Interview: John Green
"The famed sasquatch chronicler
weighs in on debunkers, the media, the best evidence
to date, and the need for a bigfoot body (or not)." - http://bigfootproject.com/
Excerpt on debunkers:
JG: Well, the media reaction certainly does. We've gone over the years
through a phase where anything about this was news to where anyone who
was doing something about it was news to where the only news nowadays is
when people claim to have proven it's all a hoax.
BIP: Yes, I was going to ask you about that -
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Graphic
from Denver Post article "Bigfoot
Believers". Click on the image for a ridiculously
large
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JG: Oh, I missed one phase. There was a phase there when any scientist
who showed an interest was news. We've now reached the extreme where some
of the world's very top people in the relevant fields are very interested
and are saying publicly that there should be proper investigation and this
is not news. The only thing that's news is that the whole thing has proved
to be a fake. The demonstration of that is very clear when this absolute
nonsense story about Ray
Wallace faking all the foot prints went all around
the world in exactly the same time period the Denver Post ran a major
article and sidebars on these key scientists who were saying it should be investigated,
the Associated Press wouldn't even carry the story. It never went anywhere
beyond Denver. To me as a newspaper man, this is absolutely shocking. I
tried to contact some of those at Columbia University's long-established
graduate school of journalism who keep a tab on the press and the response
was, "Nobody here is interested in taking this up." In other
words, for 40 years we've been butting our heads against a barrier manned
by the scientists saying there can't be any such thing. Now they're stepping
away from the ramparts and the media is stepping up to take their place.
Absolutely fascinating. The media is seeing to it that this heresy does
not get to the public.
BIP: It seems to be the case when you can bet that someone who has bigfoot
living up in that attic would get more press than something like the Skookum
cast would.
JG: Well...
BIP: They seem to want to relegate this to the tabloids and that's where
the story stays.
JG: For example, right now, we
have the proof - absolute and indisputable
- that the Patterson film is genuine. The newspapers refuse to carry anything
of that. It can't be sold so therefore they're not going to be taken in
therefore they're not going to run the story. As a result of this silly
book where people are claiming that they were involved in making the film
we've gone back to looking at the film and realize that, although you can't
establish beyond dispute the size of anything, you can establish the relative
size of things that are right there in the same film frame. This creature
has an intermembral index - the comparison of the length of the arms to
the length of the legs - that is totally outside the human range so it
cannot be a human in a suit, but it is also totally outside the range of
any other known primate of any size at all. Therefore, it has to be an
unknown primate. This can only be ignored, it cannot be argued against.
All you can do is say, "Well, you can't measure properly on the film." Well,
you can't measure precisely, but the difference is so slight that it doesn't
matter. The human intermembral index is around 70, all of the great apes
are over 100, this thing is in the high 80's. The question of the angle
of this segment of the arm to the camera and so on, if you look at enough
frames, you've got to be able to get to it. And on top of that, we have
a forensic animator who worked on the "Legend Meets Science" DVD.
He says that they established beyond any question the relative length of
where the joints were as the thing was moving and the intermembral index
was pretty close to 90. This is a man who says when he was hired to work
on the film he took it for granted it was a man in a suit.
BIP: Mr. Long and his
book. People have read the book -
JG: Not many people have.
BIP: I haven't read it myself,
but those who have say it is a mass of contradictions.
JG: Yes.
BIP: It befuddles your mind
at times trying to see how he weighs his information and where he gets
his information from and how it's all added together. I wanted to ask you
what kind of an effect does this latest attack on the Patterson/Gimlin
film have on the bigfoot community in general? Or does it have an effect?
JG: Well...it's very annoying. [Laughs] It would have had a very bad effect
if it had been treated in the press the way that the Wallace thing was.
Fortunately, that hasn't happened.
BIP: They pretty well ignored The
Making of Bigfoot.
JG: Yes, they pretty well have.
BIP: Ignore it and maybe it'll go away.
JG: Well, it pretty much has. There is now an article in the Skeptical
Enquirer, but I don't know how much circulation that has. That magazine
is linked to the publishers of the book. Of course, the public doesn't
know that. Other than that, there's been just minor publicity and a few
local TV things. They did get one network TV exposure, but it wasn't favorable
to them.
BIP: No, and isn't that amazing. It seems that anything about sasquatch
that is picked up by the media is not favorable.
JG: Well, the host on the program is on our side like so many people not
prepared to say so.
Full interview can be read here:
