Grizzly, man

Grizzly Man is a disturbing movie. Yeah, Werner Herzog has the good taste not to play the audio of our hero and his girlfriend being eaten alive by a bear. Well done. In some ways this restraint, this not showing the monster, conveys as much horror as it did in the Blair Witch Project. And just as with the whiney, wet, nicotine-starved stars of that flick, it's hard to really be too worried about the inevitable in this movie.

Timothy Treadwell was, in his desire to pet the sweet little grizzlies, an idiot and a freak. Then again, aside from the fabulous bear footage, including the roaring fight where one of two big boys takes a dump. it is Treadwell's freakishness and his implicit consciousness of it, his tortured sexuality, his substance abuse, his self-declared self-destructiveness, which make the movie worth watching. When he looks at the camera and -- with his fem voice -- thanks the bears for giving his life meaning, it's pretty poignant.

But late at night, I couldn't help but think about Herzog's commentary after watching the tape. It's just scary, nasty. I don't like the thought of anyone being eaten alive by a bear, even for someone who's into it.

A number of people seem to draw inferences from Treadwell's story about nimrod environmentalists. He was both green and a fool, and the kind of fool that does a lot of damage. He was a tree that would have been better off falling in the forest, right next to where a bear was shitting.