All Episodes
Previous Next
March 13, 2018 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
01:15:21
Santo film controversy revealed - exclusive interview with filmmaker Robert Everest
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hello and welcome everyone.
This is Mike Adams, the Health Ranger with NaturalNews.com.
Today with a special interview with a filmmaker of a film that has stirred up a lot of controversy recently.
The film is called Santo, or at least that's the working name.
The filmmaker, well his screen name is Robert Everest.
That's not his real name.
He uses the screen name to protect his identity for reasons that we will talk about.
But he joins me today to talk about...
The fact that there is a lot of disinfo and engineered false criticism being leveled towards him, almost like a really highly organized social media attack that might be funded by, well, you can probably guess who.
But we're going to get to the bottom of the story with Robert Everest, who joins us by phone now to give us more details.
Robert, thank you for joining me today.
Thank you, Mike.
I appreciate it.
So...
Tell us just briefly about the film, and then we'll get into this campaign of disinfo that has targeted your film.
Great.
Well, the film is called Santos 71315.
The numbers beneath the film are actually not the date, but the corresponding letters in the alphabet for the term GMO. And as we know, genetically modified organisms is something that's extraordinarily controversial.
Although it's been around for many years, it's becoming a little bit more visible.
In the public's eye and I created a narrative science fiction or as I like to call science faction drama based on the backdrop of GMO and using a flash forward,
flash backward narrative, I'm trying to introduce the potential dangers in human society with the use of genetically modifying any organism from what agro biotech companies are doing now in plant species All the way up through the future where they could potentially be tampering with human DNA. I think is probably the good sum of what the film is without giving away too much detail.
And so I know you're protecting your identity, which I don't blame you, being someone who myself has been, you know, threatened, death-threatened, attacked, blamed for things I didn't do, and so on.
But just can you give a little bit about your background in terms of your qualifications?
Because you have done films and you've been involved in projects in many different ways that really establish your credibility.
Can you describe that in general terms without giving away exactly your real name?
Oh, absolutely.
So, I'm from New York originally and I moved to Los Angeles a few years ago with the idea of hitting the ground and propelling myself in the entertainment business both as a writer, actually all three, director and an actor.
I mostly started, my background was in theater when I was in New York and eventually that led me to the Hollywood scene where I tried to go after my acting career goal.
But in the midst of that, there was this nagging at me that screenwriting And directing was something that could ultimately be prevalent in my future.
So I set out on that journey.
I directed my first independent film on a super, super micro budget.
And it was well received.
It was a film shot in film.
It was over 80 minutes.
Very difficult job to do.
It took me almost two years to complete the film.
Anybody that understands independent filmmaking knows that that's probably a short road for an independent filmmaker.
And it opened up some great doors.
So while this was happening, a major motion picture company and agency had seen my film.
It played, you know, not in any big genres, but it was in a local film festival on the East Coast.
And it introduced me to those people.
From there, I was cast into a picture with some stars.
And it looked like life was just going amazing.
So I had the feature film under my belt.
I was developing a credible presence for myself.
I was just completing a second screenplay and something tragic happened.
So while all of this great was happening, it was an undermining that would ultimately happen to me when my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.
At that moment, I kind of shifted gears, Mike.
I decided, you know, I can either be the selfish, you know, self-serving Hollywood type personality, not that I take away from anybody that pursues their goals with tenacity, or I could be the modern boy that I've always been.
I decided to take a break from what I thought was a rise of success in the entertainment business to dedicate the next several years of my life to taking care of my mother until she finally passed.
It gave me a great amount of vision on what was really taking place in the medical industry and the food industry and how I was starting to come to the conclusion that we were being lied to about our diseases About our stresses that caused them,
about the food that we eat, and ultimately that led me, even though we're fast forwarding right now in the conversation, that led me to GMO, because during the sacrifice that I made with my mom, although I would do it again, for eternity, I would enter Dante's Inferno, if it was one of the stages of hell that I had to go through, I would be happy to do it again.
But it definitely opened my eyes to the atrocities that are surrounding The industries that we put so much faith into, both medical and...
Well, right, right.
Well, that's interesting that that crisis with your mother sort of ignited personal passion to dig deeper and find out what's going on here.
Why are our relatives, our loved ones, you know, dying from diseases that many didn't exist a hundred years ago?
You know, what's wrong with our food and our medicine?
You know, thousands of years ago, there was a great philosopher.
His name is Hippocrates.
And he made a statement.
Let food be thy medicine.
And that, I think, was what really was the spark for me.
And so I was on this journey with my mother.
And while she was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, the original diagnosis from UCLA Hospital where I took her to after I brought her from New York and dedicated time to her, I moved her to Los Angeles.
I took her to UCLA Hospital.
The first diagnosis they gave her was four months to live.
Her tumor had grown to the size of a fist.
It had invaded her chest wall.
It was attacking her bones.
It was just atrocious.
And I said to them, there has to be something we could do.
And they said, well, when you're at this stage, at stage four, you have little chance to survive this.
Lung cancer is one of those things that, you know, generally most people don't survive.
So I was just, you know, I was on this mission to figure it out.
You know, what's the cause of it?
I didn't want to find a cure.
I wanted to find the cause.
If I could find the cause, perhaps, I could intervene.
I started to discover food.
Once I discovered food was the ultimate healer, at least in my opinion, I started to realize that there was a great amount of ills perpetrated in our food supply.
While I was on one hand fighting the medical industry because they were trying to take a conventional approach by dosing my mother with drugs, Chemotherapy, radiation, which we know has long-term ill effects and can wreck your body.
At the same time, what was going into her body?
What's going through her cellular system?
What's going through her bloodstream?
Besides, you know, medication that they wanted to give her, what about the stuff that was the sustenance of all life?
Well, right.
The Seralini study shows the GMO lab rats growing tumors and dying prematurely with incredible organ damage.
So yeah, you're right to question that.
And I did.
My mother was never a great source of good food.
I remember growing up and she was always into the packaged foods and anything that was on TV, a bag of Doritos or whatever, without speaking ill of any of these companies.
Those were the things that she went after because that's what they do.
They put it into our peripheral.
They flash it across the screen a million times.
They tell you that it's good for you.
They tell you cheese is good for you.
They push it out there.
These industries make you believe that what they're giving you is good.
I wanted to go deeper.
I wanted to find out what's bad about the food.
If someone thousands of years ago was saying in a quote that carried through the ages, let food be that medicine, Could food also be a damaging factor?
And that's when I discovered more and more about pesticides, and pesticides slowly led me to genetically modify organisms, and the red flag went up in my head.
So, you know, when I realized, you know, evolution has done its own genetic modification, I knew that.
You know, we could see that just by different species having evolved.
But the moment that man started tampering with it, I was starting to get into the rabbit hole of information About things like autism, autoimmune disorders, cancer, diabetes.
And I started to trace them back to the historical evidence of those diseases.
And what I found was the further I went back, the less prevalent they were.
The further I went back, the less reality that man had camped with the food supply was.
Well, exactly.
And there are also different levels of tampering.
For example, selective breeding is considered quite natural.
You know, you pick out the plants with the traits that you want, and that's how we have modern-day corn and wheat and potatoes and things like that.
But genetic engineering, mixing the genes of insects or soil microbes with plants, nature would never do that naturally.
That's artificial.
That's what I think you saw with the rise of chronic disease as GMOs started to get rolled out.
It's funny because it led me to an article that I read on transhumanism and I was astounded.
When we look at some of our historical, like in the Greek era, they used to show us statues and artwork combining animals and men.
There was this thing on transhumanism and it freaked me out, Mike, because I said, were they postulating a future then?
Were they really trying to tamper with it, or has man now evolved to the point that we feel that we could play that role and actually mix species that would never combine themselves, such as putting an insect into a seed that we're going to eat,
or the gene of something, or even worse, putting a pesticide, something that we already know has an aggregate effect on the human body, That people that have surrounded themselves in those polluting environments of the workplace have themselves suffered some debilitating disease, be it asthma, lung cancer, something.
These were just light bulbs, one after the other after the other.
Of course, I'm in the middle of a fight for someone else's life that I love with all my heart.
It just continued to nag at me and anger me.
I decided What can I do?
What can I do to make a substantial difference in the world?
I don't know.
I'm not a voice yet.
And that led to the film.
Yes.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Well, I want to ask you this.
I can only imagine that as you were contemplating the film and also the GMO-free community or the anti-biotech community, you must have thought, you know, wow, this film is going to get a lot of support because the march against Monsanto was a huge global success.
400-plus cities or 500-plus cities participated in that.
And there's a lot of activists online, you know, social media, a lot of people opposed to GMOs online.
It's a very powerful, although somewhat discombobulated movement, right?
But you must have thought, well, wow, I'm going to get a lot of support from that.
So were you shocked when you started being criticized?
And when did that begin?
Well, we originally launched our campaign on Kickstarter.
We weren't a known entity, and I had reached out to some of the factions of the anti-GMO community.
And of course, I thought it was a slam dunk.
They would support an anti-GMO film by way of showing a narrative as opposed to a documentary, because a documentary has a limited audience appeal and something that could be based in a wider audience is narrative.
That's just proven through history and filmmaking.
There were only a few organizations that were responsive to me, and I found that odd.
I aligned myself with the biggest at that particular time.
I did participate in the march against Monsanto, and I reached out to the organizer, the person who created it, Ms.
Connell.
She was the first person that responded, not just in kind, but she said, I believe what you're doing could actually awaken masses to this problem.
That is being suppressed by the powers that are behind it.
Because that knowledge is not out there.
Right.
And I just spoke with Tammy before this interview, by the way.
And I have some quotes from her that I'm going to be using in a story.
And just to confirm what you said there, Tammy told me things like, quote, I think that it's shocking how more people haven't gotten behind it yet in the GMO-free coalition because I feel Robert is on our side.
And we have this forum to really reach the masses.
I think more people should get on board with the film.
I really support it.
So that's her quote.
Thank you, Ms.
Kanell.
She's been an incredible ally for us.
Without pulling punches, I received some things from the GMO community that I didn't want to see.
I don't know if this will be omitted from our conversation or our article, but I will say this.
I was shocked to learn that some of the interactions of the community and this is partially why I believe biotech is winning the fight.
This is partially why.
There was a tremendous amount of infighting that was happening but what I started to discover, in fact I was told point blank by one of the largest organizations for organic food thought, we'll put it that way without any names, that they were more concerned about their own donators.
Giving to their foundation than they were about pushing for someone else's campaign to create a film that creates awareness.
I mean, they thought there would be like donation competition?
That's exactly what I was told.
That donations to your film would sabotage their donations?
That's correct.
And then I discovered that during the...
Because we have an initiative going on right now.
It's Initiative 522.
That initiative is trying to reach Washington to actually institute labeling laws.
Because we lost top 37 here in California, so now we're trying to get the initiative to do labeling laws.
Well, to confirm the first organization that made that quote to me, made that statement to me, point blank, was more and more people who were coming out and saying, you know, some of the community is upset that people are funneling money to your campaign and not to ours for 522.
Got it.
And then at the same time, the fact that you were using a screen name rather than your real name, that had to have raised some suspicion because I think the GMO or the anti-GMO community is just generally suspicious or skeptical, might be a better term, because of everything that's gone on in the past.
And in a way, that's almost a farce because during a lot of these protests and marches, that anti-GMO community wears masks.
You know, I mean, firstly...
Well, but people are afraid.
I mean, people are afraid.
They know there have been stories about Monsanto working with, like, ex-military contractors and things like that.
People are genuinely afraid of being targeted.
Well, here's what I'll say about that.
Besides this being a normal occurrence that's widely accepted entertainment to change your name, which is embraced by the industry, The more important reason for my new working actor and my new working director name is two-fold.
One, it was because I wanted a new lease on life after taking care of my mother.
I was off the radar from Hollywood for over two years.
That's a long time for you to not be a presence.
If you know anything about Hollywood, Mike, or anybody that's watching or listening to this, understand they're not very forgiving.
It doesn't matter what your excuse is.
It doesn't matter who's sick in your family.
They're not interested in that.
They're interested in numbers.
And when your numbers fall and you don't have anything to substantiate, you're just off the radar.
So I wanted to come back new and fresh.
But the second and more important nagging reason for me was there is still a genuine fear of the biotech company Rippertrain trying to stop us if they can undermine the main creator.
That's me.
And I think that's a feasible explanation For me, to want to have a little bit of anonymity, pardon my language, about whom I am.
I don't want somebody knocking on my door and infiltrating my family and my life, and most importantly, trying to stop the film that I believe It can make a huge difference in the peripheral of people and the conscious of GMO. Well, right.
That makes sense.
And let me just lay out a couple of things for the listeners here who may be hearing you say these things and say, what?
This guy sounds, I don't know, paranoid or something.
But let me lay out a few facts for people, all right?
All of us in the natural health or alternative medicine movement, we all live with a high degree of caution.
We take major steps to protect the places where we live.
We don't put our names on the property where we actually reside.
We typically don't even use credit cards anywhere.
We don't want to be tracked.
We live a very private lifestyle for legitimate reasons, which are that we've all been targeted, we've all been threatened, we've all been attempted to be silenced through a number of things.
We also know that there are large companies, and I'm not saying Monsanto itself is doing this, I'm just saying across the board.
We know that some pharma companies do this, for example.
They will hire what are called anti-public relations groups, which are basically social media trolls who are highly paid, highly trained, to go out there and muckrake across the internet and create confusion and doubt.
And there's also some evidence that there are quite a few bots, you know, automated, scripted posting accounts, fake accounts on Twitter and Facebook.
We've run into those.
We've been able to trace, you know, some of the similar language patterns and canned responses and things like that.
So, folks, this is real.
And I think what we're really looking at here in the big picture, Robert, is I suspect, I'm 99% convinced of this at this point, I suspect that you and your film have been the victim of a highly organized, highly paid disinfo campaign that was engineered by someone who didn't want to see this movie made.
That's what it looks like to me.
Without speculating, Mike, I can only assume that this is correct because of the fact that in the very early stages of our first campaign, before we moved to the second platform in Plan B, we didn't get this kind of resistance.
The resistance only came as we became more successful.
The more people that were joining, the resistance began.
If I was just to take a bystander standpoint on it, As passionate as I am about the film, I would have to say yes.
There's no question that people are afraid because, here's my opinion, for anybody that's listening, this has the potential to be much greater accepted.
Hiding the medicine and the popcorn of something that is a narrative reaches a much bigger audience than something that's a targeted demographic like a documentary.
I'm not the kind of person that stands on a street corner on a pulpit with a microphone in my hand and screams at people that you have to do this and you have to listen to us because I would say the vast majority of the public shies away from that.
However, if it's something that's educative to them, that's enlightening to them, that brings them around and then they learn it, if it's entertaining and then they learn it.
It's kind of like when we were in school.
At least for me, I excelled in things that I was excited about.
I excelled in the classes where the teacher was the most animated, or used real life examples, or took us out into nature, or had us paint our thoughts, those kinds of things.
Those were the things that left the most impression on me.
Just as we know, art in general has had the most culturally shifting opinion throughout the ages.
It has transformed society through art.
You can see that from Kane's writings all the way up through the statues and ultimate architecture.
That's art.
And I think that because of that, they're scared.
They're scared because I present something that could reach more people than the guy that goes, you have to listen to me.
And everybody goes, ah, he's just one of those that likes to be a conspiracy theorist.
This is why, by the way, I don't know how you feel about Obamacare, but the White House actually pays money to have pro-Obamacare messages planted in television shows and sitcoms and so on.
We've covered that.
The government and, of course, private industry, drug companies and so on, they actually pay to alter the programming because it's that powerful.
When people get information in a format that feels like entertainment or feels like fiction, the subconscious message or the subtext goes in in a much more powerful and profound way.
So I'm agreeing with what you're saying, and there are a lot of examples of that being done right now in television.
But I really want to educate people in a hybrid movie on what's going on currently.
That's why I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation, it's a flash-forward, flash-backward film.
So I'm spouting you in the future, but I'm bringing you back to current day, current reality, current event, current government, current biotech, Current events right now that are happening that maybe if you're the audience you saw it in passing but you didn't pay any mind.
Now in the film I'm going to point it out to you so you understand what's going on around you and perhaps you can intervene so the future that I present doesn't come to pass.
And, you know, your film, the imagery is fantastic.
And I'm going to post the URL where people can go to learn more about your film.
But it kind of reminds me of that new Matt Damon film, Elysium.
But imagine, what if you had the budget of just one day of shooting that that film had?
You could make a whole film out of that.
I mean, those high-dollar films, they'll spend sometimes half a million dollars a day.
Oh, yeah.
That movie, I believe, is pleased at $200 or $300 million.
Yeah, exactly.
And imagine if even a fraction of that money was spent on films that showed a dystopian sci-fi future where genetic pollution has caused a food supply collapse, mass starvation, and the scientists are all apologizing for their mistakes.
I would like to see a film like that.
I agree.
I doubt that the politicians or scientists would actually come forward and say, sorry.
Right.
I think that that's really the future I'd like to see, but I'm a little skeptical on it.
But yes, am I doing this in an independent fashion?
Absolutely.
I'm an independent filmmaker.
I was involved with a group, and candidly, they wanted...
GMO and Monsanto, who is the biotech company that we're just parodying.
It'll be up to the viewer to decide who the biotech companies are.
Of course, we use them as our basis of information.
They distance themselves from doing high-profile movie that used those political targets as the backdrop of the movie.
It's partially why I veered into Headstrong, I will make an independent film.
Crook, crook, crook, we will get this film done.
Right, right.
I want to go back and address something you said earlier when you said that you think at some level Monsanto is kind of winning because I actually disagree with that, but I want to explain why and then get your comments on it.
I think that...
First of all, there's probably disagreement inside Monsanto and the biotech industry.
There's probably a lot of faction fighting in that industry about how to respond to the grassroots movement that is questioning GMOs.
And we don't see that.
All we see is their organized front.
But...
That said, I also want to remind you and the listeners that every grassroots movement is always somewhat chaotic throughout history.
You know, every revolution.
The American Revolution was, you know, total chaos.
And it was only, I think, 5% of the population that actually supported the revolution, and probably 80% who didn't care either way, and then another, you know, 15% who were pro, you know, king of England.
I think there have always been factions in every revolution, and so I don't think that's unusual to see.
And I do feel like overall that we're winning in terms of spreading public awareness and getting out the actual science that shows GMOs don't really work.
They're not improvements.
They create superweeds.
The crops fail.
The farmers commit suicide.
There's genetic pollution and so on.
So I just wanted to get that point across and get your comments on those points.
Let me start from the back of what you said, which is the superweeds.
There are also superbugs that are evolving.
That to me is a little bit more unnerving than the superweeds.
The weeds we can pull out, but the bugs, they populate by the millions.
Who knows what kind of ecological disaster that could ultimately perpetrate on us.
Looking at the beehive The beehive collapse in itself I think is directly related to the tampering of these biotech companies.
I don't believe that Einstein ever really made that quote or at least it was verified where he said if we lost our bees we would all be dead in four years.
I think that we have a great amount of experience and potentially pollinating crops.
I wanted to start there.
There's a lot more to be feared than just a couple of weeds as a result of biotech.
Going to what it potentially does to the human body is the most important factor to me because if there's no conclusive evidence, if you didn't do a 25 or 30 or 40-year study, humans are living longer today.
That probably has a lot to do with simple things like, we have fresh water.
And some of them didn't, you know, back in the day, you know, when Nostradamus walked the planet.
I mean, he was one of the first people that discovered the black plague was because people didn't have fresh water.
Exactly, yeah.
Or sewage systems.
Exactly.
Cholera outbreaks.
Let me phrase it the way that I would best feel comfortable.
They have a great amount of power.
They have a great amount of financing.
They have a great amount of leverage in the decision makers of our country.
And so when I say that they're winning, what I mean is they're capable of continuing to do the tampering in genetic engineering.
So winning doesn't always mean that the consumer is the one who's losing.
Because if they can continue We can make 100 people aware, but if the company can continue its course, it can only bring more of the negative side effects for those 100 people that are still aware.
I'm sorry, Mike.
Go ahead.
Well, I was just going to say, especially if the GMO labeling is not a success, then they can continue to sell the product hidden in foods and consumers will be eating it even when they don't want to because they're just not aware of what's in the food.
Right.
And that's really what I mean by when I say that they're winning.
They're winning because we are a small power.
We realized that when we lost Prop 37.
Proposition 37 was lost only by a handful It was something like 6.2 million to 5.8 million.
Of course, don't quote me on those numbers, but it's within reason that there was not that much tipping the scale.
But there's a reason, in my opinion, why that's happening, because government, our leaders, these are the people that are here to protect us, the people.
We are the ones that elect them.
They are in the pockets of these biotech companies.
The biotech companies purchase their rights to continue to perform and execute anything in science that they deem is helpful to the human population through our food supply.
Well, that's right.
I was just looking at the USDA newsroom today, earlier this morning, and they announced they're going to deregulate GMO corn and deregulate GMO beets, I think, and one other crop.
Just completely deregulate them.
What's the reason for the anti-Monsanto protection?
You know?
Protection Act.
You know, think about when I look at things like that, that's when I begin to question.
You know, I want to find the truth.
It's important for me, especially because I don't want to postulate a future that's not possible in a film or as a filmmaker.
I don't want to be labeled as a quack, just some whack-tivist, as I might want to call them.
I want to be presented with something factual.
Why would our government want to protect a company from us taking them on Because we're harmed by something that they're giving us.
When you put it that way, it's quite comedic.
Yeah, you're right.
I mean, isn't this the government's job?
Shouldn't the USDA be banning these GMO crops until sufficient long-term health effect tests are done?
But instead, the USDA is in the pocket of Monsanto.
Why are so many electives, so many people in our government...
Why do they sit on the board of these biotech companies?
Yeah, exactly.
You know, that's, I think, a really big question, and people don't know that.
You know, if you ask the general public, if I walk down the street, Mike, and I took a camera to every single person that I encountered, and I ask them a simple series of questions, one, do you know what GMO is?
I would imagine the vast majority does not know what those three initials mean.
That's the first thing.
The second thing is, if I ask them, did you know that who you voted for and who they named elected officials sit on the board of biotech companies that are perpetrating negativity on the human population via through our food supply?
I'll put money on it that out of 100 people, 90 of them do not know.
Right.
Because they're uninformed.
They won't put that on television.
They'll tell me what's good for me.
They'll tell me what they want me to believe.
It reminds me of an Orwellian society.
People operate on a tiny fraction of the information that they should be operating with.
Just in terms of, think about ingredients in their food, or how does money and finance work?
What's the actual history of our nation?
There are technologies that have been suppressed.
There's knowledge that's being suppressed.
The FDA doesn't allow...
Nutritional supplement companies to make scientifically substantiated health claims on their product even when they're true.
Like cherries prevents arthritis inflammation.
Or cherry extract can reverse gout.
Well, it's a scientific fact.
Like vitamin C can reverse scurvy because scurvy is a vitamin C deficiency.
But the FDA doesn't let you tell the truth.
And that's part of the destruction of knowledge that I think you're also talking about.
Absolutely.
I remember a few years ago, there was a product that came out on the market which was called human chorionic gonadropin, HCG. It was this big craze of a diet using something that has to do with inside of pregnant women that happens while they're pregnant.
People started using it in homeopathy.
Homeopathy has been around for thousands of years and has helped people through nutrition and health for thousands of years.
By using plant extracts and compounds, etc.
Well, after it had a huge success, it was even nationally publicized on Dr.
Oz that HCG was good for a weight loss protocol, within two years, because I followed the story, the FDA banned it from the marketplace.
Why?
And within six months, approved a drug from a biotech company, That was for weight loss.
I find the evidence overwhelming that we are living in a society that is shrouded in misconception.
Oh, absolutely.
And let's talk about that now in more detail, about the attacks on your film, because when I was getting information from sources that your film was a fake project and so on and so forth, and as you know, ultimately I reached out to call you to get clarification on it.
But it seems like if we really trace this information, it comes back to just maybe as little as two people.
Who were spreading this information, spreading, you know, fear and doubt across the Internet, and other people were believing it and picking it up and then multiplying it.
It was like a viral campaign of destruction.
Well, I mean, I think that goes back to something that we've learned all our lives.
You know, negative commentary, in a lot of cases, carries more weight than something positive.
Yeah.
It's unfortunate.
I am taking legal action against these people that I can publicly state.
We're seeking injunctive relief, cease and desist, and lawsuits are imminent.
But if I took a step back, I believe that the underpinning is directly related to the fact that we are starting to make this a visible notion that GMO is bad for us.
And even if I've done my job in this film and they tried to squash me in the process, there's a lot of people that did not know what GMO was until they encountered a science fiction fiction piece about it.
Right.
And I think that it's actually a testament to the success of the vision that you have for this film that it's already being attacked so early.
It's as if the film, the preview and so on looks so compelling that whoever's behind all of this felt like they had to really try to go after and attack you immediately.
You want to know what's funny, Mike?
It's something that came down the pike.
One of the most important elements that they wanted to capture was my script.
They want to know what I wrote.
They want to see the details.
And I give some indication.
I was fairly transparent about at least the structure of the storyline, the motivations behind the hero in the story, because everybody follows the hero's journey in a great movie.
However, the fact that this was a pressing subject, the script, the script, the script, the script, the script, the script, was very suspect to me, because I think there's a genuine fear that I might have some either illicit knowledge from because I think there's a genuine fear that I might have some either illicit knowledge from someone within their organization, or I've just got a mind that Right.
Yeah, maybe so.
You laid out, or maybe they think you discovered their future, or maybe somebody leaked it to you, right?
And you made it, or you're going to make it into a film.
People don't realize, people who aren't really deeply into investigative journalism and activism and so on, they don't realize the dark forces that can mount against you.
And they don't understand how incredibly insidious the entire process can be because, like you said, spreading bad news goes a long way.
And I think it was all made worse by the fact that your name was a new name and nobody knew your background.
It wasn't like you were someone who had made two or three other food films and now you're doing a GMO film.
So I think that played into it.
And I got to say, too, as a disclaimer on the record, you know, I can't be 100 percent sure that you're going to make this film.
I don't think I can say that about any film.
But I would say substantially, I feel like what you're telling me and the audience here is the truth and that you have been maligned through an engineered campaign of disinfo.
That's that's what I'm that's what all the evidence points to right now.
And I have I have quite a substantial background of investigative journalism.
And so, you know, I've dealt with people who are frauds and crooks.
And when I call them up, they don't they don't talk to me like you and I are talking right now.
They usually go ape-crazy, you know, screaming.
And most of them don't verify themselves through several campaigns.
This is our second Plan B campaign, where there are money institutions involved that have to qualify who I am.
Right, like you're talking about Indiegogo, right?
Indiegogo, PayPal, banking institutions...
You know, corporate documents, our law firm.
I mean, this, you know, we have to be an entity to do this.
There would be no reason for, you know, this is what I know.
When somebody's doing something wrong, they run through the hills.
That's what they do.
They don't meet it head on and say, bring it on.
If this is a site you wanted, bring it on.
Right, right.
No, I've dealt with actual scammers.
I mean, I've exposed scammers before and they don't act like you're acting.
They run and they deceive and they do counterattacks and things like that.
So if all this is true, then it's actually kind of disturbing in the sense that It's startlingly easy, and I know Monsanto's PR people will laugh their heads off at this one, but it seems to be astonishingly easy to spread this info in the anti-GMO community.
And I guess that's just an extension of the fact that there's a lot of inherent suspicion and there's no number one top leader.
It's not a dictatorship.
It's grassroots.
And there's drama.
And there's relationships.
And there's different stories that people believe and tell.
So it's somewhat chaotic, even though we're all kind of moving in the same direction.
You know, again, I go back to what I said earlier.
It's unfortunate that there's a great amount of jealousy and infighting within these organizations.
I've personally been told that some of these organizations have stolen the ideas of a movement from another organization.
My feeling is, if you are fighting for the same cause, why would you fight with your teammates?
I'm the colonel of the urinal.
Who cares who the chief is?
That's what I always say.
Really, who cares?
Why do you have to name yourself the CEO or the I am this?
Who cares about your label if you're really earnest in your desire to make a difference and your cause, whatever it is, anti-GMO, autism, retardation, down syndrome, cancer awareness, Breast cancer, it doesn't matter what you're fighting for.
Why are you fighting with the same people that are doing what you want?
And that's the part that confuses someone like me because, again, I'm not a genuine activist activist.
I want to be a filmmaker activist by doing it in a distinctly novel hybrid way that's never been done.
That's the goal.
So I'm capable of looking at it from the outside and saying, This is amazing that there's all these organizations.
Why don't they all merge into one?
Honestly, they would become a force.
Think about how many biotech companies are.
There's only a handful that are really the main players in biotech.
We know them.
Monsanto, we know who they are.
Why aren't the organizations that are pursuing the truth about these companies?
Well, let me answer some of that, but you raised some really good points.
I think that some of the answer is, number one, to be part of the community, you have to be the kind of person who is typically an anti-establishment thinker to begin with.
Across the board, I don't think anyone in the GMO-free community is a conformist.
They tend to think for themselves, and they tend to be suspicious of the world around them, which I think is a healthy thing.
It's kind of a healthy attitude to question everything, as they say.
And then I think you've also then got the dark side, which is the jealousy and the personality clashes.
I mean, I know that I've had people target me just because they're jealous of the success of natural news, and they want to replace natural news or be the next natural news, and it's harder work than it seems.
You don't become number one in the industry overnight, right?
You've got to put in a lot of hard work.
And, you know, things like that.
So it's a complex issue, but a good question on your part.
And I agree.
You know, I had a great amount of experience not exposing, but just understanding non-for-profit charities.
And I won't always agree with them, Mike, candidly.
501c3 charities are not required by law to give a substantial amount of their donations.
That's right.
And because of that, I have distanced myself from typical standard fare of 501c3 organizations.
There's one in particular that I will not mention.
I don't want to cause any libelous effect.
There's one organization in the anti-GMO community that I question the validity of where their money is going.
The reason is because I understand that they have raised X amount of dollars.
We'll just make it easy on the public.
We'll say that they raised $100,000.
And out of that $100,000, They've only elected to give a small percentage of it, somewhere in the range of 25%, to the actual 522 campaign.
That disturbs me.
I don't even know who you're talking about, but I'm intrigued.
Yeah, I mean, this is news directly from more than a credible source in the anti-channel movement.
And I was not astonished.
My first reaction was, of course they're not.
Because they want to pay the people that are working with them top dollar, they want to drive a fancy car, they want to still pay their beautiful bills, they want to still have their vacations, and they want to pretend to be genuine concerned activists.
You're describing the American Cancer Society just like that.
They're called the wealthiest non-profit.
They love the fact, I think, that cancer continues to devastate the population because they can raise more money, they can buy more limos and more real estate and bigger salaries.
Mike, you're talking my language now because the last conversation that I had with a high-profile person in the anti-GMO community, and if you reach out to that person, you can quote them as me having this conversation.
I said, I really believe, after having witnessed it from the outside and reaching out to so many factions of the anti-GMO community, I've reached out to so many in request of their help for my campaign for this film, and I discovered that I don't want to point fingers,
I don't want to say anything that's really awful, but I discovered they don't really want, not all of them, We don't really want the problem fixed because they'll all be out of a job.
That's funny.
Honestly, I've seen it in the cancer industry.
I've seen it in diabetes.
I've never really thought about that in the anti-GMO industry.
It's every industry.
Will I be under fire from some of the GMO activists for even suggesting this?
Absolutely.
But what I'm doing is I want to create awareness.
I did want to tell you something.
I don't want to digress, but then I'll go back to the point.
For the audience to know, I even contemplated, and most likely we will, at the end of this campaign, change the name of our film to simply three letters, G-M-O. And the reason for that is not because we're concerned so much about using a portion of a giant biotech company's name, but because the whole initiative of this It's to put back on the lips of every human being on the planet that this movie can reach.
Right.
Some people are asking what are GMOs.
Absolutely.
Because we did try to do that in Santos 7-13-15.
7-13-15 is the numerical association in the alphabet to GMO. Those are the numbers that associate those.
Yeah, that screwed me up because I thought the movie was coming out in 2015.
I think more people have done that and I enjoyed the diagram because it created a great amount of questions.
The more you question, as a society, the people that are trying to offer you something, the more knowledge you have to make an informed decision.
So when people would ask us, well, why is this movie not coming out until 15?
We would say, look deeper.
This is used in the film, which we won't give away the details.
It's used in the film as a methodology to show just how shrouded In conspiracy, those companies are.
They don't use their own energy to tell you the truth.
They hide behind things.
It's why the law in our country is set up with a series of numbers and letters.
They don't just come right out and say, well, this is what this means.
It's like the DaVinci code, the Bible code stuff.
Absolutely.
I mean, you know, that's, you know, to me that, you know, when you start talking about real conspiracy and Illuminati and, you know, all this stuff, it's, you know, of course, that's a whole separate conversation for someone like me, but that's the reason why we did it.
So we thought, what if we changed the name to GMO? What would happen?
I could tell you what would happen.
Someone that had absolutely no idea what GMO was would say, well, what does that mean?
Why is it GMO? Well, why is it GMO? You know, what does that mean?
That's breaking news, though, right here, that you're announcing that you're going to change the name of the film to GMO. I mean, that's a big deal.
We've got some resistance, by the way, from some people in the GMO community not to do that.
Oh.
Well, you're going to get a lot of different opinions no matter what, but, you know, everybody's got a different view on it.
The number one biotech company, it's not just them that's doing...
The perpetrating negative effects on our society through food supply or chemicals.
It's not just that one company.
Yes, we use them as the model of the truth, but it's not just them.
There's a multitude of people behind the scenes.
And so by changing the name to GMO, we realize we can get much more exposure for the public that doesn't know.
That has always been the point of this narrative, Mike.
It is to make people aware that otherwise wouldn't.
I believe that we'll get a great amount of people to go see the movie that are belonging to the GMO community.
But if I only wanted those, we would do a documentary.
We want everyone, young and old, to see, you know, God willing, our success point happens and we're capable of international distribution.
Then yes, I want everybody that can see this.
That doesn't know to realize that's the reason for the name change.
To go back to organizations that are undermining each other and what their ultimate motives are, I really firmly believe, as much as I may be hated for saying it, they don't want all of these causes.
I've been exposed to so many foundations here in Hollywood because every other day There's another function happening where they're raising money for something.
Oh, yeah.
And a lot of it's a big scam.
I mean, I don't get into the scam part.
I just look at the organization.
I ask, what are you doing?
Where are you from?
Is it a 501c3?
Great.
Let me go on to the Internal Revenue Services website.
Let me look you up.
I want to see if, in fact, you're actually a legitimate 501c3.
And then I start asking the questions that nobody likes me for us.
Where is the money going and how much of it are you actually giving?
When I walk into a pavilion here on the Southern Coast, which is a supermarket chain, they have a little thing at the front and they ask you, right before you check out, would you like to donate a dollar to Cancer Awareness?
I always say to them, how much of the dollar do you keep?
Of course, I'm stunning the cashier at the register and making people in the line laugh But they don't know what to say.
And that makes me nervous.
Because, yes, I'm crowdfunding a movie, but at least we know there's no way I can make a movie without money.
It's not possible.
Well, exactly.
Exactly.
And the bottom line is, as long as you actually present progress of the movie, and maybe even let us help put out some early film or teasers and things like that.
Absolutely.
We're beginning our production in September.
And we would love for you to be instrumental in that.
Even if it means that we bring you to the set.
I mean, that's part of our desire is to include the community that's been supporting us.
Well, yeah, I hear you.
But my main point is that if you can demonstrate progress, you're going to get more and more goodwill and people are going to realize, you know, this thing's moving along.
This is great.
And, you know, if for some reason you weren't able to show any progress along the way, then the criticism would probably increase.
But from what I understand...
Due to circumstances out of our control.
So, you know, whatever that means.
Natural disaster, death, you know, something just atrocious.
We were unable to fulfill our goal.
We would refund every single person that backed this film.
Because there's no reason for us not to make a movie.
And I'll make that public statement.
Well, that's nice to hear, but I think people would love to see your movie succeed, and they would love to see you be able to do this without all the false accusations, the noise, and so on and so forth.
But bottom line is, you're tackling a big monster, and you've stepped in it, dude.
You're going to get blasted one way or another.
Be ready.
Thicken up your skin, because it's coming.
People can try to criticize what we're doing, Mike.
That's fine.
I can accept the criticism.
Lies, libelous statements, they'll be met with and dealt with according to the law that governs us.
That I can promise to those people.
But beyond that, there's nothing that anyone can do to stop me from voicing my opinion through art.
Well, that's very true.
And by the way, I'm sure I will be attacked by these same couple of people for even interviewing you, you know, for attempting to communicate.
That's a crime now.
But I think, by and large, though, I think the anti-GMO community will be very happy to hear this interview, to know that we're talking, that the folks here at Natural News are doing some due diligence on this and checking things out.
And, you know, again, my disclaimer is, I don't know you personally.
I haven't met you in person.
But it sounds, everything you're saying sounds legitimate, and I know you're providing me with additional documentation to substantiate things.
And so I'm, you know, and a lot of people that I really trust have told me that they're pulling for the film, and they are working with you on the film, in fact.
So I think that the people who really count are pulling for you.
Absolutely.
And they have been since the beginning.
They've gone to bat with us every single time something has emerged as an undermining of our film.
They have been there from the beginning, and that's how you and I met.
That's right.
If you think about that, it brought us to this conversation.
And, you know, I'm elated that someone like you who has such a strong voice and a presence in the natural food world is...
You know, taking a leap of faith by even talking with me because, yes, it does reflect on you personally.
However, I don't believe that it will hurt your organization Because I want to help your organization.
No, I think Natural News fans and readers, they know that we are interested in uncovering the real story, the real truth, performing a lot of due diligence on research that we do.
And we're not 100% perfect all the time.
You know, in fact, I... I put out a couple of paragraphs questioning your film that I have already retracted based on what I've learned since then.
But we try to correct mistakes quickly and then get to the bottom of it.
For example, I bet I'm the only one who has called you to try to correct the record.
That's correct.
Other than the people that support us and the high-profile people, I should say, that support us in the film and in the FGMO community.
I've even put out messages, pardon me, to some people that have made some comments within the community in a closed group and said, please have them reach me, and no one's ever called me.
Well, I can't speak for them, but I can tell you this.
I don't run natural news by committee, and there's a reason for that.
Because to get things done, sometimes you've got to be just doing it yourself, you know?
It's unfortunate what happened.
I think the most painful thing that happened was, through this process, I lost a few relationships that were dear to me because, as you know, people like to distance themselves from anything that has too much controversy.
It's a natural, innate survival mechanism that kicks in with people, even if you've known them for 10 years.
At one point, we had a wonderful man who is a seasoned executive producer in Hollywood who is willing to lend his name.
I had never personally met him.
He was introduced to us through one of my lead design partners in our design team.
We have several, but he was his friend and he said, I love the idea.
I hate biotech.
I hate GMO. I'm pro-natural foods.
You guys go ahead and put my name.
And as soon as people started to try to undermine our film, They even reached him and he said, you know what?
It's best for my own personal public profile that I pull away because I don't want to get caught up in some controversies.
He got intimidated out of it.
And that's what they try to do.
That's a success for the Monsanto type of people.
They love to see that happen.
They love to see people pull out because they get scared.
Which I think is why we need to really help support your effort and get this film made.
What's the best website for people to check out the film, by the way?
Well, we have two.
There's santomovie.com, which just gives you kind of a background on what we're doing, some of the reasons, you know, the motives of the film...
It has some nice links within there.
Well, we did take a portion of our team members' faces off because they were being bombarded with a lot of negativity.
So we were just in the interest of keeping people private.
We decided in an effort to take most of them off.
And then the other one would be Indiegogo.com, which is really where we are.
That's the biggest and most prevalent because that's where you can go and become a part of our team.
Right now, we have reached over 1,800 supporters of our film.
It's monumental even for Indiegogo.com because they've listed us originally during the campaign when we rose to success very fast.
They listed us on their first page.
They have recently acknowledged us in their internationally viewed newsletter.
We've been told by their team that we most likely will get an extension on our time because we're doing so well and we are on the heels of being the most Backed, meaning the number of backers of any film that they've had.
I think the record is 5,000-something people.
We're already at almost 2,000.
Wow, and maybe by the time this interview gets out, we could increase that number even more.
So I want to thank you for your time, and thank you for your willingness to answer my questions, because I was kind of grilling you.
I would fly to wherever you are.
I had this conversation with another one of our big We have allies in the anti-GMO community and I said I would love to get on a plane to go wherever Mike Adams is to do an interview in person with him and at the end give him a hug because that's my goal.
My goal is to bring people together.
I don't want to be a person that drives them apart.
I want to bring people together and I think that with my voice and a voice like yours we can do that.
Well, I would love to meet you in person.
And if you have any plans to be in the Austin area, that's where I am located most of the time.
So maybe we'll get a chance to get together.
I would love that, Mike.
And I thank you for taking your time out of your busy day.
I know running an organization like yours requires a great amount of your energy.
And to distract from that, to speak with me for well over an hour is monumental.
Well, the most important thing is to set the record straight here because, again, I was getting so much conflicting information about your film and about you, and I've also learned over time to go straight to the source when you can and don't just listen to other people's hearsay.
So I appreciate you being willing to talk, even though I was kind of grilling you in our first conversation.
Absolutely.
And please get me those documents that we talked about so we can further substantiate things.
And have a great day, and I'll keep you posted on the status of this interview.
Great.
I will give you a third phone call once I have amassed all of the information that we're sending to you via emails.
All right.
Sounds good, Robert.
Appreciate all your help and best to you on this project.
Thank you so much, Mike.
Have a great day.
Alright, so that was the interview with Robert Everest, and I just have a quick update for you here.
Since that interview, which was conducted on August 6th, 2013, and I'm recording this a few hours later now, I have spoken with the attorneys of Robert Everest,
and I was able to confirm that the attorneys are exactly who they say they are, That they are licensed legal attorneys in the state of California and that they are representing him and helping him issue some cease and desist letters and deal with some other issues related to some of the people that have been intentionally smearing him.
And in addition, I also requested quite a bit of documentation from Mr.
Everest, even though that's his stage name, not his actual real name.
But by the way, I know who he is.
I know his real name.
And I can confirm firsthand that he is an experienced person in Hollywood and has film credits and so on.
And has filmed production slash direction credits and experience.
But anyway, I did get an email confirmation from Indiegogo.com.
The senior fraud analyst there did take a look at the Santo film project because of some of the questions that were being very publicly raised.
and he replied to Rob saying that I quote now this is this quote is from the senior fraud analyst at Indiegogo.com quote I was able to verify your identity and the validity of the company behind the Santo movie and If you have any questions, don't hesitate to call me and so on and so forth.
So this is from a man named Matt Canty, C-A-N-T-Y, the Senior Fraud Analyst at Indiegogo.com.
So this is additional information that Indiegogo took a look at the person behind the Santo campaign and the company behind it.
And that they saw that that was legit in their view.
Now, all of that being said...
As a disclaimer, I can't guarantee that the money that you donate to this movie is 100% guaranteed to end up resulting in a kick-ass movie.
There's no way to promise that.
I can't promise you that.
I'm not making the movie.
I couldn't even promise you that if I were the guy making the movie because there's so many weird things that can go wrong or things get delayed or...
Who knows?
Maybe there's a dollar crash in six months and then...
You can't get money out of the bank to pay key photographers and crew to film the movie.
Who knows?
So, nothing's 100%.
It doesn't work that way.
But, based on what I have researched for this situation, this movie, Santo, and this individual...
I feel like there's a 99% chance that this guy is telling the truth, that he's legit, that he's really attempting to make this movie.
And maybe a 1% chance that somehow I'm being duped, but I actually think that 1% chance is more like 1 tenth of 1% chance.
I think it's really more like a 99.9% chance that this is legit.
I've done a lot of due diligence.
I've done the research.
I've talked to many people.
I have a quote on the record from Tammy, the founder of March Against Monsanto, Tammy Canal.
And I read some of that quote in the interview, but I'll include it in the article as well.
I also have a conversation on the record with Pam Larry, the founder of Prop 37, or the originator of Prop 37, who is working on the movie.
She's, I think, providing some technical assistance and some information about GMOs for the movie, and she feels optimistic about the project.
But again, none of us can guarantee you 100% that if you donate money to this project, it's going to turn into a wonderful movie.
But if you think about it, folks, you can't guarantee that on anything you do.
You put money in the bank.
You don't have a hundred percent guarantee that you're ever going to get that back out again.
Just ask the people who had money in the Cypress Bank accounts, right?
Or Goldman Sachs or Bernie Madoff, the investment broker slash Ponzi scheme operator who stole hundreds of millions of dollars from lots of people.
There are no 100 percent guarantees, folks.
My view is, this guy's trying to make a movie.
He could probably use your help.
If he gets enough support, he can make a pretty amazing movie on a relatively low budget with a powerful message.
And so, I'm going to donate some money to him.
I can't say that you should do the same thing, but I'm going to do that, because I think it's a good investment.
I may be wrong, there's a slight chance I'm wrong, but overall, I'm convinced that the attacks against him were falsely engineered for the purpose of bringing down the movie.
Or possibly there was an element of jealousy or suspicion or donation competition, as he mentioned in it.
I don't know exactly which one of those would be more prominent in trying to figure out where these attacks came from.
I do know that most of the people that I have interacted with in the anti-GMO community are really amazing people that are trying to protect the future of human civilization against these truly evil corporate entities and a truly evil industry of biotechnology that is risking the future of all life on our planet.
Genetic pollution, It's a self-replicating pollution.
It's a very real risk to the future of humanity, the future of life on our world.
And so most of the people that I have met and interacted with, they seem like they care about our future.
And that's why they're fighting against GMOs.
That's why they're fighting for food labeling.
That's why they're fighting against Monsanto.
That's why they're begging you to give them money sometimes.
They want to raise money so they can fund the operations and the activism and the marches and the movies and all of these things that are part of a revolution.
And revolutions take money.
If you studied American history, you know that the American Revolution took money.
We've got to thank the French for some of that, too, by the way.
They provided a line of credit for some of the revolutionaries.
But it takes money to do this.
So just the fact that the guy is out there asking for money, that doesn't automatically make him a scam artist or anything.
That's crazy.
Lots of people have to raise money to get things done.
And you think about the amount of money that Monsanto puts into things like Prop 37.
What was it?
Tens of millions of dollars?
I don't know the exact answer.
A lot of money.
Yeah, I think it was tens of millions, or at least the industry overall put in tens of millions.
And we've got to compete with that using a fraction of that money because the grassroots community is not a bunch of super-loaded, ultra-wealthy people, right?
It's people who have ordinary salaries but extraordinary love for the future of humanity and the future of our planet.
And that's why we're going to win, by the way.
Because money, in the long term, can't compete with humanity.
You know?
There's a spiritual drive among all of us.
And this is a thought I'd like to leave you with as I wrap this up.
I know this is a very long interview and audio.
But all of us who care about this issue and are fighting for the sanctity and the integrity of our food and our future generations and our children and our ecosystems, we all feel a calling.
It's a spiritual calling.
It's something beyond normal words and normal understanding.
It's as if the hand of God is reaching down and turning on a light switch in our minds and our hearts and saying, you have been chosen to be a warrior for truth.
You know, to fight in whatever way you can, using your skills and your resources to fight for Saving our future or protecting our future is a better way to put it.
And I just think, folks, that all of us who have that calling, who share that spiritual vision of a planet that is safe from the mad scientists of Monsanto, I think we all have an obligation to do our best to get along with each other.
And to stop the infighting and to reject it.
When people post things on your board, on your Facebook page, and they're muckraking, you should just ban them.
We ban people all the time on the Natural News Facebook page because they don't have anything useful to say.
So we just ban the trolls.
We need the anti-troll spray, as they say.
So I hope you join me in that.
Let's not tolerate infighting, and let's all try to be a little more open-minded to the fact that There are lots of different people who are drawn to this cause from all across the political spectrum, from every nationality and race, religion, background, sexual orientation, gender, you name it.
Let's be open to the commonality that we have with each other, which is that we all give Of ourselves with the intention of creating a future that can sustain life.
And I applaud you for being part of this movement.
Because I think there's no more noble cause today.
Than serving in the protection of life.
And that's what I serve in.
That is my mission.
To help protect the future of life on our planet.
And I believe that if you are listening to this, I think that you share that.
You share that vision.
You share that mission.
And you have courage for being part of this.
This is not the popular Lady Gaga GMO movement.
No, it's not that.
These are the tip of the spear.
This is the cutting edge of people who have more vision than most, people who have greater understanding than most, people who have greater compassion than most.
And we will win.
We will win this.
It's just a matter of time.
Let's take it easy on each other folks and let's welcome people who have something to contribute even if they may be a little bit abrasive, a little bit non-status quo, maybe even a little bit argumentative.
Aren't we all a little bit argumentative?
Which is kind of why we attack the processed food and genetically modified food in the first place.
Because we don't stand for that, right?
We want to raise the questions, find real answers, and protect our collective future.
So thank you for listening.
▲
Export Selection