money Here Are Some Behind-The-Scenes Facts About "Cocaine Bear" You Probably Don't Know
Cocaine Bear is officially out in theaters and I'm glad to report it's just as glorious as I hoped it would be.
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As is the case with most movies I love, I immediately did a little research as soon as I was home from the theater.
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And as usual, I fell down the rabbit hole and learned a lot.
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Here are 18 things I found out about Cocaine Bear:
1.First and foremost, it's based on actual events.
I had no idea this was the case until I watched the trailer a couple months ago, and I was genuinely shocked when that "inspired by true events" text popped up. These true events began in September of 1985 when a Kentucky drug smuggler unloaded 45 plastic containers of cocaine from their plane into the Tennesse wilderness, likely due to the weight.
About two and a half months later, just two days before Christmas, a black bear was found dead, having overdosed on some of the abandoned cocaine. The bear's activity from when the cocaine was dropped and his death is unknown.
2.The real bear ate 75 pounds (or 34 kilos) of cocaine, valued at $2 million.
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According to Dr. Kenneth Alonso, who examined the bear's corpse, the animal's stomach was "literally packed to the brim with cocaine."
3.Dr. Alonso had the bear taxidermied and gave it to the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area (CRNRA).
4.Country singer Waylon Jennings is rumored to have owned the stuffed bear at one point.
Following its bestowal to the CRNRA, it ended up in a pawn shop, where Jennings found and purchased it.
5.Cocaine Bear — also known as Pablo Escobear — now resides in Kentucky.
Specifically, in the Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall.
6.Radio Silence members, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, were approached to direct the film adaptation.
They turned it down so they could revive the Scream franchise.
7.Elizabeth Banks ended up directing it instead.
"My goal is to make the audience laugh, scream, and jump," she said at the film's LA premiere. "I made this movie during the pandemic, when everything seemed scary and traumatic. I felt like there was no greater metaphor for the chaos all around us than a bear who is high on cocaine. So if this helps people process the last two and a half years of their life, I’ll feel great about that. I hope they are just entertained."
8.Banks sees the film as a "redemption story" for the real Cocaine Bear.
Universal Pictures
She told ScreenRant that after reading the script and learning about the origin story, "it really depressed [her] that, that bear became collateral damage in this insane war on drugs. And I just felt like this movie was the redemption story for that bear."
9.One of Banks' biggest conditions for directing was that the name Cocaine Bear remained.
“I lived through Zach and Miri Make a Porno, and the title was a problem,” she told Variety. “But I think Zach and Miri Make a Porno now would be like, ‘Whatever.’ I don’t really think anyone would even shy away from it. Because words don’t matter anymore.”
10.No real bears were used in the making of this film.
Peter Jackson's New Zealand-based special effects company Wētā FX — which worked on The Lord of the Rings, Avatar, and Planet of the Apes franchises — created the CGI bear. There was also some motion capture involved, performed by stuntman Allan Henry (sometimes in bear prosthetics), who was a student of Andy Serkis'.
11.A lot of research was done to try to figure out how a bear on cocaine might behave.
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“We had a little leeway with the bear because it’s on cocaine, and nobody knows how a bear would actually act on cocaine,” Banks told Esquire. The outlet reported that the crew did research on various bear species' behavior, even looking up how fast they can run, how high they can jump, etc., and embellished these stats.
“Everything in this movie has some basis in reality, which I’m proud of,” Banks said. “You believe all these things could be happening, but it also tells you that this is a supercharged bear.”
12.Though it takes place in Georgia in the US, Cocaine Bear was shot in County Wicklow on the east coast of Ireland.
13.Former Devo frontman, Mark Mothersbaugh, known for his work on numerous Wes Anderson movies and the Rugrats franchise, composed the score for Cocaine Bear.
14.Using "Jane" by Jefferson Starship as the opening song was a deliberate nod to Wet Hot American Summer, which was one of Banks' first films.
15.Cocaine Bear is the first film starring Ray Liotta to be released following the actor's passing.
His character, Syd Dentwood, is the druglord whose cocaine the bear eats.
16.Banks had been talking with Keri Russell about a completely different project when Cocaine Bear came into the picture.
“I thought it was so insane,” Russell told Daily Beast, adding that Banks told her it was “even more insane.”
17.Christian Convery, the kid actor who plays Henry, got COVID during filming and a local boy was brought in as a stand-in for 10 days so production could stay on schedule.
However, the boy didn't know any of Henry's lines, so Banks used a megaphone to read them out so Russell would have something to act against.“So it’s fucking Banks in the background screaming this little kid’s lines in the background in this Southern accent," Russell explained. “‘Ms. McKinley, have you ever done cocaine?’ And me looking at this little blank-faced kid.”
18.This might not be the last we've seen of Cocaine Bear.
