So I’m almost done on my shadow puppet. It’s like, one step away from being finished… it’s just that to coat the rods with the rubber Plastidip takes forever … foooorreeevvvverrrrr

On the can it says wait 4 hours per coat, and do a minimum of 3 to 4 coats - and since I have to do one side of the rod at a time, it’s slow going. Plus, it’s very heavy on the vapors, which also means I have to do it at a time when nobody’s about to sniff it in - and make sure the back door’s open (currently it’s 5° celsius in Melbourne… at night of course) which makes the work quite cold too.

I’ve figured out the trick to puppet making though is to work on a number of builds at once. While the spray is drying, I go back to my muppet pattern: I’m working on the mouth. That too is slow, because each part requires gluing, and foam glue is also something you have to wait on until you can move to the next part. So while part of the mouth is drying, I glue the two pieces of the head together; and while that’s drying I glue fur on the lower part of the jaw… that’s how I built my moppets for City Head (read more about that on the Blog page), part of each at a time. It’s very efficient; but can be messy.

In the meantime, I’ve also kept myself occupied with a rather unusual reading matter. I’m always fascinated with the urban myths that people believe, and I’ve been trying to find a good topic to write a play about. As I do when feeling uninspired, I turn to the odd pages of the net… and thinking of the recent ‘Bigfoot in a cooler’ news, I hunted the story down. I first saw it on CNN’s newspages, and the pics immediately told me it was a hoax. But it was unconfirmed at that stage… so today I tracked down the story to see if I was right. And I was. Gee, never saw that coming!

But in hunting down the story, it gave me an opportunity to learn more about the myth. I’ve never really been into the whole Bigfoot myth (maybe you just need to be American to have more of an affinity with it), and to be honest, the only Bigfoot stuff I really remember is that TV show in the 90s (The Hendersons?). That fur suited creature on TV always scared me for some reason (hey, me and my sister found a lot of puppets creepy… I can’t convince my sister to watch Dark Crystal because of the ‘birds’, and Never Ending Story still creeps me, even though I’m sure if I watched it again I wouldn’t feel that way anymore).

Anyway, reading more about this hoax was interesting for a number of reasons: first is that it seems to be made up from two bored guys who simply wanted to play a joke on local Georgian media (no, not the country, the state in America) and got carried away; two is that they managed to be picked up by a notorious Bigfoot con artist (or at least in the Bigfoot world he seems notorious) and used to buy media coverage; three is that none of them seemed smart enough to do a long con.

For those who don’t know, a long con refers to a con trick that you have to put in effort and time; short con is something akin to those guys who do dodgy card tricks (think the start of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and you have a short con; The Italian Job is more of a long con).

… Ok, bare with me here this is actually puppetry related.

Anyway, the hoaxers purported to have the body of Bigfoot stashed away somewhere. They provide pics (two) and say in a while they’ll provide DNA evidence and more photos; only a select group of scientists will later have access to the body as proof, and the clincher, the third notorious guy, who’s known in the Bigfoot world as having done hoaxes before, will be posting videos of the body online for a fee.

The images are quickly debunked: forum posters notice that the ‘body’ looks amazingly like a Sasquatch suit sold by a costumer. Pics of the costume are found and provided as comparisons. There’s differences though; the ‘body’ has protruding teeth. Quickly debunked as a set of falsies. The ‘body’ also has a very long tongue sticking out (rigor mortis in animals does mean that the tongue tends to poke out of the mouth slightly)… quickly debunked as an odd piece of bologna (or something). Entrails on top of the ‘body’.. yep, you guessed it, debunked. And the DNA evidence? Apparently partly human, partly ape, and partly opossum… but there’s no chain of evidence, the DNA could have come from anything since it was taken by the hoaxers and sent to the scientist; who by the way, agrees that it doesn’t prove anything.

While the topic of this hoax is interesting for only so long, I start to think about that famous footage of Bigfoot. We’ve all seen it one time or another, but how many of us actually view it or know about the background of it? (Again, perhaps not so in America) While I was reading, I got curious and started reading more about the Patterson footage. The most well-known example of ‘proof’ of the creature, it’s seen walking across screen from left to right, turning and looking at the camera, and then continues on its way.

What’s fascinating to me is that the more I looked at the footage, the more I wanted to say hoax. And yet, it was captivating enough to make me wonder. Whereas with the above recent ‘body in a cooler’ thing, I knew it immediately on sight of the photos. Watching the Patterson footage, I couldn’t really say that. Now, I’m not a believer in any way; nor did I become convinced when watching it. But, I believe that there is a reason why so many people do believe in Bigfoot from this footage alone. It’s so damn ambiguous that it’s hard to prove anything either way.

Reading the literature on the theories behind the footage, disproving and proving the Bigfoot seen in it, and comparing it with discussions on the recent hoax, one wonders. Scientists have taken a look at various things, including gait, ratios of body parts, pivot points for limbs, and suggest that it’s not a human on film, and humans wouldn’t be capable of such movements without giving themselves away (in fact, they suggest it’s not possible at all). Furthermore, they believe that no costume, no matter how well made, would hide human elements or create ‘Bigfoot’ ones.

The figure (costume, whatever) is so simply done - you’d have to be in the acting/performance area to know just how difficult it would be for an actor to pull off such a hoax. Taking everything at face value (ie. let’s pretend that the footage is not doctored, etc etc), the gait, the pacing, the way the limbs pivot, the gentleness and smoothness, the gravity of the whole … ‘thing’ is enough to make you think that that’s at the very least, one great actor. How many actors do you know who could take the direction of ‘now, act like a human, but not quite human; act like an ape, but not quite an ape’ and actually do it as smoothly as that, on cue, for a couple of guys shooting film in the wilderness, while wearing a bulky sweaty costume?

Here’s where it gets puppet related: many people in Hollywood, the costume area as well as special effects, including those who have worked on sci fi (and Planet of the Apes) have said that they could not produce something to replicate the Patterson footage in terms of costume; and that in fact, if they could, they’d be bloody amazed.

Furthermore, this footage was shot in the late 60s, before a lot of current methods of costume and makeup (ie. latex) would have been used. So anybody who could replicated a costume would have to do it with limitations of materials in mind. Given that there are a number of people who have tried to replicate it and failed, the footage looks even more impressive from that standpoint: how come guys in the 60s could create a Bigfoot that looks natural, and contemporaries can’t?

Given that costume puppets are all the rage in children’s TV at the moment, surely out there somewhere is a designer that could make a replica, and disprove this decades-old film?

I’m still convinced that the Patterson footage is simply a person in a suit. Frankly, the biggest problem with it is that face-on shot. I mean, how come this supposedly timid, reclusive creature, that can only be tracked down in remote areas, turns around and looks straight down the barrel of a camera (it’s the 60s - no quiet pocket handhelds here), ignores the guy holding it, ignores the guy next to him holding a rifle, in broad daylight, in a clearing in a forest? Ignoring the possibility that a Bigfoot might not have seen either of them (eyesight that bad huh?), are we really to believe that this reclusive creature wouldn’t have just… run away from fright? Hidden from shyness? That’s what most shy animals do.

But if the Patterson footage is a hoax - man it’s a good one. Not only that, but what a great opportunity for all those costumers out there to try and prove/disprove the footage.

Anyway, that’s my odd thought for the day.

And actually, it’s not solved my problem of what to write about. It has kept me delightfully occupied though. I find the ambiguities of reality and fantasy good writing fodder, and Bigfoot is a great place to start. If you want to learn a bit more about the topic - or simply want to understand what I’ve been babbling about - here’s some places. The whole ‘body in a cooler’ hoax laid out from start to finish as events and news evolved and Bigfoot info from news and sightings, to history and media. I found the first site to be both informative and objective, despite the author clearly advocating Bigfoot to be real; not a bad thing, but it’s nice to have an objective description from someone who obviously promotes scientific methods to proving the creature to be real.

… Monday, I hope to have those damn rods finished and the puppet online. I’ve also come up with another product to offer - rods! I thought to myself, if I’m making them for shadow puppets, I may as well offer them separately too. So that should also be up on Monday. And I’m also going to add a post about the Plastidip product, since I’ve had a question about it from another puppet maker in Melbourne… See, and you thought drying was boring!