Reviews / 30 May 2008

Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie

Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie
USA  /  2008

As I sat in the Somerville Theater, safe from the Monday night drizzle outside and awaiting the penultimate screening of IFFB 2008 – a second showing of Jay Delaney’s buzzed-about documentary Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie for those of us who missed it on Saturday – I tried to pinpoint what would constitute a typical Bigfoot movie. I was having trouble, unable to come up with much aside from a vaguely remembered VHS encounter with Harry and the Hendersons.

As it turns out, the title refers not to Bigfoot sightings of the Hollywood kind, but rather to the sort of footage that used to surface on Unsolved Mysteries or those cheap one-off specials that were once a staple of the Fox network’s primetime programming. You know what I’m talking about: grainy camcorder stuff purporting to have captured the mythical creature on film, a lone furry figure lumbering through trees and shadows. Delaney documents the ups and downs of Dallas Gilbert and Wayne Burton, two of the guys who go after this stuff and believe in it (or very genuinely want to believe in it), and the result is surprisingly insightful.

Gilbert and Burton live in Portsmouth, Ohio and spend a great deal of time searching not simply for one mythic beast, but families of them (Gilbert repeatedly refers to “bigfoots,” plural). Delaney’s film has the potential to mock the two friends and their quest, a possibility that might make some viewers uncomfortable in the early going, but the director happily resists this temptation.

There is a level of perverse humor to some of the scenes, particularly those of a wildly self-important Bigfoot hunter who snaps petulantly at Gilbert, but the film isn’t about cheap laughs. Rather than exploiting the pair for his own fun, Delaney illuminates the highs and lows of friendship between Gilbert and Burton. The relationship is a vital part of both men’s lives, and it’s distressing to see it start to come unglued in the face of ambition.

Delaney also digs into a very real human desire to believe that there is something wonderful out there just waiting to be discovered. It’s impossible to watch the film without taking note of the very stark contrast between the fantastic creatures that the two men hunt, and claim to routinely see, and the dull reality of their circumstances. Both are financially poor, and Burton is particularly candid about his struggles with his self-worth. The men want to gain money and recognition for their obsessive work, but it’s easy to see that the search itself has immense value for them. Who doesn’t need to believe in the possibility of change for the better, however unlikely?

The film has scenes of Gilbert standing in the woods and pointing out “bigfoots” among the trees, or noting the creatures’ locations in the photographs that he and Burton have taken. In all likelihood, every one of these sightings will strike you as wishful thinking, borne of tricks of the light and an active imagination. But you may also find yourself squinting and making an effort, sharing Gilbert and Burton’s desire to believe, or at least understanding it.

Comments / 3 total / Submit Comment

  1. Kim Charles/your niece uncle Wayne
    5 June 2008
    5:34 AM

    My uncle has long believed and spent many years in his search for Bigfoot and is 100% certain of his findings. On Yahoo.com news they are offering 1 million dollars for proof. I believe my uncle and his friend have been relentless in searching, all their outings have been from their own money,time and resources. I think he should have his chance at this million dollars because he has worked so hard to prove that the “dragfoot” which when I was a child was always believed to live in the hills of New Boston, OH where we are all from. Many people including my own husband has heard this mythological creature. Never agressive just making his/her way through the hills and forest. Please make sure my uncle Wayne Burton sees this e-mail and let him know I’m pulling for him and he deserves some credit after all these years. Thank You so much for allowing him his chance to make history. Kim Sparks/Jd Sparks

  2. sandy gaines
    23 October 2008
    12:55 PM

    hey wayne this is such an interesting thing here. keep me updated ok ssandy and wayne hollingsworth here

  3. Jeremiah
    26 October 2008
    2:26 PM

    I may have encountered a meeting between one or both of these fellows and a group of their clients(?) several years ago. I was in a group selling Kirby vacuums door-to-door in Maysville, KY (mere miles from Portsmouth). We often drove down country hollows hoping to find rich landowners. At the end of one hollow was a filthy looking trailer. One of my colleagues, being bored, volunteered to go inside.

    Over an hour later we returned for him. He didn’t come outside, but several people did. One of my managers made a “Beverly Hillbillies” remark; I have to say it was spot-on. One of the people wore bib-overalls; the rest wore dirty t-shirts and jeans. They stood on their porch looking at some object for a very long time. The object looked like a flat rock. More time passed. One of my managers went inside. A young man came outside and approached our van. My manager said “Hi.” They made small-talk for a few minutes; the young man seemed to be fairly stupid. He said he was from Boston. “Massachusetts?,” my manager asked. “No, Kentucky,” the young man replied. When we asked where Boston, KY was, he pointed and said, “That way.” He said there was an expert inside who was going to help them hunt an animal. We asked what sort of animal it was. He said it was “one ‘a them big thangs, you know… that’s real hairy.” “A bear?,” asked my manager. “No,” the young man said, “one of them… what’d’ya call ‘em… bigfoots.” “The bigfoot,” my manager exclaimed. We cracked up, but tried to maintain our composure. The young man asked if we had any bright green or yellow tape. He said they needed it to mark off any area exhibiting evidence of the bigfoot’s presence. We told him we had no bright tape. He went back into the trailer. We waited.

    Shortly, my other manager returned to the van. She burst out laughing as soon as she got inside. She said the demonstration had ended when the bigfoot expert had arrived. The family had gone into a tizzy. The rock-like object they had been inspecting was a plaster cast of a large footprint. There were several of these. The expert wasn’t much different from the family. He professed a desire to go to Russia someday in order to seek out the Abominable Snowman, as it was related to the bigfoot. He had attempted to enlist my co-worker in his hunt, and had asked my co-worker to man a “forty-aught-six with sniper scope.” The family began filing out and climbing onboard a phalanx of four-wheelers. One of them was a very visibly pregnant young girl. My co-worker ran to the van, threw his vacuum in, and said, “Get me the hell out of here!”

    Coincidentally, few people ever believe me when I tell them this story.

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Credits

Directed by
Jay Delaney

Review by
Victoria Large

Source
35mm print

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