1 00:00:00,650 --> 00:00:07,550 In June 1947, an unidentified flying object crashed northwest of Roswell, New 2 00:00:07,550 --> 00:00:08,550 Mexico. 3 00:00:08,910 --> 00:00:15,430 What precisely some probably superior being was doing, piloting a probably 4 00:00:15,430 --> 00:00:20,590 expensive spacecraft over a remote, though cynically notable portion of a 5 00:00:20,590 --> 00:00:25,010 probably a good number of light years away from its home world, is something 6 00:00:25,010 --> 00:00:26,870 this movie is about. 7 00:01:15,050 --> 00:01:18,050 Dear Secret Diary, Hi, this is Bill again. 8 00:01:18,330 --> 00:01:20,470 Having a secret diary sure is fun. 9 00:01:22,170 --> 00:01:27,570 Anyway, I got lost today, which I realized is a lot like having amnesia. 10 00:01:31,470 --> 00:01:36,430 See, it's like you'll pass all these road signs and landmarks and all this 11 00:01:36,430 --> 00:01:40,430 you normally pass on the road. And you know this stuff is probably really 12 00:01:40,430 --> 00:01:44,850 important, but when you get amnesia, You just can't say why it's important 13 00:01:44,850 --> 00:01:45,850 anymore. 14 00:01:51,930 --> 00:01:57,070 It seems that people in movies who get amnesia always remember too much. Like 15 00:01:57,070 --> 00:02:01,650 they realize they're amnesiacs, but it seems amnesia should encompass its own 16 00:02:01,650 --> 00:02:02,650 condition, right? 17 00:02:02,770 --> 00:02:08,669 So a real amnesiac forgets he's forgotten anything, and he goes on with 18 00:02:08,669 --> 00:02:12,010 having forgotten that there's all this stuff he was supposed to remember. 19 00:02:24,600 --> 00:02:26,720 Amnesia is what brings me to New Mexico. 20 00:02:27,360 --> 00:02:32,060 To have a theory that what got that UFO pilot into the mess he got into back in 21 00:02:32,060 --> 00:02:37,800 47 had something to do with forgetting where he was going, or why he was going 22 00:02:37,800 --> 00:02:40,920 there, or what he was doing going anywhere at all. 23 00:02:59,180 --> 00:03:04,640 Roswell, New Mexico is home to the UFO Enigma Museum and Outer Limits Video 24 00:03:04,640 --> 00:03:05,640 Shop. 25 00:03:12,580 --> 00:03:17,260 Most people think the enigmatic thing about the Roswell crash has something to 26 00:03:17,260 --> 00:03:21,520 do with the nature of the thing that smashed into that ranch northwest of 27 00:03:21,700 --> 00:03:25,000 whether it was a weather balloon or a spy satellite. 28 00:03:25,690 --> 00:03:28,350 or some secret CIA mind experiment. 29 00:03:28,990 --> 00:03:31,210 But really, that's not all that important. 30 00:03:31,710 --> 00:03:37,430 The real enigma here is why that UFO pilot was flying around Roswell in the 31 00:03:37,430 --> 00:03:38,430 first place. 32 00:03:40,530 --> 00:03:46,850 What was he doing out here under the big blue yawn of the sky, flying over 33 00:03:46,850 --> 00:03:51,830 ranches and long, lonely highways and barbed wire fences? 34 00:03:53,200 --> 00:03:57,540 What brought a cosmic tourist out here of all places, and what brought him 35 00:03:57,760 --> 00:04:01,180 What made him crash up and screw up his vacation? 36 00:04:04,040 --> 00:04:07,300 And did it have something to do with the sorghum fields? 37 00:04:12,500 --> 00:04:17,519 Or the old grain elevators that sit idle by idle railroad tracks? 38 00:04:25,420 --> 00:04:30,860 did have something to do with high technology in the 21st century disguised 39 00:04:30,860 --> 00:04:33,320 row after row of telephone poles. 40 00:04:41,880 --> 00:04:48,580 I sometimes think that UFO wasn't being piloted by a star man at all, but by a 41 00:04:48,580 --> 00:04:50,220 boy, a star boy. 42 00:04:51,560 --> 00:04:55,700 And maybe he'd borrowed Dad's spaceship, and he was out joyriding through the 43 00:04:55,700 --> 00:05:00,280 cosmos. And who knows, maybe he got lost, and he was looking at a map, and 44 00:05:00,280 --> 00:05:02,820 that's when he lost control and lost his UFO. 45 00:05:28,240 --> 00:05:33,180 The curator of the Enigma Museum didn't have much to say about my UFO theories, 46 00:05:33,400 --> 00:05:36,280 but he did agree to take my picture in front of the aliens. 47 00:05:39,580 --> 00:05:40,960 It was sort of creepy. 48 00:05:52,440 --> 00:05:56,840 Dear Secret Diary, Driving is real purposeful. 49 00:05:57,340 --> 00:06:00,700 what with the speed and the destinations and the itineraries. 50 00:06:00,940 --> 00:06:02,780 It's mostly really straight ahead. 51 00:06:07,740 --> 00:06:13,000 And maybe a driver hopes his purposefulness behind the wheel will 52 00:06:13,000 --> 00:06:17,120 world he travels through so that the world and the traveler are suddenly in 53 00:06:17,120 --> 00:06:18,120 sync. 54 00:06:18,280 --> 00:06:22,400 And I was thinking, maybe there's a more advanced species of travelers, 55 00:06:22,600 --> 00:06:28,320 namely... time travelers who find traveling so excellent and exciting 56 00:06:28,320 --> 00:06:33,340 they start to convince themselves that time itself conspires with them. And 57 00:06:33,340 --> 00:06:38,600 somehow time's vast span had these time travelers in mind when it decided to 58 00:06:38,600 --> 00:06:39,760 lurch into motion. 59 00:06:48,240 --> 00:06:52,420 Then I was thinking, somewhere in the universe, there's probably postcards 60 00:06:52,420 --> 00:06:57,440 say, greetings from the future, wish you were here, which, if you think about it 61 00:06:57,440 --> 00:07:02,480 too long, begins to sound less like a friendly greeting and more like a 62 00:07:02,480 --> 00:07:03,520 of your own mortality. 63 00:07:31,240 --> 00:07:35,440 UFOs and space aliens get a lot of bad press, which is pretty unfair. 64 00:07:37,820 --> 00:07:44,200 After all, UFOs are just events that transform, not unlike volcanic eruptions 65 00:07:44,200 --> 00:07:45,200 plate tectonics. 66 00:07:45,760 --> 00:07:50,940 And the geography UFOs transform is in our heads or in our hearts. 67 00:08:00,840 --> 00:08:06,240 UFOs can make an otherwise boring day really exciting or an otherwise ordinary 68 00:08:06,240 --> 00:08:07,900 life suddenly extraordinary. 69 00:08:12,740 --> 00:08:18,060 UFOs offer the possibility that even the most average or ordinary life could be 70 00:08:18,060 --> 00:08:20,240 the subject of a TV mini -series. 71 00:08:37,580 --> 00:08:39,799 is the real enemy, not space aliens. 72 00:08:41,020 --> 00:08:45,400 Time abducts our memories. It turns our brains into mush. 73 00:08:45,660 --> 00:08:48,780 It performs creepy experiments on our bodies. 74 00:08:49,460 --> 00:08:52,980 Time conspires to make us all amnesiacs. 75 00:09:04,170 --> 00:09:08,710 One day, time will make every road map in the known universe obsolete and 76 00:09:08,710 --> 00:09:11,050 useless, and then we'll all get lost. 77 00:09:25,450 --> 00:09:30,010 On the road to Corona, I remembered a really sad story. 78 00:09:32,270 --> 00:09:36,730 It was about a woman who lived on the New Mexico range during the pioneer 79 00:09:37,070 --> 00:09:42,230 and the story goes that this woman lived alone in some ranch house far from 80 00:09:42,230 --> 00:09:47,470 anyone, and spent her days composing elaborate love letters, which, on 81 00:09:47,470 --> 00:09:53,210 completion, she would carry outside and set adrift on the interminable wind that 82 00:09:53,210 --> 00:09:55,770 blusters and blows over this land. 83 00:10:06,160 --> 00:10:10,940 off cowboys would occasionally find her letters tangled in the scrub or caught 84 00:10:10,940 --> 00:10:14,920 on some barbed wire, but they never knew where the letters came from. 85 00:10:16,800 --> 00:10:21,880 So on the road to Corona, I began to think maybe one of these letters got 86 00:10:21,880 --> 00:10:26,580 in some violent updraft and drifted to that star boy's far off world. 87 00:10:26,920 --> 00:10:32,920 And maybe the star boy went looking for this woman as lost in space as he was. 88 00:10:42,790 --> 00:10:49,030 There's an irony to traveling Secret Diary, contained in the traveler's 89 00:10:53,570 --> 00:11:00,370 See, on the road, it's easy to find yourself dreaming about home sweet home 90 00:11:00,370 --> 00:11:07,210 backyard gardens and long summer afternoons chasing fireflies in the yard 91 00:11:07,210 --> 00:11:10,050 warm smells drifting out kitchen windows. 92 00:11:24,010 --> 00:11:28,830 All travelers are broken -hearted somehow, and they dream about a 93 00:11:28,830 --> 00:11:34,410 address, maybe with the same strange consistency that homebodies dream about 94 00:11:34,410 --> 00:11:35,410 open road. 95 00:11:35,650 --> 00:11:41,530 And maybe it's because all traveling implies a destination someday, a dream 96 00:11:41,530 --> 00:11:45,350 house hidden in the ruins you pass along the back roads. 97 00:12:09,000 --> 00:12:12,420 The runes remind you that someday you might stop. 98 00:12:13,060 --> 00:12:19,640 They remind you that the legacy of this land is as much about stopping as it is 99 00:12:19,640 --> 00:12:20,640 about going. 100 00:12:47,790 --> 00:12:50,890 Did I ever mention how much I appreciate motel TV? 101 00:12:52,470 --> 00:12:56,350 It makes me feel connected no matter how far I drive. 102 00:12:56,770 --> 00:13:00,990 Because say I watch a show in Albuquerque one night and it's to be 103 00:13:01,370 --> 00:13:07,390 Well, the next night in Las Cruces or Columbus or Truth or Consequences, I can 104 00:13:07,390 --> 00:13:10,970 watch the second part of the show and feel like there's some element of 105 00:13:10,970 --> 00:13:13,970 continuity that ties my wandering together. 106 00:13:14,830 --> 00:13:19,010 even if it's just the invisible continuity of television signals. 107 00:13:33,810 --> 00:13:38,810 But what I really wanted to write about was the movie Repo Man, and Miller 108 00:13:38,810 --> 00:13:44,320 claims at one point that UFOs and time machines are really just the same thing, 109 00:13:44,500 --> 00:13:49,880 and I think he might be right, the way UFOs fly into a life and take it out of 110 00:13:49,880 --> 00:13:56,380 time, the way UFOs make ordinary people legendary and memorable and somehow 111 00:13:56,380 --> 00:13:57,380 timeless. 112 00:14:00,060 --> 00:14:05,440 It's like UFOs can fly us so high that maybe we escape time's gravitational 113 00:14:05,440 --> 00:14:07,520 field for just a moment. 114 00:14:09,610 --> 00:14:15,230 We can escape time's gravity, which is always trying to pull us down and make 115 00:14:15,230 --> 00:14:16,230 crash. 116 00:14:22,410 --> 00:14:29,350 Dear Secret Diary, out here among the small ruins that crumble along this 117 00:14:29,350 --> 00:14:35,490 road to white sands, I think about the Starboy again, and how unfamiliar this 118 00:14:35,490 --> 00:14:36,690 landscape must be. 119 00:14:37,180 --> 00:14:41,820 How depressing to hide among the abandonment that reminds you of your 120 00:14:41,820 --> 00:14:45,440 UFO and the dreams you had to abandon on board. 121 00:14:53,600 --> 00:14:59,320 And I think how maybe the Starboy was an amnesiac like me who hoped cruising off 122 00:14:59,320 --> 00:15:03,160 into space would help him remember if he'd really forgotten something. 123 00:15:03,620 --> 00:15:05,180 Another life, maybe. 124 00:15:05,760 --> 00:15:10,360 or another person without whom his life was broken and hobbled and incomplete. 125 00:15:11,460 --> 00:15:16,040 And maybe it was the shock of finally remembering that distracted him for the 126 00:15:16,040 --> 00:15:20,960 split second it took to crash into that remote place on this remote planet. 127 00:15:28,970 --> 00:15:34,310 Or maybe, after so many miles, it was the shock of recognizing his amnesia as 128 00:15:34,310 --> 00:15:38,970 something like a universal condition rather than a personal pathology that 129 00:15:38,970 --> 00:15:42,950 him stop caring about where he was going just long enough that he stopped going 130 00:15:42,950 --> 00:15:44,050 anywhere at all. 131 00:16:06,440 --> 00:16:10,620 But thoughts like these on this long, lost road make me sad. 132 00:16:11,080 --> 00:16:16,820 So I force myself to imagine my star boy signaled the skies above Roswell and 133 00:16:16,820 --> 00:16:23,100 caught another passing UFO and hitchhiked back out of time, back onto 134 00:16:23,100 --> 00:16:25,260 highway. And he's okay now. 135 00:17:10,829 --> 00:17:14,950 Dear Secret Diary, I've been informed by reliable sources that an alien 136 00:17:14,950 --> 00:17:19,970 spacecraft is buried out here somewhere at White Sands, underneath the tourists 137 00:17:19,970 --> 00:17:24,410 and the sand dunes, a technology so dangerous that it had to be lost. 138 00:17:27,310 --> 00:17:33,070 I suppose when I take off in some UFO, I'll be considered a missing person, and 139 00:17:33,070 --> 00:17:37,410 my face will be printed on milk cartons all over America, which is so ironic. 140 00:17:38,000 --> 00:17:42,860 Since really the only way any of us can ever escape that fate, the fate of 141 00:17:42,860 --> 00:17:48,140 everyone caught in time's trap, the fate of the missing person, is to find some 142 00:17:48,140 --> 00:17:53,460 UFO and hop aboard and hope time doesn't figure out what we're up to before it 143 00:17:53,460 --> 00:17:56,140 can conveniently decide to run out.