Hollywood has been fascinated with UFOs and little green men for as long as the motion picture has existing. At various times the genre has reached manic levels with multiple films being released at the same time. Typically in summer blockbuster style. Whether it’s alien invasions or exploring the outer reaches of space and finding something out of this world, the public has devoured it. In 1977 filmmaker Steven Spielberg released his science fiction classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind about an average guy in Indiana whose life is turned upside down after an encounter with a UFO. The film was a critical and financial success eventually grossing over $300 million world wide. Or the equivalent of 1.2 billion today. Interestingly, in 2007 the Library of Congress deemed the film culturally and historically significant and preserved it as part of the National Film Registry. But what if the film were not a work of fiction and instead was based on actual events? In 1971 writer and filmmaker, Robert Emenegger was approached by President Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign, the Republican Party and the US Department of Defense (DOD) to produce a documentary film about UFO’s using only official DOD and NASA source material. In other words, real footage of UFO encounters provided by the US Government. Part of the promised footage was to be of a 1964 landing at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. Unfortunately at the eleventh hour access was rescinded and the footage was never provided. The answer given was that the public was not ready for the reveal that UFOs are real and that the film was not expected to help Nixon’s re-election chances. Emenegger ultimately completed his film minus the special footage and released it as UFOs: Past, Present, and Future. The movie was based on his 1975 published book of the same name. According to Emenegger he had given a copy of the book to Steven Spielberg and only 2 years later when Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released the film’s finale of the UFO landing at Devils Tower, Wyoming was eerily similar to the reported Holloman Air Force Base footage described in the book and recreated in the documentary movie.

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