Ep:163 Town That Cried Bigfoot

<v Speaker 1>I grew up in the seventies, you know, I grew
<v Speaker 1>up with Bigfoot being on TV in search of let's
<v Speaker 1>learning anymore than the six ninion dollars man. That's one
<v Speaker 1>of the things I wanted people to take away from
<v Speaker 1>this movie is, Yes, critical thinking only benefits the Bigfoot community.
<v Speaker 1>It doesn't harm it in any way. It keeps it
<v Speaker 1>respected and authentic. I release a trailer that opens with
<v Speaker 1>Orson Wells and he's standing there in a black hat
<v Speaker 1>and he says, ladies and gentlemen by way of introduction,
<v Speaker 1>this is a film about trickery and fraud and lies.
<v Speaker 1>And then it cuts to the trailer. There's an easter
<v Speaker 1>egg right there that tells you everything. Use of critical
<v Speaker 1>thinking will keep the Bigfoot research in the community authentic
<v Speaker 1>and credible.
<v Speaker 2>This is Bigfoot Crossroads. My name is Matt and I'd
<v Speaker 2>like to welcome Mark Dawsett, director of one of my
<v Speaker 2>new favorite documentaries. I would say a Bigfoot documentary, but
<v Speaker 2>it's so much more than that. The town that cried
<v Speaker 2>Bigfoot Man. So I've been in the Bigfoot world since
<v Speaker 2>literally just right before the year two thousand. I was
<v Speaker 2>interested in the subject of my entire life but the
<v Speaker 2>internet side of things happened right around nineteen ninety nine
<v Speaker 2>for me, and I have been an active bigfooter since then.
<v Speaker 2>I've been doing this podcast forever now, and this is
<v Speaker 2>a Bigfoot story that I had never even heard about.
<v Speaker 2>How did you find out about this?
<v Speaker 1>Man?
<v Speaker 2>I guess it was pretty famous whenever it happened, but
<v Speaker 2>like it flew under my radar. So how did it
<v Speaker 2>come to your attention?
<v Speaker 1>Well, as we talked about a few minutes ago, I
<v Speaker 1>grew up in the seventies, and like many many of
<v Speaker 1>your listeners in that era, you know, I grew up
<v Speaker 1>with Bigfoot being on TV in search of what's learning?
<v Speaker 1>Anymoy team out in seventy seven, the six Million Dollars man,
<v Speaker 1>and I grew up in Virginia. It's it's more about
<v Speaker 1>the small town corruption that took place centered around Bigfoot.
<v Speaker 1>I heard a lot of stories about that, and those
<v Speaker 1>stories are still prevalent to this day. You know, they're
<v Speaker 1>still going on to this day.
<v Speaker 2>So this particular story happened in Wayburn, which is kind
<v Speaker 2>of in that same general area from what I get so,
<v Speaker 2>you heard about this event growing.
<v Speaker 1>Up, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that and many others
<v Speaker 1>for sure. Yeah, different types.
<v Speaker 2>Yet, were you into Bigfoot as a kid. Was this
<v Speaker 2>something that like has always interested you?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? Six million dollar Man lunchbox. You know. I used
<v Speaker 1>to watch six million dollars Man show and that was
<v Speaker 1>the biggest episode where he fought big Foot. I remember
<v Speaker 1>people one of my friends dressed up was big Foot
<v Speaker 1>for Halloween in the movie. That's when I talk about
<v Speaker 1>when you know, I said, you know, you got to
<v Speaker 1>remember this. Nineteen seventy eight, big Foot was everywhere from movies, books,
<v Speaker 1>Halloween costumes, TV shows, lunchboxes. Yeah, it was. Big Foot
<v Speaker 1>was more popular magazine than he is today. I mean
<v Speaker 1>there was just it was just all around. But he's
<v Speaker 1>it's grown in popularity now more so than I ever thought.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, you can't. I'm in Texas, and I mean
<v Speaker 1>you're at a stoplight. There's a big Foot sticker on
<v Speaker 1>the back of f one fifty right in front of you, right, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I mean it's it's it's everywhere now, So it's, uh yeah,
<v Speaker 1>there's and I've heard different stories from all kinds of
<v Speaker 1>people from Florida to Virginia to Texas to Utah all over.
<v Speaker 1>I mean it's it's uh it's a big synonymou.
<v Speaker 2>So what was it about this particular story? Was it
<v Speaker 2>just because it happened to be from your area growing
<v Speaker 2>up and everything? What made you decide that you needed
<v Speaker 2>to turn this into a documentary?
<v Speaker 1>The story because it just it speaks to even though
<v Speaker 1>it happened in nineteen seventy eight, it speaks to today
<v Speaker 1>as far as small town corruption. You know, I was
<v Speaker 1>just out of dinner last night with one of my
<v Speaker 1>friends and we're talking about basically and money and power
<v Speaker 1>will make anyone throw their moral compass out the window,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I mean it'll it'll, yeah. And you're seeing
<v Speaker 1>that everywhere. I mean from from banks to governments to
<v Speaker 1>you know, to small businesses to local town people. What's
<v Speaker 1>taking place here should resonate now more than ever as well,
<v Speaker 1>because it's it's been going on forever, you know, corruption
<v Speaker 1>and greed and power, and that's basically what that movie
<v Speaker 1>was centered around.
<v Speaker 2>You took kind of a what I thought was a
<v Speaker 2>unique approach to it. Was there really just that much
<v Speaker 2>stock footage from this event for you to use or
<v Speaker 2>did you make that on your own?
<v Speaker 1>There's a compilation of footage kind of like you remember
<v Speaker 1>Leonard Nimoy in search of You remember that, Okay, if
<v Speaker 1>you watch the first three minutes of that when when
<v Speaker 1>they're talking, uh, they're using it. It's like a docudrama.
<v Speaker 1>They're using re re re reenactment to show because obviously
<v Speaker 1>people in the woods didn't have a camera at the time,
<v Speaker 1>you know, or you know somebody's they're trying to showcase
<v Speaker 1>somebody running from a big foot or hearing a big
<v Speaker 1>foot and running, Well, they had to go out and
<v Speaker 1>recreate that. So, yeah, I had to work with with
<v Speaker 1>what I what I could what I could work with,
<v Speaker 1>and uh, the biggest thing was the legal backing I
<v Speaker 1>got from the Supreme Court ruling with a Fair Use Act,
<v Speaker 1>because this is a completely transformative piece of work, is
<v Speaker 1>what you're seeing where you can actually as long as
<v Speaker 1>you you could take a dishwashing detergent commercial or whatever,
<v Speaker 1>and if you took that commercial and flip that footage
<v Speaker 1>around inside out and you made it look like it
<v Speaker 1>was about some toxic stuff somebody was porn on their dishes,
<v Speaker 1>you know, that's that's a completely different piece of work,
<v Speaker 1>you know than the Dawn original commercial. Yeah, so the
<v Speaker 1>Fair Use Act helped me utilize a lot of that footage.
<v Speaker 2>And I assume being a professional video editor can in
<v Speaker 2>handy as well.
<v Speaker 1>Oh sure, absolutely. I mean, at the end of the day,
<v Speaker 1>a video editor, you're only as good as a video
<v Speaker 1>editor as you are a storyteller, because that's what you're doing.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, you know, you can you write three movies.
<v Speaker 1>You write one on paper, then you shoot one out
<v Speaker 1>in the field with a crew of you know, whether
<v Speaker 1>it's five people or five hundred. But at the end
<v Speaker 1>of the day, like for Clinton Tarantino, his longtime editor
<v Speaker 1>Sally Minky, that's where the real movie was made in
<v Speaker 1>that room, in a dark room, which is two of
<v Speaker 1>them cutting and chopping and arguing over what needs to
<v Speaker 1>go where. That's where the real movie's made is in
<v Speaker 1>the editing. So that's where the real story comes out,
<v Speaker 1>is in the the edit.
<v Speaker 2>The entire documentary is done in a way where it
<v Speaker 2>just all seems to be footage from the nineteen seventies, basically.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah. Ever, from opening train to the end credits.
<v Speaker 2>One of the questions that's been eating away at me
<v Speaker 2>since I finished watching it, is all of this information
<v Speaker 2>in this documentary true, did you take any fictional liberties
<v Speaker 2>in it?
<v Speaker 1>Everything that you see. I'll say this, every word you've
<v Speaker 1>seen here and there happened is true. The reactions you
<v Speaker 1>see from the people, what they're you know, the guy
<v Speaker 1>in the truck talking about, Hey, you know, when we
<v Speaker 1>see it coming down the mountain, that's when we'll believe.
<v Speaker 1>But right now, you know, I don't know what to think. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that's that's a real reactions, that's real footage. That is
<v Speaker 1>exactly what you're seeing. But yeah, as a storyteller, you
<v Speaker 1>got to take certain liberties to make a story flow,
<v Speaker 1>for sure.
<v Speaker 2>So let's just you know, kind of break this down
<v Speaker 2>as much as we can. So we've got this small
<v Speaker 2>town Weyburn, Virginia. It's nineteen seventy eight. There's basically a
<v Speaker 2>sawmill industry there that's kind of the anchor of the town.
<v Speaker 2>And these family members, the sheriff, and this other guy,
<v Speaker 2>this local politician guy, they kind of come up with
<v Speaker 2>a scheme to try and like help each other out
<v Speaker 2>in this small town. They bring the politician to the
<v Speaker 2>town and they start putting pressure on this sawmill to
<v Speaker 2>try to relieve some tax pressures on the community and
<v Speaker 2>everything and get this politician popular to boost his career basically,
<v Speaker 2>and things kind of go south and the sawmill leaves town.
<v Speaker 1>We'll just say that much, right.
<v Speaker 2>So then these four guys kind of come together and
<v Speaker 2>cook up this scheme to drive tourism off of the
<v Speaker 2>Bigfoot topic, because, as you were saying, at that point
<v Speaker 2>in time in the United States, it was extremely popular,
<v Speaker 2>and so they kind of cook up this Bigfoot scheme
<v Speaker 2>and this plays out to be one of the absolute
<v Speaker 2>craziest stories I've ever heard. It's got so many different
<v Speaker 2>elements to it. Like you were saying, it's so much
<v Speaker 2>more than just, you know, the topic of Bigfoot, which
<v Speaker 2>is kind of the focal point, but like all this
<v Speaker 2>stuff going on around it is crazy. Which character did
<v Speaker 2>you find most interesting in this story?
<v Speaker 1>Probably the sheriff. Sheriff threw it because of the way,
<v Speaker 1>as it's said in the documentary say, he brings in
<v Speaker 1>uh Danny Shifflett, the mayor from Richmond, who was trying
<v Speaker 1>to climb up the political out of there, and it
<v Speaker 1>just wasn't working too much competition, like you know on
<v Speaker 1>the tape recordings that that were made. And then you
<v Speaker 1>find out that he's not just a local sheriff from
<v Speaker 1>a small town. He happens to be Danny Shifflett's older cousin. Uh,
<v Speaker 1>and he's, like it says in the movie, you know,
<v Speaker 1>he knew not only having the mayor on your side
<v Speaker 1>would make his job a lot easier, but he was
<v Speaker 1>also a family member and he was older, so he
<v Speaker 1>knew he could kind of manipulate him, you know. I
<v Speaker 1>mean he still had that that uh, that older brother figure.
<v Speaker 1>I guess, you know, from growing up from kids. He
<v Speaker 1>knew he could he could kind of bend Danny's way
<v Speaker 1>to what he needed done, and he totally utilized that
<v Speaker 1>has been so Yeah, sheriffrewit was. It's not only the
<v Speaker 1>bad guys that are interesting. I mean, look at New
<v Speaker 1>Country for old men. Cigar. I mean he was to me,
<v Speaker 1>he was one of the more interesting characters in the
<v Speaker 1>movie because he was so mysterious and he was you know,
<v Speaker 1>he was he was uh, he was pretty evil dude.
<v Speaker 1>So for me, yeah, Sheriff, Sheriff prewit was the most interesting.
<v Speaker 2>You could especially here in like the recording conversations that
<v Speaker 2>they had between one another on that initial phone call.
<v Speaker 2>How it's kind of like, uh, Chaefflet had already kind
<v Speaker 2>of taken that position as like the younger family member
<v Speaker 2>and kind of just like initially got talked into doing it.
<v Speaker 2>He didn't really want to do it, you know, he
<v Speaker 2>was kind of questioning it. And then the sheriffs is
<v Speaker 2>just like, yeah, I'm gonna lay it all out for
<v Speaker 2>you that you know you're you're sucking where you're at.
<v Speaker 2>You know you're not going to go anyway. Yeah, and
<v Speaker 2>then it starts kind of bullying him into doing it
<v Speaker 2>to begin with.
<v Speaker 1>Well, he once again he used a manipulation tactic because
<v Speaker 1>he he framed it as, hey, look, you're a small
<v Speaker 1>fish in a big pond. You come to Wayburn, you're
<v Speaker 1>going to be a big fish in a small pond.
<v Speaker 1>And you know you're you're gonna people. I mean, that's
<v Speaker 1>what drove the lumber mill out of town, was a
<v Speaker 1>quick tactic to try to get the lumbermill to take
<v Speaker 1>up the taxes for the people. And everybody likes that,
<v Speaker 1>so you know, right away he's going to look like
<v Speaker 1>a hero. And it kind of backfired on them, and
<v Speaker 1>that's when they found themselves like, holy crap, now what
<v Speaker 1>do we do? You know, the new guy just drove
<v Speaker 1>the number one industry that everybody's I think it was
<v Speaker 1>like sixty percent of the town was employed at now
<v Speaker 1>they're out of a job because the lumber mill up
<v Speaker 1>and moved, you know, so now it's like, holy cow,
<v Speaker 1>this is way worse than he ever thought it could happen.
<v Speaker 1>And then that's where, you know, the bigfoot idea came
<v Speaker 1>in and for a short time there saved the day.
<v Speaker 2>Which was interesting because we're talking about a ton of
<v Speaker 2>what I think you said, fourteen hundred, yeah, fourteen hundred, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>not a real big town, but not a small town,
<v Speaker 2>you know, kind of a bigger small town, I guess
<v Speaker 2>is the correct way to kind of frame it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, but you've.
<v Speaker 2>Got the mayor, the sheriff, and then they incorporate the
<v Speaker 2>town attorney, Lester Clemens, and then this local mechanic kind
<v Speaker 2>of makes up the what were they called the fraudulent four.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, when when everything started to come into light, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>the newspaper, I mean they always kind of name, you know,
<v Speaker 1>the Memphis six or whatever they are fraudulent for Moniker
<v Speaker 1>on them.
<v Speaker 2>So that was kind of one of the interesting things
<v Speaker 2>about it. And like I'm you know this it's so
<v Speaker 2>difficult because I want to talk candidly, but I also
<v Speaker 2>want people to watch the documentary and I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I don't want to tell the whole story, but damn it,
<v Speaker 2>it's such a good story.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you.
<v Speaker 2>So, like, I am going to skip a little bit
<v Speaker 2>ahead because like, this was one of the things that
<v Speaker 2>was like, Okay, well, are these just all just good
<v Speaker 2>old boys that grew up together, Like why would they
<v Speaker 2>kind of you know, this is like a major deal
<v Speaker 2>to bring somebody in on. I mean, you're talking about
<v Speaker 2>defrauding the entire town that you live in.
<v Speaker 1>But once again, that's what makes for me, that's what
<v Speaker 1>makes sheriff prove it so interesting. He knew he could
<v Speaker 1>do that. It wasn't like he just, oh, let me
<v Speaker 1>go grab that random politician who's not doing it. He
<v Speaker 1>grabbed a family member. Yeah, you know, he's known his
<v Speaker 1>entire life, so he knew what he was doing, and
<v Speaker 1>he knew like, Okay, Danny's gonna you know, I got
<v Speaker 1>to I'm not under his thumb, He's under mine right.
<v Speaker 1>You know. That's why in the movie it says, you know,
<v Speaker 1>he knew having the mayor the new mayor is your cousin,
<v Speaker 1>would make any sheriff's job easier.
<v Speaker 2>And then you know, their initial plan, their initial scheme
<v Speaker 2>didn't have anything to do with Bigfoot. Bigfoot was just
<v Speaker 2>kind of like a random idea that came up in
<v Speaker 2>a conversation.
<v Speaker 1>And once again it goes back to six million dollar million.
<v Speaker 1>That was Lonnie when they're they're in the barn and
<v Speaker 1>his son, pretty much like me and my friends had,
<v Speaker 1>you know, the metal lunchboxes. His son had a six
<v Speaker 1>million dollar man lunchbox and on the side of it
<v Speaker 1>was Steve Austin, you know, fighting a resking rate to
<v Speaker 1>wrestle a Bigfoot and Bigfoot being all over TV with
<v Speaker 1>Leonard Nimoy In Search of and Books and movie posters
<v Speaker 1>and Halloween costumes. You know, it wasn't too hard to
<v Speaker 1>figure out, well, you know, people are really buying into
<v Speaker 1>this stuff or you know, or fascinated with it, and
<v Speaker 1>so yeah, I guess it wasn't too much of a
<v Speaker 1>stretch for Ronnie to throw that out. There was literally
<v Speaker 1>sitting on his work bench right in front of him.
<v Speaker 2>I guess it's because you know, I was born in
<v Speaker 2>the late seventies. I remember in the early eighties watching
<v Speaker 2>reruns of In Search Of and seeing some of those
<v Speaker 2>re enactments and stuff. That's kind of where Bigfoot came
<v Speaker 2>onto my radar me too, exactly exactly, But like, I
<v Speaker 2>don't think about it being such a huge deal in
<v Speaker 2>the seventies. Now, if you look at Bigfoot reports, you
<v Speaker 2>do see a spike of Bigfoot sightings in the late seventies.
<v Speaker 1>Willow Creek, I mean, as they mentioned in the movie, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>Willow Creek blew up big time.
<v Speaker 2>And I never even thought about that. I mean, I
<v Speaker 2>obviously anybody that looks into Bigfoot knows that, like Willow
<v Speaker 2>Creek is like the mecca of Sasquatch, you know, like
<v Speaker 2>that obviously, you know, different towns like this one said
<v Speaker 2>that they were, you know, the the eastern capital of Bigfoot.
<v Speaker 2>Willow Creek would definitely be like the capital of Bigfoot
<v Speaker 2>globally for sure, for sure. Yeah, but I never thought
<v Speaker 2>about what that actually meant for a small town. You know,
<v Speaker 2>the tourism and everything I know they have, you know
<v Speaker 2>still to this day, like parades and Bigfoot Days and
<v Speaker 2>stuff like that. Oklahoma has taken on a monic as well,
<v Speaker 2>and you know there's Bigfoot festivals here. But I never
<v Speaker 2>really think about the actual you know, impact that these
<v Speaker 2>things had on these small towns like that. But it
<v Speaker 2>was huge.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I mean, if you if you're listeners, you know,
<v Speaker 1>when you when you watch the movie, I mean, you
<v Speaker 1>can pause it google Wayburn, Virginia. There's even supposed I
<v Speaker 1>mean they don't have pictures of it, but supposedly, according
<v Speaker 1>to the website, Waylon Jennings on tour actually stopped there,
<v Speaker 1>stayed at the holiday inn. Wow, I guess he was,
<v Speaker 1>you know, so, yeah, it was It was a pretty
<v Speaker 1>big deal.
<v Speaker 2>So these guys, you know, they the general idea was,
<v Speaker 2>we're going to hook some Bigfoot stuff and we're going
<v Speaker 2>to turn this into a tourism spot kind of centered
<v Speaker 2>around Bigfoot. And it took them a while to get
<v Speaker 2>the ball rolling, but eventually they did. And it was
<v Speaker 2>crazy because we're talking about late seventies, early eighties at
<v Speaker 2>this point, and you know, there's that one clip of
<v Speaker 2>that old timer, you know, sitting in a cafe or whatever,
<v Speaker 2>just talking about tourism has hit our town, you know,
<v Speaker 2>and we're just gonna have to deal with it, and
<v Speaker 2>we're going to have to learn how to adjust it.
<v Speaker 2>And he's talking about a million people being there over
<v Speaker 2>a million people.
<v Speaker 1>A million and a half, yeah, in a.
<v Speaker 2>Town of fourteen hundred.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. I mean you know, well, here's
<v Speaker 1>what's interesting. They have big foot festivals like in West
<v Speaker 1>Virginia and Pennsylvania or whatever. And I sound one that
<v Speaker 1>had I think the town was so small it was
<v Speaker 1>under a thousand people and either it was last year
<v Speaker 1>the year before they had thirty thousand people. And I'm like,
<v Speaker 1>where do these they had to stay? Like, you know, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>way down the road? I mean, where were they sleeping?
<v Speaker 1>But that's what was interesting. If you says on the movie,
<v Speaker 1>it really boosted not only the local economy, but I
<v Speaker 1>mean even farmers were turning their back forties into makeshift campgrounds. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you know, so they were probably charging I mean I
<v Speaker 1>don't know what a campground coss back then, probably eight
<v Speaker 1>eight bucks, you know, a spot, and I mean they
<v Speaker 1>have they have acres and they probably you know, three
<v Speaker 1>hundred acres or whatever out there farmland and they're like, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>pitch your tin up, you're good to go, you know,
<v Speaker 1>and just made it made it a made it fun
<v Speaker 1>for everybody.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I mean I don't even know what the largest
<v Speaker 2>I couldn't tell you what the largest draw is for
<v Speaker 2>a Bigfoot festival or conference in the United States, But
<v Speaker 2>the one you just specifically mentioned, I mean, thirty thousand
<v Speaker 2>seems like a lot of people.
<v Speaker 1>To me.
<v Speaker 2>That's a huge turnout for an event. And we're talking,
<v Speaker 2>you know, nineteen eighty drawn a million and a half.
<v Speaker 2>Thirty thousand is nothing compared to that. Yeah, so everybody
<v Speaker 2>in the community was making a lot of money.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I mean, do you remember the one part with
<v Speaker 1>the guy with the canoe rental where he says, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>he goes because I don't even know how many people
<v Speaker 1>we have on a weekend, but I can how many
<v Speaker 1>people visit, But I can tell you we have I
<v Speaker 1>think it was twenty five hundred canoes going the water
<v Speaker 1>on a Saturday morning. Yeah. I wouldn't want to be
<v Speaker 1>on a river with twenty five I mean you're pretty
<v Speaker 1>much walking from boat to bar.
<v Speaker 2>You guys are just sitting in the water.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. And it makes LA Freeway traffic look nice, I guess. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Another thing that I found interesting, and again not trying
<v Speaker 2>to give too much away, was how they figured out
<v Speaker 2>that they kind of had to make it bigger. Each
<v Speaker 2>thing that they did, each step that they took they realized, well,
<v Speaker 2>we have to go bigger than the last time. And
<v Speaker 2>eventually it gets to like violence, you know, they get
<v Speaker 2>to violence with you know, the bigfoot hooks in and everything,
<v Speaker 2>and that was the catalyst that kind of tipped things
<v Speaker 2>over for them and finally made everything work out. And
<v Speaker 2>then they all start cashing in on it, interestingly, like
<v Speaker 2>I don't know if I would have chosen their particular
<v Speaker 2>avenues of side businesses or whatever. I know, the mayor's
<v Speaker 2>chili cookoffs to go over pretty well. Said it threw
<v Speaker 2>three thousand people for a chili cookoff. I've never seen
<v Speaker 2>that before in modern times.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, I mean, well you might. I mean you can't. Really,
<v Speaker 1>that's a different thing too modern times now. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>back then, people did do stuff. Those two week vacations
<v Speaker 1>you get at your job were a big deal. A
<v Speaker 1>lot of people now will take two weeks vacations and
<v Speaker 1>just not even leave home. Yeah, you know, And I
<v Speaker 1>don't blame them. They're just like, hey, I just want
<v Speaker 1>a piece and quiet like that is that's what I need,
<v Speaker 1>you know. But back then, people they were looking for
<v Speaker 1>anything to get away and think about it like that's
<v Speaker 1>a cheap vacation that especially if you have kids. It's
<v Speaker 1>the coolest thing in the world for kids.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah. And there was a lot of kids in
<v Speaker 2>that footage, like the tractor rides and the pony I
<v Speaker 2>mean that, like you said, they were cashing in any
<v Speaker 2>way they could. And yeah, it was drawing families. There
<v Speaker 2>was that one lady that said that they came all
<v Speaker 2>the way from Chicago.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and they even as I said,
<v Speaker 1>do you believe and she just looked right at the
<v Speaker 1>camera and said, yeah, yeah, I do.
<v Speaker 2>So. Part of this scheme that they put was a
<v Speaker 2>fifteen thousand dollars reward for you know, I guess the
<v Speaker 2>capture or bring in a body or whatever. And you know,
<v Speaker 2>very similarly to what happened down in foul Arkansas with
<v Speaker 2>you know, the legend of Boggie Creek and everything. You
<v Speaker 2>you did have teams of men showing up, you know,
<v Speaker 2>hunting this thing. Whether it was to cash in on
<v Speaker 2>the prize or make it safe to be outdoors again,
<v Speaker 2>who knows, but you actually have this in the document.
<v Speaker 2>It drew the attention of the Hell's Angels.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Once again, those guys were they were always looking
<v Speaker 1>for something. I mean they had their hand and everything.
<v Speaker 1>And you know, I'm not a Hell's Angel. I wasn't,
<v Speaker 1>but I'm just I'm.
<v Speaker 2>Speculating, not speaking on the behalf of the Hell's Angels.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not stupid, but uh yeah, I
<v Speaker 1>would imagine that they were like, hey, you know, we're
<v Speaker 1>probably maybe they were headed through that way anyway, and
<v Speaker 1>they're like, let's go stop in Wayburn, and you know
<v Speaker 1>what a great excuse to go out and shoot guns
<v Speaker 1>like you see in the footage, which I don't think
<v Speaker 1>Bigfoot had much to worry about. They couldn't even hit
<v Speaker 1>that beer can floating around in the ditch.
<v Speaker 2>Well, it's funny because, like, you know, all the local
<v Speaker 2>you know, backwards guys are out there with their rifles
<v Speaker 2>and shotguns. In the Hell's Angel show up and they're
<v Speaker 2>like shooting semi automatics and automatic.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, oh yeah, all the stuff you're not supposed to have. Probably. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Another thing that I thought was interesting was that the
<v Speaker 2>town even went as far as putting out a tourism
<v Speaker 2>commercial based on Bigfoot and broadcasting in the area.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that was pretty much based off of the Hell's
<v Speaker 1>Angels because they knew they got a lot of notoriety
<v Speaker 1>when they showed up, you know, because people are like
<v Speaker 1>they were leaving then they were like, this isn't good.
<v Speaker 1>You like, we want everybody to come, but like we
<v Speaker 1>don't want everybody. I mean they were fighting on the
<v Speaker 1>side of the road. They were just randomly shooting everywhere.
<v Speaker 1>So uh yeah, they had to they had to create
<v Speaker 1>a more family friendly, friendly image and fast, you know,
<v Speaker 1>to kind of curb because you know, they got a
<v Speaker 1>lot of new footage when the Hell's Angels showed up.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, because it it just went from everybody needs to
<v Speaker 2>hunt down and shoot this thing, you know, we're trying
<v Speaker 2>to kill it, to come see bigfoot come to waiver.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yeah, you sound like you did the voiceover that.
<v Speaker 1>It was great.
<v Speaker 2>Did you do the voiceover on that? Yes, that was me, no.
<v Speaker 1>Way, Yeah, and once again through AI AI helped a
<v Speaker 1>lot for sure. Yeah, it.
<v Speaker 2>Sound it a lot like Sam Elliott.
<v Speaker 1>No I.
<v Speaker 2>No, okay, Well I knew it wasn't Sam Elliott's voice. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>but there was a lot of characteristic It was very similar,
<v Speaker 2>like to a Sam Elliott type delivery, I guess is
<v Speaker 2>what I'm saying.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, oh yeah, for sure, for sure, And that was
<v Speaker 1>by design. I mean, once again, let's not forget I'm
<v Speaker 1>a storyteller. I'm a video editor, I'm a filmmaker. My
<v Speaker 1>first movie came out in twenty thirteen. I just got
<v Speaker 1>the rights back to It's called The Torment of Orient Culumn.
<v Speaker 1>It was the eighties horse style throwback movie. Now I'm
<v Speaker 1>gonna get that put back out there. But yeah, I'm
<v Speaker 1>a storyteller at art. So yeah, the narration is key
<v Speaker 1>to telling the cohesive story. If you don't have that,
<v Speaker 1>oh for sure. Yeah, it just looks like some random
<v Speaker 1>footage flap together because you really don't have context of
<v Speaker 1>what you're seeing and why.
<v Speaker 2>The footage at the end of the narrator was that
<v Speaker 2>you or was that some stock footage that you use
<v Speaker 2>with AI.
<v Speaker 1>Well, Matt, I'm going to play the devil's advocate here.
<v Speaker 1>What do you believe? Ooh, what do you honestly believe?
<v Speaker 1>I'll answer your question. I'm not dodging it. I hate
<v Speaker 1>when people do that. You know, I'd piss myself off
<v Speaker 1>if I didn't. But I'm just I'm redirecting. I just
<v Speaker 1>see what you say before I answered that. Okay, Well,
<v Speaker 1>give me your honest opinion. My honest opinion was it
<v Speaker 1>was stock footage, stock footage of the narrator, no.
<v Speaker 2>Of somebody I don't know who, in a studio, in
<v Speaker 2>a recording studio. And then AI was used on the mouth.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, AI was used on the mouth. And once again
<v Speaker 1>it had to be because I'm the narrator. So that
<v Speaker 1>guy who's clearly was filmed in the seventies, because that's
<v Speaker 1>real seventies footage. I mean, everything you're seeing is earal
<v Speaker 1>seventy footage. But yeah, yeah, I manipulated that was that
<v Speaker 1>was an Easter egg. There's Easter eggs. There's an even
<v Speaker 1>Eastern egg in the in the title The Town that
<v Speaker 1>Cried Bigfoot. That that tells you a lot right there.
<v Speaker 1>But there's Easter eggs, especially on the very end, right
<v Speaker 1>before you see the credit roll up. But yeah, there's
<v Speaker 1>the Easter eggs all through this.
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna have to go back and rewatch now.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and that's good. That's good. It's kind of like
<v Speaker 1>fight Club. Honestly, I think if if anybody that's already
<v Speaker 1>seen it and they're hearing this, definitely it's definitely worth
<v Speaker 1>to go back and rewatch because now you're like fight
<v Speaker 1>Club was to me, it was way better the second
<v Speaker 1>time around, because you're like, oh, Ed Norton and Brad
<v Speaker 1>Pitt are.
<v Speaker 2>The scene guy, right right, yeah, you know.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so then you start to look for like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>that's why every time Marlo Singer came in the room,
<v Speaker 1>they both were never in the same room with her
<v Speaker 1>because they couldn't be because they're the same person. So
<v Speaker 1>he starts to see all that stuff. It's kind of interesting.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, I mean I'm a sucker for the whole
<v Speaker 2>vinage retro look anyways.
<v Speaker 1>Me too. I mean we grew up that era, so yeah.
<v Speaker 2>And the idea to make a modern documentary, but the
<v Speaker 2>entire thing is presented as a documentary from that era.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, yeah, I'm all in. I'm absolutely all in
<v Speaker 2>on that.
<v Speaker 1>Well, here's the thing, and I'm this is gonna I
<v Speaker 1>don't I'm just gonna say it. I'm not gonna try
<v Speaker 1>to preface this with anything but a lot of bigfoot documentaries,
<v Speaker 1>you see. I mean, if you've seen any, I promise
<v Speaker 1>you you've seen them where it's just drum footage over
<v Speaker 1>a forest in the daytime and somebody trying to talk,
<v Speaker 1>trying to make you scared or trying to create a
<v Speaker 1>scary vibe and it just doesn't work because it doesn't
<v Speaker 1>what you're seeing doesn't match up with what you're hearing,
<v Speaker 1>and you just see shots of the woods and then
<v Speaker 1>you see like nothing is going on. An out of ten,
<v Speaker 1>there may be a story about what somebody heard or saw,
<v Speaker 1>but there's not a I mean, like this story, this
<v Speaker 1>narrative has an arc, you know what I mean. The
<v Speaker 1>town went from went from being okay to nothing and
<v Speaker 1>then to holy cow. Now they're like the big Foot
<v Speaker 1>caval East Coast. And then you know, in the end,
<v Speaker 1>it gets it gets goes from bad to worse.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it gets dark, It gets real dark.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it definitely gets dark. Yeah, very dark for sure,
<v Speaker 1>for sure. Yeah, but get catch on that on the end.
<v Speaker 1>So back to your question. Yeah, yeah, that was me
<v Speaker 1>manipulating the narrator I did. I didn't have to put
<v Speaker 1>that in there, but I couldn't resist putting that in there.
<v Speaker 1>That's why I did that.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it was definitely a good thing to add in there.
<v Speaker 2>I enjoyed that part.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. He literally looks at the camera and he tells
<v Speaker 1>the audience, look, I get that all this is hard,
<v Speaker 1>hard to swallow. But try this one on for size,
<v Speaker 1>and then he cuts to current day, the exact same story.
<v Speaker 1>Pretty how much you just saw is happening in Oklahoma.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I know it all too well. I know it
<v Speaker 2>all too well.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so that is That's why that was one of
<v Speaker 1>the reasons the story was so important to tell for me,
<v Speaker 1>because it's going on. What you see is seventy eight,
<v Speaker 1>but it's going on now.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, in the area of Honuby, Oklahoma, where we have
<v Speaker 2>an annual Bigfoot conference. There's a story there, man, Like, oh, man,
<v Speaker 2>I know that there's some people that listen to my
<v Speaker 2>podcast that are actually involved in this, but sorry, you know,
<v Speaker 2>this is the way it works. Factions, you know, have
<v Speaker 2>like kind of feuded with one another, and the festival
<v Speaker 2>that takes place down there was taken over by a
<v Speaker 2>different group basically, and the other group started a bunch
<v Speaker 2>of internet rumors and then they rebuttled, and you know,
<v Speaker 2>you had all this drama going on, and they're trying
<v Speaker 2>to keep it going and trying to, you know, keep
<v Speaker 2>it all held together a duct tape at this point.
<v Speaker 1>And.
<v Speaker 2>I wish them the best of luck. But then on
<v Speaker 2>top of that, you've got this you know, Oklahoma state representative.
<v Speaker 2>Not a real.
<v Speaker 1>Uh Humphreys Humphrey, isn't that his name, Yeah, Humphreys.
<v Speaker 2>Or something, Justin William something Humphries.
<v Speaker 1>Justin Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's yeah, that's the footage. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, And he came up with this brilliant idea to
<v Speaker 2>actually open up a big foot hunting season in Oklahoma
<v Speaker 2>and sell hunting licenses and permits for this. I don't
<v Speaker 2>know how serious he is, but you know, he's doing it,
<v Speaker 2>and he he made a little bit of a splash,
<v Speaker 2>you know, with it and everything. I don't know if
<v Speaker 2>it really helped Oklahoma tourism or whatever. I know, he
<v Speaker 2>made a run on a few podcasts out there talking
<v Speaker 2>about it.
<v Speaker 1>I heard about it in Virginia, you know when I
<v Speaker 1>started there, you go years ago. I mean I'm in
<v Speaker 1>Virginia and I knew who this guy was, you know.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, he's making a bigger, bigger splash than you
<v Speaker 1>guys think supparently.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, I don't know that it's next necessarily paid
<v Speaker 2>off for him, but hopefully he won't take it to
<v Speaker 2>the links that these gentlemen did.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I'll just kind of leave it at that, because I,
<v Speaker 2>like I said, I don't want to give too much away.
<v Speaker 2>One interesting aspect about the dynamic of these guys. If
<v Speaker 2>you take out mayor shiflet you know, who was the
<v Speaker 2>cousin that they the sheriff brought in, the other three
<v Speaker 2>guys served a numb together.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, yeah, and like.
<v Speaker 2>We're already scheming back then and doing nefarious things, not
<v Speaker 2>to a huge extent, but they're you know, making money
<v Speaker 2>for themselves. Will say that, and kind of already created
<v Speaker 2>their own dynamic. And I'm going to guess that there's
<v Speaker 2>probably more this story that you weren't able to uncover.
<v Speaker 2>I'm going to guess that the attorney and the sheriff
<v Speaker 2>kind of got in their positions, not by accident. I'm
<v Speaker 2>going to say that they've probably been working together over
<v Speaker 2>the years to get those positions.
<v Speaker 1>Oh for sure, for sure, I mean that's yeah, That's
<v Speaker 1>all I could uncover was what you saw. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you're you're dead on for sure. I mean, there was
<v Speaker 1>definitely a lot more there. And and I'll tell you
<v Speaker 1>I served in the military four years and I saw
<v Speaker 1>things that people were doing to make money off the side, uh,
<v Speaker 1>through the access of what they had access to. It's
<v Speaker 1>not uncommon. It's not uncommon. People don't like to hear
<v Speaker 1>about it, but yeah, there's you know, it's the military
<v Speaker 1>is a business and small scales to large scales things,
<v Speaker 1>things are stipulated for financial gain in all different aspects.
<v Speaker 1>For sure, I saw it firsthand.
<v Speaker 2>Another interesting thing is whenever this all went down and
<v Speaker 2>it was kind of uncovered and everything, I believe it
<v Speaker 2>was the attorney Lester Clemens uh belled, took off on
<v Speaker 2>his family, took off everybody and went on the lamb,
<v Speaker 2>and the last time he popped up on the radar
<v Speaker 2>was in Oklahoma.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, huh, yeah, that is. That's one of the reasons
<v Speaker 1>why I had to throw the Oklahoma thing in there
<v Speaker 1>at the end of what's going on where you're at
<v Speaker 1>right now?
<v Speaker 2>I mean you don't you don't think.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, who knows, maybe a great grandson or something, who knows.
<v Speaker 1>That blew my mind. When I heard about the Oklahoma thing,
<v Speaker 1>I was like, wow, I mean.
<v Speaker 2>There's no such thing as coincidence, right.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean it's uh, it's it's pretty compelling, that's
<v Speaker 1>all I'm going to say. Pretty compelling.
<v Speaker 2>One final thing I want to hit on with the
<v Speaker 2>documentary is towards the end, and again we're not gonna
<v Speaker 2>I'm not leaking. But at the end, there's an incident
<v Speaker 2>that takes place, and you referenced a few eyewitnesses that
<v Speaker 2>stated they saw Bigfoot involved in that incident. Was that true?
<v Speaker 1>Uh? The uh? Oh the reports from the linemen and
<v Speaker 1>the guys on the lake. Ye about the uh that's
<v Speaker 1>what I uncovered, Okay.
<v Speaker 2>And then we have i mean sworn testimony by the
<v Speaker 2>sheriff that some of the stuff that was turning up
<v Speaker 2>in the community in reference to tracks and howls and
<v Speaker 2>tree knocks and things like that, he says they were
<v Speaker 2>not responsible for all of that stuff.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And that's that's some of the Easter eggs that
<v Speaker 1>you got to look at too. I mean, the the
<v Speaker 1>pictures of the of the tracks. I mean, if you
<v Speaker 1>look at them and you and I think I edited
<v Speaker 1>him in there side by side so you could tell
<v Speaker 1>they don't match up. Yeah, you know, like he states
<v Speaker 1>in court, like so he's like, we did these He's
<v Speaker 1>owning up to it because he's caught, yeah, saying we
<v Speaker 1>in fact did this stuff. And then when he talks
<v Speaker 1>about the tree notkins in the house, he's like, I
<v Speaker 1>don't know anything about that, because we needed stuff that
<v Speaker 1>could be documented the next day on. You know, not
<v Speaker 1>every farmer is walking around with an MP you know,
<v Speaker 1>a tape recorder, you know, so they thought of they
<v Speaker 1>were smart enough to think about that. So they're like, well,
<v Speaker 1>we need something that they can document. And you know,
<v Speaker 1>a polaroid instant camera was pretty prevalent back then. I
<v Speaker 1>had one as a kid, So yeah, they were they
<v Speaker 1>left stuff they could take pictures of, and they were
<v Speaker 1>pretty smart about it that the locals could. You know,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I got a picture. It's as big as
<v Speaker 1>my son's skateboard, like you hear in the movie, and
<v Speaker 1>you see but yeah, the tracks don't match up, which
<v Speaker 1>is pretty interesting. So that begs the question what left those?
<v Speaker 2>And then you had some of the locals claiming that
<v Speaker 2>they saw the thing when they were out there searching
<v Speaker 2>for it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean, it's what you saw earlier in the
<v Speaker 1>footage earlier in the movie when that one guy talking
<v Speaker 1>about he saw it throwing a tire at forty cars. Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you know, it's like, okay, all right, I guess so
<v Speaker 1>there's where the other forty people that were there, you know,
<v Speaker 1>and you know the narrator actually even says, you know,
<v Speaker 1>and some people just want to be on the news,
<v Speaker 1>you know, And that's true with anything. I mean, you
<v Speaker 1>can have a bank robbery and somebody's like, oh, they
<v Speaker 1>got a TV camera and they walk over, Hey, I
<v Speaker 1>saw the whole thing. You know, they want their fifteen
<v Speaker 1>minutes of fame. I mean that's not uncommon. Yeah, that's
<v Speaker 1>that's kind of the culture we live in now.
<v Speaker 2>And that's part of it. And that's probably why this
<v Speaker 2>story actually did fly under the radar on me, because
<v Speaker 2>especially in the Bigfoot world, you know, I know people
<v Speaker 2>I used to be one of these people that spent
<v Speaker 2>countless hours and countless dollars of their own pockets out
<v Speaker 2>there researching, investigating claims, trying to find evidence, trying to
<v Speaker 2>get proof that Bigfoot's real. And a large part of
<v Speaker 2>that community does not want to draw any attention or
<v Speaker 2>any light to the hoaxes and to the people that lie.
<v Speaker 2>But I think that's part of it. I think that's
<v Speaker 2>part of the story.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I think thank you for bringing that up. That
<v Speaker 1>is one of the things that I also wanted to
<v Speaker 1>do with this. I mean, that's pretty much the underlying
<v Speaker 1>theme for the entire movie is it should help better
<v Speaker 1>serve the bigfoot community by not critical thinking, by way
<v Speaker 1>of use of critical thinking, not taking things at face value,
<v Speaker 1>because what that'll do, and it's not saying you dismiss something,
<v Speaker 1>it's just, you know, just just be analyze what you're
<v Speaker 1>looking at, don't just don't take it at face value,
<v Speaker 1>and you will. It adds validity to the research, it
<v Speaker 1>keeps it authentic, and it keeps it respected. But if
<v Speaker 1>every every time there's a blurry camera footage of something
<v Speaker 1>moving around in a bush and everybody's like, oh, that's bigfoot,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, after a people are like, you can't even
<v Speaker 1>tell what that is. But and I'm seeing this to
<v Speaker 1>every single person listening to this, me myself, the most
<v Speaker 1>compelling footage that I've ever seen, and you know, as
<v Speaker 1>long as I've been alive, is that Francis Peak Farmington,
<v Speaker 1>Utah footage on YouTube of that bigfoot or whatever walking
<v Speaker 1>upright up the side of that snow cliff covered mountain.
<v Speaker 1>Have you seen that?
<v Speaker 2>Yes?
<v Speaker 1>Or? I mean, my only thing that if you want
<v Speaker 1>to go, well, that's not real, I would say, well
<v Speaker 1>that has to be AI. To me, it doesn't look
<v Speaker 1>like AI. But the deepness of how deep that snow is,
<v Speaker 1>the angle, the altitude, and the way that thing is moving.
<v Speaker 1>To me, that's the best footage I've ever seen for sure.
<v Speaker 1>Because people ask me ever since I've made this, do
<v Speaker 1>you believe in Bigfoot? Do you believe in bigfoot? It's
<v Speaker 1>like I've never personally seen one in person, and I've
<v Speaker 1>seen a lot of footage that I just kind of
<v Speaker 1>laugh at. But I'll tell you right now that that
<v Speaker 1>footage of the Francis Peak footage, that's pretty compelling. That's
<v Speaker 1>the one I personally will share with anybody, and I'm
<v Speaker 1>doing that right now. I'm saying, please, please, If you
<v Speaker 1>haven't seen that, I'm sure your listeners have because they're
<v Speaker 1>in the big Foot. But to me, that's pretty compelling.
<v Speaker 1>And if somebody has, I would love to hear if
<v Speaker 1>somebody explained that away, you know, I'm all for it too.
<v Speaker 1>But for me, that's pretty that's pretty compelling.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I think it's interesting that you know, this was
<v Speaker 2>a situation where people were like intently and purposely hoaxing. However,
<v Speaker 2>you did have a number of townsfolk that claimed that
<v Speaker 2>they witnessed the creature, that they saw the creature, and
<v Speaker 2>you know, they all had their own stories to go
<v Speaker 2>with it, and you're looking at this panel of different
<v Speaker 2>individuals and you're like, Okay, well apparently they're lying, but
<v Speaker 2>you know, they really don't have any reason to other
<v Speaker 2>than you're saying, like they just want to be on
<v Speaker 2>camera or have a story to tell or whatever. And
<v Speaker 2>that was in the late seventies. I think that's more
<v Speaker 2>likely to happen today with the anonymity of the Internet,
<v Speaker 2>especially where people can do it, get a little bit
<v Speaker 2>of attention and then realize, hey, I got away with that.
<v Speaker 2>I'm going to do it again. I like that feeling,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and they get that adrenaline rush off of it.
<v Speaker 2>And I think that's an important aspect to bigfoot or
<v Speaker 2>any unexplained topic. I think we have to recognize that
<v Speaker 2>and we have to acknowledge that because I used to
<v Speaker 2>debunk stuff. I used to, you know, anytime I could
<v Speaker 2>prove that somebody was lying or making something up, I
<v Speaker 2>felt the need I need to put it out there
<v Speaker 2>and let everybody know. I need to alert them. And
<v Speaker 2>the reason I did that wasn't to like argue against
<v Speaker 2>Bigfoot existing. I've had my own personal encounters I've had
<v Speaker 2>my own sighting. I know Bigfoot's real for myself. Do
<v Speaker 2>I expect anybody else to believe me? No, And I
<v Speaker 2>would implore them not to believe me just because I
<v Speaker 2>say so. Go find out for yourself. But with that
<v Speaker 2>being said, whenever you are looking at you know, one
<v Speaker 2>hundred different videos and you're saying like, yeah, I can
<v Speaker 2>explain away ninety nine of them, that means one of
<v Speaker 2>them you can't. That means there's there's still truth out there.
<v Speaker 2>If I can debunk anything that's fake that comes out,
<v Speaker 2>and I'm telling you, yeah, I can debunk it if
<v Speaker 2>it's fake, but here's some that I can't debunk. That's
<v Speaker 2>a stronger argument to me for the existence of these
<v Speaker 2>things than anything else.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I agree with And that's Uh. That's one of
<v Speaker 1>the things I wanted people to take away from this
<v Speaker 1>movie is yes, critical thinking only benefits the Bigfoot community,
<v Speaker 1>doesn't harm it in any way. It keeps it respected
<v Speaker 1>and authentic. And that's that's kind of like which I
<v Speaker 1>thought was very interesting is when you saw where the
<v Speaker 1>sheriff was like, hey, you know we lay these tracks.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know about those tree knockings in the house.
<v Speaker 1>We didn't do that because we had we didn't know
<v Speaker 1>even know how to replicate it, much less if anybody
<v Speaker 1>would be able to record it to post as evidence
<v Speaker 1>later to help drive it. But we knew bigfoot tracks
<v Speaker 1>in the snow will last at least a day and
<v Speaker 1>people will get pictures. So yeah, critical thinking is big
<v Speaker 1>when it comes to this stuff, absolutely, you know. I
<v Speaker 1>mean you can walk outside at night and look up
<v Speaker 1>and go, oh my gosh, is that a whole army
<v Speaker 1>of drones. It's like, well, listen to it, sounds like helicopters.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, okay, I wasn't paying attention to that part.
<v Speaker 1>You know. Yeah, there's nothing. I mean, you have to
<v Speaker 1>have critical thinking for sure.
<v Speaker 2>So is this a subject that you're done with or
<v Speaker 2>do you think you'll do any future projects in this?
<v Speaker 1>I'm not gonna I would never. I'm not gonna say never,
<v Speaker 1>but I already have some different scripts that I'm working
<v Speaker 1>on for UH fictional movies, not not the documentary side.
<v Speaker 1>That is the one thing that we all went through,
<v Speaker 1>UH five years ago, you know, with being locked in
<v Speaker 1>our homes and everything. Through the the UH legal backing
<v Speaker 1>of the Fair Use Act that enabled me to make
<v Speaker 1>this documentary without having to uh go out and film,
<v Speaker 1>you know, and I can't. I can't go back in time.
<v Speaker 1>I don't have a time machine, so that that was
<v Speaker 1>challenging too. I was excited about making a movie that
<v Speaker 1>puts you from the moment it opens up, you know
<v Speaker 1>with uh, Wayburn Sheriff, what's your what's your emergency? Uh.
<v Speaker 1>I wanted to put you back into Wayburn from the
<v Speaker 1>get go, all the way up until the very end
<v Speaker 1>and keep you there. Uh. So that was that was
<v Speaker 1>a pretty cool, uh pretty cool deal for me to
<v Speaker 1>be able to do through the use of the Fair
<v Speaker 1>Use Act.
<v Speaker 2>And you pulled it off successfully, by the.
<v Speaker 1>Way, Thank you man, Thank you. I appreciate that.
<v Speaker 2>I really enjoyed it. I mean, there's a lot of
<v Speaker 2>documentaries out there, Bigfoot and otherwise, you know, and I
<v Speaker 2>run across a lot of documentaries, and I watch a
<v Speaker 2>lot of documentaries. I rarely talk about them, and a
<v Speaker 2>lot of them. It's kind of like cookie Cutter, so
<v Speaker 2>to speak, like you were talking about, you know, the
<v Speaker 2>drone footage and all that. You know, I would probably
<v Speaker 2>do that same sort of thing for my own YouTube channel.
<v Speaker 2>I'm not sure I would, you know, try to put
<v Speaker 2>out a mass marketed documentary in that style. But a
<v Speaker 2>lot of people have and if that's your thing, great,
<v Speaker 2>but it's not something that really grabs my attention personally.
<v Speaker 2>But this was something that I was pleasantly surprised with.
<v Speaker 2>I was not expecting that approach, and I thought it
<v Speaker 2>was awesome. I thought it was very entertaining, and like
<v Speaker 2>I said, it's now one of my favorite documentaries. The
<v Speaker 2>story is absolutely insane.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, ILL think you, Matt. I mean that's that's that's
<v Speaker 1>a huge compliment. Seriously, I mean that. But yeah, I
<v Speaker 1>would never have made this if the story wasn't there,
<v Speaker 1>If the story wasn't as interesting as you've pointed out
<v Speaker 1>and all the twist and turns in it, I would
<v Speaker 1>have never have made it. I had no interest in making,
<v Speaker 1>you know, just videotaping somebody just talking about what they
<v Speaker 1>heard or what they saw. I wanted a story that
<v Speaker 1>definitely had an art to it, that definitely that was
<v Speaker 1>worth telling.
<v Speaker 2>So do any of your upcoming fictional works involve in
<v Speaker 2>Bigfoot or anything else? Unexplained.
<v Speaker 1>The next one that I'm working on planning to shoot
<v Speaker 1>here in Texas, out in West Texas around the Fort
<v Speaker 1>David Area. That one has a supernatural kind of vibe
<v Speaker 1>to it. It's a it's a Western, so yeah, there's
<v Speaker 1>there's a kind of a supernatural vibe to it. That well,
<v Speaker 1>I'm kind of mixing with genres that that'll be. It's
<v Speaker 1>gonna be a lot of fun to do. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>there there's no there's no big foot in that one.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, supernatural and western sounds really cool though.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I I kind of want to. I like, I
<v Speaker 1>remember when I saw do you remember what was it
<v Speaker 1>called Cowboys and Aliens with Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>there's parts of that I loved, and then the when
<v Speaker 1>the spaceships and all that stuff towards the end, Uh,
<v Speaker 1>the kind of pulled me out of it. But I
<v Speaker 1>always that kind of resonated with me about I kind
<v Speaker 1>of like mixing genres, you know, and I have I do.
<v Speaker 1>I do have one now that I think about it.
<v Speaker 1>I wrote a couple of years ago. I don't even
<v Speaker 1>know if I want to say this because somebody might
<v Speaker 1>make it before I do.
<v Speaker 2>But uh, don't say anything you're not comfortable with.
<v Speaker 1>No, Well, I'll say this. Nobody's gonna make it the
<v Speaker 1>way I'm gonna make it. They don't know the story.
<v Speaker 1>But uh, yeah, I've always wondered, like, you know, American
<v Speaker 1>Werewolf in London was a great movie growing up, and
<v Speaker 1>I've always well, you know, if werewolves has been around,
<v Speaker 1>you know, they've been around for for all the decades
<v Speaker 1>and eras. So I was thinking of mixing a werewolf
<v Speaker 1>in the Civil War.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, what.
<v Speaker 1>Should be kind of because you're out in the woods,
<v Speaker 1>you're out in the middle of nowhere, you know, and
<v Speaker 1>you're not surrounded by cannons at all times. Sometimes there's
<v Speaker 1>a little A troop can be four people, you know,
<v Speaker 1>that's pretty much what constant. So you could have four
<v Speaker 1>guys out in the woods that are fighting something that
<v Speaker 1>they don't even know what it is yet, you know,
<v Speaker 1>like dogs soldiers.
<v Speaker 2>It can be four guys in one state and they'll
<v Speaker 2>get orders, Hey take this message to this general over
<v Speaker 2>in this other state. There you go, there you go,
<v Speaker 2>you're walking.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yeah, So mixing, mixing genres is something I'm pretty
<v Speaker 1>interested in doing to keep it interesting. But uh, it's honestly,
<v Speaker 1>for independent filmmakers, it's getting harder and harder to to
<v Speaker 1>get things out there, and where it's even worth the
<v Speaker 1>time and the effort instead of just putting it up
<v Speaker 1>on YouTube and just going here, everybody enjoy you know, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I personally, because I'm old, I personally missed the day
<v Speaker 1>as a Blockbuster because the cool thing about Blockbuster. Here's
<v Speaker 1>the difference between Blockbuster and Netflix and Amazon right now
<v Speaker 1>is back in the day, the store had what it had.
<v Speaker 1>It didn't have this infinite supply, and like when Titanic
<v Speaker 1>came out, there was like any copies, so the whole
<v Speaker 1>back wall was Titanic. But you would go and look
<v Speaker 1>for other movies and if they didn't have the one
<v Speaker 1>movie you were looking for, well you're like, well we're here.
<v Speaker 1>So it kind of forced you to pick something you
<v Speaker 1>probably normally wouldn't pick out. Yeah, and then you end
<v Speaker 1>up you end up loving it. Like, you know, Reservoir
<v Speaker 1>Dogs came to mind. I wasn't looking for Reservoir Dogs.
<v Speaker 1>I was looking for something else, and then that was
<v Speaker 1>out and I picked that up and I ended up
<v Speaker 1>became a huge Quentin Tarantino fan, you know.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, And and most of your choices were based off
<v Speaker 2>of cover design.
<v Speaker 1>Cover design, and actually when film Laurels, you know, the
<v Speaker 1>Little Sun Dance the film Festival, gold Leafs actually meant something. Yeah. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you're like, oh, this must be kind of cool, but yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it's just a different time now. It definitely is. And
<v Speaker 1>that is another reason why I wouldn't have made this movie,
<v Speaker 1>because there's so many it's and it is flooded and
<v Speaker 1>some some some independent films are great, some are not. Some.
<v Speaker 1>You know, my first film had major issues in it.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, the first part of it, which I'm going
<v Speaker 1>to re release, I'm going to cut out. It looks
<v Speaker 1>like a bad seventies porn in the beginning, just by
<v Speaker 1>the acting. You know, it's because we were rushed. It
<v Speaker 1>had nothing to do with the actors. It was because
<v Speaker 1>we were rushed. But yeah, I wanted to put out
<v Speaker 1>something that like, will this hold people's attention, because now,
<v Speaker 1>more than ever, we have shorter attention spans. And so
<v Speaker 1>uh that's why I opened it. That opened it with
<v Speaker 1>the cow and the creek. You know, I got dead
<v Speaker 1>cowum blood all over the side of my house. That's
<v Speaker 1>in the trailer. Yeah, you know. And by the way,
<v Speaker 1>I did release two weeks ago. This is an easter egg.
<v Speaker 1>I release a trailer that opens with orson Wells and
<v Speaker 1>He's standing there in a black hat and he says,
<v Speaker 1>ladies and gentlemen, by way of introduction, this is a
<v Speaker 1>film about trickery and fraud and lies. And then it
<v Speaker 1>cuts to the trailer.
<v Speaker 2>Oh cool.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so there's an easter egg right there that tells
<v Speaker 1>you everything. It goes back to what I'm saying about
<v Speaker 1>the Bigfoot community. Critical thinking. Use of critical thinking will
<v Speaker 1>keep the Bigfoot research in the community authentic, incredible.
<v Speaker 2>One final question. Have you had any of your own
<v Speaker 2>experiences with the unexplained, whether it be UFOs, ghosts, whatever.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, I've had something, uh a couple of years ago
<v Speaker 1>that was pretty traumatic. And I'll say this and I'm
<v Speaker 1>actually I'm really glad to ask that question. Matt. I.
<v Speaker 1>I when I was younger, I went to Catholic school,
<v Speaker 1>I went to Baptist church, I went to I diated
<v Speaker 1>a girl, and I was out in Guita and went
<v Speaker 1>to didn't go to a Mormon cathedral, but I was
<v Speaker 1>around Mormons. I've been around a lot of different religions
<v Speaker 1>and I've always believed in God. I've had my struggles
<v Speaker 1>with God as far as you know, like you know,
<v Speaker 1>why does why do good things have to happen to
<v Speaker 1>or why do bad things have have to happen to
<v Speaker 1>good people? And some things just don't make sense. You
<v Speaker 1>can't wrap your head around it, and you're like, well, you know, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I struggled with it. You know, I struggled with it.
<v Speaker 1>But I will say this to answer your question. A
<v Speaker 1>couple of years ago, I had some things that were
<v Speaker 1>very hard to explain and it terrified me. And I'll
<v Speaker 1>say this, I I never used to talk about praying
<v Speaker 1>a lot. I would talk to God in my own
<v Speaker 1>on my own times and terms, but I was never
<v Speaker 1>a big church guy. I'm still not a big church
<v Speaker 1>guy as far as like the pageantry of religion and
<v Speaker 1>what takes place, you know, for that hour on Sunday, right,
<v Speaker 1>But I talk to God now more than ever, and
<v Speaker 1>I will say it's given me peace with what I've
<v Speaker 1>experienced a couple of years ago, because without it, it
<v Speaker 1>was it was pretty traumatizing. I don't want to get
<v Speaker 1>into it too much, but I will say praying now
<v Speaker 1>has taken that that trauma away, and it's helped and
<v Speaker 1>it's it's made things a lot better and easier to
<v Speaker 1>understand for me for sure. And that's just me and
<v Speaker 1>and I am not listen. Please, anybody that's listening, I
<v Speaker 1>am not preaching. I am just sharing, that's all. I'm
<v Speaker 1>sharing my own no different than you sharing your experience,
<v Speaker 1>you know, uh what you were telling me earlier before
<v Speaker 1>we got on. Yeah, yeah, so I'm just for me.
<v Speaker 1>That's that's how I was able to make peace with it.
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, I have experienced something that was terrifying that
<v Speaker 1>I really can't explain, but I found peace with it
<v Speaker 1>through actually my connection with talking with God, and it's helped.
<v Speaker 1>It's helped a lot. Like I helped in ways that
<v Speaker 1>I can't even I can't explain away if I wanted to.
<v Speaker 1>And I'm like, yep, he's somebody's looking out for me.
<v Speaker 1>So I kind of answered your question, but kind of didn't.
<v Speaker 2>I'm sorry.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I'm not gonna let it go. We're gonna have
<v Speaker 2>to talk privately about it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, we can do that. We can
<v Speaker 1>do that for sure. Mark.
<v Speaker 2>I appreciate you coming on here man and talking to
<v Speaker 2>me about your documentary. I know I had to twist
<v Speaker 2>your arm a little. I'm glad you changed your mind,
<v Speaker 2>but I really enjoyed it.
<v Speaker 1>Man. You got me too, it was. It was awesome.
<v Speaker 1>I really and I look forward to, uh, you know,
<v Speaker 1>hearing hearing what people have to say about it, especially
<v Speaker 1>after they watch it or just listen to your pod.
<v Speaker 1>So thank you for the opportunity.
<v Speaker 2>Matt Oh for sure the town that cried Bigfoot Mark Dawset.
<v Speaker 2>I'll put a link somewhere on probably the Facebook page again.
<v Speaker 2>I posted the trailer there and a link to it before,
<v Speaker 2>but I'll do it again. You really enjoyed it, highly
<v Speaker 2>recommend it. Check it out. Have you had your own
<v Speaker 2>encounter with Bigfoot or something else you can't explain, and
<v Speaker 2>you'd like to share your story on Bigfoot Crossroads, Email
<v Speaker 2>me a Bigfoot Crossroads at gmail dot com. Check out
<v Speaker 2>the website Bigfootcrossroads dot com. You can find links to
<v Speaker 2>social media, past episodes, merchandise, everything you need all in
<v Speaker 2>one place. And until next time, remember there's something in
<v Speaker 2>the woods.