Grizzly Man

I'm out in the prime cut of the big green.

Behind me is Ed and Rowdy,

members of an up and coming sub-adult gang.

They're challenging everything including me.

Goes with the territory.

If I show weakness, if I retreat,

I may be hurt, I may be killed.

I must hold my own if I'm gonna stay within this land.

For once there is weakness they will exploit it, they will take me out, they will decapitate me,

they will chop me into bits and pieces.

I'm dead.

But so far I persevere.

Persevere.

Most times I'm a kind warrior out here.

Most times I am gentle, I am like a flower,

I'm like a fly on the wall,

observing, non-committal, non-invasive in any way.

Occasionally I am challenged, and in that case the kind warrior

must, must, must become a samurai,

must become so...

So formidable,

so fearless of death, so strong,

that he will win, he will win.

Even the bears will believe that you are more powerful,

and in a sense you must be

more powerful if you are to survive in this land with the bear.

No one knew that.

No one ever friggin' knew

that there are times when my life is on the precipice of death

and that these bears can bite, they can kill.

And if I am weak I go down.

I love them with all my heart, I will protect them,

I will die for them, but I will not die at their claws and paws.

I will fight, I will be strong. I'll be one of them.

I will be the master.

But still a kind warrior.

Love you, Rowdy.

Give it to me, baby.

That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about.

That's what I'm talking about.

I can smell death all over my fingers.

Herzog All these majestic creatures were filmed by Timothy Treadwei!

who lived among wild grizz/Ies for 13 summers.

He went to remote areas of the Alaskan peninsula

believing that he was needed there to protect these animate

and educate the public.

During his fast five years out there,

he took along a video camera and shot over 100 hours of footage.

What Treadwett intended was to show these bears in their natural habitat,.

Having myself filmed in the wilderness of jungles,

I found that beyond a wildlife film,

in his material lay dormant a story of astonishing beauty and depth.

1 discovered a film of human ecstasies and darkest inner turmoil.

As I? there was a desire in him

to leave the confinements of his humanness and bond with the bears,

Treadwefl reached out seeking a primordial encounter.

But in doing so he crossed an invisible borderline.

Go back and play.

Go back. Go back.

Go back.

This is a sub-adult, and this is what happens to them.

They work together and they get really powerful.

As you see, I'm just feet away.

He's now moving away from me.

I have now proven myself

as being able to hold my ground and therefore earning their respect.

This is Rowdy the bear, and he's rowdy.

He's getting bigger and...

Knew him from he was a little, little dot a couple years ago.

He's getting to be a big boy. Anyway, we're doing just fine.

But that was a challenge,

and you have to remain cool in the challenge, in the moment.

If you don't, you're dead.

They can kill, they can bite.

They can decapitate.

Excuse me.

Hey-

Hey!

It's OK. It's OK, ifs OK.

I didn't mean to get in your way.

Wow.

It's OK. You're the boss.

Nice job.

Wow, nice job.

I kind of think he was over 10 feet high, don't you?

Whoo, he's a big bear.

He's a big bear.

A very big bear.

Wow.

Huh. Anyway, he was over here rub-a-dub-dubbing.

He's a big bear!

The excitement Treadwell felt connected him immediately with children.

In his campaign to create awareness

he reached thousands and thousands of school children

who would remember his fabulous story telling

as one of the highlights of their school years.

He took his mission so seriously that he never solicited for a fee.

Over time, he reached the status of a national celebrity.

Man} Timothy Treadwefl is crazy about grizzly bears.

How crazy? Sometimes.“...

It was as if he had become a star by virtue of his own invention.

I would be within the physical presence of bears

24 hours a day for months at a time.

This is crazy.

This is nuts.

These are the most dangerous animals on the face of the earth.

And you want to go and put yourself in harm's way 24 hours a day.

I think they've been misunderstood.

How can I believe that if you are about to be killed by a bear

that you wouldn't say, "Oh, I made a mistake. I'd like to have a gun."

I would never ever kill a bear in the defence of my own life.

I would not go into a bear's home and kill a bear.

One day,

I came home and I was sitting on my patio,

and my wife was in the bedroom with the TV on.

And I heard her scream.

And I thought she'd fallen or something,

and I came in and she was

sitting on the edge of the bed staring at the television.

And I looked at the television,

and I saw Timmy's face.

And I hadn't heard the sound or the news yet, but I knew just by seeing Timmy's face on TV

and hearing my wife's reaction that the worst had happened.

Not necessarily a surprise,

but the worst.

1 never have days when I grieve for Timmy as 1 have with other friends who have died.

They feel dead.

Timmy doesn't feel dead.

This is the last photo of Timothy Treadwe/I.

It was taken at the beginning of his thirteenth summer

in the wilds of Alaska.

With him is Amie Huguenard who would die by his side.

The man who took the photo was VVi/Iy Fulton,

a close friend of Timothy's and the pilot who would bring him

to this remote pan of the Alaskan peninsula.

Treadwe/I saw himself as the guardian of this land

and stylised himself as Prince Valiant,

fighting the bad guys with their schemes to do harm to the bears.

But all this land is a federally protected reserve,

part of Katmai National Park.

This big plain Treadwell called the Sanctuary.

Here he would spend the early summer months

before moving along some 35 miles

to this densely overgrown area which he cal/ed the Grizzly Maze,

where he would observe the late summer salmon run.

It was here that Fulton would pick him up in the fall.

On October 6th last year, this is the spot here

at Kaflia Lake where I pulled in to pick up Tim and Amie.

A typical day out here, rain, foggy, a lot of wind and...

fl was kind of stranger.

Didn't see him, didn't hear anything.

There's no gear on the beach or anything, you know,

so I tied up and I started yelling a little bit.

Tim, you know, Amie and,

no answer, and I caught a little tiny bit of movement up on the hills.

So, I'm like, well, you know, it was windy,

maybe they just couldn't hear me or something,

so I decided I'd go up in the camp,

you know, and see what was going on, and headed off up through the alders.

It's kind of a thick trail up into camp there, and...

Got about three-quarters of the way up the hill

and something just didn't feel right at all, you know?

Something was, something seemed strange.

And I'm yelling and no answer or anything,

so I turned around and started coming back down the trail,

a pretty good clip I guess.

I was kind of trotting along,

and as I got in the thickest part of the alders right here...

As I got near the aeroplane I just happened to turn around,

and I turned around and looked, and...

Pretty nasty-looking bear that I had seen here before

is just sneaking slow with his head down,

just the meanest looking thing, you know, coming through the brush.

And so I jumped on the aeroplane real quick

and untied it and took off, turned around, flew over,

over camp there, and...

Just looked down and saw a human rib cage,

you know, that I knew had to be either Tim or Amie laying there,

and, he was just eating that,

and as I...

So I circled around again, got really low

and tried to run him off just over and over again with the aeroplane.

And every time I would come over,

he'd just start eating faster and faster and crouch over this,

this rib cage there, and,

and, right at that time I...

I just realised, "Wow," you know,

I was pretty close to getting eaten myself, is what I thought,

and this shot of adrenalin like I've never had

just came over me and my throat went,

couldn't breathe, my face went numb, my arms and legs went numb,

and then I called back to the office

and told them what happened out here,

what I thought had happened and that we would need

some assistance out here, that we had some problems.

After the park service arrived,

then I'm leading them up through the alders here.

This is the same trail that I'd come up the first time,

and we got to about right here and we just stopped, you know,

and we stopped just to take a look around