Customer Reviews

The Making of Bigfoot: The Inside Story

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(39)

 

 

It has to be understood from the outset that more people have claimed to be inside that suit than have claimed to be at the original Woodstock. Have we all forgotten so quickly that Bigfoot "died" last year with some other publicity nut? (Note to all who are going to "admit" to be being in the suit: Be sure not to give your "admission" until you are sure that everyone else has given theirs.)

The book DESPERATELY needs to address the other wackos who have claimed to be the apeman and give respectable reasons why they are not to be trusted. As it stands I can think of at least 5 people right now who have "admitted" to being bigfoot. At the very least, 4 out of those 5 people are obviously wackos, which leads us to the very real chance that 5 out of 5 are.

They ALL claimed to have known Patterson, they ALL claimed to know who built the suit, etc etc.
BORING
As sorry as I am to dash the intrepid savior of Kal Korff, this movie is 40 years old, and by this time, saying "I know the secret!!!" can and should be nothing less than having bigfoot's head in your duffle bag. Trotting out yet another old fogey with the same tired story is yesterday's news with a capital YAWN.

Bigfoot believers have to give us a body. Fair enough. Therefore Korff has to give us the suit. Far easier task, I should think. Yet no "hoax" savior has ever even attempted it. Nobody has been able to show us so much as a hairy glove.
Until they do, Korff and all his buddies are just selling snake oil.
Buy Loren Coleman's Bigfoot book, if you want something with some substance.

I'm not really sure what to think about the Patterson film and as I am interested in this topic, I was hoping for an incisive, detailed look at the film and how it might have been made, hoax or otherwise. Unfortunately, this book is more the tale of a reporter piecing together anectdotal evidence about someone based on hearsay and opinion rather than an investigation into the making of the film.

I was prepared to welcome an expose of a hoax (should it be a hoax), but from the very start the introduction to the book presents the case for a hoax on the basis of something like "we don't believe in this film because we think Roger Patterson might have been able to fake it." That's not meant to be (and isn't) a quote from the book, just my emphasis on what I think the attitude of this book is. And that would be fine, but why not set out to prove it with facts? Instead, I'd say this book does little more than offer an opinion.

The central concept of this book revolves around the idea that Patterson faked the footage with a costume he either made or purchased and perhaps modified. The book presents interviews with the alleged costume maker (even picturing an ad selling the costume), the alleged costume wearer and a score of others who swear that they know that Patterson made or had a costume. Where is the costume and isn't the logical approach to show the reader something that really looks like something that Patterson showed us in the film? Seems like it should be fairly simple to do with all these people claiming inside knowledge of the hoax. (Some people Long interviewed don't even offer strong opinions, they just act suspicious, in Long's view!)

Maybe the latter could have been done, but the fact that it wasn't done by Mr. Long is a little troubling given his strong assertion of a hoax. It just seems that Mr. Long is only willing to go so far, and no farther, to make his hoax claim. Mr. Long, if there is a hoax, let's expose it! If not, well let's leave it at that.

Bob Mack, Indianapolis

Few things in life are as unpleasant as getting a tooth pulled. Doing taxes. Slaving away in a dead-end job. Reading "The Making of Bigfoot". Wait, what's that you say? Reading "The Making of Bigfoot" qualifies as an unpleasant experience? Yes, friends, it does. The whole book should be classified as "historical fiction". The first two chapters take extreme liberties by making suppositions about what Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin thought the day they filmed a Bigfoot, October 20, 1967. These first two chapters pretty much set the tone of the whole book. Long goes into his "investigation" (read character assassination) of Patterson with a zeal akin to rich televangelists who receive another check from someone they've just fleeced. He completely ignored anything good about Patterson, instead focusing on Patterson's habit of borrowing money and not paying it back, Patterson's arrest record and his "con artist" ways. It's clear that Long has hatred for Patterson, and complete disdain for Bigfoot hunters who support the PGF; he mocks the late Rene Dahinden's unique speech characteristics regularly throughout the book, and discounts John Green and Peter Byrne's assessments of the the PGf and regularly mocks them as well. Long interviews several witnesses, most of whom seem to have an axe to grind against Roger Patterson for one reason or another. He seems most excited by his find of Bob Heironimus, the man alleged to have worn the "suit", and also the man alleged to have made the "suit", Philip Morris. The two conflicting stories of how the suit was made and the fact that one party says it was in 3 parts, the other saying 6, doesn't seem to bother Long one bit. He puts both claims in the book and says that one account of the suit can be traced to a rumor put forth by Patterson. He arrogantly pronounces the PGF dead, and he the killer, by the end of the book, and the reader feels he/she has been through the literary equivalent of a tax audit. Do yourself a favor, don't buy this book unless you are really desperate or curious. Thumbs down to "The Making of Bigfoot".

Auutor Greg Long claims to have proved the Bigfoot movie a hoax by finding the man who wore the suit and the man who made the suit.

The man he claims wore the suit says it was made in three parts out of the skin of a dead horse, and smelled accordingly.

The man who claims he made the suit says it was made in six parts out of ordinary costume materials.

How does junk like this get published?

This book is long on circumstantial evidence and hearsay and short on any kind of hard evidence. It totally discounts the decades of scientific and forensic analysis that supports the film's authenticity and mocks those who do not.

If I could have given it negative stars, I would have.

RECENT PATTERSON-GIMLIN FILM "CONFESSIONS" DEBUNKED

Recently two men, Bob Hieronimus and Philip Morris, "confessed" their involvement in the Patterson-Gimlin film, which they claimed was a hoax. Hieronimus claimed to have been the person who wore the alleged suit, while Morris claimed to have been the person who fabricated the suit. The claims are touted by Greg Long and Kal Korff in their book, "The Making of Bigfoot: The Inside Story", endorsed by Prometheus Books, a publishing company run by Paul Kurtz, chairman of CSICOP.

However, their own claims disprove them.

Morris stated that the arms of the alleged suit were made to look longer than human arms by attaching the hands to sticks that would extend the length of the arms.

The problem here is that the subject in the Patterson-Gimlin film exhibits hand flexion. This is impossible to duplicate by merely extending the arms with sticks. A sophisticated prothesis would be needed.

Morris' claims to not fit the actual film data, and they can now be dismissed as false.

If that alone were not enough to disprove the claims, the individuals' descriptions of the alleged suit are entirely contradictory.

Morris claims that the suit was made in six pieces (head, full body with arms and legs, two hands, and two feet). He also claims that synthetic strands of dynel nylon material were attached to knitted cloth to form his suit.

In contrast, Hieronimus claims that the suit came in three pieces (head, upper body with arms and hands, and lower body with legs and feet). Furthermore, he states that Patterson fabricated the suit from the skin of a dead red horse, gluing fur from a coat onto the hide.

These two claims are mutually exclusive, yet both are being labelled as the truth by Long, Korff, Kurtz, and Prometheus Books.

In conclusion, the claims are clearly without merit. And the uncritical acceptance of the claims by the supposedly "skeptical" Kurtz and his company reveals an obvious lack of skepticism.

I hereby waive any intellectual property rights that I may have to this review, and request that anyone who is willing and able would copy this review and disseminate it to as many people as is possible or permissible within the law.

I found this a very interesting and informative glimpse into the events and people aurrounding the Patterson film. Well worth the read just for the interviews and varying personal insights into Patterson the man and the film footage.

That being said, I feel the author fell short of putting this controversy to rest. If anything he simply raised more questions with a lot of circumstantial evidence that is often contradicting. Most of those contradictions have been aptly covered in prior reviews here so no sense in rehashing them.

But one thing I found very irritating is the author's failure to press Bob H's statement to the effect "There may have been more than one suit." What did BH mean by that? How come the author didn't press him to clarify what he meant with that statement? Or did he press him but chose not to include BH's answer in the book because it would have weakened his case? That is just one of many things that raises more questions as opposed to answering them.

Personally, before I read this book, I was about 50/50 on the authenticity of the film. After reading it, I am still 50/50 on the authenticity. Not enough solid evidence to dismiss it as a hoax based on all this "he said, she said."

The last chapter on Phillip Morris, if anything, was strong cirumstantial evidence that the film may NOT have been a hoax. the suit Morris describes selling to Patterson is certainly not the suit that BH described wearing. I also found myself leaning toward feeling the film may indeed be genuine with Morris's opinion about a professional makeup man needing to be on site in order to glue the mask on to the man 'in the suit'. And Morris raised more questions with his puzzlement about the great detail in the face of the subject when Patterson wouldn't have known that it would someday be exposed to computer blowups and enhancement. This is a professional costume designer who was clearly very impressed by the detail in the face and at a loss, himself, as to how such detail was achieved.

Overall, I found much of the circumstantial evidence that pointed to a hoax to be equally off-set by circumstantial evidence that pointed to the authenticity of this film. An enjoyable and very interesting book but by no means the final word on this fascinating controversy.

Having looked forward to this book, just the latest in a long line of attempts to 'debunk' the Patterson film ( and thus, the bigfoot mythos in general ) and after finally reading it, I am greatly disapointed. Having anticipated what was touted as a final, fairhanded and CREDIBLE expose of the film, what I found within it's pages is a schizophrenic mishmash of sorts. Several of the author's 'witnesses' contradict each other ( and themselves )on many key points, and his facts are presented in a somewhat haphazard manner, particularly where the alleged monkey suit is involved, and this is perhaps the most damning of all. This should not be taken lightly, as this is the central point of his thesis - that the 'bigfoot' in the film is actually a man in a suit. However, this final, irrevocable demolition of the sasquatch legend falls well short of the mark, as his two main witnesses offer conflicted and extremely contradictory testimony as regards the 'suit' itself, and as such, the promised knock-out punch turns out to be a feeble wrist-flap. What most of the media fail to mention is that one of the parties behind this latest revelation was involved a few years back in a widely-seen FOX-TV special wherein he presented an entirely different scenario behind the 'creation' of the bigfoot suit and even produced 'evidence' that pointed to the true identity of the man who supposedly wore the suit ( an entirely different individual from the man who is now claiming that honor ). How does this square with his latest claims? This seems to be a case of 'throw bull**** at the wall and see what sticks'. To date, and to my knowledge, there have been no less than SIX different individuals all claiming to have been 'the man in the suit'. Having seen the purely anecdotal and contradictory statements the author is presenting as proof, I can see no reason to accept this latest set of revelations as being any more reliable than the other claims. Perhaps the bigfoot in the film is an actual undescribed hominid. Perhaps not. However, if what was filmed WAS a man in a suit, one should like to see actual evidence ( capital E, in the skeptics parlance ). Please provide some tangible example to back up your claim. It has been nearly 40 years since the footage was shot. Special effects, make-up and costuming have made incredible advances since that time. If the author's claims are true, then it should certainly be possible to recreate the suit that was seen in the film. That, and that alone, would constitue proof, and the matter could finally be laid to rest. This book was a resounding disapointment. If the Patterson film is a fake, I look forward to reading an account that will provide reliable evidence of that fact. That is what I thought this book would be. It wasn't. What I got was contradictory anecdotes and character assassination.

Well some may think me partial to the topic and of the mind to strike out against anyone who would attack something of special interest to me. That may be true so I have held off until I did purchase my copy through Amazon and did read it. Then I had to look at what was written, striking out the words Bigfoot and some of the people and places I know and know of, replacing it with any other topic. What I found seems right on the verge of being criminal. Criminal in how Greg Long acted, spoke to and of, wrote and now defends his methods and theory in the name of "critical-thinking". It reminded me of other logic streams I have witnessed in such groups as supremacists exhibit.

What could have been, should have been seems to have gotten lost in the writings of Greg Long with "The Making of Bigfoot". The only reason it deserves to be on anyone's book shelf is to show future would-be-debunkers how not to do it. Greg put in a lot of effort with this book but let his ego and bias taint everything he wrote about. It calls into question more on his own motive than that of Roger Patterson.

There is no science in it. There is no earth-shattering evidence presented. He shows us scraps of paper with no chain of custody. Only second hand information, conjecture and arguments, except for the documentation of what Greg and his wife consumed while driving to and from his interviews, that we get from first hand.

For all that he did (Greg) to produce this book, he undid it all with the last chapter. One is left with a feeling that he left the story unfinished and dramatized for something in the future.

I do not recommend for anyone to purchase this book but to seek it out in a library or as used if you feel that you should read it.

Greg misses one very important fact in all of this. The people who look for or claim to have seen, casted tracks of or filmed such a creature are held to a very high standard in producing evidence that science will look at. It begs the question why is this not so with all these so called "critical thinking" people as well?

This book arrived on my doorstep, and was opened eagerly. I wish it hadn't !
Long has produced what he would refer to as an investigative book, with very little in the way of investigation - he didn't even bother to watch the Patterson-Gimlin movie on anything better than an old VHS tape, when there is a high quality DVD version easily available.

The book 'interviews' a number of people (Long's Publicist Kal Korff, who wrote the forward claimed publicly that they had been 'deposed' - this is not true), and from the very start, you could see he had an agenda fuelled by the promise of a later TV show.
The book insults our intelligence, bringing forward two 'witnesses' - one who claims to have worn the suit, and one who made the suit - their descriptions don't even come close to matching on any level. Long's response to that was 'thats okay'! No Mr. Long, it is not okay.

For the record, the `suit man' Bob Heironimous claims that Patterson had made the suit from a skinned `dead red horse' - Philip Morris the suit maker claims it was made from a synthetic fabric, and that is was an off-the-shelf gorilla costume.

Philip Morris has a track record of jumping on the band-wagon - he went to the press years ago complaining that the Austin Powers character `Dr. Evil' was stolen from his old road show, with a character called `Dr. Evil' who wore a fez. - Morris can't even get his story straight about whether Patterson paid for the costume !

I wish Amazon could show you the photo of the gorilla suit that is printed in this book - it looks nothing like the object in the film.

Long very neatly sidesteps scientific papers on the subject of this film that detail arm proportions, muscle mass, fingers flexing.

Long ignores the detail of breasts - neither he nor Morris explain why they went to the trouble of making fake breasts.

Long tells so many simple lies in this book - (for example, that the Ford Motor Company gave Roger Patterson `Land Rovers' - Land Rover are not part of Ford, and never have been - Ford would never supply rival vehicles), that it is impossibly to trust anything he has said in the book - he badgered relatives to produce this book. Roger Patterson's widow had to threaten to call the police to remove him from her property twice.

I keep an open mind on whether the film was a hoax or not, but one thing is certain - this book is nothing more than a fabrication and a vicious character assassination from start to finish.