True Films 3.0 - Kevin Kelly

Project Grizzly
A Canadian outdoorsman who fancies himself a survival expert crosses
the wrong side of a grizzly bear. The grizzly begins to attack him, but our
hero stares the bear down, nose to snout, inches apart. In that moment
of eye contact, our hero has a cosmic connection with the bear and
vows to return to meet grizzly face to face again. But he’s no fool, so he
decides to invent a grizzly-proof suit. For the next seven years he spends
hundreds of thousands of dollars developing the wackiest series of fullbody
armor outfits, each one stronger, stranger, and more invincible, but
less mobile. In a perverted logic he tests the suits by having speeding
trucks knock him down or by swinging half ton blocks of concrete into
his head. In his obsession to face grizzly he becomes a deranged captain
Ahab, and you are horrified, uplifted and transfixed as you watch him
sink. It’s filmed as it happens; you couldn’t make this one up.
By Peter Lynch
1997, 72 min.
Available from Amazon
Rent from Netflix
Our hero re-enacts
his meeting with
Grizzly in the
snow. He inserts
himself into the
7th generation of
his bear protection
suit (above), only
to find that it has
to be helicoptered
into place (top
right). He figures
the best way to
test it against the
power of a grizzly
is to have a truck
run him over while
he is wearing
it.
137