Timothy Treadwell ‘The Grizzly Man’ who thought he could live with bears. Known for his crazy antics. Timothy spent 13 summers camping in Alaska until his eventual demise. Photo taken in the late 90s
I thought the issue was the last time he camped he staying longer than he usually does. And the bear or bears that attacked him were not the ones he came in contact with and were more aggressive.
That's basically what happened. They stayed weeks later than they usually did and it overlapped with when bears started searching for food for their hibernating period which made them more aggressive. The bears who were accustomed to him probably would have been more aggressive during this period, but the newer bears who arrived in the area definitely were.
I heard recently that he had also camped on a path to a local bear fishing spot. It's possible they didn't hunt him for food but he was just in the way between them and their food and they got aggressive because of that.
I've seen this behavior in line at McDonald's.
Wow, I went on a grizzly-esque rampage fueled by hunger one time and people won't shut up about it
The official investigation report states that “a person could not have designed a more dangerous location to set up a camp”.
Which is exactly the place a crazy guy who wants to live with bears would choose to camp.
He knew what he was doing…
The bear they had tracked and found remains inside of was an older bear, one who probably had lost the agility to hunt, so was forced to forage and often got chased off by younger, stronger bears. He was new to the area and was likely desperate for food and, not familiar with Treadwell and seeing an easy meal, attacked him then doubled back for his girlfriend.
When they didn't make their pick-up time a few days later the pilot tried to walk out to their camp but was stalked back to his plane by the same bear, likely protecting his kill. Circling the area from above, the pilot was able to see their decimated camp and report his suspicions to the local authorities.
Responding rescue personell had to shoot a second, healthy bear to defend themselves, and when they returned a day later to collect samples for the investigation, there wasn't enough of that bear left to test on. Thats how desperate these bears were at this point in the season, his girlfriend was terrified of the bears and just wanted to spend time with him. He got both of them and two of his precious bears killed. Stupid prick.
Also, while the audio of the event has never been released, the transcript was. He died first, and the bear drug him of into the bush while she screamed. It came back for her, possibly perceiving her screams as a threat/challenge over its kill.
Honestly, I don't think this post belongs on old school cool. Maybe something like /r/HoldMyBreathingTube
Poor bears.
When the small plane arrived to pick them up the pilot saw the biggest meanest bear he had ever seen sitting in the camp chewing on a human rib cage. So yeah the bear saw them as food. The most amazing part of this predictable incident was the girlfriend who was terrified of the bears attacking the bear with a frying pan because it was killing her boyfriend.
he was just in the way between them and their food and they got aggressive because of that.
Humans do that.
It's called road rage.
Not food, just you're in their way.
You can feel the anger at times from the jackasses around you. They would kill you if they could.
And they do at times.
More or less. The bear would have been hibernating already but hadn't found enough food yet, which makes them more aggressive. It was late season.
And that it was an elderly bear which naturally would have died that season due to an inability to hunt. Humans are a last resort type of meal.
He had also gone out of his way to not appear threatening. Even a hungry, weak bear will almost always avoid attacking a human because they’re not sure how dangerous the human is, and know they can’t effectively defend themselves. But by making the bears think he was harmless, he made himself an easy target once they got desperate enough.
He did defend himself in the end, but he created a situation where the bears thought he was safe to attack, and so they did.
No, it was late in the season, but it wasn't yet time for hibernating.
When the "rescue" crew arrived and found their bodies, they encountered at least 3 different bears, 2 of which they shot.
When they returned several days later to finish the investigation, one of the bears they had killed was so thoroughly eaten by other bears that they couldn't get a sample of stomach contents to test for human DNA.
There were probably a dozen bears still in the area. It wasn't time for hibernation... and the bear that ate him was one he had previously given a name. It just wasn't one that regularly got close to him. It was an older, loner bear.
It was an older bear that was desperate for food and behaving aggressively, and Treadwell recognized that. It seems like he had a death wish.
he had a death wish.
dude wasn't all there and had some unchecked mental issues.
He ultimately did nothing for the science community and is still openly mocked by biologists and sportsmen alike.
Bring up his name or Chris mccandles to any Alaskan and you'll get an earful. Their copy cats are such a pain in the ass for local emergency services and volunteer SAR teams.
His dumb ass also led to the death of a couple of bears too if I remember correctly
Bears and moose are respected in Alaska. Fish and game will do everything they can to avoid disrupting the local ecosystem....
But yeah. They will euthanize bears that attack humans in parks or around trails.
Coastal brown bears are something else. I've known people who have used bear spray to no effect. They're fucking tanks. It's why so many guides and AK locals will pack heat when fishing or camping.
It's why so many guides and AK locals will pack heat when fishing or camping
My uncle used to work on one of the oil pipelines in AK in the 90s and he carried a gold-plated Desert Eagle on him while he was out working on the line. I asked him why that particular gun and he said it had the necessary stopping power to drop a charging bear, and the gold plating prevented the salt spray from the Bearing Sea corroding the firearm - which he learned the hard way when he carried a different hand cannon out there.
That is absolutely hilarious if true. I can only imagine being his coworker working on the line when a bear charges them and this gruff blue collar dude pulls out the mostly gaudy rich druglord pistol imaginable to shoot it.
moose are respected in Alaska.
Fuck those stupid swamp donkeys!
My grandpa used to carry a .357 magnum, iirc, when he'd go camping in Montana to deal with potential bears. He was crazy for going out into those conditions with his heart the way it was, but he wasn't crazy enough to fuck with bears.
This is so weird to me. Like, cool, buddy (Mcandless) went and did his thing way off in the wilderness, it’s a story, and one full of cautionary points.
Neat. In no way does that spur me to want to try/visit any of it. I guess if a monument has been publicly approved and is accessible, a person might not mind checking it out for a moment. Beyond that… man, I read Hatchet and Lost in the Barrens and My Side of the Mountain. No thanks.
Mccandless was a rich Cali hipster who thought he could just wing it in sub arctic conditions. He should have listened to the locals that told him he was going to get himself killed.
No experience. No arctic gear. Tried to take down moose with a Vermont rifle, etc.
Ultimately died miles from a cable bridge and a ranger station because he brought a road map instead of a proper topographical map of the area.
According to some newer looks into the case, McCandles basically spent his adult life trying to distance himself from an abusive/volatile home life. He may have also had some significant mental health issues. Doesn't make what he did any less stupid, but it is quite possible he'd had a death wish for years.
You are correct. It was an older bear that was not one of the bears who knew him. It was starving and they had stayed longer than they usually did. They recognized the danger and had planned to leave the next morning, but unfortunately, they were not able to.
It was this mixed with the bear he didn’t recognize having severe dental issues. Researchers found during the field autopsy there was bad wear on bears teeth that made it harder for the bear to eat its usual food and iirc it was after hibernation season or possibly going into it which would also kinda drive the bears to be more competitive for food.
What’s also crazy is Tim says this in the doc, he points out the bear he doesn’t recognize and states the bear doesn’t look well and that those are the bears to watch for as there more likely to attack people.
(This was also the case for the pair of killer lions in Africa as well, they had horrible dental issues making normal prey and competition impossible)
That's how it goes with pretty much any predator. Once they get old and their teeth start going bad they learn real quick how much easier a human is to take down compared to an elk or something.
Yes, but man eaters are still comparatively rare among large predators.
If illness and infirmity turned large predators consistently into man eaters then you'd have a lot more Tsavo's.. The fact of the matter is that predator's are incredibly wary of us outside of a handful of notable exceptions.
We can go back and forth on animal sapience, but 20,000 years of the Anthropocene has taught them we're not as easy prey as we look.
Yes there’s a really good National Parks After Dark podcast episode on both Timothy and the Tsavo lions (separate episodes) but give a lot of context. Like Timothy refusing to store food properly, refusing bear mace ‘because it makes bears angry’, staying after rangers said it wasn’t safe. Even in the Tsavo lion episode they discussed the dental issue with the lions but also pointed that it’s not common for two male lions to team up like this to stalk and kill humans and displayed other very irregular behaviors.
Same for the tiger in India that killed and ate over 400 people. Bad tooth.
They stayed longer than they should have against the advice of the park rangers. They refused bear mace and did not follow instructions to keep their food elevated/away from camp. Timothy thought he knew better than the rangers and other professionals; he thought he had this ultra special relationship with bears and spent most of his “career” invading the boundaries of wild animals while disregarding all safety measures.
And it cost the bear its life.
Can't stress that point enough: if you love nature/animals, the last thing you want them to do, is get used to your presence. Your cute little Snow White moment is going to drastically increase the likelyhood they'll get too curious around a camp/car/food stash and cause a problem for both parties, or your fellow idiot on the other side of your idiot coin is going to shoot your wannabe pet when it walks right up to them.
If memory serves the bear that he was camping near at the end was very old and thus extremely reckless and territorial
and hungry. It was noticeably skinnier than when it had been seen before.
Yeah, he moved to Kodiak Island, which iirc was facing drought conditions, and he was trying to damn a stream so the bears would have more water. There were certain hostile bears that weren't interested in his schtick. Then, he either missed the plane or stayed longer to work on the waterfall.
And then the rest of it played out.
He should've stayed in his original spot.
He died in Katmai
The helicopter pilot says as much.
I think the only reason that Treadwell lasted as long in the game as he did, was that the bears probably thought there was something wrong with him, like he was mentally retarded or something. That bear, I think, that day, decided that he had either had enough of Tim Treadwell or that something clicked in that bear's head that he thought 'Hey, you know, he might be good to eat.'
The bear that ate him was the old asshole who didn't give a shit lol.
Old Bear: "The fuck is that hairless runt doing?"
Regular Bear: "oh that's just the local human, kinda dumb but he leaves us alone"
Old Bear: "he's in my spot"
Regular Bear: "cmon he's harmless, doesn't even have claws"
Old bear: "back in my day we used to steal their Pick-a-nick baskets and dragged them out of their tents! I'll show you whipper snappers how it's done!"
back in my day we used to steal their Pick-a-nick basket
😂
Is this the guy that they have a sound recording of him being eaten that was never released?
Wonder how many clicks he would have gotten if tik tok was around back then.
It was more that another group of bears moved into the area where he was, and those were the ones who killed him. The ones he had been "hanging out" with were generally OK with him.
Respect to Werner Herzog for making the brilliant film
Respect to Werner Herzog for making many, many brilliant films.
Respect to Werner Herzog for having the most incredible selection of words in his films and having impeccable delivery on top of that. He's just....man, I could listen to him all day lol
I see the jungle as being full of obscenity. Nature here is vile and base. The trees here are in misery, the birds are in misery. I don’t think they sing, they just screech in pain… It’s an unfinished country. It’s still prehistorical. The only thing that’s lacking here is the dinosaurs. It’s like a curse weighing on an entire landscape. And whoever goes too deep into it has his share of that curse. It’s a land that God, if he exists, has created in anger. It’s the only land where creation is still unfinished. Taking a close look at what’s around us, there is some sort of harmony. It’s the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. And we in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle, we in comparison to that enormous articulation, we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban novel, a cheap novel. And we have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication, overwhelming growth and overwhelming lack of order. Even the stars up here in the sky look like a mess. There’s no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted with this idea that there’s no real harmony as we have conceived it. But when I say this, I say this full of admiration for the jungle. It’s not that I hate it, I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment.
Well, he did spend quite a bit of time in the jungle willing Aguirre Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo into existence against all odds and good sense. I think he's entitled to an opinion!
The behind the scenes stories of Fitzcarraldo are insane.
Same for Aguirre, iirc at one point he threatened to kill Klaus Kinski over his behavior, and he maintains that he really meant it.
IIRC He was going to shoot kinski than himself. And when they were filming Fitzcarraldo, there were tribesmen who offered to kill kinski for him because Klaus was such a piece of shit,
His memoir is Every Man for Himself and God Against All
I've dwelt among the humans. Their entire culture is built around their penises. It's funny to say they are small, it's funny to say they are big. I've been at parties, where humans have held bottles, pencils, thermoses in front of themselves and called out "hey look at me! I'm Mr. so and so dick." "I've got such and such for a penis." I never saw it fail to get a laugh.
Earth. A cradle for unimaginable beauty and staggering wonder. Incomprehensible, overwhelming, this planet mocks our feeble power to describe it. Yes, to truly appreciate the astounding grandeur of this planet, sometimes you must defile it. Behold the defiler. His character is vile, base, and depraved. Once a proud talk show host, he has been driven by a changing ecosystem to a drier and harsher climate... the weekly podcast. Here, without the nourishment of his studio audience, this clown with dull, tiny eyes, the eyes of a crudely painted doll, is forced to feed on that meagerest of morsels, the random call-in fan. Unhinged by the feral scent of their mild enthusiasm, he scavenges in distant lands uninvited, fueled by a bottomless hunger for recognition and the occasional selfie.
I just read this in Herzog’s voice lol.
I would like to see the baby.
Get his autobiography, read by himself. It's wild.
Respect to Werner Herzog for cannonically trying to save us from both Baby Yoda and the Madagascar Penguins.
Respect to Werner Herzog for voicing an alien named "Shrimply Pibbles" in Rick & Morty.
I can’t think of the word “unimaginable” without my inner monologue saying it with his voice and inflection
“I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility, and murder”
Most people say they want Morgan Freeman narrating their lives. Fuck that. Only Werner Herzog could accurately narrate my life
Coolest accent and vocabulary ever!
Hearing him just rip into chickens for being stupid is my favorite Herzog moments. My second is Herzog absolutely laying into a penguin who's just running towards a glacier but talking like the little guy has doomed the whole world and by extension himself
“Here Comes Honey BooBoo” documentary when?
When I see the Honeybooboo family, I see the decadence that will the downfall of western civilization. In their bickering and plotting I see the death of the Roman Empire, in their country colloquialisms the ignorance of the Dark Ages. When they waddle too and fro in their lumbering excess, I imagine a great horde of Mongolian riders over the Georgian hills, ready to loot and plunder the weak and broken kingdom of Mama June. They stand against the natural order: the fat and slow prosper, mediocrity is renewed season after season, their sugar-derived death delayed through modern medicine they are too selfish to be grateful for. But by understanding the "Honeybooboo", the "Mama June", the "Sugar Bear" and various other June grotesqueries do we finally understand that there is no natural law left, that we have killed it and replaced it with the jabbering of an inbred Georgian family.
A friend of mine had him randomly sit next to him on a flight and when the attendant came over to ask if they wanted anything to drink Herzog half-yelled in his Herzog voice, “APPLE JUUUUUICE.” And that is my favorite thing and I think of it often.
Also a fun actor. My favorite was his brief role on Parks and Recreation.
I don't want to attract a bunch of high IQ people with this comment but his few lines on Rick and Morty were great in that episode.
Respect to Werner Herzog for following through with his bet and eating his own shoe.
"It was not a significant bullet"
-- Herzog after getting shot
That guy is just awesome.
“And what haunts me, is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature.
To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears. And this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored interest in food. But for Timothy Treadwell, this bear was a friend, a savior.”
Probably because the bear is a wild animal , and you can never truly make friends with a wild animal. He was under some delusion that he had some type of connection with the bears ,which he didn't, and he and his girlfriend paid the price for that delusion. Camping out with bears on a regular basis does not afford you some type of protection from a hungry bear.
On the one hand, the bears he "knew" left the area for autumn/winter. The one that ate him and his girlfriend was a stranger. However, that doesn't mean the ones he "knew", named and featured in his videos couldn't also kill them both. The Parks Service hated him for violating park policy by making the wild grizzlies feel too confident being around people. Grizzlies usually shy away from people.
Seems like he made friends with that fox though.
What’s annoying about THAT is that you can’t tell me he wasn’t feeding that fox off camera to gain its friendship and trust. There’s no way it would just become friends with him like that for no reason and Timothy showed that he had no problem with interfering with nature if it meant he could be the hero of the animals. So now those foxes are accustomed to human and could easily get hunted for their fur. Good job Timothy! 🙄 Sorry, this is fresh in my mind because I just watched this doc last night and he was infuriating to watch. The Park Rangers would try to get him to step off and follow rules and the dude would tantrum as if he knew better. Ugh. That fox was totally gorgeous though.
Anthropomorphism can be dangerous.
I have never seen the film, but I have only seen the clip of Werner listening to the audio of the attack, then the look in his eyes. And when he takes off the headphones, he tells the person related to Timothy (I forget whom it was) to destroy the tape and for her to never listen to it and to never let a single person listen to it.
Knowing he was shook like that has stayed with me.
Yeah, that was one of the most powerful scenes in the documentary. Herzog taking his headphones off and saying 'You must never listen to this.'
Likely because the guy was being eaten alive. I guess that's the point, though.
Not just Treadwell. His girlfriend Amie Huguenard was with him.
Need to point out Treadmill stupidly stayed in bear country after the summer season when the bears were getting hungry and convinced her to stay with him.
Need to point out Treadmill stupidly stayed in bear country after the summer season when the bears were getting hungry and convinced her to stay with him.
Not only that, he set up camp on a fucking known bear trail. His hubris/delusion was beyond compare.
I know she made her choices, but I feel so bad for Amie, especially because she had her doubts about camping out there. Can you imagine seeing/hearing your boyfriend get eaten alive by a 400 lb beast and then see it coming for you, deep in the middle of nowhere where nobody on Earth can help you? Fuck all of that.
Yeah, I read that elsewhere in the thread. Crazy.
There was a woman who called her mom on the phone several times while being eaten alive byna bear. They released the audio. If it was anything like that i can imagine why.
Edit : for people who don't have reading comprehension im not talking about treadwell. There was a woman, not treadwells gf. As i said in the first 4 words.
I've heard that story before but had read it that it was made up. I never knew that the audio was released.
Bears don't rush when they eat people. They just hold them down work their way through the meat.
It was his ex-girlfriend and business partner.
I was just wondering if this was the guy that they have on tape being eaten, but only a few have heard. Like the Steve Irwin video. No need for it to be public.
Terri had that footage destroyed.
As far as I know only Terri and one other person (Steve's best mate) saw it.
I'm glad it's not out there.
I didn't know that about the Irwin vid, but I'm happy to hear it. His son is carrying on his legacy in a way that can only be described as inspirational. Love his Instagram vids.
Both his kids are doing damn fine work following in his footsteps, imo
You are absolutely correct. Steve’s death is the only celebrity death I’ve ever really felt personally. It’s truly wonderful seeing Terri, Robert, and Bindi carry on his legacy in such a tremendous way.
His daughter as well is carrying on his legacy
Was that just an audio or was it video too?
With the bear attack.
Just the audio. Tim left the cap on the lens when he hit record in a panic.
Oh geez.
Honestly for the best, after seeing Wener Herzog listen to it, it was likely absolutely horrific.
Fun fact - grizzly bears are omnivores and top of their food chain. They don't have the quick kill instinct of big cats who are concerned about attracting unwanted attention to their kill. What this means is that a grizzly bear can and will eat you alive in a very literal sense of the word, zero fucks given. What sucks about this bear whisperer bro, who pretty much fucked around and found out, is that he also had his GF with him on meet the bears camping trip, and she got eaten as well.
Tangential to the above, the "man or bear" TikTok thing is unintentionally hilarious.
From my understanding she initially got away but went back to try to help and was killed. This bear was also old with really fucked up teeth, so it would not have been a quick experience.
And not sharing the audio where this idiot got eaten by a bear.
“We hauled away four garbage bags full of people”. That’s the line that always stuck with me
And him saying “no, bad bear!” As he is being mauled to death.
The audio that’s floating around is a fake.
Wait I thought the official audio was never released?!
It wasn’t. Apparently the audio that was floating around was a fake, and I listened to it years ago and was traumatized. Turns out I was traumatized by a fake all these years.
context? im confused?
is this from the documentary? reading comments i realize he died… but “four bags of people? did a whole crew die???
Treadwell and his girlfriend were mauled and eaten alive. Their remains were strewn everywhere.
okay so two people, thank you for the info
i was having trouble converting bags of people into number of bodies
You made me read this with my own eyes 🤢🤢🤮
I was so excited to see this film when it first released. I figured "wow this guy must have some great insight into grizzly bears. 13 years of study, this is gonna be huge"
Then I watch it and it's him naming the bears " I call this one Mr fuzzy britches, and that ones grumpy gus" then he weeps over a fox stealing his baseball cap, and calls himself a samurai.
So you just watch a mentally disturbed persons videos of being homeless in the Alaskan wilderness pretty much.
It’s like if Michael Scott were real and just flew to Alaska to camp with bears. What great contributions to science that would make. That’s basically what happened here lol.
The movie's basically a dark comedy about hubris of the man. The premise in itself is сomedic - the guy claims he's the chosen one with unfathomable amounts of knowledge and control over bears, except it turns out the bears were just well-fed and the minute fish wasn't in oversupply he gets eaten. The thing that everyone told him would happen happens.
My favorite part of the film is the guy talking about what a dumbass Treadwell was.
He was also trying to shoot a sort of documentary about it, which became most of the documentary made after their deaths. I can't quite be sure how much of his weird behavior in his footage was being dramatic for the camera versus genuinely how he was and thought. At the very least, he was taking way more risks once he brought in the cameras
This was more than a decade before internet fame was invented and everyone started competing to do really, really stupid stuff on camera. Dude was ahead of his time there
then he weeps over a fox stealing his baseball cap, and calls himself a samurai.
Funniest thing I've read all month
“You know, Lloyd, just when I think you couldn't possibly be any dumber, you go and do something like this... and totally redeem yourself!”
Pretty sure he gets 100 miles to the gallon on that hog.
gotta love that this just evolved into dumb and dumber quotes, lol.
Porkchop sandwiches! I loved that GI Joe.
God that smelled good
You’ll have to excuse my friend he’s a little slow… the town is back that way.
I'm gonna hang by the bar. Put out the vibe.
Nice set of hooters you got there.
You’re all beautiful people
That John Denver is full of shit man
Tic tac sir?
Mmmm Aspen Alaska, beaaaautiful
What’s the matter? Little tense about the flight?
Killed him AND his girlfriend at the time. She wanted to leave but he kept trying to be the “bear whisperer” but then a new bear that didn’t get the memo came and the rest is history, although apparently there is a surviving tape recording of part of the attack.
RIP Amie Huguenard. Awful everything.
Moderator removed comment
13d
He needed, and I mean NEEDED to believe he was special.
Nature does not think we are special. We are nothing more than specks of dust in an ever changing universe.
We can die in an instant and nature will not weep. Respect nature, it is powerful and will fuck you up.
his girlfriend at the time
Oh, did they like break up afterwards?
It was destroyed. The only people that listened were the ones in the doc. The ones you’ve seen or heard are fake
Will never forget one of my classmates convincing our biology teacher to let us watch Grizzly Man after a test one day in 10th grade. It was her first year teaching and she reluctantly agreed, I will never forget the look of horror on her face when Timothy started yelling something like “this is the FUCKING one!!” and she immediately shut the TV off lol. Lost all movie privileges after that day unfortunately
More than it being about Treadwell or the bears, I saw Herzog's documentary as a very disturbing chronicle of a man's descent into madness. You can see it happen as the movie progresses.
If you watch the doc about him it becomes clear the guy was a severely depressed, isolated person who meant well but lost sight of reality. Poor guy.
My favorite moment that really sums the whole thing up is when he's ranting about the airplanes flying over, saying they're poachers and that the plane noise is disturbing/distressing the bears. Then comes the Herzog voiceover about how the land where he was is a bear sanctuary and the flyovers are aid workers who are checking on the health of the bears.
My favorite moment that sums it up was the bit at the start when the guy says the bears that were familiar with Timothy probably left him alone because they thought he was mentally retarded.
Thatt stuck with me too. They said animals can tell when someone is behaving strangely. Which makes sense, we see it in dogs and cats and even ourselves all the time. The combination of being weird and harmless caused the bears to tolerate more than they normally would have.
He also held onto a false belief that bears were not as dangerous as they are made out to be and that he can bridge that gap in nature.
I get that he wanted bears to be cuddly, and he never said they were safe, but the image he was trying to portray of bears just doesn’t respect reality.
He also held onto a false belief that bears were not as dangerous as they are made out to be and that he can bridge that gap in nature.
I know this is a commonly held belief, but having recently rewatched Herzog's documentary.. I'm not sure? Tim mentions numerous times in his own private recordings that he could die, and in fact that death was likely.
Some of it is machismo. Him playing up for the camera as this kind of action wildlife photographer as Herzog pointed out, but at other times he seems much more introspective.
It's juxtaposed by the kind of child like interactions he'd have with the bears, but between the aforementioned musings and his conversation about his death being more helpful to the bears than his life? I think he knew what he faced.
If not fren then why fren shaped
Good to know that’s a career option
I thought failing to get gig as Woody in Cheers was an interesting "what if" fact in the documentary. Apparently, not getting that job sent him spiraling off in the wrong direction.
In other words - what if he got the job rather than Woody Harrelson (which obviously was a huge career milestone for him)?
then woody harrelson wouldve bee eaten by a bear duh
I’ve written essays on this doc and I do not remember the Cheers thing at all wth
Tbf though the only part that sticks out to me (other than the obvious tape listening scene), is Timothy going off on a bear because she kept eating her cubs (me and one of my classmates even had an inside joke about “Melissa eating all of her fucking babies!”)
The father mentioned that that's when he started spiralling, doing loads of drugs, etc.
He speaks exactly like the born again Christians I've met. That weird mix of immature and "knowing" conviction.
Known for his crazy antics
I think he's better known for getting eaten by bears.
I’ve photographed grizzlies in Katmai for a cumulative total of about 8 weeks. I’ve been flown by the pilot who found his body, and my bear guide knew him well too.
Treadwell was hated because he chased off bear viewing tours. He thought the bears were “his”. He once tried negotiating peace with my guide and wore a suit to the discussion which struck everybody as bizarre.
Treadwell’s big mistake wasn’t getting close to bears. That’s what photographers do every summer in Katmai.
His mistake was camping on an active bear trail in fall, during hyperphagia, when bears eat anything in sight. Making matters worse, he didn’t store his food away from his camp on the bear trail. And finally, when he saw the bear on his food, he confronted the bear and attempted to intimidate it. Those are all poor decisions.
But who gets more hate, him or Christopher McCandless (Into the Wild)? I think both get criticized for their deaths, but I feel McCandless gets more hate (probably because some felt inspired by what he did, while few have been motivated to do what Treadwell did).
McCandless gets more hate. And deservedly so!He is the patron saint of a certain type of obnoxious PNW bro. It is absolutely tragic that young people have died trying to get to that goofy clown bus. I’m pleased they’ve gotten rid of it.
I feel like Grizzly Man is almost the antidote. No Holden Caulfield angst filled 20 year old wants to live and die like Treadwell. He is weird, he’s offputting, he’s pitiful… but it’s a cautionary tale. Herzog nailed it here imo
If dude woulda called it after 12 years he’d be touring, rich, and the Steve Irwin of Bears. But that 13th season….
They're working on a documentary where a depressed guy goes and camps with bears for almost half his life before he dies by getting eaten alive by those same bears. It's called "13 Seasons Why"
It never occurred to me that a Homo sapien might aspire to be a “bear whisperer”. What’s next? A guy who gossips with crocodiles?
Timothy wasn’t cool, he was a lunatic that got both himself and his girlfriend eaten alive by a bear.
unfortunately r/oldschooldipshitbestknownforbeingeatenbybears never came back after the API protests
I would argue that he's known not for his crazy antics, but rather for getting eating by a grizzly bear.
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13d
This guy was straight-up strange. Before the documentary, he came to speak at my college class (Art school!). One thing the documentary did not really cover, but was from his own words to our class was how he started this whole "living with the bears". The dude was coming down from a serious coke binge in LA and was totally whacked out and just pointed his car north and did a drug-induced marathon run to AK. He was basically detoxing by the time he got to Alaska. This was his state of mind when he found the pamphlet on the bears and well..........Timothy was going to save the bears. Don't do heavy drugs.
Can someone photoshop the book to say “How not to get eaten by bears”?
The jackass got another person and two bears killed because of his stupidity. This is in no way "cool."
Access to mental health aid is cool. Buddy really coulda used some.
Dude was delusional, he killed himself and his girlfriend due to hubris. The helicopter pilot seeing his severed hand with his watch still attached to it is such a a crazy image burnt into my brain.
“… garbage bags full of people out of that bear…”
That post-interview with some guy has lived rent free in my head for almost 20 years.
Sorry but this dude was not fucking cool. Watch the documentary. He knew damn well the bears wanted nothing to do with him. There were a few shots of the bears tolerating him at best.
Before the one that killed him did it, it charged at him. Timothy knew he was in danger and still told his girlfriend to come out there where she got murdered too.
The only friend he had on the entire planet was that absolute wack job of a woman that forced herself to say she loved him during the documentary. Even the pilot that dropped him off and picked him up wasn’t keen on him, just acknowledged he was a decent dude.
Treadwell only proved one thing with this documentary, and it’s to stay the fuck away from bears. I don’t have any sympathy for people that fucking stupid.
Narrator: He, in fact, did not tread well.
He picked his own demise, but the risk he put his girlfriend in is unforgivable. I feel so bad for her. Not so much for him.
This guy won the Darwin award
Got his girlfriend eaten too.
Live by the bear, die by the bear.
Why are there so many people who get eaten by bears because they were fucking around with bears?
Was he killed in a shark attack?
Yes, when a shark-slinging bear attacked him.
I'm pretty sure it was a bear-slinging landshark
Jeeez, what's 'cool' about a mentally disturbed guy who thought he could live among Grizzlys?!
His story did fuck me up thoroughly and I wish I never heard it.
Treadwell was a moron who got bears, and his gf, killed by being a moron.
End of story.
When you watch the documentary about him it seems like even the bears were weirded out by him and left him alone, until they didn't.