Art Bell is joined by Richard C. Hoagland for a discussion about the upcoming Disney-Touchstone film Mission to Mars and the extraordinary controversy surrounding it. Hoagland reveals that director Brian De Palma has mysteriously canceled all press interviews and apparently fled the country days before the film's premiere, a move unprecedented for a director with $120 million on the line.
The conversation centers on a second promotional trailer that has surfaced, featuring authoritative voiceover declaring that "for 25 years, the government has concealed evidence of a lifelike formation on Mars." The trailer reportedly uses actual Viking mission imagery of the Cydonia face rather than the stylized version created for the film. This is remarkable given that NASA had full script approval and was intimately involved in the production from the beginning.
Hoagland theorizes that De Palma, whose late brother Bruce was deeply involved in hyperdimensional physics research connected to Cydonia, may have deliberately embedded coded references to real Mars anomaly research throughout the film. Art appeals to listeners to send him a copy of the controversial trailer, while both men wrestle with whether this represents a genuine crack in NASA's longstanding silence or an elaborate marketing ploy.
