I'm out in the prime cut
of the big green.
Behind me is Ed and Rowdy, members
of an up-and-coming subadult gang.
They're challenging everything, including me.
Goes with the territory.
If I show weakness,
if I retreat,
I may be hurt,
I may be killed.
I must hold my own
if I'm gonna stay within this land.
For once there is weakness,
they will exploit it, they will take me out,
they will decapitate me,
they will chop me into bits and pieces.
I'm dead.
But so far, I persevere.
Persevere.
Most times
I'm a kind warrior out here.
Most times, I am gentle,
I am like a flower,
I'm like... I'm like
a fly on the wall,
observing, noncommittal,
noninvasive in any way.
Occasionally I am challenged.
And in that case,
the kind warrior must,
must, must become a samurai.
Must become so,
so formidable,
so fearless of death,
so strong
that he will win, he will win.
Even the bears will believe
that you are more powerful.
And in a sense
you must be more powerful
if you are to survive in this land
with the bear.
No one knew that.
No one ever friggin' knew
that there are times when my life
is on the precipice of death
and that these bears can bite,
they can kill.
And if I am weak,
I go down.
I love them with all my heart.
I will protect them.
I will die for them, but I will not die
at their claws and paws.
I will fight. I will be strong.
I'll be one of them.
I will be... the master.
But still a kind warrior.
Love you, Rowdy.
Give it to me, baby.
That's what I'm talkin' about.
That's what I'm talkin' about.
That's what I'm talkin' about.
I can smell death
all over my fingers.
All these majestic creatures were filmed
by Timothy Treadwell
who lived among wild grizzlies
for 13 summers.
He went to remote areas
of the Alaskan peninsula
believing that
he was needed there
to protect these animals
and educate the public.
During his last five years
out there,
he took along a video camera
and shot over 100 hours
of footage.
What Treadwell intended was to show
these bears in their natural habitat.
Having myself filmed
in the wilderness of jungles,
I found that beyond
the wildlife film,
in his material lay
dormant a story
of astonishing beauty
and depth.
I discovered a film
of human ecstasies
and darkest inner turmoil.
As if there was
a desire in him
to leave the confinements
of his humanness
and bond with the bears,
Treadwell reached out,
seeking a primordial encounter.
But in doing so, he crossed
an invisible borderline.
Go back and play.
Go ahead back. Go back.
Go back.
This is a subadult.
And this is what happens to them.
They work together,
and they get really powerful.
As you can see,
I'm just feet away.
You just relax.
You just relax.
He's now moving away from me.
I've now proven myself as being able to hold
my ground and therefore earning their respect.
This is Rowdy, the bear.
And he's rowdy.
He's gettin' bigger.
Knew him from... He was a little dot
a couple of years ago.
He's gettin' to be a big boy.
Anyway, we're doing just fine.
But that was a challenge,
and you have to remain cool
in the challenge, in the moment.
If you don't, you're dead.
They can kill. They can bite.
They can decapitate.
Excuse me. Hey.
Hey!
It's okay, it's okay. It's okay.
I didn't mean to get in your way.
Wow. It's okay.
You're the boss.
Nice job. Wow! Nice job.
I gotta think, he was over ten-feet high,
don't you?
He's a big bear!
He's a big bear!
A very big bear! Wow!
Anyway, he's over here
rub-a-dub-dubbing.
He's a big bear!
The excitement Treadwell felt
connected him immediately
with children.
In his campaign
to create awareness,
he reached thousands and thousands
of school children
who would remember
his fabulous storytelling
as one of the highlights
of their school years.
He took his mission
so seriously
that he never solicited for a fee.
Over time, he reached the status
of a national celebrity.
Timothy Treadwell is crazy
about grizzly bears.
How crazy? Sometimes...
It was as if he had become a star
by virtue of his own invention.
I would be within
the physical presence of bears
for months at a time.
This is... crazy.
This is nuts.
These are the most dangerous animals
on the face of the earth.
- Well...
- And you want to go
and put yourself in harm's way
I think they've been misunderstood.
How can I believe that if you are
about to be killed by a bear,
that you wouldn't say, "I made a mistake.
I'd like to have a gun"?
I would never, ever kill a bear
in defense of my own life.
Would not go into a bear's home
and kill a bear.
One day, I came home
and I was sitting on my patio.
My wife was in the bedroom
with the TV on.
And I heard her scream.
And I thought
she'd fallen or something.
I came in and she was sitting
on the edge of the bed,
staring at the television.
I looked at the television,
and I saw Timmy's face.
I hadn't heard the sound
or the news yet,
but I knew just by seeing
Timmy's face on TV
and hearing
my wife's reaction,
that the worst had happened.
Not necessarily a surprise,
but... the worst.
I never have days
when I grieve for Timmy
as I have with other friends
who have died.
They feel dead.
Timmy doesn't feel dead.
This is the last photo
of Timothy Treadwell.
It was taken at the beginning
of his 13th summer
in the wilds of Alaska.
With him is Amie Huguenard,
who would die by his side.
The man who took the photo
was Willy Fulton,
a close friend of Timothy's,
and the pilot
who would bring him to this remote part
of the Alaskan peninsula.
Treadwell saw himself
as the guardian of this land
and stylized himself
as Prince Valiant,
fighting the bad guys with their schemes
to do harm to the bears.
But all this land is
a federally protected reserve,
part of Katmai National Park.
This big plain,
Treadwell called "The Sanctuary."
Here he would spend
the early summer months
before moving along
some 35 miles
to this densely overgrown area
which he called
"The Grizzly Maze"
where he would observe
the late summer salmon run.
It was here that Fulton
would pick him up in the fall.
On October 6 last year,
this is the spot here at Kaflia Lake
where I pulled in
to pick up Tim and Amie.
Typical day out here.
Rain, foggy, a lot of wind.
It was kinda strange.
Didn't see him, didn't hear anything.
No gear on the beach
or anything.
I tied up, and I started
yelling a little bit.
"Tim! Amie!" And no answer.
I caught a little tiny bit
of movement up on the hill,
so I'm like, it was windy, maybe they
just couldn't hear me or something.
So I decided I'd go up
in the camp,
and see what was going on.
And headed off
up through the alders.
It's kind of a thick trail
up into camp there.
Got about three-quarters
of the way up the hill,
and something just didn't feel right at all,
something seemed strange.
I'm yelling and no answer.
So I turned around
and started coming back down the trail
at a pretty good clip, I guess.
I was kinda... trottin' along.
And as I got in the thickest
part of the alders right here,
as I got near the airplane,
I just happened to turn around.
And I turned around
and looked and...
Pretty nasty-Iooking bear
that I had seen here before
is just sneaking slow,
with his head down.
Just the meanest-Iooking thing
coming through the brush.
So I jumped on the airplane
real quick and untied it.
And took off. Turned around,
flew over camp there.
Just looked down
and saw a human rib cage
that I knew had to be
either Tim or Amie laying there.
And he was just eating that.
And as l...
So I circled around again.
Got really low,
and tried to run him off.
Just over and over again with the airplane.
Every time I would come over,
he'd just start eating faster
and faster and crouch over
this rib cage there.
And right at that time,
I just realized, "Wow!
I was pretty close to gettin' eaten myself"
is what I thought.
And this shot of adrenalin like
I've never had just came over me.
And my throat went...
couldn't breathe.
My face went numb.
My arms and legs went numb.
And then I called back...
back to the office,
and told them what happened out here,
what I thought had happened.
And that we would need some assistance
out here. That we had some problems.
After the Park Service arrived,
then I'm leading them up through the alders.
This is the same trail
that I'd come up the first time.
We got to about right here,
and we just stopped.
We stopped just to take
a look around.
Right then, one guy with us
just yells, "Bear!"
And they all spin around. These gun barrels
come over the top of my head.
Boy, they just start
firing them off.
I ducked down 'cause
they hadn't given me a gun.
I'd look up, and they'd fire
over and over again.
Then I look up when they're done firing
and there's just a cloud of smoke here.
I look over, and the bear
is laying right there.
They're yelling at me,
just don't go near the bear.
I knew he was dead.
He'd been shot in the head
and the neck and everywhere.
He was just laying here
pretty much lifeless.
And this is right where...
where the bear...
I told them at the time, I said,
"This is the bear that killed Tim."
I knew, 'cause that was the same bear
that I had seen down here
looking at me right through
the alder bushes there.
So I knew this was the bear.
I said, "Yep, that'll be the one."
That wound up being the bear
that they found Tim in.
I'm here on camera with Olie, the big old bear.
The big old grumpy bear.
He just took Cracker
out of the creek area.
There's not a lot of fish here
so you can understand him wanting
to have control of the creek.
He's acting like
an alpha male here.
Which, I guess, for the fact that he is
the only male here, he is the alpha male.
At any rate, he's also...
He's a surly bear.
I met him on the path
the other day,
after feeling sorry for him, thinking
that he was a bit thin, a bit gaunt...
And he promptly charged me
with the intent to probably strike.
I know the language
of the bear.
I was able to deter him from doing that,
and I'm fine.
But I will tell you something.
It is the old bear, one who is struggling
for survival,
and an aggressive one at that,
who is the one
that you must be very careful of.
For these are the bears,
that on occasion,
do, for survival,
kill and eat humans.
Could Olie, the big old bear,
possibly kill and eat Timothy Treadwell?
What do you think, Olie?
I think if you were weak around him,
you're going down his gullet,
going down the pipe.
Right up top of the hill here
is where we found
what was left of Tim's body...
his head and a little bit of backbone.
And we found
a hand, arm,
wristwatch still on the arm.
I remember the watch.
Shoot, I can remember the watch.
And here's a guy
that used to dive in the lake down here
naked to scare the airplanes away.
And here I'm finding his watch
and arm on top of the hill.
And here's about all that's left
of the bear that killed him.
A few pieces of rib bone.
This bear was shot,
and drug off and eaten
by other bears here,
right in this area.
The tough thing out of all this is Tim would
have never wanted to see any bears killed.
Even if they had killed him,
he would've...
He would've been happy
if nobody found him.
Nobody found any remains.
Nobody found his camp or anything.
He would've been
perfectly content.
He definitely lived
on the edge. But he...
He was a little smarter than everyone
gave him credit for.
He made it out here a long time
before they caught up with him.
And actually the bear
that wound up killing him
was just a dirty rotten bear
that he didn't like anyway.
He wanted to be friends with,
but never happened.
I want to introduce you to one of the key
role players in this year's expedition.
The bear's name is The Grinch.
The Grinch has come on
to be one of the more
frequent bears
here in the Grizzly Maze.
The Grinch is a female
of about five years of age.
Oh, hi, Grinch. Hi.
And she has kind of
an aggressive attitude.
Hi.
If I turn around too much, she'll bite me.
It's okay. Hi. How are you?
How are you?
Don't you do that.
Don't you do that!
Back off!
Don't do it.
It's okay. I love you.
I love you. I love you.
I love you.
I love you. I'm sorry.
I'm Sam Egli.
I was called out as a helicopter pilot
to assist on the cleanup after
the Treadwell tragedy of last winter.
I was in there the morning
the Fish and Game officers
were there examining
the bear that had done
the killing.
The bear was all cut open.
It was full of people.
It was full of clothing. It was...
We hauled away
four garbage bags of people
out of that bear.
Treadwell was, I think,
meaning well, trying to do things
to help the resource of the bears.
But to me
he was acting like...
like he was working with people
wearing bear costumes out there
instead of wild animals.
Those bears are big
and ferocious,
and they come equipped
to kill ya and eat ya.
And that's just what
Treadwell was asking for.
He got what
he was asking for.
He got what he deserved,
in my opinion.
The tragedy of it
was taking the girl with him.
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."
My opinion,
I think Treadwell thought
these bears were big,
scary looking, harmless creatures
that he could go up and pet
and sing to,
- and they would bond
- Look it there!
As children of the universe
or some odd.
I think he had lost sight
of what was really going on.
He wanted to become like the bear.
Perhaps it was religious,
but not in the true sense of religion.
I think perhaps he wanted to
mutate into a wild animal
as he says in this last letter.
He says, "I have to mutually
mutate into a wild animal
to handle the life
I live out here."
I think there's
a religious sense in that
in the sense of connecting so deeply
that you're no longer human.
And that is a religious experience.
Here's another example.
"There are many times that
I feel death is the best option.
My work would be
much more seriously looked at
and possibly make the difference
that in living, I can't do."
I think that was
sort of a paradox for him.
That he felt not worthy enough
to get his message across at times.
And so, maybe,
in the drama of death
his message would be more poignant
and reach out to more people.
But his message stirred
a lot of controversy.
The Gaedes have collected
thousands of angry letters.
I can read you some of...
I picked out three
of these vitriolic hate mails.
They cover the gamut.
"Stereotypical environmentalist.
Just as long as the donations
keep coming,
furthering the antihuman
eco-religion as a noble cause,
who cares about reality?"
And the very idea
that Timothy made a lot of money
doing what he did
is absolutely preposterous, 'cause
he's one of the poorest people we knew.
Another one.
"A bear diet consists
of liberals and Dems,"
meaning Democrats.
"A bear diet consists of liberals and Dems
and wacko environmentalists
that think the spotted owl
is the most important thing in the world.
We need to somehow drastically increase
the number of bears in America,
especially in such key spots
as the Berkeley campus."
I, too, would like to step in here
in his defense,
not as an ecologist,
but as a filmmaker.
He captured such glorious
improvised moments,
the likes of which
the studio directors,
with their union crews,
can never dream of.
Okay.
What are you doing up there?
That's where you're sitting?
There. Go.
Go! Go! Go!
Come on! Come on!
Come on! Run home!
Come on!
Hi.
Hey, you little champion.
Hi. How are you?
You're such a good champion.
I love you. I love you.
Get up there,
and guard that tent.
I'm here with one of my favorite bears.
It's Mr. Chocolate.
Hi, Mr. Chocolate.
He is the star of many people
across the country:
Children, people, adults.
And we're here
in the Grizzly Sanctuary.
But I'm wrapping up my work
in the Grizzly Sanctuary. Why is that?
Because I'm on my way
to the Grizzly Maze
where bears do not have human protection,
but are under human threat.
Bears like Aunt Melissa. Bears like Demon,
Hatchet, Downey and Tabitha.
And it's time for me
to go to protect them.
I wish I could bring
Mr. Chocolate with me.
You'd be great protection there.
He's been with me for over a decade, and he's
been my good friend and I appreciate it.
Thank you, Mr. Chocolate.
I'll see you again next year.
No. I'll see him again at expedition...
end of this expedition.
I'll be back here to join you again.
Back with Mr. Chocolate.
But first, it's off to the exciting
and often dangerous Grizzly Maze.
Now the scene seems to be over.
But as a filmmaker,
sometimes things fall into your lap
which you couldn't expect,
never even dream of.
Hi, Spirit.
There is something like
an inexplicable magic of cinema.
Hi, Spirit.
Well, I'm here with Mr. Chocolate
and Spirit, the fox.
And here comes
some of her pups. Yea!
Here comes
some of her pups.
Hi.
Hi, Spirit.
Hi, Spirit. Hello, baby.
Coming down.
What are you doing to that hat?
Where's that hat going?
Hey, who's stealing that hat?
Let me see that hat.
Ghost, I want that hat.
Man! Ghost is bad.
Ghost, what are you doing
with that hat?
Ghost, that hat
is a very important hat.
Drop it! Hey!
Oh, goddamn it!
I can't believe this!
Ghost!
Ghost, where's that fucking hat?
That hat is so frigging valuable
for this trip.
Ghost, you come back here
with that friggin' hat.
If it's in the den,
I'm gonna fucking explode.
Ghost, where's that hat?
It's not okay for you to steal it.
Oh, man!
Oh, man!
It's a friggin' den.
One of the things I've
heard about Mr. Treadwell,
and you can see
in a lot of his films,
is that he tended
to want to become a bear.
Some people that I've spoken with would
encounter him in the field,
and he would act like a bear,
he would "woof" at them.
He would act in the same way a bear
would when they were surprised.
Why he did this is only known to him.
No one really knows for sure.
But when you spend
a lot of time with bears,
especially when you're in the field
with them day after day,
there's a siren song,
there's a calling
that makes you wanna come in
and spend more time in the world.
Because it is a simpler world.
It is a wonderful thing,
but in fact
it's a harsh world.
It's a different world that bears
live in than we do.
So there is that desire
to get into their world,
but the reality is we never can because
we're very different than they are.
The line between bear and human
has apparently always
been respected
by the native communities
of Alaska.
We visited the curator
of Kodiak's Alutiiq Museum,
which had recently been raided
by tourists out of control.
Somebody wanted it so much,
they cut the paw off.
They stole it from here.
It was quite tragic for us
because it's on loan
and they came in and took it.
And how do you see
Timothy Treadwell's story?
I see it as something that's both...
It's tragic because,
yeah, he died
and his girlfriend died
because he tried to be a bear.
He tried to act like a bear, and for us
on the island, you don't do that.
You don't invade
on their territory.
You...
When you're in their territory,
you know you're there.
And when you're nearby,
you make sure that
they know you're around.
You know, for him to act
like a bear the way he did,
would be...
I don't know.
To me, it was the ultimate
of disrespecting the bear
and what the bear represents.
But he tried to protect the bears,
didn't he?
I think he did more damage
to the bears than he did...
Because when you habituate bears to
humans, they think all humans are safe.
Where I grew up, the bears avoid us
and we avoid them.
They're not habituated to us.
If I look at it from my culture,
Timothy Treadwell crossed a boundary
that we have lived with
for 7,000 years.
It's an unspoken boundary,
an unknown boundary.
But when we know
we've crossed it,
we pay the price.
Jewel, I apologize
that this wristwatch
is still in an evidence bag.
However, I want you to have this watch.
I think that it is important
that you have it.
You knew Timothy for a long time.
My understanding is that you lived together
for three years.
You were very close to him.
Yeah. He was my boyfriend for three years.
He was my boss.
He was a lot of things
to me in 20 years.
I understand that. And that's the reason
I want you to have this.
This really should be yours.
- This watch is still running.
- Oh, wow.
It has been running continuously
since the time that I received it.
This was taken off Timothy's wrist.
Wow! There it is.
It's still running. I can't even believe it.
I can't believe it.
I'm gonna wear it.
And I'm gonna remember him,
and I'm gonna remember Amie.
Can you speak about Amie?
Amie was brave
and Amie was strong.
Amie was my friend
and she was Timothy's friend.
She was his girlfriend, but most important,
she was his friend.
And...
And I believe that
I'm gonna honor their choice.
I'm always gonna respect them for
what they did, and for how they did it.
And for being out there,
and for protecting bears
and living in wild nature.
And living their life to the fullest.
They truly died
doing what they lived for.
Representing Timothy.
And then I'll fill in the rest.
That's the specific number.
- So there it is.
- So there it is.
Full circle. I've got it all.
I can't even believe it.
- Hopefully it will continue to run a long time.
- I think it will.
Very good.
It's the last thing that's left.
Thanks, Franc.
Jewel Palovak,
you were very close
to Timothy Treadwell.
Do you sometimes
feel like his widow?
Do I feel like his widow?
Yeah, you know,
in some ways I do.
I feel like his widow because
everything that he had,
everything that he worked for,
he left to me.
I was his girlfriend.
I was his employee.
I was the person that figured
all the last-minute details out.
You also founded a foundation
with him?
Yeah. We did.
We founded Grizzly People,
whose mission is to protect
and preserve habitat worldwide.
For Treadwell, who had
a natural tendency towards chaos,
Grizzly People served
as his organized platform,
and Jewel was his
most trusted co-combatant.
I met him in a restaurant.
We both worked at this place
called Gulliver's.
It was a prime rib restaurant.
It was huge and theatrical.
Timothy was a squire,
'cause it was set in the time...
It was based
on Gulliver's Travels.
He had a chintzy felt hat
and a cheap plastic apron
and some knickers
and that blond hair
just sticking out.
And me, I would be your English
serving wench for the evening.
You had to toss the salad
with aplomb,
and you had to boil the soup
and serve it to the people.
I had seen Timothy,
and he was kind of fun.
I didn't really know who he was.
And one night, I just wasn't
in the best of moods.
I had a huge table.
A family of people that wanted me
to make it the best dining experience
of their life.
Do it up big. Make the soup big, you know.
Use the vernacular.
There was grandmas and babies
and hairdos and coats.
So I thought, "You know what? I'll make it.
I'll make it big for ya.
I'll make it really big.
You'll never forget this birthday."
So, one of the parts
was you'd take the soup cart,
and you'd light it up with this gas
so that the soup was bubbling and boiling.
You could smell
the deliciousness.
And I decided to make it
really big.
So I trailed a little bit
extra of the lighter fluid
around the polyester cloth,
and I kind of miscalculated
because the soup exploded.
The people screamed,
the fire went everywhere.
So I was called into the office
in the next couple of days.
And who do I see
when I sit down in the office,
waiting like you're in the jail or
you're in the principal's office?
I see Timothy Treadwell.
I was like, "Hey, How are you?
I know I've seen you. I'm Jewel."
He said, "I'm Tim."
I said, "What are you in for?"
He said, "I'm in for walking funny
in the dining room."
He said, "What did you do?"
I said, "I lit the soup cart on fire."
He said, "That was you?"
And you know,
it wasn't love at first sight,
but it was certainly kindred spirits.
Only Timmy is the boss
of all foxes and all bears.
You're their ruler.
Look at that face.
Hey, thanks for being my friend.
This is so good.
Does that feel good?
We patrol the Grizzly Sanctuary together.
How did we meet?
Over a decade ago.
He left his mother and father's side,
promptly peed on my shoes,
pooped on my clothes, that was it.
He was my friend. Timmy, the fox. Yep.
And we watch over things.
And he's the boss.
Takes care of everything.
Yep, yep. He says,
"I love the way you pet."
I think one of the things that's really important
is you can see the bond
that has developed between
this very wild animal
and this very,
fairly wild person.
And you realize
he has this gorgeous fur,
and people are trying
to kill him for it
with steel door traps
and cruel farming practices.
And other people run him down
on horses for sport.
Fox hunting.
We want this to end.
Between Timmy, the fox, this beautiful fox,
and me, we ask the public,
please stop killing and hurting these foxes
and torturing them.
Don't you think?
If they knew how beautiful he was,
and how sweet he was,
they would never hurt him.
Thanks.
Timothy used his camera as a tool
to get his message across.
Sometimes it was very playful.
Do another take here. I fucked up the last
one. Almost fell off the cliff.
I'm a fucking asshole.
Behind me is the Grizzly Sanctuary
and also behind me,
hidden down below in those trees somewhere,
is my camp.
I must stay incognito.
I must hide from the authorities.
I must hide from people
who would harm me.
I must now hide from people
that seek me out
because I've made some sort of,
I don't want to say celebrity,
but they come to Alaska
and hear about Treadwell in the bush
and they want to go find him.
Well, they can't.
I'm hidden down below.
No one knows where I am.
Even I don't know where I am.
That's pretty shitty.
Let's do a really short take here.
But as a filmmaker,
he was methodical.
- Whatever.
- Often repeating takes 15 times.
One more really short,
excellent take.
Let's just really sum it up. Here we go.
This is gonna be the motherfucker.
Behind me is the Grizzly Sanctuary,
and also hidden below is my camp.
For I must now remain hidden from the
authorities, from people who would harm me,
from people who would
seek me out as a story.
My future helping the animals
depends on it.
I must be a spirit
in the wilderness.
With himself as the central character,
he began to craft his own movie,
something way beyond
the wildlife film.
There is going to be a number of takes
I'm gonna do.
These are called
"Wild Timmy Jungle Scenes."
We're gonna do
several takes of each
where I'll do it with a bandanna on,
maybe a bandanna off.
Maybe two different
colored bandannas.
Some without a bandanna,
some with the camera
being held.
I kind of stumbled.
Let's do it again.
So the basic deal is that this stuff
could be cut into a show later on,
but who knows what look I had, whether
I had the black bandanna or no bandanna.
Very rarely the camo one,
but I like the camo look.
Both cameras rolling. Both cameras rolling.
Both cameras rolling!
Sexy green bandanna,
last take of the evening.
I'm on my way to the creek.
I need to get water.
And there's a super-duper low tide.
Full moon tonight, and action.
In his action movie mode,
Treadwell probably did not realize
that seemingly empty moments
had a strange, secret beauty.
Sometimes images themselves
developed their own life,
their own mysterious stardom.
Starsky and Hutch. Over.
Beyond his posings,
the camera was his only
present companion.
It was his instrument to explore
the wilderness around him,
but increasingly
it became something more.
He started to scrutinize
his innermost being,
his demons,
his exhilarations.
Facing the lens of a camera took
on the quality of a confessional.
Covering various years,
the following samples illustrate
the search for himself.
If there... I have no idea
if there's a God.
But if there's a God, God would
be very, very... pleased with me.
If he could just watch me here,
how much I love them,
how much I adore them,
how respectful I am to them.
How I am one of them.
And how the studies they give me,
the photographs, the video...
And take that around
for no charge
to people around the world.
It's good work. I feel good about it.
I feel good about myself doing it.
And I want to continue, and I hope I can.
I really hope I can.
But if not, be warned.
I will die for these animals. I will die for
these animals. I will die for these animals.
Thank you so much
for letting me do this.
Thank you so much for these animals,
for giving me a life.
I had no life.
Now I have a life.
Now, enough of that.
Now let the expedition continue.
It's off to Timmy, the fox.
We've gotta find Banjo.
He's missing!
And that's my story here,
for me, Timothy Treadwell,
the kind warrior.
Can I take it?
I'm trying.
Okay, yeah, I can do it.
Yeah. Why not? Why not?
I've crossed the halfway point.
Government's given me
all they have. So far.
I've stood up to it.
I've had danger in the boat, almost died.
I've almost fallen off a cliff.
Yeah. The danger factor's
about to amp up in the Maze.
The Maze is always
the most dangerous.
Lord, I do not want
to be hurt by a bear.
I do not.
I always cannot understand why girls
don't wanna be with me for a long time,
because I have really
a nice personality.
I'm fun.
I'm very, very good in the... You're not
supposed to say that when you're a guy.
But I know I am.
They know I am.
And...
I don't fight with them,
I'm so passive.
Bit of a patsy!
Is that a turnoff to girls,
to be a patsy?
I mean it's not... it's not
that I'm a total great guy.
I'm a lot of fun
and have a good life going.
I don't know what's going on.
I always wished I was gay.
Would've been a lot easier.
You know?
You can just "bing-bing-bing."
Gay guys have no problem. I mean,
they go to restrooms and truck stops,
and they perform sex.
It's like so easy for 'em and stuff.
But you know what?
Alas, Timothy Treadwell is not gay. Bummer!
I love girls! And girls...
Girls need a lot more...
need a lot more, you know,
finesse and care,
and I like that a bit.
But when it goes bad
and you're alone,
it's like...
Well,
you know, you can't rebound
like you can if you were gay.
I'm sure gay people
have problems too,
but not as much as one goofy straight guy
named Timothy Treadwell.
Anyway, that's my story.
That's my story.
I love you. Look at you.
You're the best little fox.
But how did I come
into this work, Iris?
Did you ever get the story?
I was troubled. I was troubled.
I drank a lot.
Did you know that?
You wouldn't even know what that is.
But I used to drink
to the point of
that I guess I was either gonna die
from it or break free of it.
But nothing, nothing, Iris,
could get me from... to stop drinking.
Nothing! I went to programs.
I tried quitting myself.
I did everything that I could
to try not to drink,
and then I did everything
I could to drink.
And... And it was killing me
until I discovered
this land of bears
and realized that they were in
such great danger
that they needed a caretaker, they needed
someone to look after them.
But not a drunk person.
Not a person messed up.
So I promised the bears
that if I would look over them,
would they please help me
be a better person and
they've become so inspirational,
and living with the foxes too,
that I did, I gave up the drinking.
It was a miracle.
It was an absolute miracle.
And the miracle was animals.
The miracle was animals.
I live here. It's very dangerous.
It's really dangerous.
I run wild with the bears.
I run so wild, so free,
so like a child
with these animals.
It's really cool.
And it's very serious.
I'm here alone,
and when you're all alone
you do get... you get lonely.
Oh, duhl Right?
You get pretty lonely.
Oh, no. I'm gonna do all this stuff because
I'm supposed to be alone.
Oh. Okay.
Part of the mythical character
Treadwell was transforming
himself into
required him to be seen
as being completely alone.
He was mostly alone,
but he did spend time with women
who will here
remain anonymous.
The truth is that
Amie Huguenard
accompanied him for parts
of his last two summers.
A fact which was out of step
with his stylization
as the lone guardian
of the grizzlies.
It's July 26, and I've been dropped off
all alone again here in the Grizzly Maze.
And it's always such a surreal
feeling as the plane takes off.
And it doesn't quite sink
into you just how alone you are.
That for the next
two months or more
you will be alone
in this wild wilderness,
this jungle that the bears
have carved tunnels through.
And that's the Grizzly Maze.
It's July 26.
I hope to survive
and to be able to record
the secret world of the bears.
And come September when people
might come to harm these animals,
I'll look after them,
I'll make sure they're safe.
It is so weird, though,
when it sinks in,
how alone you are.
Amie Huguenard remains
a great unknown of this film.
Her family declined
to appear on camera,
and Amie herself remains hidden
in Treadwell's footage.
In nearly 100 hours
of his video,
she appears
exactly two times.
Here disembarking from the plane
in the year of her death.
We never see her face.
Here it is obscured
by her hands and her hair.
Greetings, children of America.
The second shot that we have
doesn't show her face either.
She remains a mystery,
veiled by a mosquito net,
obscured, unknown.
Only through Treadwell's diaries
do we know that
she was frightened of bears.
The only other hint
we have of her presence
is this shot here of Treadwell.
It is handheld,
and we can only deduct
it must have been Amie
operating the camera.
Timothy Treadwell
and Amie Huguenard's remains
came in this large metal can.
Inside this metal can
was a plastic bag,
one for Timothy, and one for Amie.
I mean, these are human beings.
And the question I ask is first of all:
Who are you, Timothy?
Who are you, Amie?
And what happened to you?
In the case of Timothy and Amie,
what I had were body parts.
Just the visual input of seeing
a detached human being
before my eyes
makes my heart race, makes
the hair stand up on the back of my head.
Particularly in combination
with the contents of a tape,
an audiotape that is the sound portion
of the videotape.
And when I find out
from other investigators
that the shoes neatly placed
at the entrance to a tent,
and the cap left
on a camera so that
the visual part
could not be recorded,
yet the tape is running so that we can
hear the sounds of Amie screaming
and the sounds
of Timothy moaning,
tells me that this event
occurred very, very quickly,
suddenly and unexpectedly.
I clearly can hear her screaming,
"Stop" and "Go away."
Maybe "Run away."
There's a lot of background noise.
Timothy is moaning.
And I hear Amie beating on the top
of this bear's head with a frying pan.
And Timothy is saying,
"Run away. Let go!
Run away. Run away, Amie.
Run away."
Amie had a great deal
of conviction.
She had a great deal of conviction
in this relationship. We know that.
Although in the past,
she was more standoffish.
She didn't get as close
to the bear as Timothy did.
She was more cautious.
However, I know,
that at the moment of death,
when one is being tried
to the maximum of one's ability
to be faithful,
to stick to a situation,
to be loyal, if one can say that,
to Timothy,
she stayed there,
and she fought with Timothy.
She did not run away.
Amie, we know, fought back
for approximately six minutes.
Amie stayed with her lover,
with her partner, with her mate,
and with the bear.
Ultimately she stayed
with the bear in the situation.
This is Timothy's camera.
During the fatal attack,
there was no time
to remove the lens cap.
Jewel Palovak allowed me
to listen to the audio.
I hear rain, and I hear Amie,
"Get away! Get away!
Go away!"
Can you turn it off?
Jewel, you must never
listen to this.
I know, Werner.
I'm never going to.
And you must never look at the photos
I've seen at the coroner's office.
- I will never look at them.
- Yeah.
They said it was bad.
Now you know why
no one's gonna hear it.
I think you, you should not keep it.
You should destroy it.
- Yeah.
- I think that's what you should do.
Okay.
Because it will be the white elephant
in your room all your life.
Here I am at the scene
of the fight.
It looks as if tractors tore
the land up,
raked it, rototilled it,
tossed it about.
There is fur everywhere, and in the camera
foreground excreted waste.
In the middle of the fight
so violent, so upsetting
that Sergeant Brown
went to the bathroom,
did a number two during his fight.
Extremely emotional,
extremely powerful.
And yet, both bears
back in pursuit of Saturn,
including Mickey, who appears
to have gotten the worse for the wear
in the fight between
Sergeant Brown and Mickey
for the right to court Saturn,
the queen of the Grizzly Sanctuary.
Amazing.
Oh, Mickey, I love you. And Mickey's
now the closest bear to Saturn.
Back in like a horse in a race
that does not give up.
We love that bear. Mickey!
We love him! We love him.
But, Mickey,
I've been down that street.
You don't always get the chick you want.
Let me tell you.
It doesn't always often work out.
Hey, he's after my own heart.
He don't give up,
even when it looks shitty.
All right, love you, Mickey.
Love you, Mickey.
I just wanna discuss that fight
with Mickey bear right here.
He's right next to me here
in the Grizzly Sanctuary on the tide fly.
Saturn off to camera left.
Mick, you underestimated Sergeant Brown.
You went in for the head.
He seemed to be rope-a-doping you
like he wasn't that tough.
And then once you
banged into him,
man, he turned out to be
one heck of a rough bear,
a very rough bear.
I was so scared, I almost got sick
to my stomach watching you fight.
Then when he knocked you down
and you were down on your back,
it was terrible,
it was terrible!
I'm not duking it out for any girl like that.
I'm telling you right now.
I'm not duking it out
for any girl, but l...
Well, I've had my troubles
with the girls. Yeah, yeah.
And I'll tell you something.
If Saturn was a female human...
I can just see how beautiful
she is as a bear.
I've always called her the Michelle Pfeiffer
of bears out here.
All right, you lay there.
I'm gonna go off with your girlfriend.
Don't beat me up over it.
I'm cool, I'm cool. I'm respectful.
Things are bad for me
with the human women,
but not so bad that I have
to be hitting on bears yet.
Okay? Okay.
In his diaries,
Treadwell speaks often of the human world
as something foreign.
He made a clear distinction between
the bears and the people's world
which moved further and further
into the distance.
Wild, primordial nature was
where he felt truly at home.
We explored the glacier in the back country
of his Grizzly Sanctuary.
This gigantic complexity
of tumbling ice and abysses
separated Treadwell
from the world out there.
And more so, it seems to me
that this landscape in turmoil
is a metaphor of his soul.
Off there in the distance
is his bay and his campsite
where he battled his demons.
What drove Timothy
into the wild?
We visited his parents
in Florida.
Timothy grew up with
four siblings in Long Island
in a solid middle-class family
where the father worked as the foreman
of a construction team
for a telephone company.
There must have been
an urge to escape
the safety of
his protected environment.
I was moved to find that among
all memorabilia in the house,
his mother was clutching
Timothy's favorite bear.
This has been to Alaska
many times.
I'm sure he loved it
to the end, you know?
It's just... his childhood toy.
Tim's childhood pointed towards
nothing extraordinary.
A normal everyday kid.
Never any trouble in school.
Always a good student.
Not an "A" student,
a "B" student.
And got along great
with kids and animals.
Him and I were extremely connected
to animals in the house.
I think more so
than anybody else.
This squirrel named Willie
became Timothy's best friend.
Teddy bears meant a lot to him.
He seemed to develop into
an all-American boy, handsome,
athletic, full of promise.
He excelled on
his high school swim team.
He went to Bradley University
on a diving scholarship.
I think he started drinking
out there and having,
you know, just hanging out
with the wrong people.
Then he injured his back.
And he ended up
losing his scholarship
and coming back home.
He did attempt to smoke
marijuana in the house.
Yeah, he did.
But I put the kibosh on that.
But obviously he was
doing it elsewhere, so...
He really wanted a new start,
a fresh start.
So when he went out to California,
he was 19 or 20.
He wasn't a young 15 or 16-year-old.
He was of age.
He'd gotten a job just to make money
on the Queen Mary at the gift shop.
He did hire an agent.
He did change his name
to Treadwell to be theatrical.
And it was a family name.
I know he got on
Love Connection
with Chuck Woolery.
I think he got on another show.
There were promises made
that never came true.
And he tested with the actors
to get the bartender job
on Cheers.
And allegedly he came in second
to Woody Harrelson.
How close a second?
I don't know.
But that is what
really destroyed him.
That he did not get
that job on Cheers.
He spiraled down.
Timmy used to body surf out here.
He had a boogie board
with the Union Jack on it.
And he was totally fearless.
The amazing thing about Timmy
was he did...
He had this Prince Valiant haircut.
And he could surf
and go under water,
and yet still that hair would hide
his receding hairline.
It was the most
amazing thing I'd ever seen.
No matter how rough the surf,
you never saw Timmy's forehead.
I don't know how he did that.
How's the hair look?
At some point in Timmy's life,
he had a near fatal overdose.
How he survived it,
I don't know.
He was a tough guy.
But I guess it was
an epiphany for him.
After that he was looking
for a different persona.
I guess that's when
he came up with
where he was from
and his delightful accent.
I never questioned it.
Treadwell's need to invent
a new persona for himself
led him to elaborate
fabrications.
He claimed to be an orphan
from Australia,
and even checked out details
of a small town in the Australian outback
in order to sound convincing.
His accent, though,
remained suspicious.
It almost sounded more Kennedy-esque
than Australian.
After Timmy's death,
people said, "Well, don't you feel
betrayed that he did that?
That he didn't tell you the truth
about his accent or his origins?"
And that never bothered me.
Timmy always amused me.
There's an old saying
on the farm,
"If it doesn't scare the cows,
who cares?"
Well, I don't think
Timmy ever scared the cows,
so who cares?
He was troubled.
I mean, it...
One time he went to a doctor.
They wanted to put him on some kind
of an antidepressant or something
to keep his mood, 'cause his moods
were so up and down.
And he started taking it for a while,
and then he stopped.
He said, "I had to stop."
I said, "Why?"
He said, "Because I can't stop.
I can't have the middle grounds.
I have to have the highs
and the lows.
It's a part of my life,
it's a part of my personality."
He definitely had a dark side.
He was mixed up in drugs which makes you
mixed up in bad people, people with guns.
Timothy always had a sense of justice
that was his own.
So he got into a lot,
a lot of trouble.
I think that...
How dangerous?
How dangerous? I mean...
I don't think he would've ever...
He couldn't have ever killed anybody.
He always kept it in check. One thing
that we did every once in a while
which just seems so bizarre
by now, but it's...
We would go, when we lived in the Valley,
to the Van Nuys courthouse.
We would watch when criminals
were being sentenced.
We would watch people
getting their sentence.
And I think we did it...
I did it just for shock value,
and because it was something
I had never done.
But he did it, I think,
to remind him
if he went to that dark place,
what his life would be.
I'm in love
with my animal friends.
I'm in love with my animal friends!
In love with my animal friends.
I'm very, very troubled.
It's very emotional.
It's probably not cool
even looking like this.
I'm so in love with them, and they're
so f-ed over, which so sucks.
Do you know you're the star
for all the children.
They love you. And I love you so much,
and thank you.
Thank you for being my friend.
Isn't this... so sad?
This is a bumblebee
who expired as it was working
at doing the pollen thing
on this Alaskan fireweed.
And it just is... Just has
really touched me to no end.
It was doing its duty,
it was flying around.
Working busy as a bee,
and it died right there.
It's beautiful, it's sad,
it's tragic.
I love that bee.
Well, the bee moved.
Was it sleeping?
There's your poop.
It just came out of her butt.
I can feel it.
I can feel the poop.
It's warm.
It just came from her butt.
This was just inside of her.
My girl.
I'm touching it.
It's her poop.
It's Wendy's poop.
I know it may seem weird that I touched
her poop, but it was inside of her.
It's what... It's her life!
It's her! And she's
so precious to me.
She gave me Downey.
Downey's... I adore Downey.
Everything about them is perfect.
Perfection belonged to the bears.
But once in a while,
Treadwell came face-to-face
with the harsh reality
of wild nature.
This did not fit into
his sentimentalized view
that everything out there
was good,
and the universe in balance
and in harmony.
Male bears sometimes kill cubs to stop
the females from lactating,
and thus have them ready again
for fornication.
Oh, God!
I love you.
I love you and I
don't understand.
It's a painful world.
Here I differ with Treadwell.
He seemed to ignore the fact that
in nature there are predators.
I believe the common denominator
of the universe is not harmony,
but chaos, hostility and murder.
He wandered too far
from the den.
And the wolves last night
that I heard howling,
screeching in glee
and excitement,
it was over the termination
of one of the babies.
This Expedition 2001
has taken a sad turn,
but it is a real turn.
And I mourn the death
of this gorgeous baby fox.
Good-bye, little fox.
Get out of his eye,
you friggin' fly!
Don't do it when I'm around.
Have some respect, you fucker.
Most disturbing for him
was to find the skull
of a young bear.
In the summer of 2000
came an extended drought.
The creek was so low that for weeks
there was no salmon run,
and starving bears
simply ate their own.
It has been only five, not even six days
since the baby died.
And this is all that's left
of the little tyke.
That's it!
There's nothing else left.
They've eaten everything.
It's so sad.
She was so cute.
Five days and all
that's left is a skull.
This called for desperate measures.
There are fish lining up
about to try to make a run.
And now they have a good reason for going
because I have built them a corridor.
Let's have a look at it.
What I have done is... Have a look.
I've constructed a runway for them,
a navigational trail.
When interference with nature
was not enough,
he had to invoke higher powers.
Oh, live TV.
Live on tape.
Okay, so here's the deal.
Pull this down a little bit.
It's September 20.
It's the year 2000.
It's Expedition 2000.
There has not been a substantial rainfall
for almost two months.
The fish have not run since
about August 2, August 3.
We are now getting our first rain,
but it has just slowed down.
We need at least 2 inches,
I think even 3 inches of rain.
In the last two hours, we're up
a little over.20 inches of rain.
That is not enough. We're gonna
need more rain. We need more rain!
Downey is hungry!
Tabitha's hungry!
Melissa is eating her babies.
I'm like a fucking nut.
We've got to have some rain.
I'm not a religious guy. No.
But I'm telling ya,
I'm just pissed because...
It just doesn't seem right.
It just doesn't seem right.
I know it's just weather
and crap like that, and it's...
I don't know what
the variables are.
But we've gotta have
some goddamn rain!
So if there's a God,
Downey needs to eat!
Dump on us. Hurt us!
Come on!
Think rain.
Think rain.
Just a crappy little shower right now.
What kind of crappy... Come on!
Take this again.
Does not make me
very, very happy.
I want rain. I want, if there's a God,
to kick some ass down here.
Let's have some water!
Jesus, boy!
Let's have some water!
Christ man or Allah
or Hindu floaty thing,
let's have some fucking water
for these animals!
It is now September 21, Thursday
of the year 2000. Expedition 2000.
I am the Lord's humble servant.
I am Allah's disciple.
I am the floaty thing's go-for boy.
There has been a miracle here.
There has been an absolute miracle.
It has rained 1.65 inches
of rain today.
We have over 2 inches now in the storm,
and it is not stopping.
It may hit 3 inches of rain.
It went from a trickle to a flood.
And it's amazing.
And we have a really,
really great chance
of a run of fish for the animals.
And what is even more miraculous,
according to my radio,
it is not raining much
around anywhere else
but around here.
Oops.
Well, it's now after 2:00
on October 4.
And the tent has caved in
due to the storm.
I'm still here with my little teddy bear,
Tabitha bear.
And I think the storm's actually
gotten a little weaker, but
in the course of it getting stronger,
it crushed the wall in and bent the poles.
And you really can't do much about it
because once they get like that,
they just stay kind of bent in
and you're screwed and all that.
This is my life.
This is what I do.
And l... I love it. I love it.
Even this, I love it.
My tent crushed in. I love it.
It's pathetic, but I love it.
Hello, hello, hello
Are you scared, little bear?
The storm's gonna go on
and on and on.
It doesn't look like I may get outta here
for another week or so.
Oh, look at this. I put my tripod
up to shore up the tent.
I put a pole up there, so now I got a tent.
That's a pretty good idea, huh?
Aha! Pretty good for me.
We have about 35,000 brown
grizzly bears here in Alaska.
What we can tell, it's a very healthy population,
it's a stable population.
Of course, you have to be careful with bears
because they have unique needs,
especially the grizzly bear.
They need large areas.
They have low reproductive rates.
You have to be cautious in the way
you utilize those animals.
Bear hunting, as an example,
is a very important aspect
of the economy.
$4,500,000 a year
is spent on bear hunts.
Here on Kodiak Island
we have about 3,000 bears.
Each year we harvest
about 160 of those.
Through our research, we found that you can
harvest about 6% of the population annually
and still have
a healthy group of bears.
And poaching?
Poaching is not as big
a concern around here
as it has been in Russia, for instance,
and some other locations.
There is some poaching
that occurs for gall bladders
or some bears that
are just killed wantonly
because people don't like them
or they're afraid of them.
But for the most part, here on Kodiak
and on the Alaska peninsula,
it is a very rare occurrence
in the last 20 years.
Despite the statistics,
Treadwell became
increasingly paranoid
about his enemy, the poacher.
And it's gotten to be September,
near October.
It's the time of year
where poachers can come around.
It's time for me to go in my guerrilla-style
camouflage outfit.
Downey still recognizes me
by talking to her. Don't you?
Yeah, I'm the big crazy guy with the...
or the skinny crazy guy
with the camouflage makeup on.
They're armed with pepper spray
and rocks.
In all his video recordings
over the years,
this is Treadwell's closest
encounter with intruders.
I believe the guide is the person
with the camera.
The big camera on the tripod.
There we go. Got a nice close-up of him.
He's the one who threw the rock
at Freckles, the bear.
It's Quincy.
They're throwing rocks at him.
They're throwing rocks
at my Quincy.
They're gonna stone him,
and then they're gonna photograph him.
Oh, that's it!
That's enough of this.
That's... I can... They hit Quincy.
I don't wanna expose myself
to them.
I'm submitting this
as Sunday, August 1.
It is 4:35 and 18 seconds
on this day.
It's hard to say,
but it's a warning of a sort.
And it's obviously here
to upset me.
"Hi, Timothy.
See you in summer of 2001."
Now it doesn't say, "Hi, Timothy.
We're gonna fucking kill you."
It doesn't say, "Hi, Timothy. You're fucking
dead. We're gonna chop your legs off.
Hey, Timothy,
get the fuck out."
It just says, "See you
in the summer of 2001."
But it is some sort
of a warning.
It is some sort of a ha-ha.
I don't think it's friendly.
Well, it's gotten
a little worse here.
The warning, "Hi, Timothy.
See you summer of 2001."
Now I find this big stack of rocks that were,
you know, put some labor here.
We're not calling this
the building of the pyramids.
But we are saying
there's a bit of trouble.
Now, I'm gonna walk back,
I'm gonna bring you back here.
Through my camp.
Let's come through here. Pathway.
Here's where...
Here's where the sign was, here.
Which is where my tent is.
And then we go over where
my bear-proof barrels would be.
And we find boulders piled up...
Boulders piled up
and a happy face indelibly
painted into the rock,
like looking at me.
Very, very frickin' frightening, huh?
Whoever put it there,
knew what they were doing.
It's a warning.
And the thing is, it's better
than a warning, than...
It's better than like,
"You're fucking dead" type of thing.
It's creepy, baby!
It's creepy.
It's Freddy Krueger creepy.
There were visitors
every now and then.
But for Treadwell,
they were just intruders.
An encroaching threat upon what
he considered his Eden.
Even the Park Service itself
became an enemy
because of its restrictions.
I have decided to violate
a federal rule
which states
I must camp one mile...
Every week I must move one mile after
staying for seven consecutive days.
If I was to do that,
I would not be able to study these bears,
not be able to protect them.
I'd have to move out of the bay
to get a mile out.
Therefore I have decided to protest
the United States government
and guard these bears anyway
and stay, and I have...
In order to get around the rule of not
camping permanently in one spot,
he would camouflage and hide
his tent from the Park Service.
But more than that,
he was in constant violation
of another very reasonable
park rule:
That you have to maintain at least 100 yards
distance from the bears.
Ding.
Hi. Go back to your friend.
Go back to your friend.
Shh, shh, shh.
It's okay.
It's okay.
You're awfully close.
You're awfully close.
Hi. Oh, hi, there!
The park restrictions made him
increasingly irate.
Well, we're into autumn now.
Expedition 2001 coming to an end.
The bears moving safely
towards their winter dens.
The foxes hiding in the woods,
safe from the humans
that would come to harm them.
It's been an amazing season.
It's been difficult.
But I came, I served,
I protected and I studied.
And I promise, I'll be back.
My hair.
Expedition 2001 coming to an end for
Grizzly People, for me, Timothy Treadwell.
I came here and protected
the animals as best I could.
In fact, I'm the only protection
for these animals out here.
The government flying over a total
of two times in two months.
How dare they!
How dare they challenge me!
How dare they smear me
with their campaigns!
How dare they, when they do not
look after these animals,
and I come here in peace
and in love,
neutral in respect.
I will continue to do this.
I will fight them.
I will be an American dissident
if I need be.
There's a patriotic time
going on right now,
but as far as this
fucking government's concerned,
fuck you,
motherfucking Park Service!
Now Treadwell crosses a line
with the Park Service
which we will not cross.
He attacks the individuals with
whom he worked for 13 years.
I beat your fucking asses!
I protected the animals!
I did it! Fuck you!
Animals rule.
Timothy conquered.
Fuck you, Park Service!
Okay.
It is clear to me that the Park Service
is not Treadwell's real enemy.
There's a larger, more
implacable adversary out there:
The people's world
and civilization.
"Oh, Timothy, I'm getting
a bad feeling about you."
He only has mockery
and contempt for it.
"I saw you on David Letterman.
You're fairly entertaining."
His rage is almost
incandescent, artistic.
The actor in his film has
taken over from the filmmaker.
I have seen this madness
before on a film set.
But Treadwell is not an actor in opposition
to a director or a producer.
He's fighting civilization itself.
It is the same civilization
that cast Thoreau out of Walden
and John Muir into the wild.
Animals rule.
All right.
That's my happy stuff.
Let's do a couple
of nice takes now.
Oh, man, did I get angry!
Fuck them, right?
They do not watch these animals.
They don't care about these animals.
All they wanna do
is screw people like me around.
It's amazing. "Let the fishermen
fucking shoot the animals.
Let the fucking poachers
come in here and fuck 'em.
Let the fucking commercial
people fuck them around
with their fucking cameras
and the tourists.
But we're gonna go screw
with Timothy Treadwell
because he loves animals
and teaches kids for free.
Let's go. Let's do that.
That's what we're gonna do."
Well, fuck them. Fuck them.
I beat you, motherfuckers. I beat you.
Beat ya, so fuck you.
I beat ya. I beat ya.
I'm the champion.
I'm the fucking champion.
I beat you.
I beat your fucking asses.
Fucking losers!
Fucking nobodies!
Fuck!
Fucking fucks!
Well, Expedition 2001
coming to an end.
The bears safely moving into their winter dens,
the foxes hiding in the woods.
I came here. I studied them,
protected them.
And I promise you, I promise the
Grizzly People, I will be back. I will be back.
And I thank the animals for keeping
me safe and for inspiring me.
I thank them so very much.
Good-bye.
This is my favorite.
This is my cowboy.
Always in black.
Always sunglasses.
And always a bandanna.
I miss you terribly.
He was very dear to my heart.
Very dear to my heart.
My heart hurts every day
for him.
He was a good friend.
I've known him 13 years.
And he just was a good friend.
He was a distant friend
in the winter
and a close friend
in the summer.
And... I helped him do
quite a few things here.
He'd always come back.
And I was kind of
his confidante here.
But I miss him.
I miss his... rambunctious personality
and his outgoing... his heart,
you know, just everything
about him, I think.
Kathleen Parker still holds
some of
Timothy Treadwell's ashes.
She insists that she was
a platonic friend only.
She stored his gear in her basement
during the winters.
He would set out into
the wilderness from her house.
When he would leave,
he would say at my back door,
he says, "I love you."
He says, "This is going to be
the best year of my life out there."
And he says,
"If I don't come back,
it's what I want,
this is the way I wanna go."
His last camp was just right
in the right-hand edge of this slope.
Patch of trees here.
Right down here in this...
very end of these trees here.
This is his ashes.
Some of them for me to spread.
And some bear hair, fur.
And some weeds.
And what else is in there?
There's a little bit of lupin,
there's a little bit of iris.
- There's, I think...
- Where did you get the bear fur?
- We picked it up off the ground.
- Cool. Cool.
Where are we?
We are at a campsite
where Timothy last camped.
Not where he was killed.
But over here in Hallo Bay.
And, Willie, you can...
'cause you brought him over here.
His last campsite was right here
in the trees here.
He camped there because
he was right between two fox dens.
I'd been in the camp there.
The fox would come right to the edge
of the tent, and go in their dens.
So I think that's probably the main reason
he camped right there.
Okay, Timothy.
I love you.
And rest peacefully.
Rest peacefully, my love.
Finally figured a way out
to live here forever.
He's here forever.
This is Timothy Treadwell's
and Amie Huguenard's route
to the site of their death.
There was a certain absurdity
in their end.
As usual, the expedition was over
by the end of September,
and both had returned to Kodiak
on their way back to California.
Treadwell writes in his diary
that at the airport
he had an altercation
with an obese airline agent
over the validity of his ticket.
"How much I hate
the people's world, " he writes.
And disgusted,
he decides right then
to return to this spot
and his bears.
Once back in the Grizzly Maze,
Amie had mixed feelings.
She was afraid of the bears
and had a deadline to return
for a new job
and spoke openly
about leaving him for good.
According to one of the last entries
in Treadwell's diary,
Amie called him hell-bent
on destruction.
And yet, inexplicably, she remained
with him here in the Maze.
Normally Treadwell would not
be here this late in the year.
And upon their return,
he discovered that many of his bear friends
had gone into hibernation.
And scary,
unknown and wilder bears
from the interior had moved in.
This is the spot where
they set up their last camp.
Let me tell you.
Honestly, camping in grizzly country
is dangerous.
People who camp in grizzly country
should camp out in the open
to let the bears know
where the tent is.
My camp is unseen.
It is the most dangerous camping,
the most dangerous living
in the history of the world
by any human being.
I have lived longer with wild brown
grizzly bears, without weapons,
and that's the key, without weapons,
in modern history
than any human on earth,
any human.
And I have remained safe.
But every second of every day that I move
through this jungle, or even at the tent,
I am right on the precipice
of great bodily harm or even death.
And I am so thankful
for every minute of every day
that I found the bears
and this place,
the Grizzly Maze.
But let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen.
There is no, no, no
other place in the world
that is more dangerous, more exciting
than the Grizzly Maze.
Come here and camp here.
Come here and try to do what I do.
You will die.
You will die here.
You will frickin' die here.
They will get you.
I found a way. I found a way
to survive with them.
Am I a great person?
I don't know. I don't know.
We're all great people. Everyone has
something in them that's wonderful.
I'm just different. And I love these bears
enough to do it right.
And I'm edgy enough
and I'm tough enough.
But mostly I love these bears enough
to survive and do it right.
And I'm never giving this up.
Never giving it up.
Never giving up the Maze.
Never.
This is it.
This is my life.
This is my land.
Very late in the process
of editing this film,
we were given access
to Treadwell's last videotape.
Here he may have filmed
his murderer.
The killer bear we know
was a male
whom years earlier
the Park Service had anesthetized.
They extracted a tooth
which established him
as being 28
at the time of the attack.
Quite old for a bear.
They also tagged him
via a tattoo on his inner lip.
They had given him
a number only, 141.
Bear 141.
That's all we know of him.
And here.
Could this one be Bear 141?
What looks playful
could be desperation.
So late in the season,
the bear is diving deep
for one of the few
remaining salmon carcasses
at the bottom of the lake.
Treadwell keeps filming the bear
with a strange persistence.
And all of a sudden, this.
Is Amie trying
to get out of the shot?
Did Treadwell wait till his last tape
to put her in his film?
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.
Amie Huguenard was screaming.
All of a sudden, the intensity
of Amie's screaming
reached a new height
and became very, very loud.
And she really now was screaming
at the top of her lungs.
These horrifying screams
were punctuated by Timothy saying,
"Go away. Leave me.
Go away. Run! Get out of here."
In other words, Timothy is trying
now to save Amie's life
because Timothy realizes,
at this point in time during this attack,
Timothy knows he's gonna die.
He knows that.
My sense of listening
to this tape
is that the bear let go,
probably let go
of the top of his head where
I found massive lacerations.
That is tears of the scalp
away from his head.
Suddenly, though, the bear,
after letting go,
grabbed Timothy somewhere
in the high leg area.
And Timothy, appropriately in my opinion,
as a human being,
decided now is the time
to save one life anyway.
If his life was going away,
if his life was fading away,
now was the time
for Amie to get out.
The expedition coming close to a close,
but I'm still here.
It's been over four months
in the wilderness.
And a hurricane-force
storm now building.
Over 50-mile-an-hour winds,
soon over 70.
The bears safely
heading for their dens.
The work...
the work successful.
I'm over 20 pounds lighter.
My clothes are rags.
I've tried hard. I bleed for them,
I live for them, I die for them.
I love them. I love this.
It's tough work.
But it's the only work I know.
It's the only work I'll ever want.
Take care of these animals.
Take care of this land.
He seems to hesitate in leaving
the last frame of his own film.
It's the only thing I know.
It's the only thing
I wanna know.
Treadwell is gone.
The argument how wrong
or how right he was
disappears into a distance
into a fog.
What remains is his footage.
And while we watch the animals
in their joys of being,
in their grace
and ferociousness,
a thought becomes
more and more clear.
That it is not so much
a look at wild nature
as it is an insight
into ourselves, our nature.
And that, for me,
beyond his mission,
gives meaning to his life
and to his death.
Now the longhorns are gone
And the drovers are gone
The Comanches are gone
And the outlaws are gone
Geronimo's gone
And Sam Bass is gone
And the lion is gone
- And the red wolf is gone
- And Treadwell is gone
Well, he cursed all the roads
and the old mule
And he cursed the automobile
Said this is no place
for an hombre like I am
In this new world
of asphalt and steel
Then he'd look off
someplace in the distance
At something
only he could see
He'd say all that's left now
are the old days
Damned old coyotes and me
And they'd go
Now the longhorns are gone
And the drovers are gone
The Comanches are gone
The outlaws are gone
Now Quantrill is gone
Stan Wanty is gone
And the lion is gone
And the red wolf is gone
One morning they searched
his adobe
He disappeared
without even a word
But that night as the moon
crossed the mountain
One more coyote was heard
And he'd go