"Cocaine Bear" Arrives Friday

"A feral bear eats a boatload of cocaine and tears a whole forest apart."

The name of the film is Cocaine Bear.

The plot of the film is Cocaine Bear.

“A feral bear eats a boatload of cocaine and tears a whole forest apart.”

It’s based on a true story . . . somewhat . . .

The Daily Beast’s Kevin Fallon explains:

On Sept. 11, 1985, Andrew Thornton III, an Army paratrooper-turned-racehorse trainer-turned-narcotics cop-turned-DEA agent-turned-lawyer-turned-cocaine smuggler nicknamed “Cocaine Cowboy,” was flying 880 pounds of Colombian powder into the country, likely while high off the supply.

Allegedly convinced the Feds were tailing him, he decided to ditch three duffle bags of coke while over the Chattahoochee National Forest of Georgia. He then put the plane on autopilot and jumped with a parachute. Something went wrong on the way down, and he didn’t make it. Those duffle bags, however, did.

Four months later, the corpse of a 175-pound black bear was found in the Chattahoochee wilderness, dead from a combination of cerebral hemorrhaging, hyperthermia, respiratory failure, renal failure, and heart failure. The bear had, evidently, discovered one of Thornton’s duffles and consumed its entire contents—roughly 35 pounds of cocaine.

According to Esquire, an autopsy indicated the bear had ingested approximately 34 kilograms (street value $2 million). The medical examiner said: “Its stomach was literally packed to the brim with cocaine.”

Keri Russell became involved after talking to director Elizabeth Banks about a different project. Banks called back the next day. Russell: “When I read it, I couldn’t believe a studio was going to make this movie. I still can’t.”

Russell says shooting was done in 2021, during the pandemic. “I just thought it was such a crazy, let-loose departure from everything we were experiencing at that moment. And I was like, why the fuck shouldn’t we do Cocaine Bear right now?”

Vox spoke with ursinologist and ecologist Chris Morgan:

So, theoretically, what would you think would happen if you gave cocaine to a bear?

Well, it’s really hard to say, I mean, the sample size of bears doing cocaine is very small. I’ve got no personal experience with that, but I would think that physiologically, the bear would go through some of the very similar sort of characteristic traits that humans might have on cocaine — sort of amplified behavior that makes them a little crazy. And if that bear ate as much as I heard — you know, a big portion of cocaine — then that’s a death sentence for the bear just like it would be for humans. . . .

[B]ears in nature, they hit this thing in around fall, this thing called hyperphagia, which literally means excessive eating. They get the munchies in a big way. And that helps them get through the winter. If they eat enough in the fall, they gain all this fat, and then they can sleep all winter. If they don’t gain all that fat, they can’t sleep. . . . [T]hey get into this massive phase of eating full time. They actually get more aggressive usually in the fall . . . lean, mean, eating machines . . .

[I]n nature you have psychedelic mushrooms. And I’ve read some stories of animals getting drunk or high off of naturally occurring chemicals in plants and animals. Do you know if that happens to bears too?

There’s not much known about it. But as a lot of people know, there are mushrooms that are full of psychedelics and bears eat mushrooms. It’s got to have happened. . . . I think that’s a PhD thesis waiting to happen . . . [T]hese are smart creatures with a lot going on, massively developed brains, high intelligence, high ability to assess situations, high ability to remember things, especially where food locations are. . . . [S]ome scientists have even suggested that the bears will clue into medicinal use of plants. . . . A lot of those are mushrooms, bears don’t shy away from them. And with their high-level brains just like ours, psychedelic mushrooms have got to affect them. I’m almost certain that there are bears out there that have had hallucinogenic experiences. I don’t think I want to meet one of them.

I’m sure if they’re tripping, they just want to be left alone. . . .

I think that’s what any wise bear on mushrooms would do: just chill out and enjoy it. And it’s probably the polar opposite to a bear on cocaine. . . .

Sharks don’t really kill that many people. But everyone knows Jaws. And I think this probably applies to bears too, but the people who get killed by sharks go to the sharks’ home. If you stay out of the sharks’ home, the shark can’t kill you!

Exactly. . . . There’s a million bears in North America, black bears and grizzly bears combined, there are one or two people a year on average that are killed by them. [In 2021 and 2022, bear attack fatalities have risen, as have bear-human conflicts.] . . .

Humans probably threaten bears on a greater scale than bears have done to us.

There’s eight bear species in the world, and six of them are threatened with extinction. . . . Grizzly bears in the north of North America are a great example. Before European settlers arrived, a couple of hundred years ago, across North America’s west, there were probably 50,000 to 100,000 grizzlies. Now, there’s more like 2,000 in the lower 48. So we’ve reduced them down to 2 percent of their former historic range. Two percent! . . . They deserve our attention and help. There’s a lot going on between the ears of these bears — they’re very smart, complex, individualistic — that we need to respect and celebrate.

Russell recently screened the film with the cast:

We were screaming, slapping each other, and laughing our faces off. . . . This is not one to watch on your couch alone. This is definitely crowd-pleaser craziness. You should do what you’ve got to do: Drink your beers or do whatever it is that you’d like, and then go see it. This is that movie.”

If you are anywhere near the Kentucky Fun Mall in Lexington, you can see the actual (stuffed) Cocaine Bear . . . and munch on a KFC drumstick that’s been soaking in alcohol.

Another Fun Fact: Waylon Jennings owned the Cocaine Bear at one point!! Also, the first draft of the lyrics of his 1975 hit was “Are You Sure Cocaine Bear Done It This Way”.

Visitors to the Fun Mall see the true bear and understand that “Cokey” was more cuddlesome than carnivorous. “You wouldn’t think that a Cocaine Bear would be for all ages, but kids love it,” said Griffin. Offerings are left at Cocaine Bear’s feet — as they are at the graves of royalty — which are “really beautiful,” said Griffin. “One women knitted a kilo of cocaine.” The Fun Mall even has a Cocaine Bear mascot suit, worn on special occasions. “We do a kind of Cocaine Bear Santa Claus; people can sit on Cocaine Bear’s lap.” . . .

Dangling from its neck is a flashy placard that gives the bear's proper name (“Pablo Escobear”) and, in case visitors get the wrong impression, ends with this warning: “Don’t do drugs or you’ll end up dead (and maybe stuffed) like poor Cocaine Bear.”

(Or at leats make sure you don’t do three to four kilograms all at once.)

Cokey has a Twitter account:

Cocaine Bear @cocainebear

friday friday gotta get high on friday 🎶

Here are five quotes from the movie:

“A lot of cocaine was lost. I need you to go and get it.”

“You’re safe. Bears can’t climb trees.”

“What the fuck is wrong with that bear?”

“We have such good luck in nature.”