Cocaine Bear Isn't Quite A True Story, But It Is A 'Bear's Revenge Story' Inspired By A Real Event
No matter how many weird or oddly-titled movies you've watched in your life, it's unlikely that you ever imagined seeing one called "Cocaine Bear," but here we are.
Elizabeth Banks (Effie Trinket in "The Hunger Games" trilogy, director of "Charlie's Angels") directs this black comedy that is inspired by a true story, believe it or not. It's not based on it, which Banks was very clear about at a recent trailer and footage event attended by /Film's own Valerie Ettenhofer. It's more of a "what if" story if the hero was a giant tuned-up bear out for revenge.
The real event happened in 1985 when a drug runner dropped a whole lot of cocaine out of a plane and into a forest, where it was consumed by a black bear. That's the basis for the tale and certainly weird enough to inspire a film, but definitely not the story Banks is telling here.
Banks was asked about how she came across this strange project. She says:
"I honestly read a great script. Jimmy Warden wrote a really funny script. He was on a text with Brian Duffield, who is also a writer and one of the producers of the movie. He basically read an article, and he sent a text saying, 'Wouldn't this make a funny movie?' And Brian said, 'Write it.' And Jimmy wrote it, and I read it, and then, there it is."
That said, it's not a straightforward tale of a man gone wrong and a bear who eats a lot of drugs and doesn't make it. This is a very different take on what actually happened.
' ... consumed 70 pounds of cocaine'
Banks told the audience about what really happened before she got into the film's take. She says:
" ... it's Andrew C. Thornton [the real person from the story], who threw drugs out of an airplane while he was doing drug runs from Columbia. He dropped drugs out of an airplane, and he was a paratrooper in the Army in one of his many careers before he became a drug runner. So then he would then jump out of the planes and, like, go home. Like literally, jump into the backyard and go home, and crash the planes into the Atlantic Ocean, often."
Thornton and a partner were flying a small plane when they dumped packages of cocaine near Blairsville, Georgia. Thornton got caught in his parachute and died after falling from the plane and landing in Knoxville, Tennessee. The plane itself ended up in Hayesville, North Carolina. The bear who overdosed on the cocaine that dropped was found in Chattahoochee National Forest.
According to Banks, in the real event, they didn't find the drugs themselves, but they did find that bear, who she says "had consumed 70 pounds of cocaine." Poor fuzzy dude!
' ... the bear's revenge story'
Banks said that she "had a lot of empathy for the bear" and found it "really upsetting because this bear is collateral damage from our truly f***** up war on drugs, and I feel like we should make a movie that is the bear's revenge story." The ending of the real tale might be a downer, but at least this bear will live on in cinema with an ending that is far more satisfying for us all.
If this speaks to you, then you'll probably be interested to know that the actual 175-pound American black bear (well, his taxidermied body anyway) was once bought by country singer Waylon Jennings and is on currently on display in Lexington, Kentucky, at the Kentucky Fun Mall. The bear's name? Folks, this is not a joke. His name is Pablo Esco-bear. Give that a moment to sink in before you make plane reservations.
The idea of a coked-up and pissed-off black bear getting revenge on the bad guys is one of the weirder things that have gotten the big screen treatment lately ... but then again, this is 2022. We're sort of getting used to weird stuff. A bunch of feral hogs destroyed $22K of cocaine stashed in a forest in Italy in 2019, so it's not the only time something like this has happened. (Please, someone name one of them Tony Hog-tana.) Friends, keep your drugs away from kids and wild animals. This has been a public service announcement.
"Cocaine Bear" stars Keri Russell, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Alden Ehrenreich, Matthew Rhys, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Kristofer Hivju, Christian Convery, Brooklyn Prince, Margo Martindale, and the late Ray Liotta. The film will hit theaters on February 24, 2023.