Chapter 3 of 22 · 2'53"
A stranger stops a passerby to explain that the moon landing was faked. He describes a suppressed transmission, an astronaut shouting about a giant spacecraft in another crater, and NASA cutting off the feed. For him it all adds up to one giant cover-up.
❝ Monologue · 50 lines It's a Covert Operation
The Greenhouse Effect Ties It All In
A man on the street stops a passerby and launches into his theory that the moon landing was a lie. He says the astronauts saw a giant spacecraft in another crater and were cut off by NASA, that the whole space programme is a cover-up run by the US and the Soviet Union, and that people have been on the moon since the 1950s.
The monologue is a classic Slacker set piece: a stranger with total conviction and no interest in your answer, explaining the world in one take. The joke is not just the content but the method. He stacks details — the suppressed transmission, the astronaut cut off mid-sentence, the technology stolen from the Nazis — so that each new claim seems to prove the last, and he ends with the greenhouse effect, which ties everything together. What makes it funny is how reasonable it sounds while he is doing it, and what makes it unsettling is the feeling underneath: a man who sees a hidden hand behind every ordinary thing. His line, "Except it's absolutely true, all of it," is the whole character in five words, and the film never tells you whether to laugh or to worry.
A1–C2 is the CEFR scale. Cards above the level you pick fade, and playback will not auto-pause on them.
“It's a covert operation between the United States government and the Soviet Union.”
Naming both superpowers as partners gives the wild claim its deadpan grandeur.
Neutral
“We've been on the moon since the '50s.”
A flat, matter-of-fact sentence that drops the wildest claim of the whole scene.
Informal
“You can ask yourself what they've been doing sitting on their ass for 49 years, huh?”
A rhetorical question and a crude image leave the listener with nothing to answer.
Informal
“Except it's absolutely true, all of it.”
After a wild theory, one flat line flips it from joke to dead-serious claim.
Informal
You know about the suppressed transmission, of course? - Mm-mmm. - No? Oh, well. This is the 20th anniversary of the moon walk, you know. And way back when they're giving us that "One giant step for mankind" bit... another astronaut's in the background yelling his fool head off... saying, " Oh, my God. What's that over in the crater? What the hell is that?" Well, NASA cuts him off just like that. But those of us with the right kind of radios, you know what I mean? Yeah, we got enough of it. The gist of it was... there's a giant spacecraft over in the other crater, looking at them. That's right. Oh, it all begins to leak out then... that the space program's just one giant big cover-up. It's a covert operation between the United States government and the Soviet Union. It's been going on for over 30 years. We've been on the moon since the '50s. You wanna know how we got there, right? I'll tell you. Anti-grav drive. Anti-gravity technology. We stole it from the Nazis after the end of World War II. It's perfectly obvious. And you know, I was watching this Late, Late Show. A lot of truth in the Late, Late Show. You know, they slip it through there, they figure nobody's watching, but - Anyway, there's this sci-fi movie called Alternative Three. And, uh, it's about kidnapping people, using a little psycho-surgery on them... and, uh, turn them into zombies. And making them colonize the moon and Mars. Funny, huh? Except it's absolutely true, all of it. We've been on Mars since '62. It was May 22nd. That's a very important date for you to remember, pal. - Yeah, that's my birthday. - Right. So, see... the reason we're up there covertly is because of the greenhouse effect. It all ties in. Yeah, greenhouse effect. By the way, they discovered that in the '40s. You can ask yourself what they've been doing sitting on their ass for 49 years, huh? While we're out here with some serious social diseases and everything else. Oh, never mind that. Everybody says... "Greenhouse effect. A hundred years from now. Oh, I'll be long dead, gone and out of here." Not so, my friend. Not so. The government's sitting on the fact that it's 10-20 years maximum. It's getting hotter, don't you think? Yeah, it's not even summer yet. Yeah, and when the polar ice caps begin to melt... it's not gonna take a certified genius to understand that we're in serious global confusion. I mean, really, we're in massive mainline ecological chaos. Anyway, it's happening even as we speak. So, I'll tell you what they've already done. They've colonized outer space. Oh, they couldn't colonize everybody. No, no. That would be global bankruptcy. We couldn't beat the greenhouse effect anyway.
Up next · 04keep it under your hatThe scene: Conspiracy Guy Warns a StrangerHe believes the moon landing was faked, the space programme is a cover-up shared by the US and the Soviet Union, and people have secretly been on the moon since the 1950s.
He says an astronaut was heard shouting about a giant spacecraft in another crater before NASA cut the feed, and only people with the right radios heard it.
He claims it was stolen from the Nazis after the Second World War, which is why he thinks the technology has been available for decades.
He argues it explains why the powerful are secretly colonising space, and warns that the planet has only ten to twenty years left.
It means an attempt to hide the truth, usually to protect someone powerful. He uses it to say the entire space programme is a lie.
