Giamarco reports that De Palma's office confirms the director is somewhere in the United States but will not reveal his location. He recounts his call to NASA headquarters, where an official seemed genuinely shocked to learn about the conspiracy-themed trailer and promised a callback that never came. Giamarco also confirms that De Palma's brother Bruce, a physicist who worked closely with Hoagland's Enterprise Mission research, was present on the film's Vancouver set shortly before his death.
Hoagland argues that De Palma deliberately filmed two versions of the movie, using one to satisfy NASA's script approval process while embedding the real Cydonia research into the theatrical release. Art remains skeptical, suggesting the simpler explanation is that De Palma is angry about something taken out of the film. The broadcast opens with a bonus segment featuring a stewardess who witnessed an unidentified metallic sphere while serving first class on a Memphis-to-St. Louis flight.
Key Moments
Theater audiences yelling 'I'm glad you're dead': Art reads listener reports from a theater employee who saw Mission to Mars early - by twenty minutes in, the audience was hissing, and as characters started dying, people were shouting 'I'm glad you're dead.' Press screening attendee David Giamarco confirms there were titters and giggles in spots and that for a director to walk away from press junket interviews entirely is essentially unheard of in his fifteen years on the entertainment beat.
NASA stonewalls when asked about the cover-up trailer: Giamarco recounts calling NASA public affairs. After being passed up the chain, an official confirms NASA worked on the film and was a consultant, but says she's 'not allowed to comment.' When he reads her the trailer line about a 25-year cover-up, there's a stunned silence and a 'what?' Hoagland notes this is unprecedented - NASA scientists were free to publicly opine on the 1998 Cydonia images, but suddenly cannot say a word about a movie they helped make.
Bruce De Palma was on set - and 19.50 is the launch time: Giamarco reveals that Story Musgrave's NASA-Hollywood liaison confirmed Brian De Palma's brother Bruce - the unconventional physicist who worked with Hoagland's Enterprise Mission for years - was personally on the Vancouver set last June, despite Bruce having previously told Hoagland the brothers barely spoke. Giamarco then notes the launch countdown in the film's climax is set to 19:50 - Hoagland's iconic 19.5-degree hyperdimensional latitude - and the interior of the face on Mars matches a 3D simulation Hoagland built with the studio The Other Side.