Grizzly Man

Just watched one of my favourite Christmas shows, Emmett Otter's Jugband Christmas.
Later I'm taking Richard to a documentary I'm sure he'll find interesting: Grizzly Man. It's the story of a surfer-type dude who called himself Timothy Treadwell and gave up a life of drugs and booze for another, even deadlier, addiction - Grizzly bears. This guy tended bar through the winter so he'd have just enough money to fly to southwestern Alaska each spring, and he'd spend all summer camped out in an area of dense alder thickets veined with grizzly trails. Eventually a girlfriend named Amie joined him there. Treadwell started a foundation, Grizzly People, which raked in fat donations from celebrities (Leonardo DiCaprio allegedly gave $25, 000). I'm not sure what the foundation did, if anything, but Treadwell became something of an amateur bear expert. He launched a quixotic one-man campaign against poachers, a la Diane Fossey. He was on Letterman a couple of times. Letterman held up a photo of a huge old grizzly Treadwell had named The Big Red Machine and asked Treadwell if he was going to end up as bear food someday. Needless to say, that's exactly what happened in late summer 2003. A very old and pissed-off bear - The Big Red Machine - attacked Amie and Timothy in their tent, then charged after the bush pilot who flew in to check on them. He and another bear were taken down by rangers a few hours later, but it was far too late for Treadwell and his girlfriend. The Machine was the feared "25th Bear" that will indiscriminately kill for food.

Weirdly, Treadwell knew all the safety rules for living among bears, but obeyed hardly any of them.

The movie has a fine-looking website, www.grizzlyman.com. The only fly in the ointment is that it's directed by one of my least favourite directors, Werner Herzog. (For some idea of why I don't like him, see my post at Swallowing the Camel, "Werner Herzog: Big Fat Liar.")