Welcome to Earth Writer's Statement

"WELCOME TO EARTH"

WRITER'S STATEMENT
By James Charbonneau

I reached my teen years at the end of the 1960s and, besides all of the political and social turmoil that defines that decade, there was another phenomenon that was a product of that time that affected me quite deeply. By the mid-sixties, the golden age of television had been replaced with such mind-expanding shows as "Gilligan's Island" and "The Beverly Hillbillies." But there was one other addition to the television pantheon that seemed, in hindsight, to be more practical, than planned; more a money saver, than a marketing coup, and that was the use of every 1950's B monster and sci-fi flick to fill in the snow days and Saturday afternoon gaps in local television programming.

For the television stations it was a quick and cheap way to take up airtime. For me, it was in these afternoons that I found whole new worlds laid out before me. Most of the sci-fi and monster movies of the 1950s were parables about the invasion of communism and/or how the nuclear age was going to kill us all in ways we couldn't even begin to imagine. If you didn't have a full-scale attack by creatures from another planet going on, you had a spider, a praying mantis, or a bunch of ants transformed into gargantuan, car crushing, people squishing nightmares that nothing in man's arsenal seemed to be able to stop.

I very quickly began to take this part of my self-education so seriously that I would forego the usual romp in the sun in order to be able to investigate the next horror unleashed upon humankind. A fifteen-inch television screen showing everything in glorious black-and-white enhanced the glamour of this almost beyond measure. I quickly become a weekly viewer of anything that might remotely scare me or gross me out, and I continually searched the TV listings looking for anything else that would mesmerize me for hours on end with thoughts of outer space and all the dangers that it might hold. This is where I discovered all the classics: "Earth vs. The Flying Saucers," "It Came From Outer Space," "50 Million Miles to Earth," "Invaders From Mars," "War of the Worlds" and, of course, "The Day the Earth Stood Still."

Each of these films reinforced my rapidly growing belief that, not only were we not alone, but that we had damn well better keep our eyes to the skies. If we weren't vigilant, it seemed inevitable that something was going to come down on our heads and take over the whole shooting match.

I suppose it is the last film I mentioned, "The Day the Earth Stood Still," that was the first one I had seen that portrayed the aliens as something other than a physical threat and an invading force. It actually portrayed the alien as a human being. He was more intelligent, older and wiser than any other human being on Earth, but he was a human being nonetheless. This was both a budgetary coup and a plus for the movie's premise of having humans relate to "the unknown other" as being "like we are." It also showed that there was a possibility, however slight, that the aliens might not be mere marauding conquerors but vastly more intelligent and even benevolent. After all, when you really think about it, they had conquered the vast distances of space with their intellect so, no matter what else they might have been, they were no slouches in the brains department. This, in turn, led to the inescapable idea that it would be just as likely that they would be explorers as it would be that they were a bunch of non-thinking marauders looking for a fun Friday night of plundering and pillaging. Come on, it's at least a fifty-fifty chance.

And all of this brings me to "Welcome to Earth." It was this concept that they might be here to stay and here to help that first led to the premise for the movie. This is a 'what if' scenario that, for once, considered the possibility that humanity might not be exclusive to humans.

Many are the influences that go into the making of a story. When I sat down to write this statement, I found it interesting that I could so quickly trace the source of "Welcome to Earth" back to all of those wonderful black-and-white movies that kept a young boy's imagination spinning for days. While all of those movies gave me their share of thrills and chills, it was ultimately the human side of the stories that drew me to them.

So while "Welcome to Earth" is not a special effects extravaganza, it is, to me, a very real extension of all of those films with one twist: What if they were friendly? What if they did come for the betterment of mankind? Would we rise to the occasion? Would the 'better angels of our nature' come to our rescue? Or would we be the ones to start the fight? Would we, ultimately, turn out to be the monsters?

If life has taught me anything it is that it can turn on a dime. It can change in radical ways, not just overnight, but in a second. So should we still be looking to the skies or should we be doing what all those endearing sci-fi movies made me unconsciously do: look inside myself to see how I would react if they landed tomorrow and I had to face my worst fears right then and there. And, to take it one step further: what if we had to face our worst fears, not as individuals, but as a collective, as one mass of humanity?

"What if?" indeed.

I'd like to think we'd do okay and I think that shows through in "Welcome to Earth."

In closing, I would like to go back to what was the inspiration for all of those 1950s filmmakers and say a special thanks to Karl Marx and all those whacky communists with their manifestos and revolutions, and a very special thanks to Robert Oppenheimer and all the boys at Los Alamos for their contribution to the ushering in of the nuclear age. Writing this has made me realize that those men - the Marx's and Oppenheimer's of the world - drew their inspirations from something large or seemingly small in the worlds they grew up in as well: something I will probably never know or even be able to guess. But isn't that why when Oppenheimer saw the destruction of the first test bomb he quoted the Bhagavad Gita and said, "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." And isn't that why the filmmakers of the 50s made the movies about the destroyers that have led me to create a story ultimately about the goodness of humankind and about the love we all need to get and the love we all need to remember to give.

I guess you just never know where inspiration will come from. May the cycle continue.

Welcome to Earth.

- Jim Charbonneau