October 20, 2017

50 years ago today: Bigfoot!

I can't believe in Bigfoot. I can't even believe how long the Wikipedia article "Patterson–Gimlin film" is.
The Patterson–Gimlin film (also known as the Patterson film or the PGF) is an American short motion picture of an unidentified subject which the filmmakers have said was a Bigfoot. The footage was shot in 1967 in Northern California, and has since been subjected to many attempts to authenticate or debunk it....
The film was shot 50 years ago today, if you can believe the filmmakers' account, but even that is questioned.
Patterson said he became interested in Bigfoot after reading an article about the creature by Ivan T. Sanderson in True magazine in December 1959. In 1961 Sanderson published his encyclopedic Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life, a worldwide survey of accounts of Bigfoot-type creatures, including recent track finds, etc. in the Bluff Creek area, which heightened his interest....
"In 1962 he visited Bluff Creek and talked with a whole host of Bigfoot-believers. In 1964 he returned and met a timber-cruiser named Pat Graves, who drove him to Laird Meadows. There Patterson saw fresh tracks—for him an almost unbearably exciting, spine-chilling experience. What a tremendous feat it would be—what a scientific breakthrough—if he could obtain unshakable evidence that these tracks were not the work of a prankster, but the actual mark of a hitherto unknown creature! If he succeeded, he would be famous! And rich!..."
Almost unyetiably exciting. No it isn't. I can't possibly read this, the most overlong article I've ever seen in Wikipedia. I am out of here....

Frame 352 from the Patterson-Gimlin film

51 comments:

tcrosse said...

One shudders to think what Bigfoot had to do for Harvey Weinstein to get into this film.

rhhardin said...

Same for Sacagawea.

Bob Ellison said...

tcrosse, I think that is Weinstein before he started man-sculpting.

Robert Cook said...

I've seen the clip...years ago. It's obviously a man in a suit.

Fake news.

Patrick said...

The greatest thing Russ Feingold ever did was use Bigfoot in a campaign ad. Even better, Bigfoot was wearing a watch.

stevew said...

If Bigfoot really existed we'd have seen a lot more of him by now.

-sw

Patrick said...

And yes, I know that is a low bar.

Rusty said...

Robert Cook said...
I've seen the clip...years ago. It's obviously a man in a suit.

Fake news.


The guy who took the video, on his deathbed , said it's his wife in a gorilla suit.

People who believe in this kind of shit will believe anything.

traditionalguy said...

Us shorter guys don't believe there is a Big Foot. But if there is, then he is a little coward hiding from a fight.

Fernandinande said...

The local NPR has a program for/about Amerindians ("Native Voice One"?) - one time they had about 45 minutes of bigfoot sightings and hearings.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

fairly bad bigfoot costume.

Nonapod said...

Big foot is for grampas. Slenderman is what all the cool kids are into.

Saint Croix said...

Joe Rogan is the last word on Bigfoot.

CJinPA said...

I didn't believe it until I saw footage of him fighting the Six Million Dollar Man, where it was revealed Big Foot was an alien. Then all the pieces fit.

buwaya said...

Women from Northern California ... can be unusual.

My late mother-in-law from Humboldt County for instance. Not in that way, but still.

Bay Area Guy said...

There would have to be a Mama Bigfoot and a Daddy Bigfoot, for Bigfoot to exist, and a few hot Bigfoot gals for Bigfoot to procreate.

So, there is no darn Bigfoot! Or LochNess Monster or space aliens, jeez.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Saint Croix - lol!

tim in vermont said...

You think we will still have people who believe in the Russian colusion story in 50 years?

Darrell said...

You think we will still have people who believe in the Russian colusion story in 50 years?

They never believed it to begin with. They are just fucking liars looking for power. Do you think they believed Hillary and Obama's people saying that a stupid YouTube video cause the Benghazi/Egypt terrorist attacks? They still haven't held anyone to account for that.

rehajm said...

Fake news.

Yes, I get to agree with Cookie today but those of us who lived it can recall without the internet news travelled slowly in certain parts of the world. You could have a pretty good life spinning these hoaxes before they caught up to you. I know my lumberjack in- laws made some pretty good hay with Sasquatch sightings. D.B. Cooper, too. I think they said they ran off together to Costa Rica...

Back in the day all the best fake news came from Mr. Spock!

Ficta said...

At ten years old, camping in the Cascade Mountains, Bigfoot stories were terrifying!

tcrosse said...

R Crumb had a lot of fun with Bigfoot back in the day. NSFW

R Crumb and Bigfoot

wildswan said...

Those are just stories. The reality which is being covered up is that the US government was cloning politicians and they escaped from the "Primate Research Lab" which was the research site. Then they went feral in tunnels under state capitals which they either found or made. And they slink out at night and grab tourists and take them down to their underground bunker and make them listen to speeches and then vote and then listen to speeches and then vote. The "Big Mouths" were programmed to do this. Then they release the lost tourists after wiping their memories which is another trick they learned in their politician programming. Everybody just thinks they had a lost weekend so that's why it's all still a secret. No one dies except of boredom and those people are taken into horror movies and left in the seats so that the silent scream distorting their faces is attributed to the movie and to a heart attack. So that's the real scoop but no believes when you publish the truth so that's why I will suffer no consequences from exposing Project Big Mouth.

mockturtle said...

I'll take a good political conspiracy theory any day over Sasquatch and space aliens. But whatever floats your boat.

Quaestor said...

Within the last few years, it has come to light that Roger Patterson acquired his "Sasquatch" from a Charlotte-based entrepreneur called Philip Morris. Fortunately for the Fortean yeti experts who write the same book over and over, Morris can't back up this intelligence with sales records, Apparently, Morris's then-struggling costume business operated on handwritten receipts stored in shoeboxes.

Within a few years of the famous hoax, Morris Costumes became an international success by licensing famous entertainment industry brands such as Star Trek and Star Wars, but his Bigfoot trade was a total bust. Morris says that Patterson stiffed him for the ape suit. I met Mr. Morris two years ago at an S.A.M. meeting — a charming man much ravaged by Alzheimer's.

A bit of interesting trivia, the demonic Micheal Myers character from the Halloween series of slasher movies is known for wearing a stark-white over-the-head latex mask. That prop was provided by Morrison Costumes and is an unfinished "Captain Kirk" mask.

John Nowak said...

Guy in a suit, yes.

I think it was shot well, though. Ridiculous that people fall for it to this day.

donald said...

Saw it on a double bill with Jeremiah Johnson. We road our bikes all the way over the new bridge on Old National hwy at 285/85.

I was watching a show debunking the Patterson film several years ago, it opened with a shot of some big ole dude lumbering away, who then turned and looked at the camera. It was just like the film. They were buddies.

Drago said...

OMG! It's the Russian-Collusion-Foot! A very very very close relative to ManBearPig..and Michael Moore.

D 2 said...

Believing in Bigfoot is one thing.
Believing someone has finally found the most overlong useless article on Wikipedia?? Ha!!
The abyss is deep.

rhhardin said...

Classic sighting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFLyO2RWGms

"He had beautiful hair"

rehajm said...

Christmas version

Mr. Groovington said...

I highly recommend the indie bigfoot movie Willow Creek. Very scary, with a surprise reveal. The best bigfoot movie ever made, download it now.

Earnest Prole said...

Strangely, though Bigfoot is supposed to be widely distributed, he only seems to make appearances in front of Bigfoot enthusiasts.

Bill R said...

Occam's razor.

Which is the simpler explanation?
1: There is a tribe of hitherto undiscovered hominids running around the Oregon woods.
2: Someone put on a monkey suit.

Quaestor said...

Very scary, with a surprise reveal.

What? A zipper?

FullMoon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Earnest Prole said...

There is a tribe of hitherto undiscovered hominids running around the Oregon woods

Years ago when I lived in Oregon a fellow high-school student made plaster casts of bigfoot "prints" and pressed it into the mud at various locations in the woods. After it attracted national attention he decided it would be best to confess.

Big Mike said...

We've all seen Bigfoot on TV playing basketball -- one is named Shaquille O'Neill (shoe size 22 EEEE) and another is named Dwight Howard (shoe size 18).

Yancey Ward said...

Robert Mueller should make himself useful and investigate this video- Trump might ultimately be the source of this fraud.

southcentralpa said...

I still think it's a "proof of concept" for the apes for the "Planet of the Apes"

rhhardin said...

___'s adventure in the gorilla suit

always a good line.

veni vidi vici said...

"Big Foot" is so ridiculously '70s, it doesn't get any more '70s than that. Even the sound, in that "'70s male TV announcer with wide lapels voice", intoning "Big Foot" is ridiculous.

*sigh* Life was so much simpler, then...

Anonymous said...

All I know is, it wasn't me. I may have been big for my age back then, but not that big.

Anonymous said...

BTW, I still think Bobo on "Finding Bigfoot" is a shaved Sasquatch.

Molly said...

This is how a lot of "treatment" goes:

Step 1. I observe that you have more sex than I do (drink more than I do, use drugs more than I do, smoke more than I do, watch more TV than I do).
Step 2. I characterize your behavior as an addiction.
Step 3. (A) You can agree with me (and in doing so "take rehab seriously").
Step 3. (B) You can disagree with me, in which case, you are "in denial".

There is no room in this for the option that my characterization ("diagnosis" ) to be wrong. There is no way to treat that assertion as a testable (falsifiable) hypothesis. It is an article of faith. In this and many other ways "medical science" is not science.

Snark said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Snark said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Snark said...

"Blogger Molly said...
This is how a lot of "treatment" goes:

Step 1. I observe that you have more sex than I do (drink more than I do, use drugs more than I do, smoke more than I do, watch more TV than I do).
Step 2. I characterize your behavior as an addiction.
Step 3. (A) You can agree with me (and in doing so "take rehab seriously").
Step 3. (B) You can disagree with me, in which case, you are "in denial".

There is no room in this for the option that my characterization ("diagnosis" ) to be wrong. There is no way to treat that assertion as a testable (falsifiable) hypothesis. It is an article of faith. In this and many other ways "medical science" is not science."

Bigfoot is a sex addict! Which is not as menacing as it would be if he was Bighands, but still.

Molly said...

oops

zefal said...

Don't understand why "scientist" don't think that it is feasible that the coukd exist based on population numbers. There are isolated human populations that are small in number and yet have a sustaining population. A lot of them went undiscovered until quite recently. There are other animals that get discovered all the time that were unknown or were known but still believed to be myth. Don't know whether it exists but it being elusive enough to stay undetected for the most part wouldn't be extraordinary even for a being with lesser intelligence.

Saint Croix said...

oops

If you click on that Joe Rogan link, you will find that sex with Bigfoot is definitely a thing.

Although addicted to sex with Bigfoot is probably not a thing.