Ep. 274 - The Legend of Boggy Creek!

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Big Food and Beyond with Cliff and Bulbo. These guys
are your favorites, so like to say, subscribe and raid
it five.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Stock and me.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Greatest on yesterday and listening watching lim always keep its watching.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
And now you're hosts Cliff Berrickman and James bubble Fay.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Hey Bobs, what's happening Man?

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Not much? How you doing, Cliff?

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Lots of good things are going on, of course, lots
of projects in the works. Some I can talk about,
some I cannot. But yeah, there's great things pushing forward
in the Bigfoot world as far as the NABC and
stuff like that goes. I was out in the woods yesterday.
I found two sets of tracks, took photographs of them.
They were in forest stuff. I'm kind of hesitant to
cast and forest stuff nowadays because of all the all

(00:56):
the issues with that, you know, like the plaster leaking through.
And I've wasted many, many, many many mini mini mini
pounds of plaster dealing with four stuff, and I thought
that this was going to pose the same problem. So
I just scanned them with that scanning thing on the
phone and took note, took a couple of samples for
a lab test.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
So yeah, good.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Things are going on as usual anything with you, that's unusual,
nothing than usual.

Speaker 4 (01:18):
I just came back a two days ago from a
Bluff Creek. I was out there with the Bluff Creek
Project guys, and so that was that was fun. And
Alex was there it, you know, from Small Town Monsters,
and so I did an interview with him and just.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Hung out, you know, I kit moral there.

Speaker 4 (01:34):
So of course you're laughing the whole time in Letterman
and yeah, it's a good time.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Now, Well, what's the landscape look like? I'm hoping to
make it down there in the next month or two.
But what what do I what? What am I going
to see down there? I heard lared meadows totally gone,
Like what else is going on down there?

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:50):
I didn't get up past Laos and I never even
made it to the film, so that actually I had
to shoot with Alex that day and then by the.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Time got push back, pushback, pushback, push.

Speaker 4 (02:02):
Back, and then I had I had to leave the
next morning early, so I never actually hiked into the film.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
So so I didn't get to see the burn mark.
But they said, yeah, it came down with you know,
like one hundred yards or something.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
What about like the Notice Creek area and stuff. I
heard that area is kind of burnout. Is that accurate
or no?

Speaker 2 (02:18):
You can see where the fire came through.

Speaker 4 (02:19):
I mean yeah, it wasn't like a complete like moonscape,
you know, like it was kind of one of those
more fast moving.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
It was kind of patch here, and.

Speaker 4 (02:28):
Some parts are fine, like the bridge, Like when you
go over the bridge, it's burnt above there, but at
the bridge itself it's fine.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Okay, Okay, So the upper reaches I guess the slightly
higher altitudes not knock down to the creek at least.

Speaker 4 (02:42):
You know how it was coming from the north and
north the winds are like northwest northeast during like a
lot of that fire. When you're coming driving into Laos,
it's really burnt out on your left to the south
when you're coming down before you get into the Lous
that's where you see the most burned. It came up
the It came up the south side, I guess first,

(03:02):
and then then the fires came they switched around and
came down from the north and the north ones that
are the ones that burned down and really got down
close to the site.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
Okay, no kidding, Yeah. Well, like I said, I'm hoping
to get out there and take a look at it myself.
It's been a couple of years since I've been out
to that area anyway, and I do like going there
every few years, you know, just kind of historical visit
and stuff. That's some other contacts I need to follow
through with down there as well.

Speaker 4 (03:27):
Yeah, the Foot the swimming hole has never been better,
no kidding. I mean it's always it's always nice, but
I mean it's right right now. Was the perfect depth
it was. It was chilly, but everyone else jumped in
jumped out. But I swam around there for like ten
minutes or something. I was I thought, I was fine,
it was, it was beautiful. It's just this the bluest
there was the bluest, prettiest one I've ever seen in Bluff.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
No kidding. And of course, for people we're talking about
was talking about the swimming hole at Laois Camp. If
you've been to Laos Camp and you followed the little
trail down there to the turn in the river, that's
where he's talking about. I think everybody kind of baptized
is themselves in the Bigfoot River at that location.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Not everyone. Yeah, I was, did it up there at
the bat Box?

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Oh yeah, well that's a good spot too. I know,
I rolled around in Bluff Creek at the film site
and stuff myself. That's that's before the Bluff Creek project.
You know, I put cameras everywhere up there, so I
don't I don't know if i'd recommend it now. But
you know, back in the day, when very few people
knew where it was, still you could go up there
and be alone and do that.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
You know.

Speaker 4 (04:23):
Yeah, they got some naked footage of the bows because
I still stripped down naked and jump in the swimming hole.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
You know what. I could probably go through my contact
lists and my phone and thirty percent of the people
would probably have naked footage of the Bows somehow or another,
you know, through some accidental sort of thing. You know. Yeah,
I mean, honestly, I'd love to talk to you longer,
but we have some amazing guests on the line right now,
and I think it's time we need to hop into them. Hey, Bobo,

(04:50):
let me ask you real fast, what's if every movie
you've ever seen in your entire life from birth to now,
what is your all time favorite movie? B Kree Legend ofree,
it would be hard for me to imagine there are
people out there who don't know about the legend of
Boggie Creek. And you know, it's obviously one of the

(05:12):
most important films in the entire Bigfoot genre. And today
we are dealing with two of the heroes of the
re release of that classic. First of all, Pamela Pierce,
who got pam we'll get in this in just a minute,
but like she's directly related to Charles Pearce, a guy
who put all this together and of course one of
the producers involved in this whole project that really was

(05:33):
instrumental in getting this out there for everybody's eyeballs to enjoy.
Justin Beam, So, pam justin, thank you so much for
joining us on Bigfoot and beyond, thanks for having.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Us, Thanks for showing up for you guys.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
It's hard for me to imagine that there's people out
there who don't know what the legend of Boggie Creek is.
But then again, I live in a weird bubble where
everything I do and think and breathe and smell is
Bigfoot essentially, you know, like I'm a very Bigfoot centric life.
So it's entirely possible that there are some people out
there who don't know about the Legend of Boggie Creek. Pam,

(06:08):
I think that you're well suited to address this. Would
you please tell us about Charles Pearris and his making
of Legend of Boggie Creek.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
So, Charles pears was my dad, and in nineteen seventy
two he sets out to make an independent film, and
so the Legend of Boggy Creek, the way I sum
it up a lot of times is it's a grated
documentary on Bigfoot.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Well, g rate it obviously. The G stands for great,
because it's a huge thing for all of us. I
think I know that it really affected me for good
and bad when I was a kid. And the good
because it was part of the force that set the
hook in me at an early age to be interested
in sasquatches. And as far as bad goes, well, you
gave me nightmares for a long long time. I was

(07:01):
the kind of kid who loved monsters but wanted to
see them but hated seeing them at the same time.
You really did a number on me so well, Charles
did at least, and it was very, very influential.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
So that was his first film, but he originally set
out to do a different kind of mountain Man film,
and he and Earl Smith, who is credited as the writer,
went to Los Angeles to do pre production work and
they saw these teenage kids walking down Sunset Boulevard wearing

(07:34):
Monster T shirts. And my dad told Earl to pull over,
and he jumped out, which she was prone to do
this kind of stuff, and by the time they were
getting back into the car, he said, Earl, we're making
the wrong movie. We got to go home because, as
you guys probably know, the Bobby Ford had been attacked

(07:54):
and the newspaper reports had gone even perhaps in international,
they definitely were national news. So that sent all of
these people to foul. And of course they were merchandising
even back then and had the T shirts and they
had made their way to sense At Boulevard. So that
was a sign to my dad, and so that's the

(08:17):
legend of Boggie Creek becomes it.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
It's my favorite movie, not just my favorite Bigfoot Moved.
It's definitely my favorite movie.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
Oh that's so sweet, thank you. That's I remember you
said that. Do you remember us meeting in person and
Tree Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
I met you the theater just below Boggy Creek.

Speaker 4 (08:35):
I was with Danny, one of our former guests on
the show, and I ran into you out afternoon screening
of the Legend of Boggie Creek the four K.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
It was like a Tuesday afternoon or something.

Speaker 3 (08:47):
Yeah, so we played there at the Robinson Center for
a week. But anyway, young, so I was glad that
you got to see it.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, I seen it on the big screen in four K.
Was this awesome?

Speaker 3 (09:01):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
Where was your family living, Pam in nineteen the early
nineteen seventies.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
So we lived right there in Texta, Cana, like twelve
miles from falk Wow.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
Not far away at all. I had had you heard
rumblings of these sort of things, the Sasquatches in general,
in the area before the before your dad started working
on the movie.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
So here's what happened. I was in the second grade
when Bobby Ford, when the newspaper article came out in
the gazette about Bobby Ford being attacked. And so that
next day or whenever it was that they ran the
article had been raining. So we had to go inside
the cafeteria for you know, like until the bell rang

(09:46):
to go to our class and all of the entire
elementary cafeteria was talking about this monster had attacked this
guy in Falc and I was like, you know, you
you were a kid, and I was like, no, my
parents told me all the time there's no such thing
as monsters, you know. But I'm not going to say anything.

(10:08):
I'm just listening to everything that they're saying. And then
a couple of days later, I'm at home upstairs. My
parents live in this apartment. We live in this apartment,
and my dad's downstairs and he's telling my mother, I'm
going to make it about this this monster, that it's whatever.
And he's telling my mother about it, and I realized

(10:31):
that he's saying the same he's talking about the same
thing that all my classmates were talking about. So that's
how that was my first introduction to the Falc monster.
But after that, I lived with him pretty much every
day for you know, pretty much most of my life.
There was a short you know, like a thirty year

(10:55):
you know, timeframe when I was raising my kids and
stuff and didn't do a whole lot of Boggy Creek stuff.
But it's been the Foulc monsters that kind of like
my brother. I tease that, it's kind of like Charlie
McCarthy was to Candice Bergen.

Speaker 1 (11:11):
What was it like living with your father during the
production of the film. Did it affect the family in
any sort of way? Did he bring it home? Were
you out there watching it being filmed at the time,
any of that sort of stuff.

Speaker 3 (11:24):
So we were out there watching it a lot. He
filmed long hours whenever, you know, that's just who he was.
My dad was so driven. He could go twenty four
hours a day, probably five days. He had more energy
than anybody I've ever known. But I was there for
a lot of it. I'm in the scene where it's

(11:47):
my mom is in the kitchen and she's peeling potatoes
and we run in, saying, Grandpa, Grandpa, we saw him,
We saw the fault monster. And she tells us to
be quiet, and we pull her out into the field
and then he's the creature, steps out and my mother says,
don't run, don't run. She's running.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
Oh I didn't know that was you.

Speaker 3 (12:06):
Yeah, So that's I'm oldest kid that runs in first
with the long kind of blonde hair.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Is he your brother in that? Yep?

Speaker 3 (12:16):
My brother is the little blonde kid that runs across
the field in the beginning, you know, he grows up
at the end that says it scared me, then it
scares me now. So he was his scene. My brother
scene was the first day of principal photography. And my
dad runs out of money three days into filming, and

(12:43):
he spent all the money on film, and so he
has to go back to mister Ledwell and say, I've
got good news and bad news, you know, And it
was like, the bad news is we've run out of money.
The good news is we've got we've captured this really
incredible And that was of course before music or any

(13:04):
of those things had been added. But he knew he
had captured something the way that that sun was hitting
on the field and everything. And I teased because of
the family dynamics that that's the day my brother became
the Golden Child. That was probably the day that they
named him Junior.

Speaker 4 (13:22):
I think anyway, that's an iconic scene when he goes
running across there. I mean that that's you know, it's funny.
When I had my first bigfoot encounter, I used to
tell you all, like that sound you guys had at
the beginning of the movie was was really similar to
some of the sounds I heard.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
I was like, how'd you get that? And I was
that was that was a pretty cool story. How you
your dad got that together?

Speaker 3 (13:44):
Yeah, so I think that that was, if not the
first vocalization recorded, it's certainly one of the first.

Speaker 4 (13:52):
They mixed it, right, They mixed it in other animals
on top of it for the movie.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
Didn't they.

Speaker 3 (13:56):
That's what like people have said later on, but I
don't really know that to be true. I asked my dad.
He told me. I remember the night he was going
out to record the footage, he and Earle were going out,
and then I asked him the next day, did you
get it? And he said yes, So they could have
added things, but he told me the very next day

(14:20):
that they had it. They had gotten it. It's exactly
like they You know, Denny had won not too long
ago the last time I was there. I think I
think that his brother guide or his brother in law,
and it sounds very similar to what they recorded. So
you know they sound similar, don't you think?

Speaker 1 (14:42):
Yeah, something like that. Anyway, stay tuned for more Bigfoot
and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo will be right back
after these messages. So after the film came out, was
it an an immediate hit? I mean, I know you
were just a little girl at the time, but that

(15:04):
certainly would have affected something in your family, Like I'm
sure that Charles would have been gone a lot or
something like that. How did the success of the film,
because it made some money over the years, and I
think if I remember right, my memory is foggy at best,
but I remember I think I saw it in the
drive in or something when I was just a little boy. Yeah,
so it had to be pretty popular right out of

(15:26):
the gate.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
It was a smash hit pretty much from the first
night that it played. Everybody was a buzz. Now a
lot of people thought it was going to fail, and
they were ready to laugh. My dad out of town,
to be honest with you, you know, so he went
to what was the Paramount Theater. At that time, there

(15:48):
were only two movie theaters in texture Canna, and there
was the new fancy one that was playing whatever it
was playing the first run. They played first run movies,
and the Paramount had gone to decline. It had been
like a you know, it was I think it was
built in the late twenties or thirties. Anyway, they did

(16:08):
a lot of vaudeville at you said it had been
called the Sanger then it was the Paramount. So when
you walked in there, your feet would stick to the
bottom of the theater. Have you ever been in one
of those?

Speaker 2 (16:23):
Unfortunately?

Speaker 3 (16:24):
Yes, Yeah, So that's so my dad gave everybody mops
and brooms and stuff. So we cleaned up the whole
thing and so that night it was just it was
a buzz and everybody. But so he still couldn't get
it booked. Back then, the movies all were booked. The

(16:44):
studio was releasing them and they were distributing them, and
they were getting the theaters and stuff. So my dad
resorts to what they call four walling, where that's where
you would go to a theater like the Amount now
it's the Piro, but you would rent the building and

(17:06):
you would pay all the costs associated with it, and
then after the ticket sales you would take the full
box office. So he started doing that and they were
making so Steve Lewill told me that he was picking
up He was in college and he had he would

(17:26):
come back for the weekend and he'd make the run
from texture Cannas Shreeport Eldarta to Monroe, and he'd come
back with like forty thousand dollars. And that's when tickets
were like less than two dollars a piece.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
That's serious money back in the early seventies. Serious money now,
don't get me wrong, but back then that was that's ridiculous. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
So so he still didn't have He's calling Hollywood. They're
hanging up on him. Later on he books to deal
with sam Arkoff, but when he first contacted sam Arkoff
about Boggy Creek, Arkoff hung up on him, you know. So,
and here's the thing. When he was four walling, the
theater owners weren't seeing the box office receipts, but what

(18:14):
they did see were the concession stand receipts. And you know,
that drives a lot of business in the theaters. That's
where a lot of their profits come from. And so
that got mister later on mister Hawk's attention, Joy Holck
and he owned a chain of theaters, and so anyway

(18:39):
he comes to my dad and so he becomes the distributor.
So that's and they were you know, so, yeah, it
grossed twenty five million dollars between seventy two and seventy five,
and first the first it did first run, and then
they came back again and did all the drive ins.
Mister Halk owned a lot of drive ins and so

(19:00):
he knew how well, like you know, that it could
do there. So it went for another run and today
Filmmaker magazine in twenty seventeen put that number at like
a hundred and sixty million, one hundred senting like that.
It's a lot of money would be in today's dollars,

(19:20):
so it would be considered like a blockbuster.

Speaker 5 (19:23):
The drive in is really where a lot of people
got exposure to the film, and it was it was
one of it still remains one of the towering drive
in films because of its success and as it traveled
around and you can imagine a car load of five people,
all those eyes on the film, all those discussions like
Pam had on the playground when she was first hearing

(19:45):
about this stuff. Instead of just a couple going to
the theater on date night, all of a sudden, you
have a car load of people who are spreading the
sort of mythology of legend of Boggie Creek. And that's
really when it started to get its wings at that point,
and then words spread across the country, and then words
spread outside the country, because in a way, it's kind
of an extension of the Patterson Goimlin footage. It's the

(20:08):
first eyes people have had on footage like this in
a larger form.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
And you think.

Speaker 5 (20:13):
About what that little clip that Patterson Gimwin got and
toured with. Imagine you know the success of that times
hundreds of drive in theaters and all kinds of media coverage.
I mean, it just blew up everywhere.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
And of course that's justin Beam. He's You're like a
you have major living in the film industry, Is that right?
Can you tell us a little bit about your background?
Because you know, Pam was there boots on the ground
literally in the film watching it all happen. It is
just part of her growing up in existence. But that's

(20:48):
not the case for you. You work in the film industry.
Can you tell u about your background and how you
became part of the ongoing project of Boggy Creek.

Speaker 4 (20:57):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (20:58):
Absolutely, well, I kind of did live with the film too.
It was one of the earliest movies I saw when
I was a kid, and it stuck with me and resonated,
and I remember reading about Bigfoot about Sasquatch in a
Crestwood House book. They had a series of books about
monster movies, but then they also had some crypto books

(21:18):
on like Lockness, Monster and Bigfoot, and so Bigfoot had
captured my attention from a really really early age, and
Boggy Creek was the first time I had seen any
kind of footage of this kind of thing. It was
the first movie I ever saw in this realm, and
this led into ultimately in the long run, many many

(21:40):
years later. Of course, I was a writer for different
film magazines, like a feature writer for Fangoria, Famous Monsters
of Filmland, Scream Magazine out of the UK, and a
bunch of others, and then I started producing special features
for different studios and companies, so like Paramount and Shout Factory,
Scream Factor, Aero Video Umbrella out of Australia, where for

(22:04):
those my main job is documentary creation, so interviewing people
who were related to film productions and then editing, assembling
those feature pieces that you would have as an option
in your menu on your Blu rays and DBDs. If
you want to learn more about the making of the movie,

(22:24):
you can watch this interview or this documentary or even
this audio commentary that you can listen to as the
film plays. So I really went from my early childhood curiosity,
particularly around monster movies and things, and I was like you, Cliff,
where I was terrified of everything when I was little,
but I was endlessly fascinated with all of it and

(22:47):
really captivated by the behind the scenes from the very
get go. And that's where those magazines like Fangoria came
into play, because they were lifting the veil on an
industry as a kid growing up in Iowa that felt
like it was in a different universe completely so. And
then eventually that bumping into Pam and I had been

(23:09):
following Boggie Creek for many years, and I reached out
to her after picking up a Blu ray that she
had released some years prior, and we initiated a discussion
about the Blu ray and about some opportunities I saw
with the transfer that was presented there, like you know there,
I think this can be revisited and tightened up and

(23:31):
cleaned up and in some ways that they might not
have considered initially. And then that led into this year's
long journey with Pam which has been a wonderful adventure
all the way up to the recent four K release
that you can get at her site, which is legend
of Boggie Creek dot com.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
Thanks Justin. Yeah, when Justin reached out to me the
first time, I instantly recognized his name, and he had
done the extras for both Shout Factories release of the
ten That Dreaded Sundown and also didn't you also do

(24:11):
Blumhouse release as well?

Speaker 5 (24:13):
No, I did some stuff on yeah that because I'm
a big fan of peerce, and I did the Talma
Dreaded Sundown in conjunction with another producer, Michael Felscher on that.
But there's an audio commentary on Talma Dreaded Sundown where
you know, that's a case it's very similar to Boggy
Creek where there's reality and it's blended with cinema. And

(24:35):
I think this is a line that Pierce was expert
at straddling with his films. Because Talma Dreaded Sundown is
still an unsolved case to this day, it's a fascinating one.
And so for that one, it's a murder case where
the killer was this hooded killer and killing kids in
lovers lanes and things, and I found case historian James

(24:58):
Presley for audio commentary with me. So there's James on
one side speaking to the case itself and his dad
had even worked on the case as a sheriff. And
then on the other side of that discussion is me
speaking to the film and the filmmaking aspect of it.
So yeah, the connections with Charles Pearce and Pam went

(25:18):
back long before Pam and I ever had the chance
to talk. And it was a very fast friendship once
Pam and I connected.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
And I'm so appreciative of all the help that Justin
has given me. I don't know if you guys know this,
but when my dad and mister Ledwill broke up in
nineteen seventy five, mister led Will own the film and
he ordered mister Howe to send all the Prince back
to Texa, Canaa, to his facility there. And it turned

(25:48):
out it was like over six hundred and fifty prints
and each one had five reels of film, so they
were swimming in film. So back then when you were
going to get rid of something and you had so
many of them. And remember too, the movie had played

(26:10):
endlessly practically from seventy two to seventy five. So a
lot of these prints were beat up and you know whatever,
they were probably pretty rip shaped, so they ordered them burned.
So pretty much all the prints had been burned. And
so over the years, you know, an actual thirty five

(26:30):
millimeter print would pop up, but they were few and
far between. At Quentin Tarantino, I'm told has one, but
I would kind of tease that you can't really get
in touch with Quentin Tarantino and ask him to borrow
his you know, presumed copy or supposed copy whatever. So
it was kind of it took a long time to

(26:53):
find a print, but we did. We found one finally,
of all places, at the British Film Institute, and so
they lent us their copy and sent it to Rochester,
New York, where Eastman Kodak you know, did the transfers.
And so we ended up doing two separate transfers. So

(27:17):
but that's okay, now, why did you have to do two?
So the first one, so they explained to me that
film was, you know, the film was really old, and
film is plastic, and over time it warps and it shrinks,

(27:39):
and so at a certain point in time, in the film,
it jumped off of the whatever, and they didn't I
don't know. I guess they were heaving whatever. They didn't.
It went out like that, And I didn't really know
because when I had seen it so all these years,

(28:00):
for almost fifty years, every home version prior to mine
is this what they call pan and scan bootleg, so
you're only seeing a small little thumbnail of what's really
supposed to be on the screen. So when I had
seen Boggy Creek and it was at the it's huge,

(28:22):
like hysteria. I was a kid in the fourth fifth,
sixth grade, you know. After that, mister Littlewell puts it
away and it disappears until home video shows up a
while later. It's like a second wave.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
I think it.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
First shows up in DVD maybe two thousand and two.
I think it showed up in BHS before that, but
it's the same bootleg pan and scan print. So it
was super important, you know, that we find the full
print to restore it to the way that it was
supposed to be. Right. So when I go to them,

(29:05):
I hadn't seen the movie since, you know, since I
was a little kid, I didn't remember it that much.
And the one time I had seen it as an adult,
Like I said, the panting scam was so bad it
was almost it was very difficult for me to watch,
from seeing it in its glory days to seeing it,

(29:26):
you know, years later. So anyway, but I didn't know,
and so somebody called it I think, did you call
it a shutter?

Speaker 5 (29:35):
Jutter justin Yeah, what was happening was the film was
very jumpy, and so it needed to be stabilized, meaning
when you're watching the film, you're actually seeing the frame
kind of hop up and down on your screen throughout it.
And people had kind of become accustomed to that due
to that bootleg that had been floating around forever that

(29:58):
Pam has admirably been combating for years. I mean, that's
a whole other story that you could dive in on
with Pam, maybe just about how she's had to work
so hard to protect this movie and its legacy. But
what I did and noticed on this Blu Ray release
that had come out from her, was that there was

(30:18):
all this jumping in the frame. And so what I
did is I went through the entire picture, literally framed
by frame, and made notes of what the problem was
in each frame, and then sent that on and that
was then in turn sent on from Pam to Eastman
when they were doing the rescan of it, because it

(30:39):
had to be stabilized and it had to be cleaned
up yet. So I mean, the blu ray looked better
than the film had ever looked before, but like I
mentioned earlier, there were still some opportunities for its best
and Pam was tirelessly committed to preserving the legacy of
this movie, and this whole project is ultimately a real

(30:59):
tribute to her dad and to all that he's contributed
to cinema over the years into the world of Bigfoot,
and so Pam never gave up, and she never sat
back when they were questioning if they could or couldn't
do this transfer the right way. And in the end,
armed with all these frame by frame notes and Pam's

(31:19):
reference material and everything, the rescan was done for the
four k so's it's genuinely the absolute best that this
movie has ever looked, absolutely ever looked.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Bogo will be right back after these messages.

Speaker 3 (31:44):
I feel like my job is to preserve the film
the way that my dad created it. And so if
there was some kind of a jitter, jutter whatever in
there that my dad didn't put and that was because
of the way we transferred it, then they were going
to do it over and I had to pay for

(32:06):
it again. So it cost me double. But that's the
way that it goes, you know. But we did it
right and it's done now.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
Yeah, sometimes it does cost extra to get it done
correctly and along these lines. Now I remember and correct
me if I'm wrong, But I remember talking to you
in person at one of these conferences that you and
I were both at, and we're hanging out, just having
a conversation, and you told me a little story about
the ending credits being too clean. Am I remembering that correctly?

Speaker 3 (32:35):
Yes, so what they had done so Amtually we did
that in the beginning credits. So when I first went
there again, it was because I couldn't remember exactly, and
Kyle said, the opening credits are a little bit fuzzy,
they're a little bit out of focus. So I'm going

(32:56):
to take them and I'm going to take whatever, and
I'm going to clean it up. So I was like, oh, okay,
that's you know, that sounds good to me. Well, when
he did it. Then we showed it in Texture Canada
that first night and immediately, so as y'all know, probably
the legend bidiory gets super fans very devoted and immediately,

(33:16):
and I knew this was going to happen too. I
told Kyle, I said, if there's anything wrong at all,
the fans will point it out immediately, and so just
be ready because we may have to because I don't
really remember exactly the way it's supposed to be. So anyway,
sure enough, somebody, this other guy, Paul, stepped in and said, okay,

(33:40):
this is whatever. So we had to go back then
and he had to put it back the way that
it originally was and another thing I had been in.
So while he was doing that, I was in Texture
Canna and I was meeting with Steve Lidwell, and you know,
Steve was in his like Earth twenties when his dad

(34:01):
financed the film and stuff, and so I told him
that Kyle had taken it out and replaced him and
he said, no, Pam, I think that your daddy did
that on purpose. Because it's kind of a mystery and
we don't really know the answer, and it's a little
bit foggy hazy. So I think that was so when

(34:23):
he said that, I was to go, that's artistic expression
and we got to put it back. So, you know,
but there were things like that that happened.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
Yeah, I imagine that the entire the entire trip has
just been thick with bumps and learning opportunities. Yeah, and
just well, got well, now we know better. You know,
what were some of the biggest things that you learned
by this entire process, maybe about your father himself, the
film itself, or or something even larger than I'm not

(34:54):
thinking of. What's what some of your big takeaways from
this whole process.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
So gosh, I've I've learned a whole lot about my
dad and it's drawn me closer to him in a
lot of ways. I think the biggest surprise, I think
was that he didn't own any of the movie. I
had always because he was paid, you know, as the

(35:21):
movie was out and making all that, you know, mister
Ledwell paid him like half of it. And I think
then when mister how It came in, they split it
into threes. But my dad, everybody would say it's charlesby
Pearce's and we still say that Charlesby Pearce's Legend of
Buggy Creek, but in fact it was owned by the

(35:44):
producer who had put up all the money for it,
mister Ledwell, so that was probably the biggest surprise. There's
some other surprises, but I can't tell them yet. They're
big surprises too.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
It was surprises coming down the line in it.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
Yes, as soon as I can reveal them out, come
on your show again. And because there's some kind of
there were some shocking things that I've learned about my dad,
you know, but I mean it fits with his personality
and stuff. You know, my dad was a maverick and
a bit of a renegade.

Speaker 4 (36:20):
Yeah, because I've ever read about him back then or
not then, but like later on, and it was kind
of like they made it seem like he wasn't really
like a movie guy. He just kind of got into
this and he actually had been involved in films. But well,
I was really impressing on when I found out. I mean,
I love his movies, but that he worked on The
Outlaw Josie Wales. It's another top ten movie of mine.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
So yeah, don't believe everything you read on the internet.
So some of his Wikipedia got missed mixed up and
the Josie will part and the Emmy Award winning set
designers are not it's a different Charles Pears.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (36:59):
Every time we tried to correct it, they won't let us.
So I don't know how to fix that except that
I am working on a documentary.

Speaker 4 (37:08):
Okay, yeah, because I've ever I read the book but
Lyle Blackburn put out in twenty twelve, which is an
anyone interested in this movie has to read that book.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
That book is fantastic. That's okay, that makes sense now
because I was like, how cold Lyld missed all this?

Speaker 3 (37:22):
So how so it started so when my dad was
in high school, he went to this little bitties he
lived in Hampton, Arkansas, and I think they had about
six hundred people in the town. And he lived next
door to Harry Thomas and who Harry later on marys
Lynda Bludworth thomasin and they do Designing Women in the eighties,

(37:45):
you know that TV show, and that he did Evening
Shade with Burt Reynolds. But back then they were these
two kids in this little tiny town in Arkansas, and
both were very creative, and you know, they grew up
they were always getting into trouble and doing you know,
this kind of stuff. But my dad was like the yearbook,

(38:08):
like he was the artist. He you know, did all
the layouts and all that stuff, and they voted him
most talented, wittiest, and most likely to succeed. And so
immediately upon graduation he went to work at the NBC

(38:28):
like local affiliate back then, which was Elder Aid of
Monroe was the territory. And so he goes to work
there just low, like you know, he's just you know,
pulling cables and stuff. But he works his way up
pretty quickly and he gets his own TV show. By
the time that he met my mother, about two years

(38:51):
before I was born, he had he already had his
own television show. So and pretty quickly he was directing
the news and so like he was, you know, they
were moving them all around. He'd go to Beaumont, Texas,
he would go, you know, so they were sending him.
He went to Shreveport right before Texture Cannon. And then

(39:14):
he comes to Texture Canna and he has this show
called The laugh Alotte Club that's on Monday through Friday,
and it's a kitty show and he is mayor Chuckles
and so Monday through Friday he was on TV and
all my friends in elementary school watched him. And so
before he ever made a movie, my dad was like

(39:37):
a superstar in texture Kenna, if you can imagine that.
And everywhere we went, whether it was like the service
station or whatever, people say, hey, mayor Chuckles, you know.
And so when he started making movies, they all knew
who he was. They were like, oh, look, there's Mayor Chuckles.
So when he went to make Boggie Creek and he

(39:57):
went down to talk to those people he was working
in the news department and he had this TV show,
they talked to him, you know, where they might not
have talked to somebody that they but it was like
he was familiar and like in their house a lot,
you know what I'm saying. So he didn't come off
as a stranger. So I think that that helped him,

(40:19):
of course, a great deal, and it gave him confidence too,
you know. But so he's doing that and then he
opens up a advertising agency on State Line, which is
the main strip through town, and he starts making these
commercials and he's making one for mister Litwell. And I

(40:40):
didn't know it at the time because you know, I
didn't get I never got into his business even when
he was alive. I stayed out of his business. But
he actually, mister Littlewell was not the first person that
he went to. I think he hit up people left
and right. But if you can imagine, mister Littlewell was
extraordinarily courageous to put real cash money behind some guy

(41:05):
that's made a few commercials and is convinced that he
can make a film outside of Hollywood, you know. So
he gets a lot of kiddos in my book.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
And that's kind of the almost the standard now as
far as numbers of films. Most people who make films,
I mean the of course ones everyone hears about are
made by big Hollywood studios because they have an army
of you know, marketers and cash and all this other
stuff behind them. But I mean the I think the
majority of film art nowadays are made by small houses.

(41:37):
A lot of these are never heard of her or whatever.
But he's kind of a pioneer in that in some
sort of way, like kind of going outside the box
to make something successful, A seer of the future in
almost in some sort of ways.

Speaker 3 (41:48):
I was thinking of when you guys, I think when
Justin was saying something earlier. It made me think. My
dad said, to be a good director, you needed to
play well as a chat. And so when Harry and
he and all those kids from Hampton would get together,
he told me they would play they would play war,

(42:09):
and they would play cops and robbers and all that stuff.
And my dad would say, Okay, we're gonna shoot you
and you're going to fall off this hill and you
know whatever. And so really, if you think about that,
that's a it's a form, you know, directing and making films,
or in a way, that's what you're doing. You're creating
this other world and this other environment. He was trying

(42:33):
to get, you know, the true real story about what
was going on with Falc. So that was a little
bit different.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
Now, how did how did you regain control of the
film because it was kind of in limbo for a
period of time, I think, wasn't it well?

Speaker 3 (42:48):
So all those so when mister Ledwell puts it away
in nineteen seventy five, he puts it away and they're
in the trucking business and they, you know, are very successful.
And so as Steve Littell, his son told me, we
weren't in the movie business, you know, so, and they
had certainly made enough money off their investment, so he

(43:12):
puts it away. So that's where it was all those
years in the bootleg and whatever. So my dad dies
in twenty ten. So he had Alzheimer's and so he
had we had some people close that kind of stole
him away. To be honest with you with that, I mean,

(43:34):
that's the way I phrase it, That's my opinion. But
he was taken and he was putting into this home
and we were told that we couldn't talk to him
and they couldn't give us any information. So that it
went on like that for a while. So all of
my dad's papers and photographs and everything disappeared. So by

(43:54):
the time that he had passed, there was nothing. There
were no papers, nothing. Well, my brother finds an original
will that my dad had made and that was signed,
and that was supposed to have disappeared, but apparently there
was another copy, and so he sends it to me,

(44:16):
and so I filed for probate in twenty fourteen in Tennessee.
And so as part of that, we start trying to
put together what's what, because, as I told you before,
I didn't ask my dad personal business questions. I did
ask him one important question around two thousand and two.

(44:37):
My husband worked early on in the internet, you know,
with the Internet, and he like, he was on the
advisory board for Bell Atlantics Internet and whatever. So we
had real early service and it was pretty quick. But
I wasn't I'm not in. I wasn't into computers really,
so I kind of stayed away. We had a homeschool.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
We homeschool their.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
Kids, and so one day he sets up, he puts
a glass of wine down and he said, you just
and they didn't call it surfing, but he said, you
should just go on this thing and just play around
and just ask you questions. And back then it was
asked Jeeves, And so I asked, Jeeves, who is Charles B. Pearce?

(45:22):
And when I did, all of these things popped up
and they weren't they were kind of chat rooms back then,
they weren't really websites. But over and over the overlying
things said, you know, somebody needs to get this, get
us Boggy Creek on DBD. So I called my dad

(45:44):
and I said, hey, look, I said, have you ever
heard of this thing called the Internet? And He's like, well,
first I said to him, I said, do you I said, Dad,
who owns the legend of Boggy Creek? And I had
never asked that question? And he said I could tell
he that was like this long. And I said, well,

(46:05):
let me tell you why I'm asking you. I said,
have you ever heard of this thing called the Internet?
And he was like, well, yeah, I think i've heard.
I've heard a little bit about it. And I said, well,
it's like the library on steroids. You can ask it
all these questions and it'll give you the answers. And
I said, so I went on and asked, who is
Charles to be pious? And I said, let me just
read you some of these things that it's saying. And

(46:27):
so he said, okay, So well let me tell you.
He said, buddy owns that. That's mister Legwoy. He said
he I traded him the legend of Boggie Creek and
bootleggers for winter honk. And so I read him the
you know, some of these things what they were saying,
and he started laughing and he said, well, baby, that's

(46:49):
what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna
go back and I'm gonna talk to him and you know.
So anyway, not too long after that, he told me
that he was at Walmart and guess what was there
and he was happy and laughing and everything. So after
he dies, my assumption is that he went back to

(47:09):
mister Ledlo and got the rights. So that's anyway I called.
So I called Steve Leadwell finally in like twenty late
twenty fourteen. I had to call though, So mister little
only has one child. Okay, Steve who was played the creature? Okay,
everybody else says it's that other guy. No, it's Steve

(47:31):
Leedwell and he's listed in the credits, and the other
person that played it was my uncle Steve. But Steve
Ledwell played at the most.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
Keith Croptrey's not the creature or is in part two.

Speaker 3 (47:42):
No, So Keith Crabtree played like maybe two scenes. The
one scene that he really played was where the teenage
hunter is shooting at him. So that's him. But that
was early on and it was hot and he had
on that costume and they weren't paying very much money,

(48:05):
and Keith threw a fit and quit, and so he's but.

Speaker 6 (48:10):
He says he acted, but if you ever asked Keith
to tell you what scenes and stuff in the movie,
you won't get anything.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
Really out of it because he wasn't really.

Speaker 6 (48:19):
There so anyway, But then it fell to Steve Ledwell,
whose father was financing the movie, and we need they
needed somebody that was a big guy, and Steve Ledwell's.

Speaker 3 (48:30):
Like six foot six or six eight. He's real big,
and so he took over. And then when he couldn't
do it, my uncle Steve did it. So when I
called that day, I was like, fans are asking for
it now Blue Ray. If I could find a good
copy to restore and remaster, would you let me release it?

(48:54):
And so said, yeah, run with it, and so that
was that was it. That was the beginning.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
Oh it's fantastic. So theres no hard feelings, nothing weird
about it at all. You just simply asked and they said, yes,
stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo.
We'll be right back after these messages. That's how you

(49:21):
got rights to the reclaimed. The rights made the DVDs.
Blu Ray came out I think about the same time,
and now you've done the whole thing again. In four
k with extra features and audio over it justin let's
bring you in to this conversation real fast, and and
Pam of course can chime in as fit. But what's

(49:44):
in the extra features? Extra features are very often my
favorite part of any DVD release. What can what can
be seen in the extra features at this and how
did you get a hold of that stuff?

Speaker 5 (49:57):
Yeah, the special features are really especially now more than ever,
that's the big draw right for people. And it's so
incredible to be able to go and watch the making
of what you just watched through to be able to
see this and hear the stories behind these things. When
Pam was going through the materials that she had located
that had been scanned, it was discovered that there was

(50:21):
a real diamond in the hills there and that there
was behind the scenes footage from the making of the
movie that had never seen.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
The light of day.

Speaker 5 (50:33):
And in addition to that, there was also what we
call tales in film, which is where the scene is
wrapping up, the director calls cut and it may take
a minute or two for the camera to shut down
or whatever it might be, and so there's all of
this additional footage of not only behind the scenes, which
is very rare footage of Charles directing, because there isn't

(50:57):
much of that out there at all. In fact, I'm
not sure of much of any outside of what was
discovered here, in addition to real clear shots of the
fout monster, because the movie kind of keeps the monster
in shadow, you know, throughout the whole thing. It's not
like a contemporary creature feature where it starts off with

(51:18):
the head being knocked off by the creature and then
you're seeing it front and center for the rest of
the movie. At this time, Charles really wanted to play
it kind of in shadow and mist behind the trees.
There's an audio escape to this movie that is so
much of what makes it effective, so you don't have
to see the monster the whole time. But the truth is,

(51:40):
as we discovered as we were going through this material,
that he did shoot the monster. He shot it coming
out of emerging from the trees on the banks of
a river. There's all this additional footage that he did
not end up including in the final in the final film,
but that was laying essentially, you could just say in
this canister in a series of very short reels of film.

(52:05):
So Pam and I talked a lot about what to
do with that, and what I ended up doing was
pulling it's just under seven minutes. I think of this
behind the scenes footage and these outtakes and assembling them
into a making of I guess, or more like a
behind the scenes glimpse documentary piece that accompanies the movie

(52:28):
on the disc. And I put music under it, and
then just edited everything together and put a tribute to
Charles at the end of it in this card. But
it's a really wonderful chance for fans not only to
see Peerce doing what he did, but also to get
the first real clear look at the monster that they

(52:49):
had in this film. And then in addition, and his
name has come up several times in the discussion already. Rightfully,
so we brought in Lyle Blackburn for an audio commentary track,
and so, Bobo, you were talking about how great his
book is, and I mean, it's just that book is
a towering achievement in the story of Boggy Creek. Who

(53:12):
better right to bring on for an audio commentary track?

Speaker 3 (53:15):
It?

Speaker 5 (53:17):
Oh, absolutely yeah. And I mean he's such a tireless
cheerleader like you guys out there for all of the
Bigfoot world and this film in particular. He's almost like
an evangelist for this movie. And so what this is
for those who may not be too familiar without with
special features is it's an audio commentary track that offers

(53:39):
you the opportunity. You can select to just watch the
movie as you normally would, or you can select the
second audio option, where it's Lyle talking over the run
time of the movie. And the great thing about that
too is that it offers, in long form Lyle the
chance to speak to the production of the film, but

(54:02):
also he pours in so much information about the legends
around the Fouc area, the real stories that weren't a
part of this film, things that have happened since the
making of that movie. And then he also ties it
into a more global perspective on Bigfoot and the entire

(54:22):
world that's grown up around this in the wake of
first I say Patterson Gimlin and then on to Boggy
Creek and that has become what it is today and
you guys in your wonderful show and everything that just
keeps blossoming around it. So it's a great sort of
ab in terms of options to learn about the movie
see the behind the scenes and then get this greater

(54:44):
perspective from one of the great voices and minds in
the world of Bigfoot in film and Lyle's commentary.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
Yeah, that's something that sorely missed. I think in this
new streaming world that we've inherited. You know, are those
more in depth looks and commentaries as you're mentioning on
are some of our favorite movies? You know? It was
one thing. You know, you buy a DVD, you get
all this extra stuff, but you know, if you go
to Amazon or Netflix and you hit play, you're kind
of missing out in a lot of ways.

Speaker 5 (55:12):
I think that's a big discussion right now in the
world of my work in doing this stuff, is that
none of these streamers have really pinned down the special
feature thing. Yet HBO was an early player in that realm.
There are some additional scenes and occasionally even extra interviews
and things that accompany some of their especially documentary content,

(55:33):
but none of the streamers are really treating special features,
I think with the kind of attention that they merit.
And I think that's the big shift in what's happened
here and what's keeping the collector's market alive. For physical
media is people want this stuff and they treasure it
and they want to revisit it, and not just to

(55:54):
learn about the movie. But these are the kinds of
things that breed filmmakers because how else are you going
to learn? What better way to learn than from the
people who have made the things you love happen. And
so I think that that's an evergreen element of interest
in relation to movies of all kinds. People want to
hear and watch this stuff.

Speaker 1 (56:13):
I can't imagine a better thought to end this conversation
on that. That's fantastic because it's a look to the
future as well as a look to the past and
what we're missing out on by quote unquote progress in
some ways. You know, streaming is great and everything. It
was wonderful to push play and have a movie right there,
but but it lacks the depth. And until they fix that,
I think that there's always always going to be a

(56:34):
physical media demand with collectors and aficionados and all that
sort of stuff. So so Boggi Creek Man, Legend of
Bagugie Creek on four K, that's big news. That's big news.
And this the special features and of course Lyle's commentary
all along the way. It sounds like this is a
product that I mean, any bigfooter would want, absolutely and

(56:55):
I know we'll be carrying it in the NABC. Of
course I didn't. I didn't know there was so much
going on here. When is the release here? When can
we look forward to this?

Speaker 3 (57:04):
It's available now.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
No kidding, Now, I had no idea. My husband in
the sand, please forgive me holy smokes and let me.

Speaker 3 (57:11):
I wanted to add one last thing. We did add
the option of the five point one surround sound, which
is super fun to listen to this audio with this
five O one five point one.

Speaker 5 (57:28):
It's a great soundtrack. And also that iconic Ralph McQuary
art can't. I mean, that's something that needs to be
included in the discussion too, because that poster sold the
film everywhere even if people hadn't caught wind of it.
And Pam on the site offers the movie not only
in the four K, the new transfer and everything is
also on Blu ray and DVD, so no matter what

(57:51):
kind of machine you have, she has an option there
for you. But you can also get reprints of that
gorgeous Ralph McQuary artwork as a poster and on T
shirts and things like that. So she has a lot
going on with what is one of the most iconic
images in all of Bigfoot in cinema history or can
you order one?

Speaker 3 (58:11):
So you can order one from Legendboggie Creek dot com.

Speaker 5 (58:14):
And that's what the movie is as well all the
different versions of it on disc or at Legend Boggy
Creek dot com.

Speaker 1 (58:20):
Fantastic anything else you'd like to share with us before
the end of the episode here.

Speaker 3 (58:24):
Thank you all for having us on. This has been
super fun.

Speaker 5 (58:28):
This is a real honor you guys. I'm a longtime
fan and I'm so excited that for Pan's story to
be included in this legacy too, of this film with
her dad and the work she's done is just incredible.
So thank you for giving us a chance to share
some about that.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
Oh that's no big deal at all. I mean, it's
one of the pleasures of this podcast for me is
speaking to people who are literally making legends. You know,
they are pushing the history further and fighting the good fight,
so to speak, you know, like saying the right things
and pushing things forward and for the benefit of not
only the subject matter but also the animals themselves, and
I think Legend of Big Creek checks all those boxes

(59:07):
right there. So I was thrilled to find out that
Pam was working on this project a decade ago, and
the fact that it's still going on and you guys
are still pushing the technology forward and kind of rolling
with everything. It's just fantastic. Thank you so much for
not only coming on the podcast, but also the work
that both of you are doing. Thank you both so
much for coming on Bigfoot and Beyond with us.

Speaker 5 (59:27):
Thank you yes sing.

Speaker 4 (59:29):
All right, folks, if you want to order a copy
of your own copy of the Legend of Boga Creek,
I highly recommend it. Look at our show us down
others of mattaput a link in there. You can click
on it and go directly to it and purchase it
for yourself. All right, we want to thank Justin and
Pam for coming on and sharing their stories. I'm the
Legend of Bougier Creek my favorite movie of all time.

(59:50):
So until next week, you all keep it Squatchy.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of and Beyond.
If you liked what you heard, please rate and review
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(01:00:18):
and tweet us your thoughts and questions with the hashtag
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