[pct-l] "Grizzly Man" on TV tonight

[losthiker at sisqtel.net (Deems)]

It is an incredible piece of film footage, one that few will really ever see 
like this again. It will serve for decades as a unique insight for 
Universities that study the psychological impulses of humans that have 
chosen a personal path to self destruction via their own design, and for 
wildlife scientists to observe the close interactions between the top 
predator in North America and the self proclaimed most intelligent animal on 
earth. The conflict, mental twists, and bear - human interactions, though on 
the surface at times looks mutual and accepting, one always knows the end 
result is never far off. Mr. Treadwell, who had changed his name, imho, was 
insane, and found his place in Alaskan history in a humble pile of bear 
crap, which he found so incredible in one scene. I liked the wildlife film 
footage, it was amazing, some of the best I've seen; but Tim's humanizing 
interaction and anthropomorphism, one on one, with the bears was truly a 
disservice to both the bears and man and the final outcome somehow justified 
the means; he even embraced his inevitable death by the bears in his 
narration. So, I both liked and disliked it based upon the acting of the two 
main characters in the film. The foxes and bears were great! It's on again 
tonite 5pm, Pacific Crest Trail Time zone on the Discovery channel.

Doc Holiday wrote:
<Not really! I watched this last night, and was quite
disappointed. I
expected to see a documentary about grizzly bears, and
instead was
assaulted by a documentary of a self aggrandizing,
mis-guided, self
absorbing, naive young man who pushed the boundaries
of human interaction with a
very wild and dangerous animal.>


Well, if I guess it was supposed to be exclusively
about grizzly bears they may have called it "Grizzly
Bear" instead of "Grizzly Man".  The film's focus WAS
Treadwell and, as you correctly point out, his "self
aggrandizing, mis-guided" attempt at what he was doing
up in Alaska.  But I also felt it had, as the director
Werner Herzog points out in the film, some
extraordinary footage of grizzlies, probably only
attainable by what Treadwell was doing, however
misguided and ultimately tragic it turned out to be.