Ep:194 Bigfoot Enterprises

<v Speaker 1>As a kid growing up in the seventies, it was
<v Speaker 1>always just part of the landscape. I would see it
<v Speaker 1>in the headlines, I would see it on TV.
<v Speaker 2>I would even see it in the movies.
<v Speaker 1>You know, it wasn't something that you really questioned as
<v Speaker 1>an eight, nine, ten year old kid. It was just
<v Speaker 1>kind of there, and the spark happened, you know. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know if we were just less skeptical or cynical
<v Speaker 1>back then, but it's nostalgic for me, and I always
<v Speaker 1>kind of go back to looking through the lens of
<v Speaker 1>that young kid that didn't really question it, just just
<v Speaker 1>kind of, you know, accepted it and was inspired by it.
<v Speaker 1>So when I would see those types of headlines, you know,
<v Speaker 1>Rodeo star hunts Bigfoot, you know, whatever it was, the
<v Speaker 1>in the Midesto b or the Santa Cruz Sentinel, some
<v Speaker 1>of the places that where I lived and grew up.
<v Speaker 2>It was just kind of fact, you know, and it
<v Speaker 2>was sort of reported as fact. I don't know what changed.
<v Speaker 3>I'd like to welcome Eric full Forward to the show.
<v Speaker 3>He is the director behind Bigfoot Enterprises The Truish Adventures
<v Speaker 3>of Patterson and Gimlin. Eric, thanks for joining me. On
<v Speaker 3>Bigfoot Crossroads.
<v Speaker 2>Thank you, Matt, Thank you for having me on glor
<v Speaker 2>to be here.
<v Speaker 3>Of course. So what's your own personal interest behind the
<v Speaker 3>subject of Bigfoot?
<v Speaker 2>Uh?
<v Speaker 1>You know, for me as a kid growing up in
<v Speaker 1>the seventies, it was always just part of the part
<v Speaker 1>of the landscape.
<v Speaker 2>You know.
<v Speaker 1>I would see it in the headlines, I would see
<v Speaker 1>it on TV. I would even see it in the movies.
<v Speaker 1>But you know, it wasn't something that you really questioned
<v Speaker 1>as an eight, nine, ten year old kid. It was
<v Speaker 1>just kind of there and the spark happened.
<v Speaker 3>I actually was just reminiscing today about those old Mysteries
<v Speaker 3>of the Unknown time life books. Do you remember those?
<v Speaker 2>I do? I do?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, there's still versions of them that pop up on
<v Speaker 1>the newsstand today, interestingly at the grocery stores, you know,
<v Speaker 1>unexplained phenomenon, that kind of thing.
<v Speaker 3>It just seems that, like you were saying, seventies, eighties wise,
<v Speaker 3>even into the early nineties, these type topics were just
<v Speaker 3>kind of part of the media and part of culture
<v Speaker 3>and wasn't really questioned or treated with, you know, a
<v Speaker 3>skeptical eye of comedy or anything like that. It was
<v Speaker 3>just kind of put out there as mysteries, and it
<v Speaker 3>seemed like everybody had a copy of those books or
<v Speaker 3>you know, washed in search of or something like that.
<v Speaker 3>It's kind of strange how that was a thing, you know,
<v Speaker 3>for a couple of decades at least, and now it's
<v Speaker 3>kind of gone on the back burner. Why do you
<v Speaker 3>think that is?
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, you know, I don't know if we
<v Speaker 1>were just less you know, skeptical or cynical back then.
<v Speaker 1>But again, I kind of it's nostalgic for me, and
<v Speaker 1>I always kind of go back to looking through the
<v Speaker 1>lens of that young kid that didn't really question it,
<v Speaker 1>just just kind of, you know, accepted it and was
<v Speaker 1>inspired by it. So when I would see those types
<v Speaker 1>of headlines, you know, Rodeo star hunts Bigfoot, you know,
<v Speaker 1>whatever it was in the in the Midesto b or
<v Speaker 1>the Santa Cruz Sentinel, some of the places that I
<v Speaker 1>where I lived and grew up, it was just kind
<v Speaker 1>of fact, you know, and it was sort of reported
<v Speaker 1>as fact. And I don't I don't know what changed.
<v Speaker 1>I think we we live in a in a in
<v Speaker 1>an age where everybody kind of knows everything, you know immediately,
<v Speaker 1>So I think that kind of breaths skepticism.
<v Speaker 3>Sure, So what sparked the idea to do this particular film?
<v Speaker 1>You know, as a as a filmmaker, I'm always on
<v Speaker 1>the hunt for for new concepts and new ideas, and
<v Speaker 1>having the Patterson Gimlin film as just, you know, something
<v Speaker 1>that rattles through my brain.
<v Speaker 2>Ever since I was a.
<v Speaker 1>Kid, I I've always just kind of wondered about it.
<v Speaker 1>And one day I was I pulled it up YouTube
<v Speaker 1>or something, and I was just like, Who's what, what's
<v Speaker 1>beyond this?
<v Speaker 2>What's behind this?
<v Speaker 1>You know, what if on this day in October, in
<v Speaker 1>this moment, you know, the camera was flipped around one
<v Speaker 1>hundred and eighty degrees, and what does that world look like?
<v Speaker 1>And who are the characters that live in that world?
<v Speaker 1>What's what's beyond the frame? And so that that sort
<v Speaker 1>of questioning it was kind of the beginning of the concept.
<v Speaker 1>And so I started to research who Roger was and
<v Speaker 1>who Bob was, and you know, the Al Datley and
<v Speaker 1>Ida Diatli, Roger's sister, and Roger's wife, and all the
<v Speaker 1>kind of players and secondary characters. And I discovered this
<v Speaker 1>world that was really a pretty colorful place in small
<v Speaker 1>town Yakima, Washington, and so I wanted to put together
<v Speaker 1>a film that was a character driven drama essentially that
<v Speaker 1>tells the story of Patterson and Gimlin's partnership, their adventures,
<v Speaker 1>and a lot of the things that they got into
<v Speaker 1>post October twentieth, nineteen sixty seven once they had the film.
<v Speaker 3>So, as you know, from doing research on this, I'm
<v Speaker 3>sure you have realized that the film itself, the Patterson
<v Speaker 3>Gimlin film that can be considered a hot button topic
<v Speaker 3>for some people. There's a lot of very passionate people
<v Speaker 3>about this film on both sides of the line. And
<v Speaker 3>you still have you know, Bob Gimlin is still very
<v Speaker 3>much alive and has a lot of friends who stand
<v Speaker 3>fast behind him as an honest person and everything. So
<v Speaker 3>how are you navigating the waters whenever you tell this story?
<v Speaker 1>Well, yeah, to your point, I understand that, you know,
<v Speaker 1>Roger and Bob are sort of these these giants in
<v Speaker 1>the world of Bigfoot and Sasquatch, and their film is
<v Speaker 1>basically the origin I mean, well, the film that I
<v Speaker 1>want to create is kind of the origin story of
<v Speaker 1>their film. And so early on, you know, I kind
<v Speaker 1>of understood that we need to approach their story and
<v Speaker 1>how we depict these guys with a sense of respect
<v Speaker 1>and reverence. And from the beginning I decided that it's
<v Speaker 1>not about proving or disproving anything. It's just about telling
<v Speaker 1>the story of the human drama behind that strip of film.
<v Speaker 2>And it's kind of as simple was that.
<v Speaker 3>So as you're telling this story, which I think is
<v Speaker 3>a great take, because we spent so many years of
<v Speaker 3>just staring at the film footage, and I know that
<v Speaker 3>there's probably just an amazing story surrounding it behind the scenes,
<v Speaker 3>and like you're saying, all the aftermath afterwards. I've spoken
<v Speaker 3>to several people over the years. I was too young,
<v Speaker 3>of course, I wasn't even born yet whenever this film
<v Speaker 3>really was a hot item. But I've spoken to many
<v Speaker 3>people that remember seeing it in the theaters, you know,
<v Speaker 3>or going to events and going to listen to Roger
<v Speaker 3>Patterson you know, speak and present the film at their
<v Speaker 3>schools and everything. It was a major thing. So I
<v Speaker 3>think it's really neat that you're, you know, telling that
<v Speaker 3>side of the story. But even in the tagline the
<v Speaker 3>Truest Adventures, So how much of this is fact and
<v Speaker 3>how much is creative license? Whenever you're telling this story.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, good question. So true ish doesn't refer to you know,
<v Speaker 2>is it real, is it hoax? It has nothing to
<v Speaker 2>do with that.
<v Speaker 1>The idea of true Ish is more about taking some
<v Speaker 1>of the events that happened and arranging them in a
<v Speaker 1>way that is going to be more palatable and fun
<v Speaker 1>to watch for an audience. So their timeline is compressed
<v Speaker 1>a little bit some of the things that they you
<v Speaker 1>know that they did. So, you know, we take them
<v Speaker 1>to Hollywood, which you know they did go to Hollywood
<v Speaker 1>at some point, but we we introduce some composite characters.
<v Speaker 1>We have a Holly would pr agent that picks up
<v Speaker 1>on their story via the headlines, you know, brings them
<v Speaker 1>down to Hollywood, tries to get them involved in show business.
<v Speaker 1>Ultimately doesn't work out for them, but that's when they
<v Speaker 1>kind of get the spark and the idea that hey,
<v Speaker 1>we're going to do this ourselves. We're going to kind
<v Speaker 1>of invent this idea of four walling theaters and showings
<v Speaker 1>and take this film on the road and we're going
<v Speaker 1>to share it with our audiences that way. So, you know,
<v Speaker 1>about sixty sixty five percent of that is stuff that happened.
<v Speaker 1>But to create a complete sort of narrative structure out
<v Speaker 1>of it, you know, we had we had to introduce
<v Speaker 1>a few things, as do pretty much all bio pictures,
<v Speaker 1>you know, sure to make it, to make the story work,
<v Speaker 1>and to make it a fun ride. I mean, all
<v Speaker 1>of this stuff happened over several years, you know, from
<v Speaker 1>sixty seven to when Roger passed away in seventy two.
<v Speaker 1>So in our situation, we needed, you know, some of
<v Speaker 1>the events of the story to take place in a
<v Speaker 1>shorter timeframe. So those are those are kind of some
<v Speaker 1>samples of some of the creative license that we had
<v Speaker 1>to take.
<v Speaker 3>How far out in the timeline do you go? Do
<v Speaker 3>you just go to Patterson's death?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>We basically we basically cover from sixty seven to seventy two.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, And what was some of the actual Bigfoot lore
<v Speaker 3>in research that you did, Like whenever you were researching
<v Speaker 3>stuff for this specific film, were there any elements that
<v Speaker 3>really stood out to you that made a mark with
<v Speaker 3>you that you didn't know going into it.
<v Speaker 1>You know, some of the some of the I think
<v Speaker 1>character qualities that I discovered stood out, you know, Roger,
<v Speaker 1>you know, really being a family guy, and you know,
<v Speaker 1>doing everything that he could to look out for his
<v Speaker 1>family and just getting to know the kind of person
<v Speaker 1>he was, you know, somebody that had this kind of
<v Speaker 1>larger than life personality, drew other people in. People you know,
<v Speaker 1>like to be around him. He was fun, made people laugh.
<v Speaker 1>And then Bob his his partner in this, being more
<v Speaker 1>of you know, kind.
<v Speaker 2>Of the follow through guy.
<v Speaker 1>You know, he was more of a straight shooter, genuine
<v Speaker 1>amazing skill set and somebody that you know, probably kept
<v Speaker 1>Roger out of trouble a lot of times. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>just I think just kind of the idea that Roger
<v Speaker 1>was a guy that was facing his mortality and you know,
<v Speaker 1>he knew he was dying, and he was he was
<v Speaker 1>a guy that was trying to define his legacy. You know,
<v Speaker 1>he was trying to come up with something some way too,
<v Speaker 1>you know, a leave behind for his family, and kind
<v Speaker 1>of you know, I'm not saying that what he and
<v Speaker 1>Bob did was directly a result of that, but I
<v Speaker 1>think that certainly motivated him.
<v Speaker 3>Do you think the the aftermath kind of took on
<v Speaker 3>a life of its own after the initial film was made.
<v Speaker 3>Regardless of you know, the debate will always go on
<v Speaker 3>I don't know where you stand personally on the subject.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, I can ask you that. But the the
<v Speaker 3>stuff that happened afterwards, do you think that grew on
<v Speaker 3>its own? Was it an organic growth that blew it
<v Speaker 3>up to the extreme amount that it went to, or
<v Speaker 3>was that sort of a pre planned thing that hey,
<v Speaker 3>we've got this, we should do this now.
<v Speaker 1>I feel like it sort of organically blew up, you know,
<v Speaker 1>it was it was this thing that you know, I
<v Speaker 1>mean it was it was just immediately viral, well not
<v Speaker 1>immediately viral, but in its in its day, you know,
<v Speaker 1>timelines where things happened a little bit more slowly, but
<v Speaker 1>I would say that it kind of became viral in
<v Speaker 1>this organic way. I mean from one headline to the next,
<v Speaker 1>and one person, you know, relaying the story to the next,
<v Speaker 1>and then once people started to see it, it.
<v Speaker 2>Just, you know, it kind of blew up.
<v Speaker 1>And I always kind of think about it as like,
<v Speaker 1>there are fifteen minutes of fame that came out of
<v Speaker 1>this film and out of this event back then. It
<v Speaker 1>is still going on to this day, you know, almost yeah,
<v Speaker 1>fifty seven fifty eight.
<v Speaker 2>Years later, you know, it's kind of amazing.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, everything that we know in pop culture, everything
<v Speaker 1>that we see, you know, all the little trinkets and
<v Speaker 1>coffee mugs and T shirts and you know, you name it,
<v Speaker 1>it's all Frame three fifty two. You know, it's it's
<v Speaker 1>without without It's kind of the you know, the origin
<v Speaker 1>story of what we know as far as Bigfoot goes
<v Speaker 1>in pop culture.
<v Speaker 3>So what are your thoughts on the film? Where do
<v Speaker 3>you stand on the veracity?
<v Speaker 2>I don't know. I come to this place where I
<v Speaker 2>really don't feel.
<v Speaker 1>Compelled to, you know, to call it a hoax or
<v Speaker 1>to call it absolutely genuine, genuine. It just I just
<v Speaker 1>stay open to it. You know, it just kind of exists.
<v Speaker 2>It was here before I was here, and.
<v Speaker 1>You know, some of the amazing upresing and stabilization technology
<v Speaker 1>has helped us all see it a little bit more clearly.
<v Speaker 1>It still seems to stand up, you know, you know,
<v Speaker 1>through that scrutiny, and I love the idea that it's
<v Speaker 1>just one of these things that will never be proven.
<v Speaker 1>It will never be disproven, and so it's just going
<v Speaker 1>to live on forever.
<v Speaker 3>You mentioned earlier that you're not approaching this from the
<v Speaker 3>aspect of saying it is or isn't real or otherwise.
<v Speaker 3>But obviously there were claims even back then that when
<v Speaker 3>as far as saying some Hollywood studios were involved. Do
<v Speaker 3>you approach that in your film, Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>We do touch on that a little bit. And one
<v Speaker 1>of a little bit of the creative license that we
<v Speaker 1>take is, you know, we go to Hollywood and at
<v Speaker 1>the time, costume creator John Chambers is in the middle
<v Speaker 1>of making Planet of the Apes, right, and Stanley Kubrick's
<v Speaker 1>two thousand and one, a Space Odyssey with that opening
<v Speaker 1>monkey scene, is also being made, and so yeah, there's
<v Speaker 1>a little bit of reference to John Chambers calling these
<v Speaker 1>guys out as you know, hey, I see costumes like
<v Speaker 1>this every day and this is you know, just simply
<v Speaker 1>a hoax. So it doesn't it doesn't you know, in
<v Speaker 1>the way that we frame it, it doesn't really detract
<v Speaker 1>or it doesn't really you know, stop these guys, right.
<v Speaker 1>And what's interesting is the real John Chambers, I believe,
<v Speaker 1>has said that, you know, he didn't have anywhere near
<v Speaker 1>the technology in those days to make something of that caliber.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I've always read that it was other people saying
<v Speaker 3>that John Chambers was responsible for it and not John Chambers, right,
<v Speaker 3>which was kind of interesting. And I've seen, you know,
<v Speaker 3>some of those images of like Chambers working on suits
<v Speaker 3>out of his garage and stuff, which were amazing for
<v Speaker 3>the time, but still, like you're saying, the materials and
<v Speaker 3>design capabilities just weren't there at the time, it doesn't seem.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and then who is the other costume designer.
<v Speaker 3>That Philip Morris?
<v Speaker 1>Philip Morris, Yeah, yeah, so he doesn't come into our
<v Speaker 1>story because we've seen we've seen that costume and it's
<v Speaker 1>not that great.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, maybe that would make a good sequel to.
<v Speaker 2>This, Yeah, who knows. Who knows?
<v Speaker 3>So how are you approaching this film to make it
<v Speaker 3>stand out and be different than your typical Bigfoot movie?
<v Speaker 2>I feel like, you know, the typical Bigfoot film.
<v Speaker 1>You know, there's a whole genre onto the topic, but
<v Speaker 1>you know, most of them are creature films, and this
<v Speaker 1>is not. This is the This is one hundred and
<v Speaker 1>eighty degrees from the creature film. This is the human film.
<v Speaker 1>And it's a character driven drama. It's it's all about that,
<v Speaker 1>it's about real people, it's about relationships, it's about partnerships,
<v Speaker 1>and it's about you know, what what fame can do
<v Speaker 1>to people and Uh. Yeah, So it's you know, it's
<v Speaker 1>surprisingly I don't and I don't know why this is,
<v Speaker 1>but this angle, it just hasn't been done, you know.
<v Speaker 1>So I feel like this does original and unique take
<v Speaker 1>on the material.
<v Speaker 3>Do you have a favorite big Foot movie?
<v Speaker 2>Legend of Boggy Creek? Pretty good? Yeah, I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>Let me let me let me come back to you
<v Speaker 2>on that one.
<v Speaker 1>What was the one that the first one that actually
<v Speaker 1>incorporated the Patterson Gimlin film. It was actually Netflix actually
<v Speaker 1>had it before before Net, like when Netflix was still
<v Speaker 1>sending DVDs to your house. Yeah, they had it and
<v Speaker 1>and I got copy of it.
<v Speaker 2>I may or may not have.
<v Speaker 3>Return it.
<v Speaker 2>It's pretty rare.
<v Speaker 1>But I mean there's so many, and there's so many
<v Speaker 1>that you know, through the decades, there's.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, that's one of those questions where it's like, okay,
<v Speaker 3>well which category you know, Yeah, it's hard to answer
<v Speaker 3>just specifically one, whenever you got so many different directions
<v Speaker 3>that they go with it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, do you have any of that stand out?
<v Speaker 3>You know, I'm a Legend of Boggy Creek guy myself,
<v Speaker 3>just because you know, it's it's just got that thing
<v Speaker 3>that I like that that old school vintage bill about it. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>documentary on the border of non documentary. Yeah, probably more
<v Speaker 3>on the non documentary side. But it's weird to me,
<v Speaker 3>and we're so obsessed with Bigfoot. I mean, it's kind
<v Speaker 3>of crazy to think, if you know, Bigfoot is this
<v Speaker 3>creature in folklore. It's a global thing, but you know,
<v Speaker 3>America probably has it cornered for the most part, but
<v Speaker 3>it's everywhere. It's all over the place. It's in movies,
<v Speaker 3>it's in cartoons, it's in TV shows, it's you know,
<v Speaker 3>like you said, you can by key chains of its stickers.
<v Speaker 3>Everything you don't see that with like the Lockness Monster
<v Speaker 3>or Chewpacabra or anything else that would fall into the
<v Speaker 3>same category as Bigfoot. So what do you think it
<v Speaker 3>is about Bigfoot that makes us so obsessed with it
<v Speaker 3>like this?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's interesting the last part of that statement that
<v Speaker 1>you know you mentioned about Chupacabra or or the Lockness Monster.
<v Speaker 1>You know, I think I don't know it has I
<v Speaker 1>think there's this idea that we have this sense of wonder,
<v Speaker 1>you know that in the sense of exploration that's kind
<v Speaker 1>of been lost a little bit in today's society with
<v Speaker 1>our you know, our phones and our Internet, and our
<v Speaker 1>ability to know anything immediately at any given time, and
<v Speaker 1>anything that we don't know, we can just immediately look
<v Speaker 1>it up. If you think about what it took, even
<v Speaker 1>you know, back in the sixties to go explore some
<v Speaker 1>of this stuff, there's a ton of human efforts involved
<v Speaker 1>in that, you know, weeks. And I just feel like,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, this idea to believe in something, to
<v Speaker 1>have faith in something, you know, we all have that
<v Speaker 1>in common. And I think the idea of Bigfoot is
<v Speaker 1>kind of an extension extension of that, And as you know,
<v Speaker 1>compared to other things that might fall more into the
<v Speaker 1>paranormal realms, you know, there's that that glimmer of chance
<v Speaker 1>or hope that Bigfoot is this, depending on how you
<v Speaker 1>see it, this flesh and blood kind of thing, you know.
<v Speaker 1>And I don't know, I just think there's there's always
<v Speaker 1>curiosity about that, you know, things that have not been
<v Speaker 1>discovered in our in our world.
<v Speaker 3>The idea that something like this is out there, living
<v Speaker 3>and breathing, it's almost like a little glimmer of hope
<v Speaker 3>that this isn't just all there is to it.
<v Speaker 1>That's what I think. That's that's kind of how I
<v Speaker 1>see it. Yeah, yeah, you know, I always think about
<v Speaker 1>like the day if the day comes where it's you know,
<v Speaker 1>it's it's it's found with with improven, with scientific merit
<v Speaker 1>behind it.
<v Speaker 2>You know, it's going to be like.
<v Speaker 1>All right, well I'm not one hundred shocked and that's amazing,
<v Speaker 1>you know. So it's it's the hope that you know,
<v Speaker 1>maybe we'll come to that someday.
<v Speaker 3>I'm kind of concerned that if that happens, then it's
<v Speaker 3>just going to be like everything else, the mysticism is
<v Speaker 3>gone and we just move on and you know like,
<v Speaker 3>oh yeah that was out there, Okay.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it changes everything and then we need our next
<v Speaker 1>you know, Patterson, Gimblin film, whatever that may be.
<v Speaker 3>Have you had any personal experiences with the paranormal or anything.
<v Speaker 2>You know?
<v Speaker 1>I I have not that I really stand out that
<v Speaker 1>I can that I can claim.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>I mean I've had brushes with animals and things like
<v Speaker 1>that that certainly made the hair on my my neck
<v Speaker 1>stand up, but nothing that.
<v Speaker 2>That I felt like I couldn't explain, you know. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>And I you know, I'm a I'm a mountain biker,
<v Speaker 2>I'm a hiker.
<v Speaker 1>I get into some pretty remote areas, even from from
<v Speaker 1>where I live up in the San Gabriel Mountains. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I haven't, I haven't. My eyes are open to it,
<v Speaker 1>but I just I haven't come across it yet.
<v Speaker 3>That's totally off subject. All the all the UFO stuff
<v Speaker 3>in the news. Did you ever think we had live
<v Speaker 3>in a day where they're just openly talking about this
<v Speaker 3>sort of thing?
<v Speaker 2>No? No, not really.
<v Speaker 1>That's a that's a whole other, you know, topic that
<v Speaker 1>gets into technology and is it our technology that's kind
<v Speaker 1>of underground? Is a technology from another place that's coming
<v Speaker 1>back to us? You know, who knows what it is?
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, it seems like something is going on.
<v Speaker 3>I just know that there's been you know, of course
<v Speaker 3>people in the bigfoot world who now that the government
<v Speaker 3>and the press and everybody's talking about UFOs and looking
<v Speaker 3>into it officially or whatever, who not, who have you?
<v Speaker 3>But you know, of course people want that to happen
<v Speaker 3>for Bigfoot. Do you think that's a possibility whenever it
<v Speaker 3>comes to something like Bigfoot? I just think that the
<v Speaker 3>UFO thing is more easily consumable for the public than
<v Speaker 3>something like Bigfoot. But what are your thoughts on that.
<v Speaker 1>Well, some of the the cases of experiencers talking about,
<v Speaker 1>you know, they've had an encounter.
<v Speaker 2>And then there are.
<v Speaker 1>You know, these these kind of nondescript either bike park
<v Speaker 1>officials or government officials or people like that that sort
<v Speaker 1>of come into their story. It seems like that type
<v Speaker 1>of thing is sort of bordering on what you're what
<v Speaker 1>you're talking about. Yeah, I'm you are a person that
<v Speaker 1>has had direct experiences though, is that right? Yeah?
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I've experienced some things that I don't really have
<v Speaker 3>an explanation for. Yeah, scientifically, you.
<v Speaker 1>Know, specifically in the in the realm of bigfoot or.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I saw something back in two thousand and two.
<v Speaker 3>I was actually actively looking. It was. I was fairly
<v Speaker 3>new to the bigfoot world and found a group of
<v Speaker 3>people near me that went out looking for this thing
<v Speaker 3>and areas that had reported sightings or whatever. And I mean,
<v Speaker 3>long story short, I saw something through a night vision
<v Speaker 3>scope that it was a face looking back at me
<v Speaker 3>from the brush, basically inside the tree line. And I
<v Speaker 3>mean it I don't know what it was. It matched
<v Speaker 3>the description people give of a bigfoot, but I you know,
<v Speaker 3>I was in Oklahoma, so it kind of kind of weird.
<v Speaker 3>Didn't exactly look like the artistic renderings, so I don't know.
<v Speaker 3>It definitely wasn't a person in a mask or anything
<v Speaker 3>like that. There's no chance of that. Where I was
<v Speaker 3>at the time and the situation and everything. That was
<v Speaker 3>one of the things that you know, I tried to
<v Speaker 3>work out in my mind for months following. Yeah, here
<v Speaker 3>I am over twenty years later doing a podcast about it,
<v Speaker 3>so apparently it stuck.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it sounds like it made a mark for sure.
<v Speaker 3>For sure.
<v Speaker 2>And it wasn't like a heat signature it.
<v Speaker 3>Was no, it was Yeah, it was an actual night
<v Speaker 3>vision scope. It was actually the night vision scope. I
<v Speaker 3>think it was a Gen three, which at the time this,
<v Speaker 3>you know, they were very expensive and still not that
<v Speaker 3>easily found. But a buddy of mine had one that
<v Speaker 3>was actually a rifle scope and we were just using it.
<v Speaker 3>It wasn't on a rifle or anything like that. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>and it was about you know, it's really hard to
<v Speaker 3>say exactly. I usually go with around thirty yards away,
<v Speaker 3>and it was, like I said, just inside the tree line.
<v Speaker 3>Somebody else had actually seen it first and had called
<v Speaker 3>me over to verify what they were seeing, but I
<v Speaker 3>don't think that they got the look at it that
<v Speaker 3>I got at the time. They just see the eyes
<v Speaker 3>reflecting back and asked me to verify that there is
<v Speaker 3>like bard facing eyes glowing in the night vision. And yeah,
<v Speaker 3>definitely impactful, Definitely go through a roller coaster of emotions
<v Speaker 3>and thoughts afterwards trying to explain it away. I was
<v Speaker 3>extremely familiar. I grew up spending a lot of time
<v Speaker 3>in the outdoors and hunting and fishing and everything. And yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I still don't have an explanation for it.
<v Speaker 2>Well, good luck processing that.
<v Speaker 3>It sounds like, yeah, which is kind of you know
<v Speaker 3>what I do. I talk to people about their experiences
<v Speaker 3>and help them try to process it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I can't tell you.
<v Speaker 1>I've had a lot of experiences with bears, and because
<v Speaker 1>of where I live here in Sierra Madre, they you know,
<v Speaker 1>they come down from the mountains. We're on the edge
<v Speaker 1>of this pretty vast wilderness area, so we see them
<v Speaker 1>on the trail, we see them, they come into our
<v Speaker 1>yards and you'll come up, you'll come upon them unexpectedly,
<v Speaker 1>and the rush that you get from that, I'm sure
<v Speaker 1>it is multiplied by x amount, you know, talking about
<v Speaker 1>the thing that you witnessed.
<v Speaker 2>So it's I could imagine that that would be quite
<v Speaker 2>a quite a shock.
<v Speaker 3>I think I might be more scared to encounter a
<v Speaker 3>bear personally. I mean, you don't hear like a lot
<v Speaker 3>of stories about, you know, people being attacked by a bigfoot. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>and not that like a lot of bear attacks happened,
<v Speaker 3>but sometimes they do, you know, in the right situations.
<v Speaker 3>And I've read a lot of books on this subject
<v Speaker 3>and read some horrific tells about people being attacked by bears. Fortunately,
<v Speaker 3>I've never ran into a bear in the wild. We
<v Speaker 3>don't have a lot of them here, and the ones
<v Speaker 3>that we do have are fairly small and timid black
<v Speaker 3>bears you know that stay out of your way. But yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I've talked to a few people that have had some
<v Speaker 3>pretty intense run ins with bears and mountain lions and stuff.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah right, yeah, we get those too.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's just the idea of being in the presence
<v Speaker 1>of not necessarily a predator, but something that's bigger than
<v Speaker 1>you that yeah, you know, if they wanted to, they
<v Speaker 1>could do some damage.
<v Speaker 3>So film wise, what are some of the influences behind
<v Speaker 3>your film?
<v Speaker 1>Well to period piece, So it's late sixties, early seventies.
<v Speaker 1>So I looked to a hand full of films, so
<v Speaker 1>recent films like Tarantinos Once upon a Time in Hollywood,
<v Speaker 1>you know, that happens along those that same timeframe. Butch
<v Speaker 1>and Sundance, you know, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
<v Speaker 1>in terms of a film about a partnership two guys.
<v Speaker 2>And then there's.
<v Speaker 1>Another one called American Hustle, which is David o'russell film,
<v Speaker 1>that is it's a bit of a con you know,
<v Speaker 1>it's a kind of a heist film, not a heist
<v Speaker 1>but more of a more of a con and it's
<v Speaker 1>a period piece as well, So kind of a mashup
<v Speaker 1>of those films are are where some of the inspiration lies.
<v Speaker 2>Outside of that, you know.
<v Speaker 1>The last film that I did, the Platinum Luke, was
<v Speaker 1>a period film that was nineteen seventy three.
<v Speaker 3>And.
<v Speaker 2>There's a lot of.
<v Speaker 1>You know, approaches to production. I would say that have
<v Speaker 1>changed since some of the films that I just mentioned
<v Speaker 1>in terms of how we want to approach production for
<v Speaker 1>this film, you know, using things like virtual stages. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know if you're familiar with the Mandalorian series and
<v Speaker 1>how that was created.
<v Speaker 3>I am very cool, very cool technology.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>So so working along those lines, you know, building nineteen
<v Speaker 1>sixty eight, sixty nine, you know, Los Angeles or shots
<v Speaker 1>in Hollywood on a stage like that allows us to
<v Speaker 1>kind of open up the world a little bit more.
<v Speaker 2>Same thing. You know, the guys they go to.
<v Speaker 1>Manhattan, go to New York City each and so recreating
<v Speaker 1>some of those skylines you know from that period would
<v Speaker 1>also happen on a volume stage or a virtual stage.
<v Speaker 1>And yeah, so I think, you know, I'm a My
<v Speaker 1>nine to five job is visual effects cool and outside
<v Speaker 1>of that, you know what I truly want to do
<v Speaker 1>from nine to five? Are you making films like this?
<v Speaker 1>But the good news is there's a skill set there
<v Speaker 1>that has evolved over the decades that will be employed
<v Speaker 1>in the making of this film.
<v Speaker 3>I mean it certainly lends and storytelling and being able
<v Speaker 3>to tell the story that you want to without the
<v Speaker 3>restrictions of physical locations and set designs and things like.
<v Speaker 1>That, exactly exactly, So I think the team that we
<v Speaker 1>have will be able to put together.
<v Speaker 2>A film that is you know, not hung up you know, uh.
<v Speaker 1>Individual effects department and is able to produce something that
<v Speaker 1>will look you know, far beyond its its modest budget.
<v Speaker 3>I was going to say, you know, you you mentioned
<v Speaker 3>the Mandalorian and obviously you don't have you know, the
<v Speaker 3>Disney Empire behind you, right, What goes into producing something
<v Speaker 3>like this as an independent?
<v Speaker 2>A lot of favors? Yeah, credit cards? Yeah? Yeah, hope
<v Speaker 2>we not too many.
<v Speaker 1>But really, I mean, this is a film that I
<v Speaker 1>feel like is being created for a pretty specific audience,
<v Speaker 1>and that audience is you know, the Bigfoot community and
<v Speaker 1>people that know the story maybe haven't thought about, you know,
<v Speaker 1>oh yeah, where did this come from?
<v Speaker 2>Or what is the backstory or what happened after the event?
<v Speaker 1>You know, those are I think those are the people
<v Speaker 1>that I'm making the film for. Hopefully they will be
<v Speaker 1>willing to get behind it a little bit, show some interest.
<v Speaker 1>We're going to be doing a crowdfunding campaign and so
<v Speaker 1>you know, I wanted to invite anybody that is interested
<v Speaker 1>to take a look at our website if I can
<v Speaker 1>mention it.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, of course I was going to ask you about that.
<v Speaker 3>When does the crowdfunding kick off?
<v Speaker 1>Early December? But if you go to Bigfoot enterprisesmovie dot com,
<v Speaker 1>that's where the updates will be and that's where the
<v Speaker 1>link to the actual campaign will be so that's it'll
<v Speaker 1>be the best place to check it out.
<v Speaker 3>And I will have a link to that in the
<v Speaker 3>description of this very episode for people to check out.
<v Speaker 3>What are some of the rewards that you have in
<v Speaker 3>mind for crowdfunding backers.
<v Speaker 1>We've got a range of things we have, you know,
<v Speaker 1>anything from like digital tickets to once the film is complete,
<v Speaker 1>along with you know, some digital rewards that you know
<v Speaker 1>people might enjoy reposting and sharing with their communities. But
<v Speaker 1>there are t shirts, posters, I've got replica casts from
<v Speaker 1>the Bluff Creek site that I will be doing hand
<v Speaker 1>painted pass on that is in the motif of the
<v Speaker 1>the American flag, and we have there's a couple of artists.
<v Speaker 1>One is up in the Olympic Peninsula, Jan Small. She
<v Speaker 1>does these amazing uh there there landscapes, but within the
<v Speaker 1>landscape there will be.
<v Speaker 2>A sasquatch somewhere. They're really fun.
<v Speaker 1>So we're trying to set up a deal with her
<v Speaker 1>so that we can release prints of some of those
<v Speaker 1>paintings as rewards. There's another local artist here that we're
<v Speaker 1>going to be working with to do the same thing.
<v Speaker 2>So those are some of the kind.
<v Speaker 1>Of the physical and digital gifts or rewards, and then
<v Speaker 1>there's also the ability to, if you wanted to get
<v Speaker 1>involved in a more meaningful way, perhaps become a co
<v Speaker 1>producer on the film, or be in the special thanks
<v Speaker 1>and the credits, things like that, and beyond the crowdfund,
<v Speaker 1>you know, we're certainly also looking for people that are
<v Speaker 1>interested in being an equity partner on something like this,
<v Speaker 1>and you know, so I'm happy to talk more about
<v Speaker 1>that if anybody is interested.
<v Speaker 3>And how does someone reach you? If they are interested in.
<v Speaker 2>That same way, they can.
<v Speaker 1>They can either reach out through Bigfoot enterprisesmovie dot com,
<v Speaker 1>or they can reach out to me directly, Eric at
<v Speaker 1>ballast dot tv.
<v Speaker 3>Eric, I thank you for joining me and talking a
<v Speaker 3>little bit about Bigfoot Enterprises, the Truish Adventures of Paris
<v Speaker 3>and Gimlay. I'm personally looking forward to it. This is
<v Speaker 3>like right up my alley. I watched the I guess
<v Speaker 3>you call it a pittriol that you sent me, and
<v Speaker 3>I thought that was very cool. I assume that the
<v Speaker 3>film will be in a very similar style to that. Yes, yes, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>looking forward to it.
<v Speaker 2>Man, great, well, yeah.
<v Speaker 1>It's been great talking with you, Matt and I appreciate
<v Speaker 1>your interest and fascinating to hear about your own encounter.
<v Speaker 1>It's pretty pretty wild, so thanks for sharing that with
<v Speaker 1>me for sure, appreciate the time and yeah, inviting the
<v Speaker 1>community to take a look, and we'd love to have
<v Speaker 1>some support.
<v Speaker 3>If you've had an encounter with Bigfoot or something you
<v Speaker 3>can't explain and you'd like to share your story on
<v Speaker 3>the podcast, email me at Bigfoot Crossroads at gmail dot com.
<v Speaker 3>Check out the website Bigfoot Crossroads dot com. You can
<v Speaker 3>find links to social media, past episodes, merchandise, everything you
<v Speaker 3>need all in one place. And until next time, remember
<v Speaker 3>there's something in the woods.