Call of the wild

As the scene unfolds, we see Alaska’s breathtaking wilderness. Grizzly bears trundle along under the summer sun in a mountain-ringed meadow. Suddenly, a young man with blond, Prince Valiant locks steps into the frame.

“If I retreat, I may be killed,” he says. “They will take me out and they will decapitate me. They will chop me into bits and pieces. I’m dead. So far, I persevere. Most times, I’m a kind warrior out here. Most times, I am gentle. I am like a flower.... Occasionally I am challenged. In that case, the kind warrior must, must, must become a samurai. So formidable. So fearless of death. So strong that he will win. He will win. Even the bears will believe that he is more powerful.”

The man was Timothy Treadwell and he would die in October 2003, eaten by a grizzly at a remote campsite in Alaska’s Katmai National Park & Preserve. Killed along with the then-46-year-old Malibu bear researcher was Amie Huguenard, 37, his girlfriend.

Their deaths and Treadwell’s highly controversial and somewhat puzzling crusade on behalf of the grizzlies is recounted in a “Grizzly Man,” a documentary by veteran filmmaker Werner Herzog that premiered this year during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, where it received strong reviews and took the festival’s Alfred P. Sloan Prize for a film on science and technology. Lions Gate will release the film Aug. 5 before it eventually makes its way to the Discovery Channel.

A pioneer of the New German Cinema, Herzog, born Werner Stipetic in Munich on Sept. 5, 1942, grew up on a remote farm in the Bavarian mountains. His mystique is not unlike Tredwell’s. The award-winning director, writer and producer never attended film school and had no formal film education. Some biographies point out that no one is sure how much about Herzog’s life is fact and how much is fantasy. Among Herzog’s films are five starring the famously eccentric German actor Klaus Kinski, including “Aguirre: The Wrath of God” (1972), shot in the remote Amazon jungles about a mad conquistadore who sets out to find El Dorado.

At the heart of “Grizzly Man” is extensive bear footage Treadwell shot during his 13 summers in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One sequence features Treadwell on camera in front of the site where he and his girlfriend would be mauled a few hours later.

“I don’t think he had any fear,” Herzog said of Treadwell. “Everyone who knew him speaks about it.”

Herzog was provided with about 80 hours of Treadwell’s dramatic footage by Jewel Palovak of Malibu, who with Treadwell co-founded the grass-roots organization Grizzly People in 1998. Palovak retained the footage as heir to his estate.

Treadwell devoted himself to the preservation of the bears and often appeared in his footage standing close to the grizzlies he had come to know and love. He even named the grizzlies he filmed: Mr. Chocolate, Mickey, Sgt. Brown, Downey and Saturn.

But Treadwell’s crusade, as Herzog makes plain in the film, still provokes vigorous debate over the relationship of man and nature and whether, in trying to protect the grizzly, he crossed a line. “Let’s face it, from a practical point of view, you do not protect the grizzly by standing 3 feet away from him,” Herzog said.

The filmmaker believes Treadwell typified an attitude prevalent in Western civilization that tries to humanize wildlife.

“I speak of the ‘Disneyfication’ of wild nature,” Herzog said. “It’s the tendency of the Walt Disney attitude toward wild nature. I have objections, and I voice them.”

But Herzog also believes Treadwell was a “magnificent performer” and a filmmaker “who has given us film footage of unprecedented beauty.”

Jumping on the story

The documentary was launched only weeks after the mauling made headlines around the world. Lions Gate went to Discovery Docs, the Discovery Channel’s theatrical documentary unit, and suggested that they become partners in a film about the controversial bear researcher. The Discovery Channel was already well aware of Treadwell and Palovak. The two had co-written the book “Among Grizzlies” and were involved with a documentary, “The Grizzly Diaries,” that once aired on Discovery.

Producer Erik Nelson, vice president of feature documentaries for Lions Gate, had not known Treadwell personally, but he met with Palovak in late 2003 and, along with appearing on-screen in the documentary, she used her influence to line up other interviews.

Herzog’s involvement began as a “fluke,” Nelson recalled. The director happened to drop by Nelson’s office one day and Nelson handed him a magazine article about the maulings. Herzog instantly seized on the story as a film that he wanted to make. Nelson introduced Herzog to Palovak in January 2004, handing them a $100 bill and telling them to go get something to eat and see if they hit it off. By August, they had gone to Alaska to scout locations. The film was shot the first week in September and submitted to Sundance just four weeks later.

In some ways, the film plays out as a eulogy to Treadwell.Raised on Long Island, N.Y., he came out to California around 1980, attending college for a couple of years, and working as a bartender and waiter. He became hooked on drugs and alcohol, and nearly died of a drug overdose. After kicking his addiction, he became Palovak’s boyfriend and they lived together from 1985 to 1988.

Along the way, Treadwell would tell friends that he was an orphan from Australia, which Palovak now believes was a need he felt to reinvent himself. “He wanted a new persona,” she said. One year, he rode his motorcycle to Canada, she recalled, and later headed for Alaska, where he found a purpose to his life, lecturing, writing and making films about bears.

As his notoriety spread, Treadwell was invited on “The Late Show With David Letterman,” where the host asked him, only half in jest, whether he would one day read that Treadwell had been eaten by a grizzly.

‘She doesn’t leave him’

The great mystery of the film, Herzog notes, is Huguenard. In all of Treadwell’s footage, she is seen only twice, and each time her face is partly obscured. Herzog believes it was all part of Treadwell’s attempt to create a mystique about himself, that he faced the elements alone.

“We know almost nothing of [Amie] because the family didn’t want to talk,” Herzog said. “In Treadwell’s diaries, the very last entries speak of her leaving him ... And yet, under attack [by the bear], she doesn’t leave him.”

Willy Fulton, the pilot who discovered the bodies, had arrived only hours after the deaths to fly the couple out. He sensed something was wrong as he walked to the campsite. He noticed a bear, and hurried back to the plane, likely escaping death himself. As he took off, he spotted a human rib-cage and tried to scare the bear off by buzzing the site.

When authorities arrived, they killed a 28-year-old male grizzly in a fusillade of gunfire, cut open its belly and found human remains.

“Twenty-eight pounds of Treadwell and 22 pounds of Amie were left,” the director noted.

Herzog believes the attack occurred around 5 a.m. Oct. 6, 2003, and lasted at least six minutes.

As they’ve reconstructed it, Treadwell ran outside the tent to confront a marauding bear. Huguenard grabbed a camera but in the frenzy left the lens cap on, so that only the audio portion was recorded. Asked why he decided not to include any of the audiotape in the film, producer Nelson said: “It would turn the film, in my opinion, into a snuff film.”

The coroner interviewed in the documentary said that at one point, Treadwell can be heard moaning while Huguenard screams, “Stop! Go away!”

“Run away, Amie,” Treadwell tells her. “Run away.” Why Huguenard did not run remains a mystery.

Treadwell may be gone, but his image remains in the footage he shot: a brash, boyish, devil-may-care figure full of life who found himself in the land of the grizzly.

“There are times when my life is on the precipice of death and that the bears can bite, they can kill, and if I am weak, I go down,” he tells the camera. “I love them with all my heart. I will protect them. I will die for them....”