I had the wonderful opportunity to sit down with documentary filmmaker James Fox to discuss his newest documentary, The Program. Set to release on December 16th, The Program looks at modern disclosure and how we got here. From the events that led up to David Grush, Commander Fravor, and Ryan Graves’s testimony to the United States House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, to where we are today and what we have to look forward to. James has self-funded his previous documentaries, and The Program is no different.

Sit back and enjoy my conversation with James Fox as we discuss New Jersey drone sightings, government backlash, and a whole lot more!

An Interview with Documentarian James Fox

Brendan Jesus: Whenever I do Ufology-related interviews, I like to start them off on a lighter note before we really dig into things. There have been many representations of extraterrestrials in modern media. Do you have a favorite interpretation of ETs/UFOs/UAPs?

James Fox: How modern?

BJ: We’ll say 70s and on. Fire in the Sky and up. Wait–

James Fox: That was the 90s! Close Encounters is really cool because those reports came directly out of Project Blue Book files. And Hyneck was actually in the movie. I remember at the time people telling me like, “Close Encounters, that one object that did that, that’s what I saw!” And what the beings looked like came out of the Project Blue Book files.

Fire in the Sky was pretty good! I sat down with Travis Walton a number of times. The first time was probably 12 or 13 years ago. We met at a cafe, and the two of us were going to have dinner. I do this often when I really want to capture a story, like really live it. I’ll close my eyes and have the individual I’m interviewing give me a deep level of detail. What they saw, what they felt. I close my eyes and relive it. I did that with Travis Walton; I wanted to be there in the craft with him. See what he saw, feel what he felt. That case is just so extraordinary! They passed the polygraph tests!

I met with a lot of the guys that were with him. One of the guys was working in a Walmart and didn’t have time to get off work. So he told me if I wanted to see him to come to Walmart and he’d take a five-minute break. I went there and he goes, “You ever see a brand new Corvette? Like it’s so perfect–that’s what this craft looked like.” He was describing the level of perfection of this craft in a way I’d never forget. To see it in his eyes…it was a great case.

BJ: If there are aliens proper as we’ve come to see in shows like The X Files or heard of in Dr. Jonathan Reed’s 1999 appearance on Coast to Coast with Art Bell and his recorded alien scream, would you put your money on greys or greens?

James Fox: Greys. It’s funny, there was a witness from the Roswell crash and I had spoken to the individual who spoke directly to Mac Brazel. Mac Brazel was the one who came upon the crash debris site and went to the military base in Roswell, New Mexico, and said, “Hey, you’re talking about this reward…I think I found something..” Mac Brazel told the guy I was talking to, I think he ran the mortuary and was named Glen Dennis. [Brazel] goes, “You know those little green fellas they always talk about?” Dennis goes, “Yeah…” Brazel says, “They ain’t green.”

Image courtesy of Lab 9 Films and Falco Ink

BJ: Unbeknownst to you and your team, when you set a release date of The Program for December 16–you know The Program is releasing at a pivotal moment in modern Ufological history. Where I’m at in New Jersey, as you’ve probably heard over the past month, has been inundated with “drone” sightings. What is your take on this? And do you think these sightings might be some good PR for you to get more laypeople interested in a documentary like The Program?

James Fox: They’re trying to make contact! Kidding. I’ve kept my eye on this. I have a friend who lives in Jersey, and he’s like, “I’m living in the epicenter; I’ve seen them six times!” I asked what they looked like, and he said, “They’re the size of SUVs,” so I asked how they fly. “They’re hovering and they move side-to-side.” Okay, so what about the noise? “Oh, they’re noisy.” In my book, and I’m not talking about incursions over military bases, or the alleged objects that the F-16s have closed in on which have outmaneuver this–that’s some pretty advanced technology. If these little things can hover and outmaneuver an F-16, that’s pretty phenomenal.

But. The loiter time [of the Jersey drones] is a lot longer than any drone I’ve ever flown. I fly relatively professional drones for all of my movies and I have some higher-end drones–you have 20 or 25-minute flight times. These objects are up there for hours, I’m told. It’s just really strange that we haven’t had the kind of press conference because you have all these residents, night after night, saying this is happening, and what the hell is going on? Why has the executive branch been so quiet about it?

There have been some statements from governors and mayors, but why aren’t we saying like, “Hey, China’s flying highly advanced drones over our area.” Why are they flying over people’s houses every night? It’s really weird. Having said that. I have not seen any evidence that causes me to eliminate conventional propulsion. Advanced, but conventional.

BJ: I saw a post you made regarding taking odd jobs to fund The Program. What was the process like to get this documentary made?

James Fox: That post was for The Phenomenon, the film I made in 2020. A lot of times, I don’t think it’s told enough, the backstory of what it takes to get these projects across the finish line. I had tremendous hurdles in making The Phenomenon. I had tremendous hurdles to overcome in making Moment of Contact. The Program was even worse.

My distributor was acquired by a larger distributor at the very beginning of production. At the end of production, my distributor stopped paying me royalties. They had all of my films, directly or indirectly. It was like somebody turned off the spigot, and all my income was gone overnight. It has gone on to this day. I went into serious debt making The Program because I didn’t have any money. I was dealing with that nightmare and it’s like the worst-case scenario for a filmmaker, having your distributor rip you off. That larger company said they were making a little transition with their financial department, and they’ll be right on it!

Month after month after month.

I had to deal with that unfortunate aspect. Thank god I was in a position where I could go into debt by borrowing money. It had its challenges. This is the most independent production I’ve done in my 30 years in this field. I don’t have a distributor at all. I’m doing this completely independently. I raised a quarter of a million dollars after finishing the movie just so I could put it out. There are lots of hidden expenses people don’t know about, like insurance, trailers, social media, ads, PR firms, and all that stuff. To do it right, you have to spend the money to do it right.

To answer your question, yes. I’ve done foundational work, parked cars, floor heating, painting jobs, roofing jobs, and worked at a hotel. All of this was throughout my career making documentaries.

BJ: Do you think that having to do that has made you more hungry to tell the stories that you want to tell?

James Fox: Yeah. I never got into this for the money. When I was broke and making The Program I was like, “Well, I’ve been here before!” I picked myself up by the bootstraps. I remember people telling me to put out a GoFundMe and I’m like, “I’m not in a foreign prison right now, I don’t need to take free money.” We have a completely 100%, from start to finish, independent documentary. No executives involved, no distributors involved, no one telling me what to do or what to edit.

Image courtesy of Lab 9 Films and Falco Ink

BJ: I do want to talk about David Grusch in a second, but there’s a Ufologist I have interviewed, I won’t say his name. After he came out with his stories, he reported sightings of Men In Black, gangstalking, white vans parked down the road, and all that good stuff. Have you, from any of your films, experienced anything along the lines of thinking your phone is being recorded or seeing that van day after day?

James Fox: One of the things I reluctantly reported on, I kind of covered it a little bit in The Phenomenon, was a visitation a science teacher had. It was a dramatic UFO encounter, along with the whole school… roughly 360 people in broad daylight. This was in Melbourne, Australia, in 1966. The science teacher, who unfortunately just passed, Mr. Greenwood, had talked about why he went silent for over 50 years. It was because he had a visit from men in suits who were very intimidating. That was the first time I reported on that.

Then I went to Brazil and covered an alleged crash case for Moment of Contact. The mother of two of the primary school witnesses, who came within 10 feet of a live creature in broad daylight, had a visit from the so-called MIB–they were also very intimidating and threatening. I kind of went all in on that report. I had heard stuff like it since the 90s. At the time I didn’t really believe it, didn’t really have enough evidence, and thought it might lessen the credibility of my production so I opted out for a couple of decades. Then I decided to go all in and cover that aspect of the encounter.

In the last possible interview, we cover a case that happened in 1990: The Calvine Incident. We cover this in The Program. There were six photographs taken with two witnesses in broad daylight. Military jets were circling the object. It was a fascinating case but we just couldn’t find the witnesses. We found people who investigated the case in an official capacity from the Ministries of Defense for the Royal Airforce in Scottland, Craig Lindsay, and at the last minute, thank god to David Clark, we found someone who came forward and had worked with the two witnesses. They came forward and described these Men In Black. These men in suits came in and scared the living shit out of the witnesses.

To quote him, “They came in after a meeting with these MIB, and they were WHITE AS A FECKING GHOST.” That was one of the most indelible impressions. Like who are these people?

BJ: I’m glad your safety hasn’t been put at risk. You have a unique perspective where it’s clear you’re not trying to promote an ideology, you’re just asking questions and you’re asking the right people. That’s what separates something like The Program from other documentaries out there where you can tell people are coming at it from a point of they think they know what they think they know and that’s the story they’re telling. Whereas you ask, what I feel, are unbiased questions. I think that’s why people are going to really be intrigued by The Program.

James Fox: Thank you, I appreciate that. I’m just Joe Public who’s very curious.

BJ: I’m glad that you bring up David Grusch, and team’s, testimony. It brought a modern wave of disclosure. There’s something powerful about the visual of him sitting there with Jeremy Corbell sitting behind his left shoulder and George Knapp sitting over his right. It’s kind of visually like the angel and demon over his shoulders. Jokingly. Why do you think that out of the three of them, Ryan Graves, Commander Fravor, and Grusch, Grusch was the only one who was so heavily attacked for his testimony?

James Fox: Good question. I asked this internally to a number of folks. They said that he was tasked with going out and uncovering what the intelligence agencies knew. David Grusch, after a couple of years, found the program. He pulled the curtain back. There they were. He found it. They went after him. I remember in a parking lot, with another intel guy I was talking with at the time in D.C., and Grusch was on speaker phone. They were talking and David Grusch sounded like he was terrified for his life. I had never heard anything quite like it. He was legitimately–and I didn’t know it was him at the time. This intel guy turned to me and said, “He needs to go public as soon as humanly possible. He’s worried about his own personal safety.” [Grusch] pulled back the curtain and found what he was tasked with finding. He paid a price for what he found…and for revealing it.

There was no choice other than going public. Making that story public and saying as much as he could without going to jail. My understanding, from people I’ve talked to, is that if you violate your national security oath, there’s no due process. They just pick you up and throw you behind bars. I can’t remember the guy’s name directly behind Grusch. He was the first ICIG. He should have been sitting next to him, but he was behind him.

BJ: In The Program, you touch on the Defense Bill and the prospect of Eminent Domain regarding crashed UAPs. It’s widely known that private companies, like Lockheed Martin, have stated they’ve engaged in crash retrieval. If the government implemented Eminent Domain over these objects, do you think these companies would give their property up? If you think about it, Lockheed makes weapons. If they say, “You can pry this UAP out of my cold dead hands,” what’s there from being Ufology’s version of Ruby Ridge?

James Fox: I’ve been asking this question, specifically, where is it and who has the authority to release it? [Crash retrieval] is deliberately put in the hands of subcontractors. I say in the film that you can subpoena the subcontractors but the folks at, let’s say, Lockheed, they’re a private entity. I was told because of all the pressure and publicity, fairly recently, that there are folks within, again let’s say Lockheed, who want to divest. They want these objects out of their hands for liability reasons.

I remember when I dug into the Wilson/Davis memo, featured in The Program, it was the head of the DIA who got into a phone call where people (let’s say Lockheed) were reluctant to acknowledge what they had. Basically, [the DIA] said shut your piehole and don’t say anything about it. This was according to statements in the memo, which is a bonafide legitimate memo. Some of these folks seem to have more gravitas and power than our elected officials, the people who should be in charge of oversight. That’s the weird part about all of this. Who gave these guys the authority to call the shots?

I’m told that if such a project does exist, and I’m convinced it does, it would be an unacknowledged SAP (Special Access Program) under the umbrella of the DOE (Department of Energy). That would be the best place to hide it with the least amount of oversight. That’s where, if there is such a crash retrieval program, they have it.

BJ: That makes complete sense. Unfortunately, in Ufology, there are quite a few grifters. People who use their positions, or positions they’ve had, to make a quick buck. There are some people that I’m glad did not make an appearance in The Program, but the subjects you do have and speak with are spectacular. What was your process in deciding who to speak with, and how did your subjects craft your narrative?

James Fox: I thought it was important to highlight the bipartisan effort that was going on. I wanted individuals from both parties. That was important to me. It’s refreshing to see both parties working together and being civil with one another. I want to see more of that, we don’t have to demonize an opponent because we don’t agree politically. That was refreshing. Also, I think, okay, if this is true and I’m presenting this case to a jury, who would be most likely in a position to know? Those with the highest clearances and credentials are the ones I leaned into heavily.

People don’t just contact me and say, “Hey, I want to be in your next doc!” It took me years for Hal Puthoff to participate. It took a year just to get him to meet with me and then another year to think about whether he would go on camera. It takes time. Kirk McConnell put his neck out. He just retired this year from the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he was present from 2017 to 2024, investigating in an official capacity with high clearances. He came forward because he was disgusted with what was being said publicly by the former head of AARO.

Obviously, pilots, Ryan Graves is a very credible individual. Sitting members of Congress. People within the intel community. I try to be selective and mindful of–people with the most credibility possible.

Image courtesy of Lab 9 Films and Falco Ink

BJ: I think it shows very well in the final product. You mentioned the word jury in your previous statement and that’s very interesting with one of the last sentiments you put forward near the end of The Program. “We put people in the electric chair based on eyewitness testimony.” That’s an incredibly powerful quote, and I don’t think I’ve heard anyone in this field say anything like that. What does that quote mean to you? Do you think more people should run with that ideology when it comes to disclosure?

James Fox: I just feel like we put so much significance on eyewitness testimony except when it comes to UAPs. That doesn’t make any sense. When you have multiple trained pilots describing something that’s picked up on radar, FLIR, ground radar, airborne radar, seen by four sets of eyeballs…that should be taken seriously! Those guys on the Nimitz case have everything BUT the craft. All the sensory data, the visual data, and FLIR data. It’s damn compelling, and I would NOT call that anecdotal.

BJ: There is still quite a stigma, which you cover, against being an experiencer or having sightings. There are also a lot of entertainment shows surrounding aliens/UFOs/UAPs. Shows like The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch, and Ancient Aliens. Do you think shows like that hurt the idea of disclosure and stoke the stigma?

James Fox: Ancient Aliens has made quite an impact. It’s memed. “I’m not saying it’s aliens…but it’s aliens!” Those have gotten a lot of traction and interest. I’ve had people that I’ve met with who enjoy the shows. I remember thinking, well it’s not the most credible but okay! Everyone is having fun. I’m not trying to bash them, but I generally don’t watch them. There’s nothing wrong with entertainment. I do try and bring some lighter moments to my work and entertain. I don’t want my work to be like an encyclopedia so I try and make it fun while keeping the substance.

BJ: Like when The Program takes a trip over to Scotland!

James Fox: I made poached eggs and TOAST!

BJ: Final question. What do you want people to take away from The Program?

James Fox: That there’s a very serious and sober investigation taking place right now that could very well lead to the disclosure of a story that could touch the lives of every man, woman, and child on the planet. Whether you believe it’s real or not, I think there’s enough smoke to suggest there’s fire. There’s enough evidence to suggest something truly inexplicable is taking place, and there might very well be an agency or government body that’s hiding definitive proof we’re not alone.

I want to thank James Fox for taking the time to talk with me. His documentary

The Program is available on VOD platforms on December 16th! Don’t miss it!