Roswell Revisited
- Jun 11
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 14
This photo, by journalist Scott Enyart, was taken sometime in 1994 outside Steve Johnson's XFX in Sun Valley, California. That’s where we created a number of artifacts for the Showtime TV movie Roswell. I’m the one in the black shirt.
My job as XFX production coordinator was to make sure everything came together on time. I did not go to set, but I saw them building everything. Director Jeremy Kagan had some fascinating ideas, and he had a terrific cast. The film starred Kyle MacLachlan and Martin Sheen in a story about a journalist investigating the experiences of Major Jesse Marcel at Roswell Army Airfield in New Mexico, July 1947, where weirdness ensued after newspapers splashed the headline: “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer….”
I first posted this photo back in 2007, because the XFX creature was turning up in the media in connection with the 60th anniversary of the original U.S. Air Force reports. Now, in 2026, attention is returning to Roswell again with the release of Steven Spielberg’s beautiful new movie, Disclosure Day. You’ll get no spoilers from me here.
Before anybody claims otherwise: the crispy little critter pictured in my arms was one of four prosthetic dummy bodies that XFX created for the show. He was made from polyurethane foam with a bendy aluminum skeleton, and was cast from a sculpture by Norman Cabrera. Animatronic artist Lennie MacDonald also made a silicone articulated rod puppet version that represented a living specimen that could sit up, breathe, blink, emote and glow.
Steve donated a latex casting of our hero puppet to the Roswell UFO Museum in New Mexico. Photographs of that exhibit later appeared in Penthouse magazine, Sept. 1996, with a lady enjoying a stick of red liquorice on the cover beside the headline "THE ALIEN World's First Authentic Photograph"–– despite the fact that the museum exhibit was on public view, and is still there today.
The Sharper Image (expensive nick-nack shop) also licensed the XFX alien and produced full-body and head-and-shoulders replicas that, for a while, anyone could buy. These, too, turned up in the media labeled as authentic extra-terrestrials. While it is true that Norman based his sculpture on historical testimonies and photographs, it was fascinating to see how people latched onto his design as the real McCoy.
The most beguiling thing about working on this show as XFX production coordinator was dealing with members of the public who called our studio after Showtime aired its movie. Not sure how they found us, I suppose we were in the phone book, but one lady was quite adamant that she wanted to visit “the alien” whom she knew that we were hiding. Nothing that I said could convince her otherwise.
Rumbled!
Penthouse 1996 (safe for work)
Go see: Disclosure Day
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