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I’m feeling pleasurably morbid these days. It’s the rain for sure, but what a blessing it is. I’m not depressed in the slightest. I’m just enjoying a season change where the pungent smell of leaves feels like the backdrop to a film noir sensibility. I finally saw Werner Herzog’s Grizzlyman last night and I am just blown away. I sure loved it. Hearing Herzog’s overblown, dead-serious voice over in relation to this California-style ex-alchoholic ecological maniac was too precious. The juxtaposition of a Dostoyeviskian perspective and the Red Hot Chili Peppers tickled me pink. I think I related to both characters.

The story, in a nutshell, is about this guy, oh what is his name, Timothy Tredwell. A somewhat effeminate nature enthusiast who takes it upon himself to save the Grizzly Bears of northern Alaska. It’s a noble task that Herzog is set to implode. Herzog found all this footage after Tredwell met his fateful end about a year or so ago. Tredwell and his girlfriend were inevitably eaten by the thing that Tredwell loved (I think the girlfriend was just on the worst date of her life). Tredwell is a tragic figure who sets out on a DIY nature film of the most unthought out kind. It’s basically amateur nature film. He names his bears (Saturn, Chocky, Matilda), attempts to teach us things, goes to teach the children (always be wary of ex alchoholics that direly want to save children) and eventually gains a modicum of notoriety after ten years (he appears on David Letterman at some point). Herzog loves exposing how canned the whole thing is. What really struck me in the films was the manner in which Tredwell increasingly finds his inspiration in his absolute antipathy for humanity. His love for bears is fueled in large part for his hatred of the "civilized" world. This sense of animosity and then supposed animal empathy are definitely factors evident in Becoming Animal. It’s something I relate to quite well. Herzog will often say enigmatic nihilisms like, "I differ with Tredwell on this point. While he sees a world of compassion, I see a world of chaos, death and murder." I mean, I had to love that. Where have all the nihilist nature voice overs gone? And of course, Herzog loves Tredwell. This bleach blond ex-actor surfer gone native is the epitome of a postmodern de-centered ball of self-destruction. Tredwell is Herzog’s agonized core of dissolution. There is this great moment, where we are apparently looking at some of the last video shot of the bear that killed the couple. As the camera closes up on the bear, Herzog says something like, "Tredwell saw a world of caring and compassion in the eyes of this bear. When I look into these eyes, I see the uncaring world of nature whose only feeling is a bored sense of hunger." Woe!

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