Grizzly Man: Werner Herzog Argues Nature On Timothy Treadwell's Behalf
By Cole Smithey
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Werner Herzog represents Germany's most consistent cinema export. With more than 20 films behind him, Werner Herzog has established himself as a gifted storyteller with a unique sense of truth (and its incumbent lies) that reflect our primal natures.

In Grizzly Man, Herzog performs a Herculean editorial task by structuring copious wildlife footage from the late Timothy Treadwell, a grizzly bear expert and wildlife preservationist who was killed and eaten by a grizzly during his 13th summer of sharing Alaska's Katmai National Park and Reserve with the bears. Employing interviews with people associated with Treadwell and his own Alaskan footage, Herzog narrates Grizzly Man with contemplative examinations of Timothy Treadwell as a filmmaker and as a flawed human being struggling with personal demons -- in the direct context of the enormous bears he calls his "friends." Herzog peels back layer upon layer of insight into Treadwell's work and exposes a complex and emotional individual doing the impossible until it wasn't possible anymore.

A_P: How did Timothy Treadwell's story come to your attention?

WH: A producer, who was very friendly with me, shoved an article across [my desk] on Timothy Treadwell and said to me, "Read this. We're doing a film on him." I read it and rushed back and said to him "I'm going to do this film" even though he planned to do it himself. I started almost immediately and in 29 days, I shot and edited and delivered the film.

A_P: How much original footage was there?

WH: Treadwell's footage was probably some hundred hours.

A_P:  Did you watch all that footage?

WH: No, I didn't have time for that because I edited the film in nine days, so watching his whole footage would have taken ten days. Some other people sifted through it, but they were well instructed and looked for specific things. I, of course, looked over their shoulders once in awhile and I saw about 18 hours of Treadwell's footage, but only after I had shot [footage] myself.

I had a hunch there was something big in there, even though the only thing I had seen was a one-hour show that Treadwell put together himself. But there was a kind of a Prince Valiant guarding the bears. And there were fluffy bear cubs and bears fishing for salmon. I had a hunch that there was something behind all this, and it was a big surprise as it came -- incredible stuff that I found.

A_P: How did you go about writing the narration? Did you do that after you edited?

WH: No, while I was editing I was writing and recording right away. You don't have time when you edit a film of one hour and 45 minutes. We wanted to submit it to the Sundance Film Festival in time, [but] I always said that I'm not making a film for a festival. If I happen to finish it fast why not show it in a first version to Sundance? I'm good as a storyteller and it comes easy to me, so there's nothing special. Other people edit a film in five days.

A_P: You talk about the thing that surprised you when you were going through the footage. What was that?

WH: Well, it was only partially a surprise, but the intensity of the footage was unexpected. It was always clear to me that it wouldn't be a film on wild nature, that it would be much more a film on our nature. Looking deep into every human being is an abyss and you get vertigo looking into it, and of course, Treadwell is a very complex character full of doubts and self-aggrandizement. Full of demons that haunt him and exhilaration and swings in mood, and being almost paranoid for moments and being very sane and very clear at others.

A_P: In the film, you say that your view on nature is very different from Treadwell's.

WH: Sure, and I have an ongoing argument throughout the course of the film.

A_P: Do you think that it was inevitable that he was going to be killed by bears, or do you think that it was the result of some carelessness at just that one time?

WH: No, I think it was not carelessness at one specific time. He was simply too close to the bears for too long a period of time. I believe that the National Park Service set up some rules for human beings that are not just quirky and a caprice of the park service. One of the rules says you have to keep a distance of 100 yards from the bear and 150 yards, minimum, from a female bear with cubs. It is not the right thing to walk up to a very big bear and touch his nose with your finger.

Grizzly bears normally do not kill and attack human beings. It doesn't happen very often. Statistics are clear; since 1903 or so, not more than 12 or 14 people got killed by grizzly bears. Many more people got killed by moose, and about 800 times more Americans got killed by wasps that stung them. The polar bear, of course, is dangerous because he's out for mammals of human size. He eats walrus, whatever. If you step into the perimeter of a polar bear, you better pray for the next helicopter to lift you out of this.

A_P: When you talked to any of Treadwell's friends, did any of them express interest in getting him some mental help?

WH: Well, they probably did not know that he would go down on his hands and knees and woof at the bear and behave like the bear and sing to the bears. But his video camera knew that, and it was an intimate tool that he used. He would set up his tripod, step in front of the camera, and he did not publish it. Apparently, he planned a big movie with him as the rock star Prince Valiant, and of course, I give him credit and give him space for being a big star. And I give him credit for being a grandiose filmmaker. He has some footage of grandiose beauty that we have not seen ever before in our lives.

He was disturbed, and he was partially paranoid in moments, and he was very sane in other moments -- and in depressed moods and wonderful moods. So everything that makes us human beings was right in him.

A_P: He has this self-deception about protecting the bears. Did you sense that there was any element of truth to him "protecting" the bears?

WH: For him, it was probably a truth that he adopted. He probably believed in it. I wouldn't doubt that, but we do not know because we do not have the chance to speak to him anymore. You don't hold out for 13 summers with grizzly bears without having a deep conviction inside of you, whether that conviction is right or wrong doesn't really matter. In the film at the end, it says it does not matter how right or how wrong Treadwell was. There's something much bigger out there.

A_P: So in that time, out of the 13 summers, he's never shared any of that footage with any of his friends?

WH: Oh, sure, he showed some of it and he published it like in the one hour show that I saw, but he apparently wanted to publish it one day and be the big star of a big movie and we know how methodical he was. And sometimes, when he films 15 times, he's very selective. We have take 2, take 5, take 14, and take 15, and he numbers them, but all the rest is erased. So he was already selective. He was pre-editing, he was thinking about a big movie and I think it is a very lucky coincidence that I put his footage into a structure and I made everything that he did productive for a screen. He didn't have that discipline, and of course, I'm extremely lucky that I found these things, and I believe we compliment each other.

A_P: Amie Huguenard is a mysterious character in the film because she's not in the footage and her family refused to work with you.

WH: No, not not work with me. That's the wrong impression. The family held a family council, and they decided that they would not appear in public at all, no matter whether I did something or anyone else did. You come with your radio and try to interview them and the family counsel would point to the same decision. And of course, you respect that. There's no argument. You have to respect it. Treadwell kept hiding her presence and shot maybe only 30 seconds of her out of 100 hours because… it didn't fit into this image of himself as the lonesome eco-warrior out there to protect the bears.

And of course, it is questionable how much do you protect a 1,200 pound grizzly bear by standing three feet away from him? So it probably would have been more productive to wait out there in Hallow Bay and wait for boards and float-planes to land and tell them don't get close to the bears, don't even make an attempt to shoot them because I'm looking over you and what you're doing.

A_P: Amie Huguenard revealed a fearsome effort to fight the bear during the couple's last moments.

WH: The most mysterious thing about all this is that Amie Huguenard, according to Treadwell's diary, was at the point to leave him for good. She was desperate and wanted to return to California. Number one, she had to start a new job, but she called him something like "hellbent on destruction." And now the great mystery is, 'What is going on between men and women?'

At the moment of death, she doesn't run. She stays; she fights a huge bear that is something like 1,000 lbs. and runs as fast as a race horse, and can travel something like 200 kilometers in 24 hours and can drag up a huge moose up a steep mountain. This bear can decapitate with one blow of its paw and can bite you to death with one single crunching bite. And she stays and apparently fights back with a frying pan. It is very mysterious and it, I think, touches a mystery of what is going on between men and women at the deepest level. It speaks very much for a division that creation made between men and women.

A_P: The coroner interview scene seemed staged, and he seemed to be performing for you.

WH: Well, the coroner is a good case because he has to appear in court, he has to testify, and his manner is very reduced cold matter-of-fact, get the fact fact fact fact, without emotion. And I said to him, "Frank, you're not Dr. Frank Falco. Frank, we're not in court now. You're not going to testify in court. We're here in a film about a human being. I want to know what did you feel when you saw the remains, 28 lbs. remains of Treadwell, 22 lbs. of Amie Huguenard that were found out there in the field and the rest of both in the stomach of the bear. I want to see a human being who is telling me this. I don't want the coroner testifying in court." And he looked at me and said, "I understood what you mean." And he's quite remarkable and wonderful.

A_P: Your career seems to have taken this path with documentaries and moved away from narratives. Is that a conscious effort?

WH: No, that's not true, because right after Grizzly Man I did yet another film, a science fiction movie, The Wild Blue Yonder, and in a fortnight or so, I'm starting principal photography on a feature film with Christian Bale as the leading man in Thailand.

A_P: Can you talk about that?

WH: No, no…it's just…well, as long as I haven't started photography, there might still be bumps in the road. You never know so…

A_P: Do you think audiences will have more respect for grizzly bears after seeing Grizzly Man?

WH: I don't think that anyone is going to follow Timothy Treadwell's example. It's too obvious, but of course, at the same time, people will see something essential in his mission that he adopted for himself. I believe that anyone who sees the film and sees his pleading for foxes will be impressed. Nobody's ever going to hunt a fox who has seen this film.

New York-based film critic Cole Smithey has reviewed over one thousand films and interviewed such important directors as John Singleton, Paul Schrader and Steven Spielberg, and such notable actors as Robert Downey Jr., Adrien Brody, and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
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