Werner Herzog’s new documentary, Grizzly Man, is a fascinating and contradictory look at a fascinating and contradictory man. Timothy Treadwell spent 13 summers in Alaska, living side by side with, and far too close to, grizzly bears. For the last five summers, Treadwell filmed over 100 hours of footage of himself with the bears. In 2003 tragedy struck – Treadwell and his girlfriend Amy Huguenard were mauled and eaten by a bear.
Herzog has taken that 100 hours of footage and added some of his own commentary and conducted interviews with people who knew Treadwell to try to reconstruct who this man was, what drove him – and how it came to be that twenty some odd pounds of him had to be removed from the stomach of a grizzly.
Grizzly Man opens August 12th in New York and Los Angeles. We’ll be bringing you my interview with Werner Herzog (now that was a trip) soon enough. In the meantime, here’s an exclusive clip to tide you over: