Houdini's Magic Movie Ticket

I was just thinking about something that I never would have guessed at before. In ID4, Randy Quaid plays a drunken pilot who has claimed to have been abducted and experimented upon by aliens. Up until today, I had assumed that even while most people doubted him, he really had been abducted, because of his righteous moment at the end of the movie. I figured the moment would have been weaker if he hadn't really been abducted.

But today it occurred to me that that just might be the case. One of his "buddies" who made fun of him and his wild allegations was seen on the news in the movie as describing how Quaid had been abducted by aliens and abused, sexually.

Up to now, I never thought much of that short clip, but recently I wondered, could Quaid's "buddies" have been the "aliens?" Did they kidnap him, mess him up, and then laugh when he kept saying aliens did it? And then did the one guy go on the news and take the opportunity to pin his own transgressions on extraterrestrials?

It was a deeper and sadder thought than I would have previously connected with Quaid's sidekick, because he's such a comic genius. I wonder if they threw in that vague possibility thinking no one would probably think much of it...?

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