker Ron James and even Paul Hynek (son of Dr. J. Allen Hynek) are involved.
Its mission: “By bringing UAP/ET researchers, authors, and experiencers together with content creators working across every aspect of the global entertainment spectrum, HDA is positioned to become ‘The Go-To Organization’ to close a long-standing gap created by a government-imposed truth embargo.”
Impressive? You bet.
But even if Hollywood productions adhere closer to confirmed UFO lore, that doesn’t mean it’s going to speed up actual disclosure. Sure, it may make the public more accepting assuming any of the resulting projects gain traction. While UFOs are already part of pop culture, it’s mostly as entertainment. While lots of people will agree that they might be real — and are no doubt extraterrestrial — that doesn’t make them an upfront and personal part of one’s existence. It’s just out there and not to be taken seriously as a daily presence.
Now as most listeners to The Paracast know, we’ve given disclosure promoters their say. For example, Stephen Bassett has been on the show a number of times making his unrealized pronouncements. He’s a nice enough guy that I hope he is someday successful in his quest before we’re all too old to care.
On the other hand, I have often felt that disclosure will come gradually, over the years, or maybe never. Perhaps one day we’ll awaken to find ourselves fully accepting of the reality of the UFOs.
Well, assuming they are actually extraterrestrial and not something beyond our cultural concepts or expectations. If it ends up that they are more arcane, abstract, maybe not. How would you explain our collective unconscious as a cause? How would you explain that maybe our imaginations are projecting an external phenomenon that seems all-too-real?
Or maybe, just maybe, the UFO phenomenon will itself evolve into something we cannot yet understand. Maybe there is another incomprehensible reason behind their presence.
So back in the 1960s, the infamous sci-fi and UFO originator Ray Palmer said the flying saucers were here to make us think. Now when I said that a few times on The Paracast, some of you suggested that I was just repeating myself with no import.
I am willing to accept the possibility that I’ve been wrong about all this.
But for the sake of argument, maybe Palmer was right after all. What do the saucers make us think about?
Obviously space travel. If they are from other planets, well certainly we should be able to someday travel to visit them. Perhaps join up with them to become part of the galactic community.
But if that’s true, we’re doing piss poor job at coping with our galactic destiny, so to speak.
In any case, perhaps it is meant for humans to become spacefaring. We are meant to journey to the stars some day. It may be for the sake of science, but it may also be an imperative that will require humans to leave planet Earth to preserve our civilization.
On the other hand, maybe we aren’t ready to know our future. The flying saucers may, in some other form, take us there, if that’s where we’re destined to go. But wouldn’t that mean that we have a destiny and it’s not all a bunch of random, unpredictable events that can take is anywhere without much control over our destiny?
This means we may be quite shortsighted about what the UFOs are. It may be all about the quest and not the destination, because there is no destination. Soon as we reach one possible goal, we are led to another, and another. And there it goes.
But I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. Maybe the initial belief of UFO reality was correct after all, and it’s just a matter of time until the Silence Group, the Legacy Program, or whatever they are, will decide that we can handle the truth.
Copyright 1999-2024 The Paracast Company. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!
October 6, 2024
www.theparacast.com
Author and Movie Makeup Artist William Munns Reveals the Goods on the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot Film on The Paracast!
The Paracast is released every Sunday and available from our site, https://www.theparacast.com, your favorite podcast app, and the IRN Internet Radio Network. All episodes from 2022, 2023 and 2024 now feature better audio and fewer ads. We are also re-releasing some of our most popular classic episodes.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVEN'T SIGNED UP FOR THE PARACAST+ YET? PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARACAST+ SO YOU CAN SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE ULTIMATE PARACAST EXPERIENCE AT A SPECIAL LOW PRICE! We have another radio show and we’d love for you listen to it. So for a low subscription fee, you will receive access to an exclusive bonus podcast, After The Paracast, plus a special version of The Paracast with all the ads removed, when you join The Paracast+. We also offer a special RSS feed for easy updates of the latest episodes on your device. Episodes are now released 12-24 hours earlier. Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! For the easiest signup ever, please visit: https://www.theparacast.plus
This Week's Episode: Gene and cohost Tim Swartz present film makeup artist and creature maker William Munns. He has been fascinated all his life with cryptozoology, and in particular, Bigfoot, because of his work in films and with real apes. The most famous single piece of filmed material purported to be a Bigfoot is the Patterson-Gimlin film taken in 1967, and in the last 40 years, there has been an ongoing and still unresolved debate about whether the female figure seen in the film is a real primate of unknown species, or an ordinary human being wearing a fur suit. William put his research into a 2014 book called “When Roger Met Patty,” which details his analysis of the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film, addressing the question of hoax or fraud from the perspective of a professional makeup and creature effects designer, as well as the perspective of a vintage filmmaker. He started as a movie makeup artist when he was 20, and quickly gravitated toward the “creature” side of the field, doing prosthetics, masks, and makeup effects. William perfected doing film makeup and creatures were exacting in their nature, the kind of skills necessary for very realistic figures. He chose to expand his artistic range by applying the ultra-realistic techniques of film prosthetic work to the scientific discipline of reconstructing prehistoric creatures from fossil records, as well as exploring a new form of wildlife art, whereby living creatures were recreated with the highest museum taxidermy quality appearance, but without having to rely upon the skin, hide, fur or other remains of a dead animal to make the figure.
After The Paracast — Available exclusively for Paracast+ subscribers on October 6th: Film makeup artist and creature maker William Munns returns to talk in more detail with Gene and cohost Tim Swartz about his 2014 book, “When Roger Met Patty,” which details his analysis of the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film, addressing the question of hoax or fraud from the perspective of a professional makeup and creature effects designer, as well as the perspective of a vintage filmmaker. There will also be a discussion on the possible sources of Bigfoot appearances and, also, the techniques of creating ape costumes for films and TV shows. William began his professional life as a movie makeup artist when he was 20, and quickly gravitated toward the “creature” side of the field, doing prosthetics, masks, and makeup effects. He perfected doing film makeup and creatures were exacting in their nature, the kind of skills necessary for very realistic figures. He chose to expand his artistic range by applying the ultra-realistic techniques of film prosthetic work to the scientific discipline of reconstructing prehistoric creatures from fossil records, as well as exploring a new form of wildlife art, whereby living creatures were recreated with the highest museum taxidermy quality appearance, but without having to rely upon the skin, hide, fur or other remains of a dead animal to make the figure.
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums.
Disclosure Follies Revisited
By Gene Steinberg
If you can believe the hopes and dreams of UFO disclosure advocates over the years, the final revelations of the truth about the saucers are close. But no cigar. So close you could almost feel it, if you stretched your imagination.
In the 1950s, Major Donald E. Keyhoe pushed hard for the Silence Group to tell us its secrets. He even became took over a UFO club, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), and promised he was there to put them out of business as a result of the hoped for revelations.
Keyhoe was later ousted from NICAP because he was a poor manager, and the group went out of business some years later never having realized its goals.
UFO lobbyist Stephen Bassett has been at the game since the 1990s. He keeps giving us hopes and dreams that disclosure is just around the corner. But that corner is never turned.
The disclosure of a secret Pentagon UFO (make that UAP) program by The New York Times in 2017 made it seem ever more real. The story also made intelligence person Luis Elizondo famous for a little more than 15 minutes.
He became a fixture on cable news and reality shows covering UAPs. His recent book, “Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs,” even hit the very top of the vaunted Times best-seller list. At least for a week.
Then, as with films whose hype isn’t always realized, it dropped rapidly in hot potato fashion. That doesn’t mean nobody is buying it anymore. At Amazon, as of the time this column is being written, it was number one in these categories: UFOs, Unexplained Mysteries, and Astrophysics & Space Science. But among all books, it was stuck at 763.
This isn’t to say it’s a bad book or a poor seller. UFO books rarely achieve such high sales. Elizondo has suffered financially for his involvement in the field, he has a family to support, so he deserves to make a living at something he believes in.
At the same time, the entertainment industry has taken notice. Bassett has joined with Hollywood PR wiz Dan Harary and others involved in entertainment and the UFO field to create the Hollywood Disclosure Alliance. Even such long-time figures in the field as Richard Dolan, Nick Pope, filmmaker Ron James and even Paul Hynek (son of Dr. J. Allen Hynek) are involved.
Its mission: “By bringing UAP/ET researchers, authors, and experiencers together with content creators working across every aspect of the global entertainment spectrum, HDA is positioned to become ‘The Go-To Organization’ to close a long-standing gap created by a government-imposed truth embargo.”
Impressive? You bet.
But even if Hollywood productions adhere closer to confirmed UFO lore, that doesn’t mean it’s going to speed up actual disclosure. Sure, it may make the public more accepting assuming any of the resulting projects gain traction. While UFOs are already part of pop culture, it’s mostly as entertainment. While lots of people will agree that they might be real — and are no doubt extraterrestrial — that doesn’t make them an upfront and personal part of one’s existence. It’s just out there and not to be taken seriously as a daily presence.
Now as most listeners to The Paracast know, we’ve given disclosure promoters their say. For example, Stephen Bassett has been on the show a number of times making his unrealized pronouncements. He’s a nice enough guy that I hope he is someday successful in his quest before we’re all too old to care.
On the other hand, I have often felt that disclosure will come gradually, over the years, or maybe never. Perhaps one day we’ll awaken to find ourselves fully accepting of the reality of the UFOs.
Well, assuming they are actually extraterrestrial and not something beyond our cultural concepts or expectations. If it ends up that they are more arcane, abstract, maybe not. How would you explain our collective unconscious as a cause? How would you explain that maybe our imaginations are projecting an external phenomenon that seems all-too-real?
Or maybe, just maybe, the UFO phenomenon will itself evolve into something we cannot yet understand. Maybe there is another incomprehensible reason behind their presence.
So back in the 1960s, the infamous sci-fi and UFO originator Ray Palmer said the flying saucers were here to make us think. Now when I said that a few times on The Paracast, some of you suggested that I was just repeating myself with no import.
I am willing to accept the possibility that I’ve been wrong about all this.
But for the sake of argument, maybe Palmer was right after all. What do the saucers make us think about?
Obviously space travel. If they are from other planets, well certainly we should be able to someday travel to visit them. Perhaps join up with them to become part of the galactic community.
But if that’s true, we’re doing piss poor job at coping with our galactic destiny, so to speak.
In any case, perhaps it is meant for humans to become spacefaring. We are meant to journey to the stars some day. It may be for the sake of science, but it may also be an imperative that will require humans to leave planet Earth to preserve our civilization.
On the other hand, maybe we aren’t ready to know our future. The flying saucers may, in some other form, take us there, if that’s where we’re destined to go. But wouldn’t that mean that we have a destiny and it’s not all a bunch of random, unpredictable events that can take is anywhere without much control over our destiny?
This means we may be quite shortsighted about what the UFOs are. It may be all about the quest and not the destination, because there is no destination. Soon as we reach one possible goal, we are led to another, and another. And there it goes.
But I shouldn’t get ahead of myself. Maybe the initial belief of UFO reality was correct after all, and it’s just a matter of time until the Silence Group, the Legacy Program, or whatever they are, will decide that we can handle the truth.
Copyright 1999-2024 The Paracast Company. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!