Joe Rogan Experience #1698 - Neill Blomkamp

Neill Blomkamp 0:00 (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

Narrator 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) Nice to meet you, man.

Neill Blomkamp 0:13 Nice to meet you.

Joe Rogan 0:14 It's a pleasure. I've enjoyed your movies immensely.

Neill Blomkamp 0:16 Thank you.

Joe Rogan 0:17 So, it's very cool to meet you in person.

Neill Blomkamp 0:18 Yeah. Thank you for inviting me down. It's, uh, it's awesome to be here.

Joe Rogan 0:21 Uh, it's awesome to have you. And we were talking, just before we started, about this T-shirt, which is a design ... It's Bob Lazar's sketch of what he allegedly saw-

Neill Blomkamp 0:31 Yes.

Joe Rogan 0:32 ... inside a hangar at Area S4.

Neill Blomkamp 0:34 Yeah. So, and what I was asking you is whether you think what he is saying is in fact true or not. Do you believe what he is saying?

Joe Rogan 0:44 The problem is, I want to believe it.

Neill Blomkamp 0:47 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 0:47 That's always a problem.

Neill Blomkamp 0:48 It's causing a bias.

Joe Rogan 0:49 Yes. For sure.

Neill Blomkamp 0:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:50 Whenever it c- anything comes with UFOs, I wanna believe far too much.

Neill Blomkamp 0:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:55 Not, not far too much, 'cause I've had people on here where in the middle of talking to them, I'm like, "This sounds like horse shit."

Neill Blomkamp 1:03 It's so strange, because I watched that whole interview, and I read a bunch of, I read a whole bunch of articles around Bob Lazar as well, and I want it to be true incredibly badly.

Joe Rogan 1:14 (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 1:14 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:14 It's so hard.

Neill Blomkamp 1:15 I need it to be true. But-

Joe Rogan 1:16 Yeah, right?

Neill Blomkamp 1:16 But I also, um ... Some, if I have any rationality, some, some rational element of my brain is saying it is not possible.

Joe Rogan 1:24 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 1:25 And, uh, which is, which is strange. I mean, you know, I don't know why I'm just not believing it, but I, I believe him, but I don't know if there is an aircraft from another galaxy in a hangar in the United States somewhere.

Joe Rogan 1:37 It's not, see, it's not necessarily from another galaxy. The thing about all this stuff is, we're, we're assuming that we have, uh, an accurate understanding of what's currently possible-

Neill Blomkamp 1:53 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:53 ... with technology.

Neill Blomkamp 1:55 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:56 I, I don't necessarily know if that's correct. And it, it is possible that they were experimenting with some really wild shit and-

Neill Blomkamp 2:05 So you think it could be human-made?

Joe Rogan 2:06 It's k- it, like, it's, it's a physic- if it, if it, if it's real at all-

Neill Blomkamp 2:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:09 If it's real at all, it's a physical thing, right?

Neill Blomkamp 2:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:12 If it's real, and it is in a hangar, it's a physical thing, like ... Let's assume that they would tell this guy who, uh, has a questionable education background-

Neill Blomkamp 2:22 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 2:22 Who, uh, obviously is brilliant and obviously has a, a, a deep understanding of propulsion systems and ... He strapped a, a rocket engine to the back of his Honda, I think.

Neill Blomkamp 2:34 Yeah, to a Civic, yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:35 Is it? Yeah, he's a wild dude.

Neill Blomkamp 2:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:36 Clearly, a super, super intelligent guy. But, you know, doesn't have the best credentials in terms of, like, his education background, his accomplishments, published papers.

Neill Blomkamp 2:48 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 2:48 Like, why, why would they pick him? Like, why would they pick him? Why would they pick him? Well, he thinks they picked him because they were running their, they were, they were just banging their heads off the wall, trying to figure out how to back engineer these things or what these things were. And they said, "Well, let's think outside the box, and let's get this genius guy who worked at Los Alamos Labs-"

Neill Blomkamp 3:08 Let's get a different point, point of view. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:09 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 3:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:10 He clearly a super, super intelligent guy. But maybe they fabricate this horse shit narrative to him.

Neill Blomkamp 3:18 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 3:18 You know, "We found this in an archeological dig." But, but maybe what this is, is there's some understanding of propulsion systems or of, uh, some sort of-

Neill Blomkamp 3:28 Anti-gravity?

Joe Rogan 3:29 ... gravity.

Neill Blomkamp 3:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:30 Yeah. Some gravity system that supposedly operates on this element, Element 115. Uh, the, the thing about his story that's fascinating to me is that it's never changed. It's remarkably consistent.

Neill Blomkamp 3:43 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 3:43 If you go all the way back to, like, 1989-

Neill Blomkamp 3:45 There's that interview with him, like, uh, isn't there an interview with him in a, in a, he's sitting in a car somewhere in, like, the late '80s, talking about it?

Joe Rogan 3:52 G- George Knapp's interview.

Neill Blomkamp 3:54 Right. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:55 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 3:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:55 There, it started out with a silhouette, and they had a fake name for him, and then I believe his story is that they were threatening his life, and he was really worried, so he just decided, "Look, I'm just gonna release my full name."

Neill Blomkamp 4:06 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 4:07 "I'm gonna tell my full story, and that'll offer me some level of protection. 'Cause if I don't tell this story, then they could kill me and the story just dies."

Neill Blomkamp 4:14 I don't know if that would work today.

Joe Rogan 4:16 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 4:17 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 4:17 I don't know if it worked then. It's hard to know.

Neill Blomkamp 4:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:20 It's hard... You know, you're, you're hoping the guy's telling the truth, which is a real issue for me, 'cause I, I, one hundred percent, would like it to be true.

Neill Blomkamp 4:29 Mm-hmm. Same.

Joe Rogan 4:30 Like, there's no part of me that wants it to be fake. So then I have to say, like, how much, uh, how much bias am I inserting into my interpretation of his story? It's hard to tell.

Neill Blomkamp 4:43 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 4:43 I don't, you know, it's, it's possible that that's ours. It's possible that there's a thing like that, that-

Neill Blomkamp 4:49 But doesn't he go into a lot of detail about, m- maybe I read it somewhere else, but the height of the occupants of it, right?

Joe Rogan 4:55 Mm-hmm. Sure.

Neill Blomkamp 4:55 They're, they're, uh, they're all sort of, like, four foot or l- or less.

Joe Rogan 4:58 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 4:59 So, I mean, the level of sort of US military deception to start building miniaturized seats-

Joe Rogan 5:04 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 5:05 ... and start, like, lower ceilings, it's like how far does the conspiracy go? But h- whatever it is, I kinda hope it's real.

Joe Rogan 5:12 I hope it's real.

Neill Blomkamp 5:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:14 But what I'm saying is, i- if you had, look, the possibility of it being from another galaxy is so crazy that the idea of them pretending it's from another galaxy is not that crazy.

Neill Blomkamp 5:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 5:28 Like, if they'd say, "Oh, they're little tiny green guys."

Neill Blomkamp 5:31 Right.

Joe Rogan 5:31 "And they live inside this little ship, and it's real easy for them to fly around."

Neill Blomkamp 5:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:34 Like, that's easier-

Neill Blomkamp 5:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:36 ... than it actually being from another galaxy and actually being designed for these little tiny creatures-

Neill Blomkamp 5:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:41 ... that live in this other galaxy.

Neill Blomkamp 5:44 It would be cool to push that further, where they also build some kind of, like, get into real, sort of gene therapy or something and make humanoid aliens-

Joe Rogan 5:52 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 5:52 ... to carry, to continue that on.

Joe Rogan 5:54 Or some sort of a biological robot.

Neill Blomkamp 5:58 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:58 Like some sort of a thing.

Neill Blomkamp 5:59 Like a cybernetic-

Joe Rogan 6:00 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 6:00 ... y- yes, some, some kind of bipedal, something really terrifying that they could release.

Joe Rogan 6:05 Well, if you-- if you follow all the lore on UFOs, these creatures all look like what eventually human beings are probably gonna look like.

Neill Blomkamp 6:15 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:15 These tiny, little frail things with huge heads.

Neill Blomkamp 6:18 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:18 Like, if you go from chimps to us, chimps are massively muscular. They have smaller brains. You know, they're, uh, hugely violent, covered with hair. And as human beings get more and more evolved, or as, uh, you know-

Neill Blomkamp 6:33 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:33 ... Australopithecus and the Homo sapien and, and then what we are right now, we look at us and we're kind of like, you know, we're, we're sitting at desks all day. And we don't really if... Uh, we don't really need muscles. We have all these d- different methods of communication-

Neill Blomkamp 6:50 And propelling ourselves-

Joe Rogan 6:50 ... typing, yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 6:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:52 We're moving around in cars that drive themselves. And if N- Elon Musk has his way, and they get that Neuralink thing, and they start drilling holes in your brain, we're not gonna need words to talk. This is what he said to me. He said, "We're... You're not gonna need to use words to communicate."

Neill Blomkamp 7:06 Have you ever heard of the Hogan twins in British Columbia? They're joined, they're con- co-joined twins, um, and they, they, their, their brain is linked. There's a, there's a piece of, uh, one part of the stem, I think, is linked between them, and they can tell jokes to one another with no words, right?

Joe Rogan 7:25 Whoa.

Neill Blomkamp 7:26 Yeah. They can also see through one another's eyes.

Joe Rogan 7:29 Whoa. (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 7:29 So, yeah, you should look into it. It's pretty-

Joe Rogan 7:32 Wow.

Neill Blomkamp 7:32 ... it's pretty amazing. I feel like, um, someone that, that you would be interested in, if you don't know him already, is the, is the Canadian science fiction author Peter Watts. Do you know... Have you heard of Peter Watts?

Joe Rogan 7:40 No, I haven't heard of him.

Neill Blomkamp 7:41 He's a hard sci-fi writer who, uh, I just... I love his stuff. I came across it recently. And he used to be a marine biologist. Um, so he's a, he's a, he was a scientist who got into writing science fiction novels, uh, and has an extreme understanding of evolutionary biology. He'd be very interesting to speculate on like what the human form would look like-

Joe Rogan 8:02 Mm.

Neill Blomkamp 8:02 ... you know, a few, a few hundred generations from now.

Joe Rogan 8:05 I always felt like the aliens that you see in, like, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, these, that, that iconic shape, it's almost like we have an understanding of where we're going.

Neill Blomkamp 8:13 Mm, like, oh-

Joe Rogan 8:13 Some, some innate-

Neill Blomkamp 8:14 ... yeah. ... like, sort of shedding hair, everything becomes cerebral.

Joe Rogan 8:17 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 8:17 There would obviously... Yeah, there would be a Neuralink, like, heavy, um, uh, sort of brain computer interface system, where everything would be, would be, you know, would-

Joe Rogan 8:25 Yes.

Neill Blomkamp 8:25 ... would, would allow you to, to go somewhere else. One of the, one of the things that, that Peter Watts, um... I'm working with him on a sci-fi idea at the moment, and one of the things that he is into is this idea that he thinks that consciousness expands to the amount of neurons that are available to it. It's like a fluid thing that moves, right?

Joe Rogan 8:42 Ah.

Neill Blomkamp 8:42 And so if you, if you use the twins from, from Canada as an example, um, he... What he's saying is happening with them is the way that their brain is linked, it's... The, the data pipe isn't fat enough, right? It's more like dial-up rather than, than high, you know, broadband. So, if you were to inc- increase the volume of data, of information being sent between the two brains, what would happen at a certain point is the two versions of self would dissolve into one united self, and you would have one superorganism that would be the consciousness of both. And if you were to somehow remove that, if you were to limit the bandwidth again, those two souls would never return, because the way the neural system has been aligned at the point that you poured more, you allowed the, the consciousness to expand, it never reverts back. So, you can imagine a world where, like, Neuralink talks about, you know, fuse... If you fuse hundreds of brains together in some kind of hive mind, then everyone can think together. What may happen is you may actually get a situation where you create a superintelligence that is... that thinks of itself as I, and you are unable to undo that.

Joe Rogan 9:50 Wow.

Neill Blomkamp 9:50 It, it's sort of not clear exactly what would happen to each individual node of consciousness if you ever try to reverse it again.

Joe Rogan 9:56 Whoa.

Neill Blomkamp 9:57 You know?

Joe Rogan 9:59 Wow.

Neill Blomkamp 10:01 Yeah, so-

Joe Rogan 10:01 That, that's... If, if Neuralink really can accomplish something like that, that could, like, legitimately-

Neill Blomkamp 10:07 Well, I think, I think the sort of science fiction, um, version of thinking about the topic is that you create a hive mind of where you can imagine your brain interfacing with hundreds of other humans, and you can share ideas quicker than you can s- than you can speak, and-

Joe Rogan 10:21 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 10:21 ... things could be passed back and forth emotionally, things like that, right?

Joe Rogan 10:24 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 10:24 But pro- probably what may happen is... Maybe what happens is one form of consciousness spreads across all of them, and you end up with something that's thinking on levels that humans have never thought on before, and it's also not able to revert back to anything that is understandable.

Joe Rogan 10:41 Because you'll be connected inexorably.

Neill Blomkamp 10:43 You disappears. Yeah, the-

Joe Rogan 10:45 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 10:45 ... the sort of, the, sort of, like, ego death and the idea of one super thing.

Joe Rogan 10:49 So if you... Oh, God. So if the entire human race connects to this thing-

Neill Blomkamp 10:57 Yeah, I mean, it's-

Joe Rogan 10:57 ... there's no more human race.

Neill Blomkamp 10:58 It, there's no-

Joe Rogan 10:59 It's now-

Neill Blomkamp 10:59 There's no more individ- You, you could... I mean, hypothetically, it could be some sort of, like, neurally linked, you know, superorganism that would just never return to individual humans.

Joe Rogan 11:07 Maybe that's how we all get along.

Neill Blomkamp 11:09 Yeah, that would solve-

Joe Rogan 11:11 (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 11:11 (laughs) That would solve... I mean, I, yeah, you know?

Joe Rogan 11:13 It'd solve everything. (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 11:13 Maybe we wouldn't see images coming out of Afghanistan like we're seeing at the moment-

Joe Rogan 11:16 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 11:17 ... if we had one of those.

Joe Rogan 11:18 It would solve anyth- everything, but you also wouldn't be surprised by individual creativity.

Neill Blomkamp 11:22 Maybe it would just turn the light switch off. (laughs) As soon as it achieved that, it just clicks it off.

Joe Rogan 11:27 Right, right.

Neill Blomkamp 11:27 Maybe it's antinatalist, and it shouldn't think we should be here at all.

Joe Rogan 11:31 Well, yeah, like, at a, at a certain point in time, what, what do we lose that we love about being human? And, like, how much of the chaos and the, the negative aspects of, of human beings and human nature is necessary for art and creativity and all-

Neill Blomkamp 11:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:49 ... all the things like, like your movies.

Neill Blomkamp 11:51 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 11:51 Like, no one's gonna make a cool movie if we can all read each other's minds.

Neill Blomkamp 11:54 Well, I think art, I think everything humans do is, is as a result of, of taking a primordial brain, um, that is... 'Cause, I mean, we're all slaves to just biological programming.

Joe Rogan 12:05 Yeah, right.

Neill Blomkamp 12:06 That's all we really are. And then you're coupling a supercomputer to it. You're coupling the first self-aware...... logic and rationality supercomputer to a bunch of ancient biological needs-

Joe Rogan 12:18 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 12:18 ... and, and programs. And I think that tug of war yields everything, you know, that we, that we understand. Um, it, it yields creativity, it yields, um, territorial disputes, uh, e- you know-

Joe Rogan 12:31 Yeah. Love, passion-

Neill Blomkamp 12:33 ... bo- bond- bonding with partners, yeah, everything.

Joe Rogan 12:34 Anxiety, fear-

Neill Blomkamp 12:35 It's all-

Joe Rogan 12:35 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 12:36 ... it's, it's all a result of that. So, to take that away, I mean, you, you know, it's, it's, it's an un- understandable thing. I don't think we can comprehend it.

Joe Rogan 12:44 Well, when you follow this line of thinking with the evolution of the alien form, one of the things is they have no genitals.

Neill Blomkamp 12:53 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 12:54 The- the- the- the- they're formless, they have no muscles.

Neill Blomkamp 12:56 Asexual, yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:56 They're asexual. And, uh, you know, there's, they're-

Neill Blomkamp 13:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:01 If you think about what we need, right? The biological needs to reproduce are responsible for so much negativity, but also so much positivity. So much chaos, so much entropy, so much momentum, so much-

Neill Blomkamp 13:13 Yeah. It's, it's yin and yang. It's complete-

Joe Rogan 13:15 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 13:15 ... yin and yang.

Joe Rogan 13:15 Yeah, yeah. And they may be, like maybe one day we go, "You know, we've realized that all this war and chaos and stealing and murder, what this is about is biological needs-"

Neill Blomkamp 13:27 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 13:27 "... that, uh, we can bypass with technology and we could reproduce through some sort of genetic engineering instead of-"

Neill Blomkamp 13:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:34 "... just intercourse."

Neill Blomkamp 13:35 Yeah. I agree. I mean, e- the thing that's fascinating, though, is that you may end up with a culture that really is just, it's so alien that it might as well not be human, you know?

Joe Rogan 13:43 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 13:43 E- even if it's a step, if it's a step forward, which it probably would be.

Joe Rogan 13:47 But is it a step forward? I mean...

Neill Blomkamp 13:49 Well, it depends how you define forward.

Joe Rogan 13:51 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 13:51 'Cause it's, I mean, that's what's so fascinating about any discussion, like, like the negativity around people building rockets, like Elon and, and-

Joe Rogan 13:58 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 13:58 ... Bezos going up into space. And like, you know, a lot being along the lines of Elysium in some ways.

Joe Rogan 14:04 Yes.

Neill Blomkamp 14:04 It's like, it's like, so are we not supposed to move forward at all? What, what, what is the... You know. So, if, if, if, if we can't agree on what the end goal is that we're striving for, then there's gonna be many disputes about the sort of road between here and there. So, I, I'm all for exploration and for us trying to better ourselves. And I think part of that is about leaving the planet. I'd rather put money into that than have it squandered in what clearly we seem to squander it on.

Joe Rogan 14:32 Well, not only that. In the case of Bezos and Elon Musk, now we're d- you're dealing with private companies that are involved in this.

Neill Blomkamp 14:39 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 14:39 Which is really fascinating.

Neill Blomkamp 14:41 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 14:41 'Cause instead of it all being like NASA, and the argument was like, "Why is NASA spending all this money on this-"

Neill Blomkamp 14:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:46 "... when we have people starving here on Earth?" Well, now you're-

Neill Blomkamp 14:49 Yeah, it's not governmental, no.

Joe Rogan 14:50 Right. Well, it is kind of, though, isn't it? Sort of subsidized? Like, doesn't SpaceX have a contract with NASA, believe they do, right?

Neill Blomkamp 14:56 Yeah, no, I mean, it's, it's definitely subsidized, but it's, it's less than a NASA budget-

Joe Rogan 15:00 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 15:00 ... of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Joe Rogan 15:02 It's very, and it's a very different scenario.

Neill Blomkamp 15:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:04 Where, you know, you have these super genius billionaire characters who are e- essentially living out a sci-fi movie.

Neill Blomkamp 15:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:11 Right? They're living out Contact, right? It's really what they're doing. I mean-

Neill Blomkamp 15:15 I wonder if they built two, like in Contact.

Joe Rogan 15:17 (laughs) Right, they have a k- in case some-

Neill Blomkamp 15:19 Yeah, it's a, it's a separate-

Joe Rogan 15:19 ... religious nut blows one of them up, yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 15:21 It's a separate launch site.

Joe Rogan 15:22 Yeah. W- I, you know, I, I am so obsessed with this concept of, of life from somewhere else that, like, as I said before, with the Bob Lazar story, it's really hard, because I want it to b- I want it to be real. The thing that gets me more than anything is not just Bob Lazar, but people like Commander David Fravor, that had-

Neill Blomkamp 15:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:42 ... that encounter with the Tic Tac-

Narrator 15:44 I think it's this. I think so.

Joe Rogan 15:44 Yeah. Like, those guys-

Neill Blomkamp 15:46 No, I, I agree with you. I mean, it's completely, completely inexplainable.

Joe Rogan 15:51 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 15:51 It, it's just, it just defies logic, so, I mean, the, I guess the next thing you could move to is it's built by humans, it's just super advanced.

Joe Rogan 15:59 Right. And that-

Neill Blomkamp 15:59 Which is the most plausible.

Joe Rogan 16:01 The most plausible, because we know humans, and we know humans... There, there was some sort of technology that they were trying to get patents for. What, what was that thing that we, Jamie, the, the, it was, was it the CIA who had UFO technology that they were trying to patent?

Neill Blomkamp 16:18 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 16:18 There's some sort of gravitational... Here it is.

Narrator 16:22 I think it's this. I think-

Joe Rogan 16:22 The Navy.

Neill Blomkamp 16:22 I think so.

Joe Rogan 16:23 What is behind the US Navy's UFO fusion energy patent? So, this, this thing was, we were, we were reading it going, "What the fuck does this mean?" And so, the idea behind it... Where are you going?

Narrator 16:37 Sorry, trying to find something that doesn't have a bunch of ads on it, but-

Joe Rogan 16:39 Oh.

Narrator 16:40 ... they're not going away.

Joe Rogan 16:40 Okay.

Narrator 16:42 And trying to dig-

Neill Blomkamp 16:43 Yeah, but it's, I, I see where, I see where you're going.

Joe Rogan 16:44 So, it was a fusion... Go back to that please, where you just were.

Narrator 16:48 Oh.

Joe Rogan 16:50 So, here it says, uh, it's a fusion device and this thing is some sort of a... Where, where, where were you at before?

Narrator 16:58 This is exactly where I was, so I clicked on this to try to get better info-

Joe Rogan 17:02 Oh, okay.

Narrator 17:02 ... as just the beginning of the article.

Joe Rogan 17:04 Okay. It's a fusion reactor...

Narrator 17:05 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 17:05 For the US, for US energy independence. The physicist appears to have bonafide credentials, including a PhD from Case Western, and published some of his work while much of it is presumably classified.

Narrator 17:19 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 17:19 And so, the i- the idea is that there's some sor- some sort of novel propulsion system-

Neill Blomkamp 17:25 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 17:25 ... and a lot of people are going over this stuff, going, "Well, what the fuck is this UFO patent?" Like, what does this mean? And what does this propulsion system consist of? And the, the, what I get from people that are talking about it, is that it's at least similar to what these people are describing in terms of this device, this, that thing right there, actually.

Narrator 17:48 Right.

Joe Rogan 17:48 That little object right there. Supposedly Bob Lazar worked on-

Neill Blomkamp 17:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:52 ... that it worked on this gravitational field created by this Element 115, which we talked about was only theoretical up until-... the early 2000s-

Neill Blomkamp 18:05 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 18:05 ... when they actually used a particle collider and managed to prove its existence. Bob Lazar claims they had a stable version of this element 115, and that was the propulsion, uh, the, uh, the fuel or the, the w- whatever. I don't... I'm not exactly sure how it worked. They used a piece of this element 115-

Neill Blomkamp 18:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:24 ... and through some method-

Neill Blomkamp 18:25 It was creating a gravity field.

Joe Rogan 18:27 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 18:27 Right? It was synthetic gravity. So-

Joe Rogan 18:28 That's the idea.

Neill Blomkamp 18:29 And then someone... He also said someone cut into it (laughs) and caused some kind of nuclear, nuclear-

Joe Rogan 18:34 Explosion.

Neill Blomkamp 18:34 ... explosion in the desert.

Joe Rogan 18:35 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 18:36 Yeah. I mean, yeah, the thing, the thing I c- I think that the whole discussion comes back to is, is I, I wish that it was built by some other super intelligent species on some other planet, just because that would be cool.

Joe Rogan 18:49 Yeah. (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 18:49 Um, (laughs) that would be awesome.

Joe Rogan 18:50 Yes, exactly. (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 18:51 Um, and, and, and which is, which is tied to the discussion about, you know, where, where do we think we're going, and what do, what do we think the outcome is from s- sort of being human and going through an evolutionary process? 'Cause that's the other thing with the common conception is that, well, we're here, like, we're human. It's like, no, we're maybe one-fifth or one-one millionth or one-one hundred millionth of the journey of evolution of what we, we will become. We're, we're, we're somewhere along the timeline that you've hit pause, and we look kinda like this.

Joe Rogan 19:19 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 19:19 It's why I have lower back pain from playing squash.

Joe Rogan 19:21 (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 19:22 Because I shouldn't have a shitty single-column spine, you know?

Joe Rogan 19:25 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 19:25 I should pro-... I should have, like, eight spines.

Joe Rogan 19:26 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 19:27 And, but it's 'cause I used to be quadrupedal, and then I became bipedal, and now, you know, I have, I have structural issues. (laughs) Um, so where are we going is, is a question that I, I think if there... i- if humans could come to some kind of... if, if it was discussed more, like, what, what are we actually aiming for, what are we trying to make, the whole rockets leaving Earth discussion gets framed in a different way.

Joe Rogan 19:51 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 19:51 Right? It starts becoming, like, what are we preserving? Are we trying to preserve consciousness? Is that important, you know? It... 'Cause I think it is. And, and so what... i- in a million years, what would you like, what would you like to see happen? It won't, it won't be something you'll understand. It'll be a completely different organism, but is there... would it become transcendent? Is it like God, you know?

Joe Rogan 20:11 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 20:12 What, what is it?

Joe Rogan 20:13 What is it?

Neill Blomkamp 20:14 So the, uh, those kind of discussions are, are really interesting, and they're, they're at the backbone of, of things to do with either religion or, or finding UFOs that are in, you know, Area S4 in Nevada, in my mind.

Joe Rogan 20:26 Well, it seems like human beings have this innate desire to constantly improve upon everything they've created. A- and the way I've talked about it, it's almost like bees building a beehive. Do they really... uh, how do they know what they're doing? They just do it.

Neill Blomkamp 20:42 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 20:42 Like, it's what bees do. They make beehives. And they're really incredibly complex, but they don't have a manual. They don't have a, you know, written history-

Neill Blomkamp 20:50 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 20:50 ... that they follow.

Neill Blomkamp 20:50 Yeah, it's like, it's like biologically coded-

Joe Rogan 20:53 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 20:53 ... thing that they do.

Joe Rogan 20:53 I think we have some weird biological coding to constantly and consistently improve upon everything that we've created and to innovate and to constantly come up with new ideas. And when you... when a new, completely transcendent idea, like the internet, for example, comes along, you see how it has this massive shift in global culture, in ev- in every single aspect of human life.

Neill Blomkamp 21:15 Yeah. It cha- it changes the-

Joe Rogan 21:16 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 21:16 ... trajectory of the culture. And these things can happen in these big explosions, like an internet, you know, like a combustion engine-

Joe Rogan 21:23 Mm-hmm.

Neill Blomkamp 21:24 ... like the printing press, like- Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:25 ... so many different things that happen and then causes this huge wave of innovation to be spread off from that. And I've said multiple times that I... uh, what I think we're doing is we are, in some ways, like a- an electronic caterpillar that's making a cocoon, and we're gonna give birth to this butterfly. And this butterfly is probably gonna be a form of artificial life.

Neill Blomkamp 21:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:49 And then we're gonna-

Neill Blomkamp 21:50 Which is-

Joe Rogan 21:50 ... consistently innovate until that comes out.

Neill Blomkamp 21:51 ... completely accurate, like some, some kind of... in a, in a, in a sense that we're a stepping stone biologically to something else.

Joe Rogan 21:58 Yes.

Neill Blomkamp 21:58 It's like we're the first sentient, self-aware species that's able to use our hands to build tools to go further down the line and carry the ball a certain amount of, of distance until, through what we do, we give birth to something that, you know, is just far outstrips us and-

Joe Rogan 22:14 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 22:14 ... goes off to do other things. And that's probably how it's gonna play out. I mean, I think as soon as you start introducing AI and maybe you have hybrid, um, you know, human, human AIs, uh, but y- they will start communicating in ways that we can't. Yeah. And the other thing is, is where... uh, I mean, it's so funny when it, when it becomes a religious discussion where it's like people are, um, people are totally atheist, which I can't... I don't understand that approach, like, because it's... The Big Bang is science fiction.

Joe Rogan 22:45 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 22:45 Right. So it's like I'm not that version of science fiction with the space God, but I am the version where e- all matter and everything that I know blew out of, like, one-one hundred trillionth of, you know, o- o- of a grain of rice and came into existence. And it's like, sure, that could have happened, but it also means that there is some unbelievably complicated shit going on-

Joe Rogan 23:04 (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 23:04 ... that, (laughs) maybe you should be a little bit more open-minded about-

Joe Rogan 23:07 (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 23:07 ... some of the other things that are out there. Right?

Joe Rogan 23:09 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 23:09 So, yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:11 Right. That's the ultimate science fiction, isn't it?

Neill Blomkamp 23:12 Yeah. No. It's like-

Joe Rogan 23:13 Is, is the ultimate science.

Neill Blomkamp 23:14 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:16 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 23:16 You know, the ultimate, the ultimate... cr- the craziest thing that you could come up with would be to sit at a typewriter like Asimov and write, "First, there was nothing, and then everything exploded out of a grain of rice into being."

Joe Rogan 23:27 (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 23:27 (laughs) And it's like, "Oh, okay. Yeah. That sounds like... Let me, um... let me just knock down any discussions about God, but that sticks."

Joe Rogan 23:34 It's... What it's even really crazy is it's universally agreed upon. Right?

Neill Blomkamp 23:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:39 Like, all these cosmologists go, "Yep."

Neill Blomkamp 23:41 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 23:41 "That's it."

Neill Blomkamp 23:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:42 Like, it's the wildest theory ever. And that's the one they all agree happened.

Neill Blomkamp 23:48 Yeah. And maybe it did, but, um, you know, it's, like, to buy into it and to believe along, to just go down that road, it's like you gotta be open to everything.

Joe Rogan 23:58 What's also, we're thinking at scale, right? 'Cause that thing that happened, happened 14 billion years ago or whatever it was. You know, they're not exactly sure.

Neill Blomkamp 24:06 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 24:07 But the idea is that maybe it's a consistent process where the, the thing blows up and then retracts and becomes that grain of rice again, then blows up again.

Neill Blomkamp 24:17 Well, that was, that was Hawking's thing, right?

Joe Rogan 24:18 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 24:19 Was, was reverse at a certain point it, it, it begins to, uh, it reverses and time plays backwards.

Joe Rogan 24:24 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 24:24 And it collapses in on itself. But I think someone just disproved that. Um-

Joe Rogan 24:28 Until someone disproves that.

Neill Blomkamp 24:29 Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 24:30 (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 24:30 It just, it just, it just carries on forever. I mean, I, I, my own point of view with all, with, with thinking that, that, you know, extravagant is, is that I, I think I'm a complete solipsist. I think everything around me is some sort of holographic thing that I'm dropped into for the duration of my life, and when I die it all disappears.

Joe Rogan 24:49 Really?

Neill Blomkamp 24:50 Yeah. I kinda do think so. I think, I think it's, um ... I also think that there's, there's, uh, everything that is going to happen has already happened, and there's a paradox where free will also exists. So I think that, I think I have the ability to go around and act with free will. I don't think that things are completely deterministic. Um, but I think that free will is informed by the biological programming we were talking about before.

Joe Rogan 25:18 Hm.

Neill Blomkamp 25:19 Um, but I'm still choosing within a given set of what I'm allowed to choose from. Um, but the paradox is also that I think that by, you know, I'm probably on my deathbed if you collapse time down and look at it as, like, a linear, uh, you know, thing. If you just, if you just observe it, it's like Neal's death is here, his birth is here, these are these other events. Theoretically with free will, as you move through that three-dimensional map, these other events should change, right? Each day with choices you make, all of these other outcomes should move. And somehow I don't think they do. I think that they're kind of locked in place. And Nietzsche speaks about that. He calls it eternal recurrence. And it's like, uh, eternal recurrence was something that I got, I got quite interested in because it felt true to me. Uh, and it-

Joe Rogan 26:03 How so, how so felt true?

Neill Blomkamp 26:05 Well, he says, he says that, he says that what, what happens is that your life is set and all of the events within your life not only are set, but they will also recur infinitely through time. So, um, instead of the idea of reincarnation, it's almost like the, the idea of reincarnation into your own life eternally. And so someone else from a different point of view would be able to see the, this event of, like, Joe Rogan's life and see you make these choices, and then they would see you begin and make these choices again. And he kind of used it as a thought experiment where he said, he said that if I, if I went to most people out in the world and I said to them that your life is gonna repeat exactly like this forever, he said it was a burden that would be too heavy for most people to be able to deal with. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 26:53 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 26:53 That their life is, uh, th- th- that they don't wanna live their life over the way that they've lived it enough th- that it would be th- literally the worst burden that they could be given.

Joe Rogan 27:02 I've, I've pondered this before and I've heard this brought up before. I- in fact, Helio Gracie, who's a famous Brazilian jujitsu guy who, uh, was, uh, he's the, he's the patriarch of, like, the greatest martial arts clan ever.

Neill Blomkamp 27:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:17 He believed that. He believed you live your life over and over again-

Neill Blomkamp 27:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:21 ... until you get it right.

Neill Blomkamp 27:23 Yeah. Nietzsche's saying that you, you don't get the chance to do it right. It's locked in place.

Joe Rogan 27:28 It's locked in place ex- exac- exactly the same way forever?

Neill Blomkamp 27:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:33 But why? Why would he believe that?

Neill Blomkamp 27:35 Because, and then-

Joe Rogan 27:35 You can ch- but if you believe in free will.

Neill Blomkamp 27:37 That's the paradox then.

Joe Rogan 27:38 Yeah, so if you believe-

Neill Blomkamp 27:39 I think you make the same choices over and over.

Joe Rogan 27:41 But why? But-

Neill Blomkamp 27:42 'Cause you're not learning each time you go back. You're not, it's not a different version of you.

Joe Rogan 27:46 It's the same version of you, but why, why haven't you learned from the past?

Neill Blomkamp 27:50 Because you, it, to us, we are, it, the birth and the death is one event.

Joe Rogan 27:56 Hm. But if you are having, uh, the same life experience over and over and over again-

Neill Blomkamp 28:03 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 28:03 ... what is you? If that's you having the same... Is it new versions of you or is it you?

Neill Blomkamp 28:10 No. No, it's just one version.

Joe Rogan 28:11 It's just you.

Neill Blomkamp 28:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:12 Then why don't you learn? (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 28:14 Well, what, what, what he- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 28:16 (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 28:16 B- because from, from a, from a three-dimensional standpoint in, in that linear timeline, when you die, you, that feels like the end of the play. From, h- from a fourth-dimensional different obser- observational standpoint, you can watch it repeating.

Joe Rogan 28:30 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 28:30 But his point was, was with free will inside of that linear timeline, you should live your life in a way that, the, th- that you would want it to go on forever. It was sort of a thought experiment.

Joe Rogan 28:40 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 28:40 But what, what I was getting at was the feeling that to me it feels like things are set in place. And because this comes from the, the solipsistic thing that we were talking about where I think that it's, it's all in the, the person, it's in the observer's eyes, right? And by the, and I also think time is an illusion as well. So by the time you get to the end of your life and you're, you're lying on your deathbed, um, you, you, all of these events could've been a dream. It could just be a fever dream, you know? Um, so they, they weren't 'cause you, free will exists and you acted on them, but time compresses down to this moment. And, and, and that's the only thing that's there, is this sort of, this present moment that you're living inside of.

Joe Rogan 29:19 But it's being committed to this idea that all these things are playing out. Is that comforting? Is that why you're willing to embrace it that way? That there's no getting around this and that this is what it is?

Neill Blomkamp 29:30 No, I mean, I don't, I don't act like I don't have free will.

Joe Rogan 29:32 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 29:33 And I, and I, I don't act like things are set in place. I just on a very, very deep subconscious level, I feel like they are. I, I-

Joe Rogan 29:40 So you feel like fate is real in some ways?

Neill Blomkamp 29:43 In som- in some ways it is, yeah. I do think there's a paradox though. I think there's a definite paradox.

Joe Rogan 29:47 Do you think about that when you're making films? Do you think, do you think, like-... as, 'cause the, the creative process of writing and then I'm sure I, I've never edited a film, but I would imagine editing and filming it and choosing the angles-

Neill Blomkamp 30:01 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 30:02 ... is you're visualizing this creation and you're putting it together and then ultimately you get a final product. And-

Neill Blomkamp 30:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:08 ... that's what people go to see.

Neill Blomkamp 30:09 It's si- it's similar to people's lives, I mean, you could say, right? It, it, the choices that you're making, 'cause there's infinite possible, there's infinite possible outcomes.

Joe Rogan 30:17 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 30:17 And you're collapsing it down. You're collapsing the wave, the wave function into one outcome.

Joe Rogan 30:22 Mm-hmm.

Neill Blomkamp 30:22 And so that's what I think is happening. I think that we are given infinite numbers of options and we have the ability to act on, on those. We choose a path. And in, in the action of choosing, we collapse all possibility to one outcome, and the tree is crushed down.

Joe Rogan 30:39 One of the things that I've always thought of when it comes to UFOs, this is like a side pondering, is that the preposterous nature of them, the, the things like what Commander David Fravor saw, the things like what Bob Lazar saw, it's almost like the universe is trying to let you know that you don't know shit.

Neill Blomkamp 31:00 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 31:00 Like that this, this weird little possibility that i- is not it's, it's not outside of the realm of what's potentially available. If you think about the idea that there's hundreds of billions of stars just in this galaxy, and there's hundreds of billions of galaxies-

Neill Blomkamp 31:21 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 31:21 ... in the known universe, and right here on this planet where we walk-

Neill Blomkamp 31:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 31:25 ... there's two super billionaires that are currently shooting rockets into space.

Neill Blomkamp 31:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:29 NASA has a rover right now on Mars that's roaming around-

Neill Blomkamp 31:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:33 ... taking photos, sending them back to us-

Neill Blomkamp 31:35 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:36 ... high resolute. We know that all that's possible. Why wouldn't it be possible-

Neill Blomkamp 31:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:40 ... for something from some other place to come and visit us? But yet-

Neill Blomkamp 31:45 I mean, the-

Joe Rogan 31:46 ... the fact that it does, it seems so crazy.

Neill Blomkamp 31:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:49 It seems so fake. It, it, in, in many ways, it makes me really ponder simulation theory, because, uh, it, it seems so weird that this, this thing can go from 60,000 plus feet above sea level to 50 feet in less than a second and then take off to-

Neill Blomkamp 32:07 Like a video game.

Joe Rogan 32:07 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 32:07 Like it's-

Joe Rogan 32:08 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 32:08 It's behaving with different laws of physics. Um, the Drake Equation is that equation, right? The, the, the number of planets-

Joe Rogan 32:15 Mm-hmm.

Neill Blomkamp 32:15 ... with, uh, with po- that, that could potentially house, house life.

Joe Rogan 32:19 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 32:19 And then what, what, this is what I think is happening. What, what I think is happening is that the concept of the great filter, where if, if the Drake Equation has X number of exoplanets that have liquid water and the ability to harbor life, and there's, you know, however many hundred million of them, and we see dark, dark night skies with no aliens, then the idea of the great barrier being a filter for some- something happening to all of these things, like they reach a certain level of civilization and then they snuff themselves out somehow-

Joe Rogan 32:49 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 32:50 ... seems, seems relatively plausible to me, because I, I see us doing that as, as a human race.

Joe Rogan 32:55 It's certainly plausible.

Neill Blomkamp 32:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:57 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 32:57 Um, I mean, and it's also plausible that some of them, like maybe there, maybe, maybe a couple make it through and you, you know, we end up with, we end up seeing, uh, some other life form. But it does seem rare-

Joe Rogan 33:06 Well, the variability of intelligent life that we have here, like we know octopus or octopi are super intelligent, right?

Neill Blomkamp 33:12 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 33:12 Even though they don't have the ability to ma- manipulate their environment like we do because they're in the water.

Neill Blomkamp 33:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:17 You know, it's a different environment, but they have insane intelligence, as do dolphins, right?

Neill Blomkamp 33:20 And you could s- you could see them getting more intelligent evolutionarily.

Joe Rogan 33:23 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 33:24 Ravens and crows are also like really-

Joe Rogan 33:25 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 33:25 ... really smart.

Joe Rogan 33:26 Right. So the idea that the only way you get intelligence is bipedal hominids seems kind of silly.

Neill Blomkamp 33:32 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 33:32 There, there could very well be some super intelligent thing that instead of manipulating its environment in the way we do, it figured out a way through evolution to join minds-

Neill Blomkamp 33:44 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 33:44 ... in some strange way, but it doesn't travel. It doesn't-

Neill Blomkamp 33:48 Yeah. I would-

Joe Rogan 33:48 It-

Neill Blomkamp 33:48 It would be a, it would be some sort of evolutionary mutation-

Joe Rogan 33:51 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 33:51 ... that just is, is sort of anti, you know, it's, it's, it's counterintuitive and surprising in the way that it took form. Like, oh, shit, all of these starfish linked together and they built a nuke.

Joe Rogan 34:01 Right. (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 34:01 That's surprising.

Joe Rogan 34:03 Right. They figured out a way to will a nuke into existence.

Neill Blomkamp 34:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:06 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 34:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:07 They figured out a way to use their minds to manipulate matter in a way that's unheard of here on Earth.

Neill Blomkamp 34:13 Yeah. It's, it's like a frog hacked Dark Net or something and-

Joe Rogan 34:17 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 34:17 ... and launched a nuke. But I-

Joe Rogan 34:18 'Cause-

Neill Blomkamp 34:18 I don't know. I mean, I, to me the, the most interesting part of the whole discussion is just what the end goal is really. Like what do, what do we think we're, we're building towards?

Joe Rogan 34:26 We make things.

Neill Blomkamp 34:27 And-

Joe Rogan 34:27 If you looked at us from above, if we, if you were an outside life form that it was completely objective, not human at all, and you came to this planet and you go, "What is going on with this number one species-"

Neill Blomkamp 34:38 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 34:38 "... that seems to be on every single continent, like rats on a sinking ship. Like what are they, what are they doing?" They're making things. They're making better things. The whole lot of them all over the world are consistently making things.

Neill Blomkamp 34:52 Yeah. It does, it does also feel like some form of adolescent life form that's between super intelligent and, and-

Joe Rogan 34:58 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 34:58 ... and primitive, you know. It feels like a halfway mark 'cause it's polluting the planet, it's overpopulating. It's, it's, it's kind of like things are, things have gotten away from it, even though it's able to build a certain amount of highly advanced things.

Joe Rogan 35:11 And I wonder if those things getting away from it, the pollution, the overfishing, the changing of the environment, the CO2 levels almost motivates this acceptance of the symbiotic relationship with man and organ- and, and, and, uh, electronics because that's the only way out of it.

Neill Blomkamp 35:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:28 Like-

Neill Blomkamp 35:28 At this point it, yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:29 Yeah. We figure out the only way out of this is some sort of a technological advance-

Neill Blomkamp 35:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:35 ... that we don't really understand yet.

Neill Blomkamp 35:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:38 Like that's what's gonna fix the pro-

Neill Blomkamp 35:39 Or, or some, some kind of AI-

Joe Rogan 35:40 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 35:40 ... system that's thinking- Right.

Joe Rogan 35:42 ... thinking, thinking out-

Neill Blomkamp 35:42 Because it'll be able to think through things that we can't.

Joe Rogan 35:44 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 35:44 So just like, just flip the switch and let STARnet go live.

Joe Rogan 35:49 Yeah. (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 35:51 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 35:52 Well, when you make films like Elysium, you know, these dystopian films about potential futures, d- i- i- it's got to have, like, sort of sparked these thoughts in your mind, like-

Neill Blomkamp 36:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 36:02 ... the, uh, h- how many of these possibilities could we encounter in our lifetime?

Neill Blomkamp 36:07 Well, Elysium was ... I mean, Elysium and District 9 are both kind of cut from the same cloth in the sense that I, I do think a lot of that had to do with growing up in South Africa and just being affected by ... I'm, I'm very naturally interested in how societies seem to stratify and how wealth and equality ... You know, again, this is biological programming, right? Like, I think, I think that people hang on to resources that they have as much as they can, and so you end up with, you end up with, with billionaires, um, because it's, it's an understandable thing.

Joe Rogan 36:38 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 36:38 It's ... It makes total sense. You're just hoarding food in your cave to-

Joe Rogan 36:42 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 36:42 ... live through the winter, you know?

Joe Rogan 36:43 Right, right.

Neill Blomkamp 36:44 And keep your family safe. So, but, but, uh, Elysium really ... I- i- if, if District 9 was the, was the sort of racial part of growing up in South Africa and just being very aware of the environment that I was in, then Elysium is the kind of wealth discrepancy part of it. You know, where, where South Africa and Brazil and India would be, would be in first place when it comes to that. And you just see very ... You see imagery that's extremely striking, um, in that country that leaves an indelible mark on you, I think. Actually, you know, the inspiration for Elysium entire ... And the, the, the whole thing actually for me was I was shooting commercials in, um ... It was, I was up ... It was 2005 and I was, I was ... I had started directing commercials and I was doing a commercial for Nike. And I was in, uh, San Diego and the line producer that I was working with really wanted to go to Tijuana. And, and I was like sick. I didn't wanna go and he's like, "We gotta get in the car and we gotta go to Tijuana like now. We gotta go down there and get a, get a beer or something." And I was like, "I really don't wanna do this." And he's like, "Let's just go. It'll be fine." So I, uh, I went ... We went through the, the border into Mexico as the sun was going down and we got there and got onto ... You know, we were on some street corner and I ... we bought beers and then we were walking around in Tijuana with the beers and these federales saw us doing it, and we got arrested like kind of, uh, qu- relatively violently where we were, you know ... It was a shakedown for money, obviously, but it was like we, we got cuffed and thrown in the back of a police car. And then they started driving out of Tijuana in the darkness and, um, and the producer that I was with kept putting like hundred dollar bills through the grated thing to the, to the front seats. And then once there was enough money that had gone through, they just kinda opened the doors and let us out. And we had to walk back to where the car was. And the-

Joe Rogan 38:29 How far was the walk?

Neill Blomkamp 38:30 I don't remember how long we were walking for. It was ... It felt long. It felt like f- 40 or f- like an hour maybe, 40 minutes, somewhere in there. But the thing that was crazy about it was, was I could see US Blackhawks flying the border with like lights on them and, and floodlights on the f- far ... on the US side. And we were walking through basically favelas with dogs barking and like ... They had dropped us in places that like tourists from the US would never go. So we were walking in basically what felt like a South African shantytown in Mexico, uh, with feral animals and just like this ... But to see this country that, you know, is ... was, was this- the sort of global hyper power that everyone from Mexico was moving into, um, w- was trying to get into, uh, was i- incredibly striking. Like it was just crazy. I mean, it is crazy if you think about that, that level of poverty up against-

Joe Rogan 39:28 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 39:28 ... the US border and then ... And I think Elysium really was, was ... Th- the sort of subconscious part of it was South Africa but the conscious part was that. I, I, uh, in that moment I was like I really wanna find a way to turn that experience into, into visuals that represent these two worlds that live on one another's doorstep like this.

Joe Rogan 39:50 So you were ... As you were walking by, you could see the planes that were flying over the US side?

Neill Blomkamp 39:56 Not the planes. It was border patrol. They were Blackhawks. They were f-

Joe Rogan 39:58 Right. Oh, helicopters.

Neill Blomkamp 39:59 They were ... Yeah. They were flying the border.

Joe Rogan 40:02 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 40:02 And, um, and just floodlights. There were floodlights like along the, along the fence, along the perimeter. Like I guess they'd driven us kind of like, you know, east of, of where we were. It was weird. It was, it was, it was very impactful though. Like it had a huge effect on me.

Joe Rogan 40:16 And you get to imagine these people living in this environment looking l- literally visually seeing this place-

Neill Blomkamp 40:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:23 ... where the world is completely different right there.

Neill Blomkamp 40:25 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:25 And trying to figure out how to

Neill Blomkamp 40:26 ... and where there's opportunity.

Joe Rogan 40:28 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 40:28 And, and, um, and a way out of poverty. And South Africa has something similar happening, it's just that the difference is it's all happening within one country. Right?

Joe Rogan 40:37 Hm.

Neill Blomkamp 40:37 And so that leads to gated communities and, you know, the rich getting richer and sort of separating, and the poor again- getting poorer. And, uh, I mean, it's a phenomenon that's seen across the whole world. Um, but, but in South Africa it's right there because, uh, it's the way that the, the society, you know, is set up. And it ... And, and I ... obviously in America you'll see that same sort of wealth stratification begin to happen more and more. Uh, but at the moment being on either side of the border you can, you can see it.

Joe Rogan 41:04 The, the current situation in South Africa with the, the recent riots and chaos, what, what is your take on all that?

Neill Blomkamp 41:11 I mean, it seems like it's Jacob Zuma as the out- the ousted president moving to try to, you know, create calamity for, for the current president and, and, and it's divisions within the ANC. So I think ... I guess what I'm saying is I think it was political in the way that some of those riots potentially happened and not as simple as what it appears to be.

Joe Rogan 41:34 And g- growing up in South Africa and creating these movies like District 9, uh, do you feel like you have an obligation to, to sort of, uh, illuminate a perspective through these movies? Like what do you ...

Neill Blomkamp 41:50 No.

Joe Rogan 41:50 Uh, did it just sort of motivate your creativity?

Neill Blomkamp 41:55 I ... Yeah, I mean I ... I'm always really weary when filmmakers say that they-You know, I think at the end of the day, you're just making films. And it's, wh- what I think I'm trying to do as an artist is reflect the world that I see back to the audience. Like, this is the world through Neil's eyes, right? Is, it's- it's, that's the kind of creativity that I'm interested in, and that's why walking through that area in Mexico, looking at the US border, it was, the feeling was I wanted people to ... I don't, I'm not sure if someone from Beverly Hills knows what that feels like.

Joe Rogan 42:25 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 42:25 Right? And it's like, it would be interesting to create a film that attempted to create what this feeling is like. And so I think a lot of what I'm trying to do as a filmmaker is just show the world through my eyes. But I would never be so, you know, presumptuous as to say that, that there's some level of importance to what I'm doing, or, you know, I- I don't, I don't, I don't know if that's the right way for me to think about it.

Joe Rogan 42:47 Right. I didn't mean like a level of importance, but you almost feel like you have an obligation to express the way you see it.

Neill Blomkamp 42:56 I mean, I feel an impulse to-

Joe Rogan 42:57 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 42:57 ... to do it, you know? It was, it was similar with District 9. The original idea with District 9 was, I mean, one part of it was, was growing up in South Africa in that period of time. But the other part was, was a huge influx of, of, um, you know, people from Mozambique and Zimbabwe and stuff were, were going into South Africa in the 2000s. Uh, and South Africa, like local South Africans were getting frustrated with how many were coming into the country and, and effectively taking jobs from them, in- in their mind. And so District 9, the aliens were, was a representation of, of the idea of illegal aliens. And I made, I made a short film before I actually made the film where I was interviewing real South Africans about how they felt about Mozambicans or Nigerians or, you know, Malawians, and they would answer very honestly. And it, and so it could create a science fiction way where you could switch out, um-

Joe Rogan 43:50 Mm-hmm.

Neill Blomkamp 43:50 ... the honest answer with a more of a science fiction answer.

Joe Rogan 43:54 D- is there, uh, a culture of being obsessed with UFOs in South Africa the way it is in America?

Neill Blomkamp 44:02 No, not to the same degree.

Joe Rogan 44:03 That's interesting.

Neill Blomkamp 44:04 Yeah. Not, not to the same degree. There are s- there are quite a few sightings there. Um, but my, m- a friend that I have who's the most obsessed with UFOs is a South African who moved to, to Canada when he was relatively young. He thinks he saw a UFO, uh, right before moving to Canada. And it's, he talks, every time I go out with him, he talks about it. Like, he's totally convinced that something happened.

Joe Rogan 44:27 What was the story?

Neill Blomkamp 44:29 I don't remember exactly. Um, uh, yeah, I don't know. I don't know.

Joe Rogan 44:33 Was it credible?

Neill Blomkamp 44:34 It sounded like it could have been marginally credible, yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:38 (laughs) That's how they all sound.

Neill Blomkamp 44:39 (laughs) Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:39 They all sound like that, until you get a guy like Commander Fravor, you know?

Neill Blomkamp 44:43 Yeah, who's also backing it up with footage shot-

Joe Rogan 44:45 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 44:45 ... shot from the-

Joe Rogan 44:46 Yes.

Neill Blomkamp 44:46 ... you know, the nose of some fighter jet.

Joe Rogan 44:50 Yeah, that's the craziest shit, is the footage.

Neill Blomkamp 44:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:52 The footage when you're looking at, um ... They have, uh, an image of this thing taking off from a dead standstill, like instantaneously-

Neill Blomkamp 44:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:59 ... taking off at what they believe is thousands of miles an hour.

Neill Blomkamp 45:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:03 And you're like, "Okay, what's that?"

Neill Blomkamp 45:05 Yeah. How do you explain that?

Joe Rogan 45:06 Yeah. What is that?

Neill Blomkamp 45:07 Yeah, I don't know. It's, it's incredibly ... I mean, yeah. I- I- I was so interested to, to go through everything to do with Bob Lazar because it seemed like the most, the most ... It f- it felt like a goldmine of all of the information that I was kind of-

Joe Rogan 45:21 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 45:21 ... curious about, you know? And everything he says is just more gold in the goldmine. It's all awesome.

Joe Rogan 45:27 The thing about it is there's nothing about what he says that makes you go, "Get the fuck out of here." Everything, uh, is-

Neill Blomkamp 45:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:36 ... at least-

Neill Blomkamp 45:37 Including how it's not good for him, necessarily.

Joe Rogan 45:39 Y- yeah. He makes no money off of it, and the, the man's a legitimate scientist. He runs a, um, some sort of a research lab that, and he, and he sells some research chemicals and things. And he was raided by the FBI.

Neill Blomkamp 45:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:55 You ever see that?

Neill Blomkamp 45:56 Yeah, I did see that.

Joe Rogan 45:56 His whole footage... Well, he believes they were looking for Element 115. He thinks that they think that he still has it-

Neill Blomkamp 46:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:02 ... somewhere, and he may very well.

Neill Blomkamp 46:04 Crazy.

Joe Rogan 46:04 Yeah. But that's a real problem, 'cause if that guy goes to his grave and he doesn't tell everybody and show everybody that this shit is real ...

Neill Blomkamp 46:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:14 They did some sort of an experiment with it that's on video, but it's like, the video was so weird. It's like from 1990 and, you know, it's, it's, it doesn't mean anything. You're looking at, like, that this is, it's supposed to be able to bend light. But you're looking at it like, "What am I looking at?" I don't know what the...

Neill Blomkamp 46:31 I haven't seen that.

Joe Rogan 46:32 It's ... We tried to look-

Neill Blomkamp 46:34 But I mean-

Joe Rogan 46:34 ... at it before, right, Jamey? But George Knapp has a copy of it, and he-

Neill Blomkamp 46:41 It's the same concept, right? It's, that it's ba-

Joe Rogan 46:43 Yes.

Neill Blomkamp 46:44 It's- it's- it's a synthetic gravitational field.

Joe Rogan 46:46 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 46:46 So it would bend light and it would ...

Joe Rogan 46:48 But when you're looking at it, you don't know what you're looking at.

Neill Blomkamp 46:50 Right.

Joe Rogan 46:50 It's not an, uh, it's not something like, you know, you see a bullet go through a board.

Neill Blomkamp 46:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:55 Like hear (explosion) bang.

Neill Blomkamp 46:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:57 There it is.

Neill Blomkamp 46:57 Something definitive.

Joe Rogan 46:58 Yeah, something definitive. This is the whole thing. This is the case. This is the, the primer. You see the explosion. It's not that. It's some weirdness where you're like, "What am I looking at? I don't know what I'm looking at." Uh, what I want to see is a fucking flying saucer turn sideways and take off faster than the speed of light. That's what I want to see.

Neill Blomkamp 47:16 Or actually be in it. Like, get invited down-

Joe Rogan 47:18 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 47:18 ... to ask for it. Go in it.

Joe Rogan 47:20 (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 47:20 Sit in it. Drive, like fly around in it.

Joe Rogan 47:22 You know the, uh, Jackie Gleason story?

Neill Blomkamp 47:25 Uh, was that in the '50s?

Joe Rogan 47:28 Jackie Gleason ... I think it was later than that. Jackie Gleason used to party with Nixon.

Neill Blomkamp 47:33 Oh, no, I don't know this.

Joe Rogan 47:34 And apparently, Jackie Gleason and Nixon were drinking. And Nixon goes, "You want to see a UFO?"

Neill Blomkamp 47:40 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 47:40 And he takes them ... I don't remember what base it was supposedly at. But, uh, the aftermath was Jackie Gleason designs his house in ... Was it Upstate New York?

Neill Blomkamp 47:54 (laughs) He, he used it as inspiration.

Joe Rogan 47:56 Someone said... Yes, he designs a UFO house, and, uh, the UFO house up in the r- it was up for sale recently, and I wish it was a place that I wanted to live, 'cause I would fucking 100% buy that house.

Neill Blomkamp 48:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:07 'Cause it's, first of all, I'm a giant Jackie Gleason fan, but-

Neill Blomkamp 48:10 It's probably safe to say that he's not good with national secrets, then.

Joe Rogan 48:14 According to William Schachtar, Gleason said Nixon showed him the Roswell aliens. Um, who knows if William Schachtar's-

Neill Blomkamp 48:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 48:20 ... telling the truth. He's lying about his hair. But if you go to, uh, go to the, the house, the, the Roswell, the, uh, Jackie Gleason house, 'cause it was for sale, and it looks like a UFO.

Neill Blomkamp 48:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:33 I mean, it's, it's an amazing little tidbit.

Neill Blomkamp 48:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:38 'Cause if Jackie Gleason really did party with Nixon and he really did take him to see a UFO, and then Gleason apparently was obsessed with UFOs after that.

Neill Blomkamp 48:48 He was so moved by it.

Joe Rogan 48:49 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 48:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:49 And he built this weird house where he had it designed.

Neill Blomkamp 48:52 Interesting.

Joe Rogan 48:53 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 48:54 We, we, I, so, I, I, uh, in 2015, I kind of, I started, I, I created this small experimental studio called Oats Studios with my brother, which was, um, designed to, for me to kind of create experimental small films and tur- I wanted to turn it into something later. But one of the, one of the films that I wanted to make, and I still want to make is, is heavily UFO based, which is what got me into all of this stuff.

Joe Rogan 49:18 Oh.

Neill Blomkamp 49:19 And, uh, so I started writing different versions of, of how different stories could play out. And, um, I know that design really well now and his descriptions of it.

Joe Rogan 49:27 This is the house.

Neill Blomkamp 49:28 Oh, interesting.

Joe Rogan 49:29 Yeah. So this was Jackie Gleason's house. Where is it, Jamie?

Narrator 49:34 Uh...

Neill Blomkamp 49:35 New York.

Narrator 49:37 Westchester County.

Joe Rogan 49:38 Yeah, so it is in New York. Wow. So scroll up so we can take a look at it. It's a, the whole thing is circular. It was for sale.

Neill Blomkamp 49:47 It's definitely inspired by it.

Joe Rogan 49:48 Yeah, supposedly. I mean, pretty fucking dope. Plus, you're living in Jackie Gleason's house, which is pretty badass anyway.

Neill Blomkamp 49:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:59 But he just decided to make this thing. I mean-

Neill Blomkamp 50:01 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 50:01 I mean, uh, what does it mean? Who knows?

Neill Blomkamp 50:03 I'm not into the woods around it though. It looks a little too claustrophobic.

Joe Rogan 50:07 The woods?

Neill Blomkamp 50:08 Well, no, that, around the house like that, I hate it when, like you need a little bit of space for some sunlight to come in.

Joe Rogan 50:12 Oh, okay.

Neill Blomkamp 50:13 I live in the woods now, so.

Joe Rogan 50:14 Do you? Oh, that's right. You were saying that you live in an area of Vancou- or the outside of Vancouver in that area where there's actual rattlesnakes.

Neill Blomkamp 50:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:22 It's like a desert area.

Neill Blomkamp 50:23 Yeah, it's the end of the, of the high desert coming out of Washington State into Canada. So it's, it's called the Okanagan Valley, and, um, there's a lot of wine that's grown there. But it's, it's an unusual microclimate for Canada.

Joe Rogan 50:36 How'd you wind up there?

Neill Blomkamp 50:38 Just looking for some more arid. Like I really, I hate rain. I hated living in Vancouver.

Joe Rogan 50:42 Really?

Neill Blomkamp 50:42 Oh, I can't stand rain.

Joe Rogan 50:44 (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 50:44 Yeah, like, I mean, I'm into like thunder showers and cool rain.

Joe Rogan 50:47 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 50:47 I'm not into like stupid rain, which is-

Joe Rogan 50:49 Like constant Seattle rain?

Neill Blomkamp 50:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:51 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 50:51 I mean, yeah, Seattle would be like Vancouver light.

Joe Rogan 50:54 Righ- oh, that's true. The, Vancouver's even worse, right? Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 50:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:57 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 50:57 So I just, I just couldn't do that anymore. So without leaving Canada, I was like, 'cause I mean America would be an option, but is there anywhere more arid in Canada? And then I discovered this, this region, which it just has less precipitation. And the, I like how arid it is. So, and then it, it made me, you know-

Joe Rogan 51:14 Wow, that's fucking pretty.

Neill Blomkamp 51:16 Yeah. That's Naramata. That's where I live, so...

Joe Rogan 51:18 Oh my God. That's beautiful. You live there?

Neill Blomkamp 51:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:21 Wow.

Neill Blomkamp 51:22 Although right now it's covered in, uh, wildfire smoke.

Joe Rogan 51:25 Oh, that's right.

Neill Blomkamp 51:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:26 Um, w- does Vancouver have the same sort of association with suicide and depression the way like Portland and Seattle do?

Neill Blomkamp 51:36 You know, that's a really interesting question. I wanna get to the bottom of that. 'Cause people have said that before. There's also something to do with serial killers apparently as well that's tied to the weather like that, or the climate, I should say.

Joe Rogan 51:47 Mm-hmm.

Neill Blomkamp 51:48 But, um, I don't know, but I need to look into that 'cause I have heard that.

Joe Rogan 51:52 I haven't heard a connection though. I mean, I haven't heard it about Vancouver. You consistently hear it about Seattle.

Neill Blomkamp 51:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:58 Seattle and suicide are like-

Neill Blomkamp 52:00 Interesting.

Joe Rogan 52:01 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 52:02 Yeah, I, I felt like that was ... it, it felt oppressive to me. It's too-

Joe Rogan 52:07 Oppressive.

Neill Blomkamp 52:07 It's too much gray, yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:08 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 52:08 I just couldn't do it. So, you know, we, we moved out, we moved out there actually for COVID because, um, we, we had a place that was since 2017. And I just kind of loved the area, but it never was clear to me how I could work from there or live there just, I didn't know how to do it. So we would go there sometimes. And then as, um, as COVID began, we just kind of found ourselves more permanently there until eventually, um, we just realized we left Vancouver. So it's, it's much, it's much more of a different lifestyle. I mean, there, there's this old railroad track, uh, on the, the sort of east side of, of where we live called the KVR, the Kettle Valley Rail. And on the other side of that is th- I mean thousands of kilometers to, to Alberta basically of wild woods. So I can go like off-roading and just go out into the woods in a way that feels really alien to living in a big city.

Joe Rogan 53:02 You must have a lot of bears.

Neill Blomkamp 53:04 There are bears. I don't really run into them that much though. But there are bears. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:08 Yeah, that's a, that's a heavy bear area-

Neill Blomkamp 53:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:10 ... up north in BC.

Neill Blomkamp 53:12 I always think about that actually, like dirt biking. Like if I, if I, I, it's not cl- it, everybody has a different thing about what you're meant to do with which bear. And it's like the brown bear you're meant to just sort of lie there and let it chew your calf muscle off or something. And like you're meant to just like lie there and it's like, yeah, I don't know if I'm gonna do that.

Joe Rogan 53:28 Well, if you get attacked by a black bear most of the time it's trying to eat you.

Neill Blomkamp 53:33 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 53:33 If you get attacked by a brown bear most of the time it is defending either its cache, like it has a dead animal that it's killed and it's buried nearby and you've stumbled upon it or-

Neill Blomkamp 53:43 Or it's young.

Joe Rogan 53:44 Or it's young. And-

Neill Blomkamp 53:46 It's wei- weird that the black bear which, I mean the black bears are so much smaller that they would try to eat you.

Joe Rogan 53:50 They're big enough.

Narrator 53:52 Did you see this video?

Joe Rogan 53:53 Yes. (laughs)

Narrator 53:55 Man, it's so crazy.

Joe Rogan 53:56 The bear just walks by this guy and it's fucking enormous. Where was that that took place?

Narrator 54:02 Uh...

Joe Rogan 54:02 Is that Alaska?

Neill Blomkamp 54:07 ... yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:07 Yeah, an Alaskan-

Neill Blomkamp 54:08 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:08 ... seaplane pilot demonstrated nerves of steel early this week as he calmly convincing (laughs) a massive grizzly bear not to attack him and his group of tourists. Have you seen this?

Neill Blomkamp 54:18 No.

Joe Rogan 54:18 Here, play it.

Neill Blomkamp 54:19 Oh, all right.

Joe Rogan 54:19 Play it, because it's pretty wild. This guy is just, uh-

Neill Blomkamp 54:23 Uh, let me find the thing.

Joe Rogan 54:24 This guy is, uh... I think it's, uh, that one right there.

Neill Blomkamp 54:27 From 2018.

Joe Rogan 54:27 Yeah, that's it right there.

Neill Blomkamp 54:28 From 2018.

Joe Rogan 54:28 Give me some volume.

Narrator 54:30 Oh, shit. Hey, big boy. Oh, shit. You guys got a camera out? Yeah. Hm? Hey, big boy.

Neill Blomkamp 54:40 Yeah. I would find that problematic.

Joe Rogan 54:45 Hugely.

Neill Blomkamp 54:47 It's, it's also interesting how-

Joe Rogan 54:48 Watch this. Wait for this.

Narrator 54:52 Hey, bear. Hey, bear. Hey, bear.

Neill Blomkamp 54:58 Oh, that is terrifying.

Joe Rogan 55:00 Oh, fuck all that. That is, like, two yards away.

Neill Blomkamp 55:04 Yeah. My, my, uh, my bro- my brother sent me this video. I don't know where, where, where it's from. But he sent me a video that was like, it was a home security camera inside of a house. And it's, it's on the front door and it... I think it's a grizzly. Just smashes the door open.

Joe Rogan 55:21 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 55:21 Have you seen this?

Joe Rogan 55:21 I have seen that.

Neill Blomkamp 55:22 It kno- knocks all the, like, timber off the side of the door-

Joe Rogan 55:23 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 55:23 ... and stuff and just comes in.

Joe Rogan 55:25 Like it's nothing.

Neill Blomkamp 55:25 Yeah, like it was-

Joe Rogan 55:26 Just pushes on it.

Neill Blomkamp 55:27 ... like balsa wood.

Joe Rogan 55:28 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 55:28 Yeah. It's... Man.

Joe Rogan 55:29 My friend John saw a grizzly kill a moose by swatting at in the back. He saw it break its back.

Neill Blomkamp 55:37 Yeah. I've-

Joe Rogan 55:38 He said he was watching it through a scope that, you know, uh, uh, uh, of like, uh, a long distance scope. And he's looking th- at this, this grizzly through the spotting scope and it's chasing this moose and it swats it. Boom! On the back, just snaps the moose's back and, and attacks it and kills it.

Neill Blomkamp 55:57 Brutal.

Joe Rogan 55:57 But the... He said the way it hit it, like, you can't, um-

Neill Blomkamp 56:01 Just the force.

Joe Rogan 56:01 ... your brain doesn't imagine the amount of power that it has.

Neill Blomkamp 56:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:05 And this massive arm that just comes down and slams into the back of a fucking moose.

Neill Blomkamp 56:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:11 And snaps its back.

Neill Blomkamp 56:13 It's incredible how powerful they are.

Joe Rogan 56:15 They're ridiculous, man.

Neill Blomkamp 56:16 There was, there was a... Uh, it's, it's... When I moved to Canada, I mean, you know, I was... I remember, I remember people, um, that I was hanging out with asking me about South Africa and if, if we had wild animals roaming around. Like, when we were in West Vancouver, you know, in the, in the, in the sort of suburban areas of West Vancouver, which touch on the North Shore Mountains. And it's like, what are you, what are you talking about? Like, you're the people that have fricking bears coming down the back of your house every day.

Joe Rogan 56:42 (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 56:42 There's cougars all over the place, you know? It's like-

Joe Rogan 56:44 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 56:44 ... it's much more wild, uh, than South Africa ever felt. It's hilarious. You need to go out of Johannesburg to go see that kind of thing.

Joe Rogan 56:50 That is funny.

Neill Blomkamp 56:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:51 'Cause people think of Africa as like, "Oh my God, there's lions everywhere, everywhere you look."

Neill Blomkamp 56:55 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:56 But it's... They're... The weird thing is they're more contained, right? There's... And there's a lot of these game parks where they're all in this very specific area.

Neill Blomkamp 57:04 Like the Kruger, yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:06 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 57:06 Yeah. I don't know. It's, it's, it's interesting. I mean, there's a lot of wildlife. Like, we had, we had coyotes kill, uh... I don't know whether they... I mean, I assume they killed it, but we actually had like a dead, uh... It, it looked like, looked like a really large deer that they killed on our property. And that's just like something that I would never have seen until we moved out there, you know?

Joe Rogan 57:24 I ha- I saw a video yesterday of a bobcat killing a grown deer. I did not know-

Neill Blomkamp 57:31 Hm.

Joe Rogan 57:31 ... that a small bobcat-

Neill Blomkamp 57:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:32 ... can kill a big grown deer.

Neill Blomkamp 57:34 Yeah. Yeah, we have those too.

Joe Rogan 57:37 Bobca-... Uh, bobcats are ferocious. Like, I, I thought they would kill like rabbits and things along those lines and this... Here, I'll show it to you, Jamie. I'll send this to you. Um, it, it kills this enormous deer and it does it, like, relatively quickly. It sneaks up on it. Here, again, Jamie, I'll send this to you.

Neill Blomkamp 57:59 Is this it? Right here?

Joe Rogan 58:01 Uh, nope, that's not it. I just sent you the video.

Neill Blomkamp 58:05 He's gonna do it here too.

Joe Rogan 58:06 Let's check this one out too. Where's he at?

Neill Blomkamp 58:13 Bobcat's here.

Joe Rogan 58:13 Oh, there's... Oh. Oh, look at him.

Narrator 58:19 Whoa.

Joe Rogan 58:22 Whoa.

Narrator 58:22 Yes.

Joe Rogan 58:24 Oh.

Neill Blomkamp 58:24 Whoa.

Joe Rogan 58:25 Wow.

Neill Blomkamp 58:26 Oh, like... Yeah, that doesn't sound good.

Narrator 58:28 That's the noise.

Joe Rogan 58:29 The noise, man.

Neill Blomkamp 58:30 Oh.

Joe Rogan 58:31 I sent you one, Jamie. This, it's not, uh, c- quite as, uh, graphic, but, uh, you can see the bobcat sneaking up on this deer and then just leaps on it.

Neill Blomkamp 58:41 Crazy.

Joe Rogan 58:41 And it's a big ass deer too, like... See, there's the bobcat. Look at him. Look how much smaller the bobcat is than the deer. He's just like, a little closer, little closer and booyah. I mean-

Neill Blomkamp 58:59 Yeah, it's, it's like one fifth its size.

Joe Rogan 59:00 Yeah, it's crazy. And he, he just gets its neck.

Neill Blomkamp 59:06 Yeah, that is pretty incredible.

Joe Rogan 59:07 Yeah. The wild is a crazy place to be. D- does that inspire... Like, when you see wild predators and things like that, does that inspire...

Neill Blomkamp 59:17 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 59:17 Like, you, you write a lot of... Like, the, the new film-

Neill Blomkamp 59:21 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 59:21 ... is horrific.

Neill Blomkamp 59:22 Well, the, the new film was shot out there. I mean, the main, the main... You know, it was during COVID, it was like we could either not, not work while everything was paused or make something. And so I kind of wan-... I always wanted to shoot a, a low budget horror film. And so I, I kind of looked at all of the elements that I had available and, um, got, got the same team that did our experimental stuff for Oats Studios on YouTube together to make basically like a bigger version of what we were making for, for our experimental stuff. And shot it in the same region. We used all of the stuff that we had access to and... Yeah. So it did inspire that. It inspired... It, it was inspired by the fact that I was living out there.

Joe Rogan 1:00:03 Yeah, 'cause a bear is kinda like a demon.

Neill Blomkamp 1:00:07 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:00:07 Like, if a bear's chasing you in the woods-

Neill Blomkamp 1:00:09 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:10 I mean, that's a...

Neill Blomkamp 1:00:11 I mean, if you could create the same sense of fear, that would be good-

Joe Rogan 1:00:14 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 1:00:14 ... if there was a way to, you know, to capture that. But yeah, no, the, that film was a, it was a, uh, uh, Demonic was incredibly unique in how it came about. It was like all of these different disparate elements that, that I sort of put into a blender to try to make something that felt, that felt scary.

Joe Rogan 1:00:32 And when... There was something I read about the sound. Like, you, you did something different with the sound in this film that was revolutionary or very unique.

Neill Blomkamp 1:00:42 No, not sound. I mean, we did, we did really weird imagery. We did volumetric capture as imagery, which is unusual.

Joe Rogan 1:00:48 Oh, okay. So volumetric cap... That's, maybe I'm s- thinking that that was sound.

Neill Blomkamp 1:00:52 No, it's, it's, it's the imagery of the VR sequences, when she goes into her mother's mind.

Joe Rogan 1:00:57 Oh.

Neill Blomkamp 1:00:57 So the way, the way that that was captured was just very... It's an unusual process to be used in that way in a film. So like there's, there's a process in computer graphics called photogrammetry, where if you take 100 photos of like an object like this, hundreds of different angles, and you give it to a computer, it can extrapolate a three-dimensional object, kinda like a CAD file.

Joe Rogan 1:01:17 Mm-hmm.

Neill Blomkamp 1:01:18 And but the cool thing with photogrammetry is it also brings all of the, the image data with it as well. So you'd get the different colors and the surfaces and stuff. Um, so volumetric capture is the idea of doing that 24 times a second. So if you were to capture an actress 24 times a second, she would be fully three-dimensional in the way that this is. So it's like 3D video.

Joe Rogan 1:01:41 Mm.

Neill Blomkamp 1:01:42 And then, um, and then once you have, you know, the performances from the actors, you can put them in, in synthetic, computer-generated environments, and then begin to light them and, and select your cameras.

Joe Rogan 1:01:54 So that's what the sequence when she's lying there and she goes into her mother's mind.

Neill Blomkamp 1:01:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:59 That's, uh, that's how you did that.

Neill Blomkamp 1:02:01 Exactly, yeah. That, that was, I mean, that was part of the reverse engineering of how the movie came about, was, oh, ev- if everything is paused for now, and, uh, we, you know, let's use this time to make something else, um, what are the things I wanna do? And one of the ideas was I wanna use volumetric capture at some point. It's not clear how to use that in a movie, but I wanna use it somehow. And then another idea was this idea of the Vatican kind of buying up corporations with all of the capital that they have, and, and playing on the, the, the trope of exorcist priests, you know, but acting a slightly more 21st century way. And I sort of combined those two, and that, that was the basis for what, what the movie became.

Joe Rogan 1:02:39 It's a trippy concept, and it's one that has existed forever, the idea of demonic possession.

Neill Blomkamp 1:02:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:46 And that there could be a thing that comes from some other realm, some other dimension, that can get into a person.

Neill Blomkamp 1:02:55 Yeah, something immaterial-

Joe Rogan 1:02:56 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 1:02:56 ... that, that takes over your body. It would be... I mean, you know, the, the Vatican, the Catholic Ch- the Catholic Church does do exorcism seminars for priests. So it is... I mean, I found that when I was looking into it, that it's... There's a, there's a level of perceived reality to it that is quite, you know...

Joe Rogan 1:03:14 What are your thoughts on that? Like, when you think of the idea of people spending time-

Neill Blomkamp 1:03:19 I-

Joe Rogan 1:03:19 ... trying to get demons out of other people.

Neill Blomkamp 1:03:22 I mean, again, I wish it was true.

Joe Rogan 1:03:23 (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 1:03:23 I just don't think it is. (laughs) It's like that's the theme, right? The theme is like I want all of this other fantastical stuff, I just... Not sure that it's there.

Joe Rogan 1:03:31 But that's a one... That's one where you maybe shouldn't wish it was true, 'cause if, if the, if demons really are running around-

Neill Blomkamp 1:03:38 I mean, I, I agree, but it would also be exciting though.

Joe Rogan 1:03:40 (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 1:03:40 Like if someone was demonically possessed that you knew, like-

Joe Rogan 1:03:43 Right, if you-

Neill Blomkamp 1:03:44 ... if you could go visit him, you know, in a clinic where he was demonically possessed and just sort of look through the bulletproof glass and see how he was doing-

Joe Rogan 1:03:51 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 1:03:51 ... just would be interesting.

Joe Rogan 1:03:52 And if someone stabbed him with some sort of, you know, object from the Vatican-

Neill Blomkamp 1:03:56 Like a scepter, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:57 ... and you, you see the demon coming out of his body.

Neill Blomkamp 1:03:59 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:00 It's al- it's been around for so long, the idea of demonic possession. Do you think that the roots of that are like, uh, mental illness, you know-

Neill Blomkamp 1:04:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:07 ... psychotic breaks?

Neill Blomkamp 1:04:09 Yeah. Yeah, I think, I think it's, it's very, um, primitive, mm, you know, medicine or lack of medicine trying to understand things that we understand better now. And it gets built into the culture and it gets built into the religious system, and it, it becomes a staple.

Joe Rogan 1:04:24 One of my favorite, uh, science fiction/horror movies is the Event Horizon.

Neill Blomkamp 1:04:28 Yeah, I love Event Horizon.

Joe Rogan 1:04:29 It's a great movie.

Neill Blomkamp 1:04:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:30 Event Horizon was so fun, because they combined-

Neill Blomkamp 1:04:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:35 ... like demonic possession and space travel.

Neill Blomkamp 1:04:38 Yeah. It's a cool-

Joe Rogan 1:04:39 Two of the best things. (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 1:04:39 It's a, it's a cool mixture, yeah. It's like ice cream flavors.

Joe Rogan 1:04:42 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 1:04:42 Yeah, no, uh, Event Horizon is very cool. Um, I like Sam Neill as well.

Joe Rogan 1:04:47 Yes, yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 1:04:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:49 No, Laurence Fishburne. It's a great film. (clears throat) It's a fun film.

Neill Blomkamp 1:04:53 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:04:53 You know, when they're all...

Neill Blomkamp 1:04:54 It has a cool tone about it as well.

Joe Rogan 1:04:56 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 1:04:56 A very dark tone. What are other sci-fi favorites of yours?

Joe Rogan 1:05:01 Alien.

Neill Blomkamp 1:05:01 Alien, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:02 That's why... I was really excited when I heard that you were, uh, at least potentially, at one point in time, thinking about doing an Alien.

Neill Blomkamp 1:05:09 Yeah, it would've been cool.

Joe Rogan 1:05:10 What happened?

Neill Blomkamp 1:05:12 It's just, you know, just studio politics, and the, um... I do, I do think that the way that Chappie was received probably p- played a role in me not working on Alien. Uh, but, you know, it's, it's Ridley's world that he created, and it's like, it, it should be his to do what he wants with. So it, it, it's, it's all good.

Joe Rogan 1:05:35 Yeah, I get that. Uh, but still would've been fun.

Neill Blomkamp 1:05:39 Yeah, I would- would've been fun for me as well. I mean, the, the thing that I, I would've really enjoyed about it was Sigourney Weaver was really down for what I'd written. And she... That... The main thing to me was, even though I like Alien 3 and I love Fincher as a director, I just wanted a version of, of the continuation of what happened after Aliens. And for Newt to be alive and for, you know, for Ripley to continue that story. Um, and it's, it was sort of based on that idea, so...

Joe Rogan 1:06:06 Is the kid who played Newt, how old is she now?

Neill Blomkamp 1:06:10 Um-I, well, f- I mean, in my story, she was, she was in her, uh, kinda mid-20s. Um, I mean, in realit-, I mean, Alien just, Aliens just turned 35, so she must be, you know, like, 44 or something like that.

Joe Rogan 1:06:25 Isn't that wild?

Neill Blomkamp 1:06:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:26 It's wild when you find out that the movie, the original was from the '70s.

Neill Blomkamp 1:06:30 '79, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:31 Yeah, and you're like, "What?"

Neill Blomkamp 1:06:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:33 It seems so much more current-

Neill Blomkamp 1:06:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:36 ... than a 1970s movie.

Neill Blomkamp 1:06:36 I mean, that's one of the things that's amazing about it is, is how timeless it is.

Joe Rogan 1:06:40 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 1:06:40 You know, and, and also just, I mean, a lot of, it, I saw it in a theater a couple a years ago, and I couldn't believe just the quality of, of everything.

Joe Rogan 1:06:48 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 1:06:48 You know, it's really amazing how well it was filmed.

Joe Rogan 1:06:50 I accidentally watched the Blu-ray version of Aliens, and it's kind of hilarious, because in the Blu-ray version, things that were not meant to be HD are now HD. So wh-, there's a scene where the spaceships are lined up, and there's clearly a mural of spaceships in the background. It looks so fucking fake.

Neill Blomkamp 1:07:12 Oh, you mean a matte painting?

Joe Rogan 1:07:13 Yes.

Neill Blomkamp 1:07:13 Well, is it when they're in the Sulaco, when they're in the, when they're in the, the military ship, the big one?

Joe Rogan 1:07:18 Yes.

Neill Blomkamp 1:07:18 Okay, right.

Joe Rogan 1:07:19 I think.

Neill Blomkamp 1:07:19 I think I know what you mean.

Joe Rogan 1:07:20 It looks so corny. I'm like, "No." (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 1:07:24 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:07:24 Because there's, you know, there's, like, this physical s- ship.

Neill Blomkamp 1:07:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:28 And then behind it is just some bullshit.

Neill Blomkamp 1:07:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:30 It's, like, it's so clear that they used, you know, they expected, like, focus and, you know, the kinda graininess of film-

Neill Blomkamp 1:07:37 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:07:38 ... to ma- mask that.

Neill Blomkamp 1:07:39 Yeah, matte paintings, pre-computer graphics were done on panes of glass. And so, um, I mean, t- in a way, Aliens is like an, uh, using the technology that they had at the time is actually, like, totally incredible. But I know, I do know what you're saying though. I mean, for, for audiences now weaned on the stuff that we're, that we have access to, you know, these techniques are so dated. But it would be a large pane of glass, like a shower piece of, of glass, and then they would paint what they want the set to look like.

Joe Rogan 1:08:06 Ah.

Neill Blomkamp 1:08:07 And shoot through it, um, on, uh, with your other real, uh, environments as well. That's why the shot's always locked off, right? They're always stable.

Joe Rogan 1:08:15 Mm-hmm.

Neill Blomkamp 1:08:15 'Cause you c- obviously you can't move.

Joe Rogan 1:08:16 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 1:08:17 And so, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:18 Aliens was interesting, uh, by itself if Alien didn't exist. The problem with Aliens is these creatures are so bumbling and easy to kill. Like, in the first movie-

Neill Blomkamp 1:08:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:30 ... that thing was so clever.

Neill Blomkamp 1:08:32 Pure terror. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:33 Yeah, pure terror. So clever-

Neill Blomkamp 1:08:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:36 ... and, and so good at sneaking up on people.

Neill Blomkamp 1:08:39 I mean, I think the thing that Cameron did with the second film was pretty amazing though in the way that he was, he made it, he made it militaristic.

Joe Rogan 1:08:46 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 1:08:46 It, it cha- it changed the, the context. And so I think because of that, and also there was the kind of Vietnam War, high technology, low technology sort of parable at, at play.

Joe Rogan 1:08:56 Yes.

Neill Blomkamp 1:08:56 Um, so it was two forces, you know, who, in, in which case it makes the aliens be more, there's, there's an abundance of them.

Joe Rogan 1:09:04 Right.

Neill Blomkamp 1:09:04 Um, but I, I, I almost like both films equally, I think. Both, both approaches.

Joe Rogan 1:09:09 They're both fun. But the first one was far more terrifying.

Neill Blomkamp 1:09:13 Yeah, the first one is more scary.

Joe Rogan 1:09:14 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 1:09:14 I agree. I agree.

Joe Rogan 1:09:16 Yeah, when it gets Yaphet Kotto.

Neill Blomkamp 1:09:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:18 It's like, there's so many moments in that movie just like, "Oh, Jesus."

Neill Blomkamp 1:09:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:22 And there'd never been a film like it.

Neill Blomkamp 1:09:24 Yeah. No, I could, I mean, I can imagine in 1979 seeing that in the theater where, I think the studio executives, there's one famous quote where, where they, they thought (laughs) they had gone too far. There was, like, a test screening with the audience where they were like, "This may have gone too far." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:09:36 Wow. I wonder if they edited anything out of it. Is there an uncut version?

Neill Blomkamp 1:09:41 I think, I think just the way it is in 1979 would be-

Joe Rogan 1:09:44 Just the-

Neill Blomkamp 1:09:44 ... extreme.

Joe Rogan 1:09:45 ... the blood and-

Neill Blomkamp 1:09:45 Yeah. Well, just the tension and the...

Joe Rogan 1:09:48 Apparently, there is a VR version, um, of that. There's, like, a game version.

Neill Blomkamp 1:09:55 Yeah, Alien: Isolation.

Joe Rogan 1:09:56 Have you done it?

Neill Blomkamp 1:09:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:58 What's that like?

Neill Blomkamp 1:09:58 Well, wait, are you talking about a computer game? Or-

Joe Rogan 1:10:00 It's, it's, uh, like Oculus Rift. Like, you know, it's, is it HTC Vive or Oculus? Do you know, Jamie?

Narrator 1:10:07 I'm checking it out.

Neill Blomkamp 1:10:07 I think, I think it's Alien: Isolation, which is made by Creative Assembly in, in the UK as a, as a video game.

Joe Rogan 1:10:14 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 1:10:14 And then someone ported it over to VR.

Joe Rogan 1:10:17 Oh.

Neill Blomkamp 1:10:17 So it's kind of like a hack. Um, I don't think that, I mean, I could be wrong, but I don't think they released an official proper one. Um, but I played the game, which is really cool. And I have, I haven't seen it in VR.

Joe Rogan 1:10:28 Oh, okay.

Neill Blomkamp 1:10:29 You could, you could do, you could, I know it exists though. You could do something really terrifying in VR.

Joe Rogan 1:10:32 Well, this one in particular, people that I know that have played it or have done the experience said it's horrific.

Neill Blomkamp 1:10:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:39 It's really scary because you really do feel like you're trapped inside these-

Neill Blomkamp 1:10:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:43 ... tunnels in this ship.

Neill Blomkamp 1:10:44 I love the idea of it just going too far, you know, which you can do with VR-

Joe Rogan 1:10:48 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 1:10:48 ... where it's like, it's too much.

Joe Rogan 1:10:49 Heart attacks.

Neill Blomkamp 1:10:50 Well-

Joe Rogan 1:10:51 Yeah. (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 1:10:51 ... maybe dialed, like, 1% back from that.

Joe Rogan 1:10:54 (laughs) Yeah, well, that, that film, like, the, the, the, the idea of this thing getting into a person-

Neill Blomkamp 1:11:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:11:02 ... and then popping-

Neill Blomkamp 1:11:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:03 ... out of their chest and then escaping.

Neill Blomkamp 1:11:05 The, the, the body horror, the ges-, the gestation of it-

Joe Rogan 1:11:08 Yeah.

Neill Blomkamp 1:11:08 ... is the most, is the most intense part for sure.

Joe Rogan 1:11:10 And then not knowing where it is.

Neill Blomkamp 1:11:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:13 And, you know, being stuck on this ship where you can't get out of the ship. You're just trapped.

Neill Blomkamp 1:11:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:17 And you're flying through space. And you get this creature running around killing all your friends.

Neill Blomkamp 1:11:22 Yeah, no, it's, it was, I mean, I love the-

Joe Rogan 1:11:24 Brilliant.

Neill Blomkamp 1:11:24 I love the movie. Yeah, totally-

Joe Rogan 1:11:25 Plus-

Neill Blomkamp 1:11:25 I totally love it.

Joe Rogan 1:11:26 ... the Giger alien itself, like, the way he designed it-

Neill Blomkamp 1:11:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:11:29 ... it's so unique and-

Neill Blomkamp 1:11:31 I think he pre-designed it. I think, I think, um, it was, it was part of his, his catalog of stuff that he, he'd done.

Joe Rogan 1:11:38 Mm.

Neill Blomkamp 1:11:39 And, uh, and Ridley saw it and kind of really just narrowed in on, "Let's build that," you know.

Joe Rogan 1:11:45 That makes sense.

Neill Blomkamp 1:11:46 Yeah. Um, I sh- I did shoot another, I shot an Alien story with Sigourney called Racca, which is on our YouTube channel. So it has her and it has aliens. And it was me di-, riffing on the idea of Aliens when I wasn't working on Aliens.

Joe Rogan 1:11:59 Is it, like, a short film?

Neill Blomkamp 1:12:00 It's 25 minutes long, I think. But I wanna make a sequence of them. I wanna make lots of them.

Joe Rogan 1:12:04 Oh.

Neill Blomkamp 1:12:05 So, um, yeah, check that out, 'cause it has-

Joe Rogan 1:12:08 Yeah, for sure.

Neill Blomkamp 1:12:09 ... it's, it's, it's, it's not the same vibe as, uh, as Alien, but it's, it's, it's in the same science fiction horror realm.

Joe Rogan 1:12:16 Did you find whatever that thing is? The, uh, the, uh, VR version?

Narrator 1:12:21 Yeah, yeah. He explained exactly what it was.

Joe Rogan 1:12:24 And so, i- is it available to the public?

Narrator 1:12:26 The... Uh, at the time I'm, of the article I found, the game was free, and you had, you could, I think, the mod is free. You just download it and throw it in the folder, it says, and then you can play.

Joe Rogan 1:12:34 Is it, uh, the Vive or is it Oculus?

Narrator 1:12:37 If you hook your Oculus up to your PC, you could play it that way. But yeah, you need a computer, I believe-

Joe Rogan 1:12:42 Uh-huh.

Narrator 1:12:42 ... 'cause you need to download the game.

Joe Rogan 1:12:44 That's, to me, the future of, uh, uh, just of entertainment in general.

Neill Blomkamp 1:12:50 Oh, totally.

Joe Rogan 1:12:50 Like, my kids would come to, uh, the studio in LA, and they would literally have a race to see who could get to the Oculus first.

Neill Blomkamp 1:12:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:12:58 'Cause they just wanted to play the, the VR games, like, constantly.

Neill Blomkamp 1:13:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:02 And they'd be, like, walking the plank, screaming and, like-

Neill Blomkamp 1:13:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:04 ... walking around and, and playing the, you know, the one with the drums where you're slicing the, the boxes apart. It's, this is it?

Narrator 1:13:11 This guy's, actually, I think he's using an Oculus, it looks like, but it's hooked up-

Joe Rogan 1:13:14 Hmm.

Narrator 1:13:14 ... to his PC, so.

Joe Rogan 1:13:16 And this is the, uh-

Narrator 1:13:18 But, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:18 ... this is the game.

Neill Blomkamp 1:13:19 Yeah.

Narrator 1:13:20 And there's, like, a specific DLC that's, like, uh-

Neill Blomkamp 1:13:23 Yeah, I know, I know the artist that make, that made this game. I, uh, I was really blown away by it.

Joe Rogan 1:13:28 Oh, wow.

Neill Blomkamp 1:13:28 'Cause you know what they did, is while they captured, they captured the tone and the atmosphere of Ridley's film really well. They used audio samples, I think, that were real, and, um, Fox opened up, like, the whole sort of archive of, of imagery and sound and stuff, so they had access to all of that, so it feels very authentic.

Joe Rogan 1:13:47 They, um, you know, they've had so many Alien films now. It's so crazy, right? They w- they even did... They got so silly. They went, like, Aliens versus Predator.

Neill Blomkamp 1:13:55 Yeah, they shouldn't have done that.

Joe Rogan 1:13:56 No, they shouldn't have.

Neill Blomkamp 1:13:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:56 But, but they did. (laughs)

Neill Blomkamp 1:13:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:58 But they still a-

Neill Blomkamp 1:13:58 Predator's also awesome.

Joe Rogan 1:14:00 Yeah, by itself.

Neill Blomkamp 1:14:01 Yeah.