The History of Bigfoot

Bigfoot can add one more feather to his pimp hat. With the release of The Bigfoot Filmography [McFarland], an exhaustive 344 page turning compendium of every fictional and documentary appearances of the Hairy One in film and television (or “TV”), the total amount of books on the subject of Sasquatch now breaches 200. Only Dracula and arguably Flipper, the talking/spraying dolphin, are even in the lobby of such lofty stats.

And why not? In cryptid terms, Bigfoot is a rock star. One might even call him the Mick Jagger of Monsters. Author David Coleman, whose written a billion scripts for every Hollywood studio worth mentioning, knows this. I have yet to read the book (I’m currently reading a dozen Bigfoot books concurrently), but this one may get to move to the front of the line.

Amazon.com: “Coleman tracks Bigfoot from the earliest trick films to the most up-to-date CGI efforts. Critical insights regarding the genre’s development are offered, along with an exhaustively researched filmography that includes every known film or television appearance of Sasquatch, Bigfoot, and Yeti in both fictitious and documentary formats.”

Man, I hope this bible has photos. I know how to read (well, not ALL the words, especially those with more than two syllables). But I do love me some snaps of the Big Guy.

The book at the top of the pile (until I save $50.00 to buy The Bigfoot Filmography), is Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and other Famous Cryptids [$18.45/Columbia University Press, released August 2012; 352 pages]. Written by authors Daniel Laxtona and Donald R. Prothero, Abominable Science “complete an entertaining, educational, and definitive text on a variety of cryptids, presenting both the arguments for and against their existence and systematically challenging the pseudoscience perpetuating their myths.”

And it has pictures!

The one Sasquatch book I never wanted to know existed, but am regardless reading it with tears in my eyes, is The Making of Bigfoot: The Inside Story [Prometheus Books], a 2003 exposé trashing, debunking and otherwise besmirching the famous 1967 found footage film of Bigfoot bummin’ around in the California woods, which was shot by the chronically unemployed Roger Patterson. Calling the footage “the world’s greatest hoax,” author Greg Long interviewed more than forty witnesses who professed to know Patterson intimately. To support his claim, Long combines these LIES with so called “facts” unearthed from newspaper archives, books and court documents. And he used 476 pages to do this.

There’s a gaping hole in this character demolishing hatchet job: nowhere in The Making of Bigfoot did Long interview Bigfoot himself. Sloppy journalism, pal. Until we get Bigfoot’s side of the story, all else is conjecture. (The one three-syllable word I seem to be using while defending myself in court a lot these days.)

I want to believe. I got nothing else. Why won’t authors like Greg Long just leave me and my unconditional belief system alone? Go write about eskimos or some other mythical creatures and let me have this one.