Grizzly Man

[Barquentine]

Is it real? I think this film is a spoof and Thomas Treadwell is alive and kicking. It was a hilarious film. Does anyone know for sure?

[scuzzball]

I saw an interview with Werner Herzog the director. He was shown listening to a horrific sound recording of the death of Treadwell and his girlfriend at the hands (paws?) of a grizzly. Herzog is a very serious and dedicated director and I would be surprised if it was a hoax.

[jno]

here is an original press account of his death.

[Stu in USA]

His name was Timothy Treadwell and I don't see the humour of being eaten alive by a grizzly bear!! And then to compound the whole grizzly(sorry for the pun) episode they then shot the bear for doing what comes naturally.

[Fish Kid]

Best thing that could happen was for Treadwell to be removed from the gene pool.
Pity he had to take his girlfriend with him.

[KKKKatie]

Werner Herzog, the filmmaker, likes to manipulate reality and play with the line between reality and fiction. I thought it was hilarious too. Obviously the death of a living thing, the bear or Treadwell, is not hilarious but Herzog has made a film - i.e. not just by compiling Treadwell's video diaries - that is hilarious. Its clever film-making on Herzog's part in full knowledge that the average viewer has no idea how a film is made. My opinion is that the interviewees are either actors, or are re-playing interviews previously given. I'm not convinced that Herzog listens to an actual recording of Treadwell and his girlfriend's death. In fact I'm not convinced that this exists. He conveniently pleaded, on film, that the ex destroy the tape.
Whatever happened to Treadwell has very little to do with Herzog's finished film. It is a brilliant film if exploiting an horrific story. I would like to hear more discussion on this. There's surprisingly little.

[spotthcat]

I found it interesting that Herzog shows "the only footage" of the girlfriend in the first part of the "documentary", and then at the end she shows up again, not ten feet from bear.

Plus, just how much coverage would this film have gotton if Treadwell didn't meet such a gruesome end? Would it have gone to Sundance?

And yes, either the interviews were badly re-enacted or they were completely scripted. Plus, the doctor who performed the autopsy was like an actor from the old Ed Wood movies. I was waiting to see Treadwell rolling around on the floor fighting with a bear rug.

Herzog scripted the ending in order to bolster his fading career and probably sold the idiot treadwell on it by telling him it would attract more attention to the plight of these animals, as well as jump start his pathetic career. The only problem was, that Treadwell was such a horrible actor that he couldn't use the audio scene of the bear attact(notice, when Treadwell really got "emotional" and was yelling at the Wildlife Service, Herzog was constantly talking over him so we couldn't hear how unconvincing he was.).

[skepticgal]

I'm relieved to find that I am not the only one who thinks that this is an apparent hoax or fictionalized account. I�m guessing that Herzog is tapping into the zeitgeist, intending to expose our cultural fascination with the overlap between fiction and non-fiction (�Shattered Glass,� or the recent scandal about James Frey�s �A Million Little Pieces�).

The first tip-off for me was the series of histrionic interviews (which all seem scripted). But there are a number of things in the �documentary� that seem faker than �Spinal Tap� I am convinced that �Grizzly Man� is a filmic prank (and not even a very subtle one!).

One of the interviews with the coroner struck me as particularly problematic. He narrates the actual mauling and refers (repeatedly) to how Treadwell's girlfriend kept hitting the bear on the head with a frying pan. How does he know this if all that's available is audio? He can hear the sound of a frying pan over Treadwell's screams? Does anyone else ever mention the frying pan? Was it found on the scene? Is the coroner embellishing?

[Hoaxhunter]

This movie was a hoax.
1. The coroner gifted "evidence" to Tim's former girlfriend. By law, all his belongings, once deemed not evidence, should have been turned over to the nearest next of kin: his parents.
2. I have found a CNN / Associated Press article on the story. Oddly, you only find this article when you google "Timothy Treadwell"...When you go straight to the CNN website or the AP website, you can't find it at all.
3. The U.S. Park Service has an article posted on their website as does the Anchorage Daily News. Oddly, there is no follow up articles on the autopsy performed on the bears, to article on the likely candle vigil some environmentalits would have held, no article on a funeral...Does that sound like the story-milking media we know?
4. other than the suspicious "news postings" dated october 8-9, 2003...There is nothing else on Tim until 2005, when the movie was made...Nothing!

This is just a more sophisticated Blair Witch Project.

HH

[StellaMae]

HOAX!!!!! Did anyone notice how clean Tim always was. I just got back from a simple two day backpacking trip and I was a dirty mess. Anyone that can spend a week in the woods with a cleaned-pressed shirt is amazing. (and Tim was supposed to have been there for three months!) Just a suggestion!

[terrywolf]

just finished watching. truly the man was insane, although his love of the bears nearly rivaled his love of himself and his egocentric hair must be in place image. i think much of it was staged...the interviews, the coroner....i wouldn't be at all surprised if timothy is alive and well and hiding out ... it felt very blair witch project....including the scenes running through the bush after the fox got his hat....i did enjoy watching it, the bear footage, and the fox footage fascinating. if i had been amy, i would have fed timothy to the bears...

[veg]

Much is fishy to me:

The rodeo-riding pilot arrives just as grizzly bear 141 is polishing off Treadwell's ribcage.

Either this is incredibly fortunate or the bear consumed him over a long period.

But if that's the case, the rescue team would not have been able to retreive intact and recognisable body parts from the bear's stomach.

Come to think of it, that's a fairly wierd concept anyway. Don't bears chew?

Finding a hand with a wrist watch still on it - just sounds made-up, like watches in sharks' stomachs.

And if the camera had its lens cap on, how do they know about the frying pan etc?

And the coroner! Just doesn't add up.

But then again, there's press coverage on Treadwell going back to around 1996. His death was reprorted in oodles of reputable newspapers - Chicago Tribune etc. He published a book of his bear adventures which was widely reviewed.

Best explanation I can come up with is that Herzog collaborated with Treadwell, who had anyway (according to the film) decided to give up on his bear visits.

Herzog has just released Incident at Loch Ness, which he admits is a mockumentary, which explores simlar themes.

Treadwell was a failed actor with a taste for long periods of solitary life in the wilds of nature. Which is where, I reckon he stil is.

Then again my flatmates think I'm nutrs for not believing it!

[longfortruth]

Thank god there are people who also are going around and around with these questions! I was watching it last night and was cracking up the whole time. It felt like a Christopher Guest knock off. I was dumbfounded that anyone could act like that. I also noticed that not only was the coroner not allowed to give away his watch but also you can't go into an operating room where they did the autopsy and talk to the person who performed it like that. There are confidentiality laws against interviewing people who do that. It was just too weird for me. If it's a hoax, great...the film was funny and had beautiful footage of bears but if not, well...yeah. That sucks. Guys like him give environmentalists a bad name, not to mention stupid ex drug addicts from bleach blond California.

[Lester L.]

If you need to know whether or not Herzog is capable of creating a hoax of this magnitude, simply watch "Incident at Loch Ness" from 2004, and one or two of his other films (Fitzcarraldo is a good one to see to understand what he's capable of accomplishing - ANYTHING), and I think you will have your answer. I believe Werner is: capable of convincing anyone to do anything that he thinks will make good film, fearless, completely unconcerned whether or not the film is uncovered as a hoax (and would, in fact, be delighted if it were), far more powerful a force of nature than anything that he creates on film. I knew this film was a hoax after my first viewing, and I remain convinced. It is hilarious, and even more hilarious is the write up on the back of the DVD/Video at rental outlets and that it was presented on The Discover (Discovery?) channel here in the U.S. as some kind of "nature" documentary, "inspiring" and all that blah, as if it should be viewed by families. What a hoot. I'm convinced Werner is amused or bemused by all of this.

[bluedesign6]

It's an interesting question, I have thought it was a hoax for quite some time now owing to some serious inconsistencies in the movie. If you watch it with a critical eye, you'll notice that the bears don't seem to know or care about him like you've been told. Also, before all of this treadwell, like millions of others, was an aspiring actor in LA and like most, would jump at the chance to become famous somehow, like faking his own death. In the videos in the movie, which take place over many months of his last summer there, he is seen wearing the exact same clothes throughout all of the filming. Though It is not unusual to live in the woods and wear the same clothes, it is conspicuous that they have the same level of dirt and wear throughout. What's far more conspicuous is that his facial hair never grows a bit even though he is roughing it, but what is far more interesting is that he has dyed blonde hair with black roots. Somehow he seems to maintain the same level of blondness with the same approximately 1/2 inch of black roots throughout several months of living in the woods in a tent. These Alaska scenes seem like they were all filmed in about a day or two and set up. In other scenes he is interviewing friends of treadwell who come across like bit actors in LA hamming it up as their big chance. Crying on cue and such. These scenes seem not only scripted, but out and out fake, like when the coroner gives his old girfriend his watch he dug out of the bears stomach. This is something a coroner would never do, rather giving all his remains and possesions to either family or legal next of kin. Her crying over his chewed up watch makes it look a little over the top.

[bluedesign6]

Last night I saw herzog speak and asked him afterwords if it was a hoax, he claimed it wasn't. He has made light over the years of his affinity for playing with peoples sense of reality and illusion, but said that anyone who ever thought it wasn't real was delusional. He Claimed he had heard the tape himself, but seeing as he is the only one who ever has, there is no way to either verify that or know if was real in the first place. I would be taken aback by it had herzog not shown himself to be quite unwound over the years. When you take a deeper look at the movie, though entertaining as hell, it just seems out and out fake, like it's one step away from the incident at loch ness.

My real question is seeing how herzog finds his projects, is the hoax his or someone else who got herzog teed up on the whole thing. Really quite a conundrum if you think about it.

[Bunky_Spubbles]

I just watched this and I'm 100% sure it's a comedy hoax in the mockumentary style. The film is full of subtle and not so subtle hints as to Timothy Treadwell's obvious homosexuality. How anybody could watch this and not see the humour in this is beyond me. The coroner is clearly an actor, the interview with his parents looks like something out of a Rob Reiner movie. The scene where Timothy starts ranting at the edge of the lake is hilarious. Even the closing credits where the two bears are following behind him as he walks along the river is a joke. Werner Herzog is having a good laugh at the expense of everybody who doesn't get the joke of this film.