I once sat down with Norman Hull, producer/director of one of the BF flicks still in heavy rotation on TLC, and we along with a few others watched every BF or Yeti flick ever made, back to back to back. Norman said: "Peter Byrne, Grover Krantz, Rene Dahinden, and John Green always give the same interview, how boring!" Grover always had his giganto skull in the background, Peter always fired the imagination with his charismatic presence and attire, John Green always the journalist, reporting, maintaining journalistic integrity... Today, it's much the same, I bet if you watch every interview with Jeff Meldrum for example, from now till doomsday, you'l start to see the same old interview after awhile, polished, updated, but basically the same old story. "yes, the tracks and imprints are some of the only concrete things you can measure... etc. etc." "yes we don't have a specimen or bones, but any day now". I predict this will happen to all the new people competing with each other for the title of "Media Bigfoot Spokesperson". So, if you can watch the BF film genre in its entirety without getting completely bored to death, you are one of the few, one of the very few, completely obsessed maniacs, out to learn everything they can possibly learn about BF... unfortunately this is not a large television market, the same 5,000 BF obsessos are probably buying and selling books and artifacts on eBay to each other. But I digress, the point is, the television and news guys and everybody want a story, an entertaining and interesting story, thus, the more entertaining the BF movie, the more widespread its presentation, the more money everyone makes, the more ratings points at TLC and Discovery, the more revenue, etc. etc. "entertaining" means what the the mass consumer market buys, and the advertisers sell to. Entertaining BF documentaries and movies will be produced. Monographs such as your proposal will only be produced on the shoestring self-financing that you propose. The more scientific stuff will always be left on the cutting room floor, the kooky guy with an alien mask on will always get more screen time. That's show biz. Welcome to America. Ray Crowe used to tape every single speaker at every meeting of the Western Bigfoot Society, which seems very similar to your proposal. sit down and watch that footage for a few hundred hours sometime. Yikes, if that doesn't bore you to death, you're a better man than I.
best - LB
Posted on Jul 7, 2002, 12:36 AM from IP address 63.227.216.241