Ep:163 Town That Cried Bigfoot

Director Mark Dossett joins me to talk about his new film "The Town That Cried Bigfoot". In the bitter winter of 1978, four desperate council members from a small Virginia town hatched a daring Bigfoot hoax to save it from the brink of bankruptcy. But as the money grew, so did the greed-triggering the town's first unsolved murder. Check it out on Amazon.



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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I grew up in the seventies, you know, I grew
up with Bigfoot being on TV in search of let's
learning anymore than the six ninion dollars man. That's one
of the things I wanted people to take away from
this movie is, Yes, critical thinking only benefits the Bigfoot community.
It doesn't harm it in any way. It keeps it
respected and authentic. I release a trailer that opens with

(00:21):
Orson Wells and he's standing there in a black hat
and he says, ladies and gentlemen by way of introduction,
this is a film about trickery and fraud and lies.
And then it cuts to the trailer. There's an easter
egg right there that tells you everything. Use of critical
thinking will keep the Bigfoot research in the community authentic

(00:43):
and credible.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
This is Bigfoot Crossroads. My name is Matt and I'd
like to welcome Mark Dawsett, director of one of my
new favorite documentaries. I would say a Bigfoot documentary, but
it's so much more than that. The town that cried
Bigfoot Man. So I've been in the Bigfoot world since

(01:37):
literally just right before the year two thousand. I was
interested in the subject of my entire life but the
internet side of things happened right around nineteen ninety nine
for me, and I have been an active bigfooter since then.
I've been doing this podcast forever now, and this is

(01:57):
a Bigfoot story that I had never even heard about.
How did you find out about this?

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Man?

Speaker 2 (02:03):
I guess it was pretty famous whenever it happened, but
like it flew under my radar. So how did it
come to your attention?

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Well, as we talked about a few minutes ago, I
grew up in the seventies, and like many many of
your listeners in that era, you know, I grew up
with Bigfoot being on TV in search of what's learning?
Anymoy team out in seventy seven, the six Million Dollars man,
and I grew up in Virginia. It's it's more about
the small town corruption that took place centered around Bigfoot.

(02:37):
I heard a lot of stories about that, and those
stories are still prevalent to this day. You know, they're
still going on to this day.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
So this particular story happened in Wayburn, which is kind
of in that same general area from what I get so,
you heard about this event growing.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Up, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that and many others
for sure. Yeah, different types.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yet, were you into Bigfoot as a kid. Was this
something that like has always interested you?

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Yeah? Six million dollar Man lunchbox. You know. I used
to watch six million dollars Man show and that was
the biggest episode where he fought big Foot. I remember
people one of my friends dressed up was big Foot
for Halloween in the movie. That's when I talk about
when you know, I said, you know, you got to
remember this. Nineteen seventy eight, big Foot was everywhere from movies, books,
Halloween costumes, TV shows, lunchboxes. Yeah, it was. Big Foot

(03:27):
was more popular magazine than he is today. I mean
there was just it was just all around. But he's
it's grown in popularity now more so than I ever thought.
I mean, you can't. I'm in Texas, and I mean
you're at a stoplight. There's a big Foot sticker on
the back of f one fifty right in front of you, right, Yeah,
I mean it's it's it's everywhere now, So it's, uh yeah,

(03:48):
there's and I've heard different stories from all kinds of
people from Florida to Virginia to Texas to Utah all over.
I mean it's it's uh it's a big synonymou.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
So what was it about this particular story? Was it
just because it happened to be from your area growing
up and everything? What made you decide that you needed
to turn this into a documentary?

Speaker 1 (04:15):
The story because it just it speaks to even though
it happened in nineteen seventy eight, it speaks to today
as far as small town corruption. You know, I was
just out of dinner last night with one of my
friends and we're talking about basically and money and power
will make anyone throw their moral compass out the window,

(04:38):
you know, I mean it'll it'll, yeah. And you're seeing
that everywhere. I mean from from banks to governments to
you know, to small businesses to local town people. What's
taking place here should resonate now more than ever as well,
because it's it's been going on forever, you know, corruption

(05:01):
and greed and power, and that's basically what that movie
was centered around.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
You took kind of a what I thought was a
unique approach to it. Was there really just that much
stock footage from this event for you to use or
did you make that on your own?

Speaker 1 (05:19):
There's a compilation of footage kind of like you remember
Leonard Nimoy in search of You remember that, Okay, if
you watch the first three minutes of that when when
they're talking, uh, they're using it. It's like a docudrama.
They're using re re re reenactment to show because obviously
people in the woods didn't have a camera at the time,

(05:40):
you know, or you know somebody's they're trying to showcase
somebody running from a big foot or hearing a big
foot and running, Well, they had to go out and
recreate that. So, yeah, I had to work with with
what I what I could what I could work with,
and uh, the biggest thing was the legal backing I
got from the Supreme Court ruling with a Fair Use Act,

(06:02):
because this is a completely transformative piece of work, is
what you're seeing where you can actually as long as
you you could take a dishwashing detergent commercial or whatever,
and if you took that commercial and flip that footage
around inside out and you made it look like it

(06:23):
was about some toxic stuff somebody was porn on their dishes,
you know, that's that's a completely different piece of work,
you know than the Dawn original commercial. Yeah, so the
Fair Use Act helped me utilize a lot of that footage.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
And I assume being a professional video editor can in
handy as well.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Oh sure, absolutely. I mean, at the end of the day,
a video editor, you're only as good as a video
editor as you are a storyteller, because that's what you're doing.
I mean, you know, you can you write three movies.
You write one on paper, then you shoot one out
in the field with a crew of you know, whether
it's five people or five hundred. But at the end
of the day, like for Clinton Tarantino, his longtime editor

(07:03):
Sally Minky, that's where the real movie was made in
that room, in a dark room, which is two of
them cutting and chopping and arguing over what needs to
go where. That's where the real movie's made is in
the editing. So that's where the real story comes out,
is in the the edit.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
The entire documentary is done in a way where it
just all seems to be footage from the nineteen seventies, basically.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Oh yeah. Ever, from opening train to the end credits.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
One of the questions that's been eating away at me
since I finished watching it, is all of this information
in this documentary true, did you take any fictional liberties
in it?

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Everything that you see. I'll say this, every word you've
seen here and there happened is true. The reactions you
see from the people, what they're you know, the guy
in the truck talking about, Hey, you know, when we
see it coming down the mountain, that's when we'll believe.
But right now, you know, I don't know what to think. Yeah,
that's that's a real reactions, that's real footage. That is

(08:14):
exactly what you're seeing. But yeah, as a storyteller, you
got to take certain liberties to make a story flow,
for sure.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
So let's just you know, kind of break this down
as much as we can. So we've got this small
town Weyburn, Virginia. It's nineteen seventy eight. There's basically a
sawmill industry there that's kind of the anchor of the town.
And these family members, the sheriff, and this other guy,

(08:45):
this local politician guy, they kind of come up with
a scheme to try and like help each other out
in this small town. They bring the politician to the
town and they start putting pressure on this sawmill to
try to relieve some tax pressures on the community and
everything and get this politician popular to boost his career basically,

(09:08):
and things kind of go south and the sawmill leaves town.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
We'll just say that much, right.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
So then these four guys kind of come together and
cook up this scheme to drive tourism off of the
Bigfoot topic, because, as you were saying, at that point
in time in the United States, it was extremely popular,
and so they kind of cook up this Bigfoot scheme

(09:36):
and this plays out to be one of the absolute
craziest stories I've ever heard. It's got so many different
elements to it. Like you were saying, it's so much
more than just, you know, the topic of Bigfoot, which
is kind of the focal point, but like all this
stuff going on around it is crazy. Which character did

(09:59):
you find most interesting in this story?

Speaker 1 (10:02):
Probably the sheriff. Sheriff threw it because of the way,
as it's said in the documentary say, he brings in
uh Danny Shifflett, the mayor from Richmond, who was trying
to climb up the political out of there, and it
just wasn't working too much competition, like you know on
the tape recordings that that were made. And then you

(10:24):
find out that he's not just a local sheriff from
a small town. He happens to be Danny Shifflett's older cousin. Uh,
and he's, like it says in the movie, you know,
he knew not only having the mayor on your side
would make his job a lot easier, but he was
also a family member and he was older, so he
knew he could kind of manipulate him, you know. I

(10:45):
mean he still had that that uh, that older brother figure.
I guess, you know, from growing up from kids. He
knew he could he could kind of bend Danny's way
to what he needed done, and he totally utilized that
has been so Yeah, sheriffrewit was. It's not only the
bad guys that are interesting. I mean, look at New

(11:07):
Country for old men. Cigar. I mean he was to me,
he was one of the more interesting characters in the
movie because he was so mysterious and he was you know,
he was he was uh, he was pretty evil dude.
So for me, yeah, Sheriff, Sheriff prewit was the most interesting.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
You could especially here in like the recording conversations that
they had between one another on that initial phone call.
How it's kind of like, uh, Chaefflet had already kind
of taken that position as like the younger family member
and kind of just like initially got talked into doing it.
He didn't really want to do it, you know, he

(11:44):
was kind of questioning it. And then the sheriffs is
just like, yeah, I'm gonna lay it all out for
you that you know you're you're sucking where you're at.
You know you're not going to go anyway. Yeah, and
then it starts kind of bullying him into doing it
to begin with.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
Well, he once again he used a manipulation tactic because
he he framed it as, hey, look, you're a small
fish in a big pond. You come to Wayburn, you're
going to be a big fish in a small pond.
And you know you're you're gonna people. I mean, that's
what drove the lumber mill out of town, was a
quick tactic to try to get the lumbermill to take
up the taxes for the people. And everybody likes that,

(12:19):
so you know, right away he's going to look like
a hero. And it kind of backfired on them, and
that's when they found themselves like, holy crap, now what
do we do? You know, the new guy just drove
the number one industry that everybody's I think it was
like sixty percent of the town was employed at now
they're out of a job because the lumber mill up
and moved, you know, so now it's like, holy cow,

(12:40):
this is way worse than he ever thought it could happen.
And then that's where, you know, the bigfoot idea came
in and for a short time there saved the day.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
Which was interesting because we're talking about a ton of
what I think you said, fourteen hundred, yeah, fourteen hundred, Yeah,
not a real big town, but not a small town,
you know, kind of a bigger small town, I guess
is the correct way to kind of frame it.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
Yeah, but you've.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
Got the mayor, the sheriff, and then they incorporate the
town attorney, Lester Clemens, and then this local mechanic kind
of makes up the what were they called the fraudulent four.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, when when everything started to come into light, Yeah,
the newspaper, I mean they always kind of name, you know,
the Memphis six or whatever they are fraudulent for Moniker
on them.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
So that was kind of one of the interesting things
about it. And like I'm you know this it's so
difficult because I want to talk candidly, but I also
want people to watch the documentary and I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah,
I don't want to tell the whole story, but damn it,
it's such a good story.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
So, like, I am going to skip a little bit
ahead because like, this was one of the things that
was like, Okay, well, are these just all just good
old boys that grew up together, Like why would they
kind of you know, this is like a major deal
to bring somebody in on. I mean, you're talking about
defrauding the entire town that you live in.

Speaker 1 (14:18):
But once again, that's what makes for me, that's what
makes sheriff prove it so interesting. He knew he could
do that. It wasn't like he just, oh, let me
go grab that random politician who's not doing it. He
grabbed a family member. Yeah, you know, he's known his
entire life, so he knew what he was doing, and
he knew like, Okay, Danny's gonna you know, I got

(14:38):
to I'm not under his thumb, He's under mine right.
You know. That's why in the movie it says, you know,
he knew having the mayor the new mayor is your cousin,
would make any sheriff's job easier.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
And then you know, their initial plan, their initial scheme
didn't have anything to do with Bigfoot. Bigfoot was just
kind of like a random idea that came up in
a conversation.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
And once again it goes back to six million dollar million.
That was Lonnie when they're they're in the barn and
his son, pretty much like me and my friends had,
you know, the metal lunchboxes. His son had a six
million dollar man lunchbox and on the side of it
was Steve Austin, you know, fighting a resking rate to
wrestle a Bigfoot and Bigfoot being all over TV with

(15:24):
Leonard Nimoy In Search of and Books and movie posters
and Halloween costumes. You know, it wasn't too hard to
figure out, well, you know, people are really buying into
this stuff or you know, or fascinated with it, and
so yeah, I guess it wasn't too much of a
stretch for Ronnie to throw that out. There was literally
sitting on his work bench right in front of him.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
I guess it's because you know, I was born in
the late seventies. I remember in the early eighties watching
reruns of In Search Of and seeing some of those
re enactments and stuff. That's kind of where Bigfoot came
onto my radar me too, exactly exactly, But like, I
don't think about it being such a huge deal in

(16:10):
the seventies. Now, if you look at Bigfoot reports, you
do see a spike of Bigfoot sightings in the late seventies.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
Willow Creek, I mean, as they mentioned in the movie, yeah,
Willow Creek blew up big time.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
And I never even thought about that. I mean, I
obviously anybody that looks into Bigfoot knows that, like Willow
Creek is like the mecca of Sasquatch, you know, like
that obviously, you know, different towns like this one said
that they were, you know, the the eastern capital of Bigfoot.
Willow Creek would definitely be like the capital of Bigfoot
globally for sure, for sure. Yeah, but I never thought

(16:46):
about what that actually meant for a small town. You know,
the tourism and everything I know they have, you know
still to this day, like parades and Bigfoot Days and
stuff like that. Oklahoma has taken on a monic as well,
and you know there's Bigfoot festivals here. But I never
really think about the actual you know, impact that these

(17:09):
things had on these small towns like that. But it
was huge.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
Yeah. I mean, if you if you're listeners, you know,
when you when you watch the movie, I mean, you
can pause it google Wayburn, Virginia. There's even supposed I
mean they don't have pictures of it, but supposedly, according
to the website, Waylon Jennings on tour actually stopped there,
stayed at the holiday inn. Wow, I guess he was,
you know, so, yeah, it was It was a pretty

(17:36):
big deal.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
So these guys, you know, they the general idea was,
we're going to hook some Bigfoot stuff and we're going
to turn this into a tourism spot kind of centered
around Bigfoot. And it took them a while to get
the ball rolling, but eventually they did. And it was
crazy because we're talking about late seventies, early eighties at

(17:59):
this point, and you know, there's that one clip of
that old timer, you know, sitting in a cafe or whatever,
just talking about tourism has hit our town, you know,
and we're just gonna have to deal with it, and
we're going to have to learn how to adjust it.
And he's talking about a million people being there over
a million people.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
A million and a half, yeah, in a.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Town of fourteen hundred.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. I mean you know, well, here's
what's interesting. They have big foot festivals like in West
Virginia and Pennsylvania or whatever. And I sound one that
had I think the town was so small it was
under a thousand people and either it was last year
the year before they had thirty thousand people. And I'm like,

(18:45):
where do these they had to stay? Like, you know, yeah,
way down the road? I mean, where were they sleeping?
But that's what was interesting. If you says on the movie,
it really boosted not only the local economy, but I
mean even farmers were turning their back forties into makeshift campgrounds. Yeah,
you know, so they were probably charging I mean I
don't know what a campground coss back then, probably eight

(19:07):
eight bucks, you know, a spot, and I mean they
have they have acres and they probably you know, three
hundred acres or whatever out there farmland and they're like, yeah,
pitch your tin up, you're good to go, you know,
and just made it made it a made it fun
for everybody.

Speaker 2 (19:22):
Well, I mean I don't even know what the largest
I couldn't tell you what the largest draw is for
a Bigfoot festival or conference in the United States, But
the one you just specifically mentioned, I mean, thirty thousand
seems like a lot of people.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
To me.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
That's a huge turnout for an event. And we're talking,
you know, nineteen eighty drawn a million and a half.
Thirty thousand is nothing compared to that. Yeah, so everybody
in the community was making a lot of money.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
Yeah. I mean, do you remember the one part with
the guy with the canoe rental where he says, yeah,
he goes because I don't even know how many people
we have on a weekend, but I can how many
people visit, But I can tell you we have I
think it was twenty five hundred canoes going the water
on a Saturday morning. Yeah. I wouldn't want to be
on a river with twenty five I mean you're pretty
much walking from boat to bar.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
You guys are just sitting in the water.

Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah. And it makes LA Freeway traffic look nice, I guess. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
Another thing that I found interesting, and again not trying
to give too much away, was how they figured out
that they kind of had to make it bigger. Each
thing that they did, each step that they took they realized, well,
we have to go bigger than the last time. And
eventually it gets to like violence, you know, they get

(20:46):
to violence with you know, the bigfoot hooks in and everything,
and that was the catalyst that kind of tipped things
over for them and finally made everything work out. And
then they all start cashing in on it, interestingly, like
I don't know if I would have chosen their particular
avenues of side businesses or whatever. I know, the mayor's

(21:08):
chili cookoffs to go over pretty well. Said it threw
three thousand people for a chili cookoff. I've never seen
that before in modern times.

Speaker 1 (21:16):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, well you might. I mean you can't. Really,
that's a different thing too modern times now. I mean,
back then, people did do stuff. Those two week vacations
you get at your job were a big deal. A
lot of people now will take two weeks vacations and
just not even leave home. Yeah, you know, And I
don't blame them. They're just like, hey, I just want

(21:37):
a piece and quiet like that is that's what I need,
you know. But back then, people they were looking for
anything to get away and think about it like that's
a cheap vacation that especially if you have kids. It's
the coolest thing in the world for kids.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
Oh yeah. And there was a lot of kids in
that footage, like the tractor rides and the pony I
mean that, like you said, they were cashing in any
way they could. And yeah, it was drawing families. There
was that one lady that said that they came all
the way from Chicago.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and they even as I said,
do you believe and she just looked right at the
camera and said, yeah, yeah, I do.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
So. Part of this scheme that they put was a
fifteen thousand dollars reward for you know, I guess the
capture or bring in a body or whatever. And you know,
very similarly to what happened down in foul Arkansas with
you know, the legend of Boggie Creek and everything. You

(22:38):
you did have teams of men showing up, you know,
hunting this thing. Whether it was to cash in on
the prize or make it safe to be outdoors again,
who knows, but you actually have this in the document.
It drew the attention of the Hell's Angels.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah. Once again, those guys were they were always looking
for something. I mean they had their hand and everything.
And you know, I'm not a Hell's Angel. I wasn't,
but I'm just I'm.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
Speculating, not speaking on the behalf of the Hell's Angels.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not stupid, but uh yeah, I
would imagine that they were like, hey, you know, we're
probably maybe they were headed through that way anyway, and
they're like, let's go stop in Wayburn, and you know
what a great excuse to go out and shoot guns
like you see in the footage, which I don't think
Bigfoot had much to worry about. They couldn't even hit
that beer can floating around in the ditch.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
Well, it's funny because, like, you know, all the local
you know, backwards guys are out there with their rifles
and shotguns. In the Hell's Angel show up and they're
like shooting semi automatics and automatic.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Yeah, oh yeah, all the stuff you're not supposed to have. Probably. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
Another thing that I thought was interesting was that the
town even went as far as putting out a tourism
commercial based on Bigfoot and broadcasting in the area.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, that was pretty much based off of the Hell's
Angels because they knew they got a lot of notoriety
when they showed up, you know, because people are like
they were leaving then they were like, this isn't good.
You like, we want everybody to come, but like we
don't want everybody. I mean they were fighting on the
side of the road. They were just randomly shooting everywhere.
So uh yeah, they had to they had to create

(24:21):
a more family friendly, friendly image and fast, you know,
to kind of curb because you know, they got a
lot of new footage when the Hell's Angels showed up.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yeah, because it it just went from everybody needs to
hunt down and shoot this thing, you know, we're trying
to kill it, to come see bigfoot come to waiver.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah. Yeah, you sound like you did the voiceover that.
It was great.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
Did you do the voiceover on that? Yes, that was me, no.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
Way, Yeah, and once again through AI AI helped a
lot for sure. Yeah, it.

Speaker 2 (24:59):
Sound it a lot like Sam Elliott.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
No I.

Speaker 2 (25:07):
No, okay, Well I knew it wasn't Sam Elliott's voice. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
but there was a lot of characteristic It was very similar,
like to a Sam Elliott type delivery, I guess is
what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
Yeah, oh yeah, for sure, for sure, And that was
by design. I mean, once again, let's not forget I'm
a storyteller. I'm a video editor, I'm a filmmaker. My
first movie came out in twenty thirteen. I just got
the rights back to It's called The Torment of Orient Culumn.
It was the eighties horse style throwback movie. Now I'm

(25:44):
gonna get that put back out there. But yeah, I'm
a storyteller at art. So yeah, the narration is key
to telling the cohesive story. If you don't have that,
oh for sure. Yeah, it just looks like some random
footage flap together because you really don't have context of
what you're seeing and why.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
The footage at the end of the narrator was that
you or was that some stock footage that you use
with AI.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
Well, Matt, I'm going to play the devil's advocate here.
What do you believe? Ooh, what do you honestly believe?
I'll answer your question. I'm not dodging it. I hate
when people do that. You know, I'd piss myself off
if I didn't. But I'm just I'm redirecting. I just
see what you say before I answered that. Okay, Well,
give me your honest opinion. My honest opinion was it

(26:33):
was stock footage, stock footage of the narrator, no.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
Of somebody I don't know who, in a studio, in
a recording studio. And then AI was used on the mouth.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yes, AI was used on the mouth. And once again
it had to be because I'm the narrator. So that
guy who's clearly was filmed in the seventies, because that's
real seventies footage. I mean, everything you're seeing is earal
seventy footage. But yeah, yeah, I manipulated that was that
was an Easter egg. There's Easter eggs. There's an even
Eastern egg in the in the title The Town that

(27:10):
Cried Bigfoot. That that tells you a lot right there.
But there's Easter eggs, especially on the very end, right
before you see the credit roll up. But yeah, there's
the Easter eggs all through this.

Speaker 2 (27:21):
I'm gonna have to go back and rewatch now.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
Yeah, and that's good. That's good. It's kind of like
fight Club. Honestly, I think if if anybody that's already
seen it and they're hearing this, definitely it's definitely worth
to go back and rewatch because now you're like fight
Club was to me, it was way better the second
time around, because you're like, oh, Ed Norton and Brad
Pitt are.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
The scene guy, right right, yeah, you know.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
Yeah, so then you start to look for like, oh,
that's why every time Marlo Singer came in the room,
they both were never in the same room with her
because they couldn't be because they're the same person. So
he starts to see all that stuff. It's kind of interesting.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I'm a sucker for the whole
vinage retro look anyways.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
Me too. I mean we grew up that era, so yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
And the idea to make a modern documentary, but the
entire thing is presented as a documentary from that era.
I mean, yeah, I'm all in. I'm absolutely all in
on that.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
Well, here's the thing, and I'm this is gonna I
don't I'm just gonna say it. I'm not gonna try
to preface this with anything but a lot of bigfoot documentaries,
you see. I mean, if you've seen any, I promise
you you've seen them where it's just drum footage over
a forest in the daytime and somebody trying to talk,

(28:44):
trying to make you scared or trying to create a
scary vibe and it just doesn't work because it doesn't
what you're seeing doesn't match up with what you're hearing,
and you just see shots of the woods and then
you see like nothing is going on. An out of ten,
there may be a story about what somebody heard or saw,
but there's not a I mean, like this story, this

(29:08):
narrative has an arc, you know what I mean. The
town went from went from being okay to nothing and
then to holy cow. Now they're like the big Foot
caval East Coast. And then you know, in the end,
it gets it gets goes from bad to worse.

Speaker 2 (29:22):
Yeah, it gets dark, It gets real dark.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, it definitely gets dark. Yeah, very dark for sure,
for sure. Yeah, but get catch on that on the end.
So back to your question. Yeah, yeah, that was me
manipulating the narrator I did. I didn't have to put
that in there, but I couldn't resist putting that in there.
That's why I did that.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
Yeah, it was definitely a good thing to add in there.
I enjoyed that part.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah. He literally looks at the camera and he tells
the audience, look, I get that all this is hard,
hard to swallow. But try this one on for size,
and then he cuts to current day, the exact same story.
Pretty how much you just saw is happening in Oklahoma.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
Yeah, I know it all too well. I know it
all too well.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
Yeah, so that is That's why that was one of
the reasons the story was so important to tell for me,
because it's going on. What you see is seventy eight,
but it's going on now.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
Yeah, in the area of Honuby, Oklahoma, where we have
an annual Bigfoot conference. There's a story there, man, Like, oh, man,
I know that there's some people that listen to my
podcast that are actually involved in this, but sorry, you know,
this is the way it works. Factions, you know, have

(30:40):
like kind of feuded with one another, and the festival
that takes place down there was taken over by a
different group basically, and the other group started a bunch
of internet rumors and then they rebuttled, and you know,
you had all this drama going on, and they're trying
to keep it going and trying to, you know, keep
it all held together a duct tape at this point.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
And.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
I wish them the best of luck. But then on
top of that, you've got this you know, Oklahoma state representative.
Not a real.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
Uh Humphreys Humphrey, isn't that his name, Yeah, Humphreys.

Speaker 2 (31:15):
Or something, Justin William something Humphries.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
Justin Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's yeah, that's the footage. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah, And he came up with this brilliant idea to
actually open up a big foot hunting season in Oklahoma
and sell hunting licenses and permits for this. I don't
know how serious he is, but you know, he's doing it,
and he he made a little bit of a splash,
you know, with it and everything. I don't know if
it really helped Oklahoma tourism or whatever. I know, he

(31:41):
made a run on a few podcasts out there talking
about it.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
I heard about it in Virginia, you know when I
started there, you go years ago. I mean I'm in
Virginia and I knew who this guy was, you know.
So yeah, he's making a bigger, bigger splash than you
guys think supparently.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
So yeah, I don't know that it's next necessarily paid
off for him, but hopefully he won't take it to
the links that these gentlemen did.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
Yeah, I'll just kind of leave it at that, because I,
like I said, I don't want to give too much away.
One interesting aspect about the dynamic of these guys. If
you take out mayor shiflet you know, who was the
cousin that they the sheriff brought in, the other three
guys served a numb together.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and like.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
We're already scheming back then and doing nefarious things, not
to a huge extent, but they're you know, making money
for themselves. Will say that, and kind of already created
their own dynamic. And I'm going to guess that there's
probably more this story that you weren't able to uncover.

(32:50):
I'm going to guess that the attorney and the sheriff
kind of got in their positions, not by accident. I'm
going to say that they've probably been working together over
the years to get those positions.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
Oh for sure, for sure, I mean that's yeah, That's
all I could uncover was what you saw. But yeah,
you're you're dead on for sure. I mean, there was
definitely a lot more there. And and I'll tell you
I served in the military four years and I saw
things that people were doing to make money off the side, uh,

(33:24):
through the access of what they had access to. It's
not uncommon. It's not uncommon. People don't like to hear
about it, but yeah, there's you know, it's the military
is a business and small scales to large scales things,
things are stipulated for financial gain in all different aspects.

(33:46):
For sure, I saw it firsthand.

Speaker 2 (33:48):
Another interesting thing is whenever this all went down and
it was kind of uncovered and everything, I believe it
was the attorney Lester Clemens uh belled, took off on
his family, took off everybody and went on the lamb,
and the last time he popped up on the radar
was in Oklahoma.

Speaker 1 (34:09):
Yeah, huh, yeah, that is. That's one of the reasons
why I had to throw the Oklahoma thing in there
at the end of what's going on where you're at
right now?

Speaker 2 (34:17):
I mean you don't you don't think.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
Yeah, who knows, maybe a great grandson or something, who knows.
That blew my mind. When I heard about the Oklahoma thing,
I was like, wow, I mean.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
There's no such thing as coincidence, right.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
Yeah, I mean it's uh, it's it's pretty compelling, that's
all I'm going to say. Pretty compelling.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
One final thing I want to hit on with the
documentary is towards the end, and again we're not gonna
I'm not leaking. But at the end, there's an incident
that takes place, and you referenced a few eyewitnesses that

(35:05):
stated they saw Bigfoot involved in that incident. Was that true?

Speaker 1 (35:11):
Uh? The uh? Oh the reports from the linemen and
the guys on the lake. Ye about the uh that's
what I uncovered, Okay.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
And then we have i mean sworn testimony by the
sheriff that some of the stuff that was turning up
in the community in reference to tracks and howls and
tree knocks and things like that, he says they were
not responsible for all of that stuff.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
Yeah, And that's that's some of the Easter eggs that
you got to look at too. I mean, the the
pictures of the of the tracks. I mean, if you
look at them and you and I think I edited
him in there side by side so you could tell
they don't match up. Yeah, you know, like he states
in court, like so he's like, we did these He's
owning up to it because he's caught, yeah, saying we

(36:01):
in fact did this stuff. And then when he talks
about the tree notkins in the house, he's like, I
don't know anything about that, because we needed stuff that
could be documented the next day on. You know, not
every farmer is walking around with an MP you know,
a tape recorder, you know, so they thought of they
were smart enough to think about that. So they're like, well,
we need something that they can document. And you know,

(36:23):
a polaroid instant camera was pretty prevalent back then. I
had one as a kid, So yeah, they were they
left stuff they could take pictures of, and they were
pretty smart about it that the locals could. You know,
you know, I got a picture. It's as big as
my son's skateboard, like you hear in the movie, and
you see but yeah, the tracks don't match up, which

(36:45):
is pretty interesting. So that begs the question what left those?

Speaker 2 (36:49):
And then you had some of the locals claiming that
they saw the thing when they were out there searching
for it.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yeah, I mean, it's what you saw earlier in the
footage earlier in the movie when that one guy talking
about he saw it throwing a tire at forty cars. Yeah, yeah,
you know, it's like, okay, all right, I guess so
there's where the other forty people that were there, you know,
and you know the narrator actually even says, you know,

(37:18):
and some people just want to be on the news,
you know, And that's true with anything. I mean, you
can have a bank robbery and somebody's like, oh, they
got a TV camera and they walk over, Hey, I
saw the whole thing. You know, they want their fifteen
minutes of fame. I mean that's not uncommon. Yeah, that's
that's kind of the culture we live in now.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
And that's part of it. And that's probably why this
story actually did fly under the radar on me, because
especially in the Bigfoot world, you know, I know people
I used to be one of these people that spent
countless hours and countless dollars of their own pockets out
there researching, investigating claims, trying to find evidence, trying to

(37:59):
get proof that Bigfoot's real. And a large part of
that community does not want to draw any attention or
any light to the hoaxes and to the people that lie.
But I think that's part of it. I think that's
part of the story.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Well, I think thank you for bringing that up. That
is one of the things that I also wanted to
do with this. I mean, that's pretty much the underlying
theme for the entire movie is it should help better
serve the bigfoot community by not critical thinking, by way

(38:37):
of use of critical thinking, not taking things at face value,
because what that'll do, and it's not saying you dismiss something,
it's just, you know, just just be analyze what you're
looking at, don't just don't take it at face value,
and you will. It adds validity to the research, it
keeps it authentic, and it keeps it respected. But if
every every time there's a blurry camera footage of something

(39:00):
moving around in a bush and everybody's like, oh, that's bigfoot,
I mean, after a people are like, you can't even
tell what that is. But and I'm seeing this to
every single person listening to this, me myself, the most
compelling footage that I've ever seen, and you know, as
long as I've been alive, is that Francis Peak Farmington,

(39:22):
Utah footage on YouTube of that bigfoot or whatever walking
upright up the side of that snow cliff covered mountain.
Have you seen that?

Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (39:33):
Or? I mean, my only thing that if you want
to go, well, that's not real, I would say, well
that has to be AI. To me, it doesn't look
like AI. But the deepness of how deep that snow is,
the angle, the altitude, and the way that thing is moving.
To me, that's the best footage I've ever seen for sure.

(39:54):
Because people ask me ever since I've made this, do
you believe in Bigfoot? Do you believe in bigfoot? It's
like I've never personally seen one in person, and I've
seen a lot of footage that I just kind of
laugh at. But I'll tell you right now that that
footage of the Francis Peak footage, that's pretty compelling. That's
the one I personally will share with anybody, and I'm

(40:16):
doing that right now. I'm saying, please, please, If you
haven't seen that, I'm sure your listeners have because they're
in the big Foot. But to me, that's pretty compelling.
And if somebody has, I would love to hear if
somebody explained that away, you know, I'm all for it too.
But for me, that's pretty that's pretty compelling.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
Well, I think it's interesting that you know, this was
a situation where people were like intently and purposely hoaxing. However,
you did have a number of townsfolk that claimed that
they witnessed the creature, that they saw the creature, and
you know, they all had their own stories to go

(40:54):
with it, and you're looking at this panel of different
individuals and you're like, Okay, well apparently they're lying, but
you know, they really don't have any reason to other
than you're saying, like they just want to be on
camera or have a story to tell or whatever. And
that was in the late seventies. I think that's more

(41:16):
likely to happen today with the anonymity of the Internet,
especially where people can do it, get a little bit
of attention and then realize, hey, I got away with that.
I'm going to do it again. I like that feeling,
you know, and they get that adrenaline rush off of it.
And I think that's an important aspect to bigfoot or
any unexplained topic. I think we have to recognize that

(41:37):
and we have to acknowledge that because I used to
debunk stuff. I used to, you know, anytime I could
prove that somebody was lying or making something up, I
felt the need I need to put it out there
and let everybody know. I need to alert them. And
the reason I did that wasn't to like argue against

(41:57):
Bigfoot existing. I've had my own personal encounters I've had
my own sighting. I know Bigfoot's real for myself. Do
I expect anybody else to believe me? No, And I
would implore them not to believe me just because I
say so. Go find out for yourself. But with that
being said, whenever you are looking at you know, one

(42:18):
hundred different videos and you're saying like, yeah, I can
explain away ninety nine of them, that means one of
them you can't. That means there's there's still truth out there.
If I can debunk anything that's fake that comes out,
and I'm telling you, yeah, I can debunk it if
it's fake, but here's some that I can't debunk. That's

(42:42):
a stronger argument to me for the existence of these
things than anything else.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
Yeah, I agree with And that's Uh. That's one of
the things I wanted people to take away from this
movie is yes, critical thinking only benefits the Bigfoot community,
doesn't harm it in any way. It keeps it respected
and authentic. And that's that's kind of like which I
thought was very interesting is when you saw where the

(43:09):
sheriff was like, hey, you know we lay these tracks.
I don't know about those tree knockings in the house.
We didn't do that because we had we didn't know
even know how to replicate it, much less if anybody
would be able to record it to post as evidence
later to help drive it. But we knew bigfoot tracks
in the snow will last at least a day and
people will get pictures. So yeah, critical thinking is big

(43:33):
when it comes to this stuff, absolutely, you know. I
mean you can walk outside at night and look up
and go, oh my gosh, is that a whole army
of drones. It's like, well, listen to it, sounds like helicopters.
Oh yeah, okay, I wasn't paying attention to that part.
You know. Yeah, there's nothing. I mean, you have to
have critical thinking for sure.

Speaker 2 (43:52):
So is this a subject that you're done with or
do you think you'll do any future projects in this?

Speaker 1 (43:57):
I'm not gonna I would never. I'm not gonna say never,
but I already have some different scripts that I'm working
on for UH fictional movies, not not the documentary side.
That is the one thing that we all went through,
UH five years ago, you know, with being locked in

(44:18):
our homes and everything. Through the the UH legal backing
of the Fair Use Act that enabled me to make
this documentary without having to uh go out and film,
you know, and I can't. I can't go back in time.
I don't have a time machine, so that that was
challenging too. I was excited about making a movie that

(44:41):
puts you from the moment it opens up, you know
with uh, Wayburn Sheriff, what's your what's your emergency? Uh.
I wanted to put you back into Wayburn from the
get go, all the way up until the very end
and keep you there. Uh. So that was that was
a pretty cool, uh pretty cool deal for me to
be able to do through the use of the Fair

(45:03):
Use Act.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
And you pulled it off successfully, by the.

Speaker 1 (45:07):
Way, Thank you man, Thank you. I appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
I really enjoyed it. I mean, there's a lot of
documentaries out there, Bigfoot and otherwise, you know, and I
run across a lot of documentaries, and I watch a
lot of documentaries. I rarely talk about them, and a
lot of them. It's kind of like cookie Cutter, so

(45:30):
to speak, like you were talking about, you know, the
drone footage and all that. You know, I would probably
do that same sort of thing for my own YouTube channel.
I'm not sure I would, you know, try to put
out a mass marketed documentary in that style. But a
lot of people have and if that's your thing, great,
but it's not something that really grabs my attention personally.

(45:52):
But this was something that I was pleasantly surprised with.
I was not expecting that approach, and I thought it
was awesome. I thought it was very entertaining, and like
I said, it's now one of my favorite documentaries. The
story is absolutely insane.

Speaker 1 (46:08):
Yeah, ILL think you, Matt. I mean that's that's that's
a huge compliment. Seriously, I mean that. But yeah, I
would never have made this if the story wasn't there,
If the story wasn't as interesting as you've pointed out
and all the twist and turns in it, I would
have never have made it. I had no interest in making,

(46:29):
you know, just videotaping somebody just talking about what they
heard or what they saw. I wanted a story that
definitely had an art to it, that definitely that was
worth telling.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
So do any of your upcoming fictional works involve in
Bigfoot or anything else? Unexplained.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
The next one that I'm working on planning to shoot
here in Texas, out in West Texas around the Fort
David Area. That one has a supernatural kind of vibe
to it. It's a it's a Western, so yeah, there's
there's a kind of a supernatural vibe to it. That well,
I'm kind of mixing with genres that that'll be. It's

(47:09):
gonna be a lot of fun to do. But yeah,
there there's no there's no big foot in that one.

Speaker 2 (47:13):
Yeah, supernatural and western sounds really cool though.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
Yeah, I I kind of want to. I like, I
remember when I saw do you remember what was it
called Cowboys and Aliens with Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig. Yeah,
there's parts of that I loved, and then the when
the spaceships and all that stuff towards the end, Uh,
the kind of pulled me out of it. But I
always that kind of resonated with me about I kind
of like mixing genres, you know, and I have I do.

(47:40):
I do have one now that I think about it.
I wrote a couple of years ago. I don't even
know if I want to say this because somebody might
make it before I do.

Speaker 2 (47:50):
But uh, don't say anything you're not comfortable with.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
No, Well, I'll say this. Nobody's gonna make it the
way I'm gonna make it. They don't know the story.
But uh, yeah, I've always wondered, like, you know, American
Werewolf in London was a great movie growing up, and
I've always well, you know, if werewolves has been around,
you know, they've been around for for all the decades
and eras. So I was thinking of mixing a werewolf

(48:16):
in the Civil War.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
Oh yeah, what.

Speaker 1 (48:19):
Should be kind of because you're out in the woods,
you're out in the middle of nowhere, you know, and
you're not surrounded by cannons at all times. Sometimes there's
a little A troop can be four people, you know,
that's pretty much what constant. So you could have four
guys out in the woods that are fighting something that
they don't even know what it is yet, you know,
like dogs soldiers.

Speaker 2 (48:39):
It can be four guys in one state and they'll
get orders, Hey take this message to this general over
in this other state. There you go, there you go,
you're walking.

Speaker 1 (48:50):
Yeah. Yeah, So mixing, mixing genres is something I'm pretty
interested in doing to keep it interesting. But uh, it's honestly,
for independent filmmakers, it's getting harder and harder to to
get things out there, and where it's even worth the
time and the effort instead of just putting it up

(49:10):
on YouTube and just going here, everybody enjoy you know, yeah,
I personally, because I'm old, I personally missed the day
as a Blockbuster because the cool thing about Blockbuster. Here's
the difference between Blockbuster and Netflix and Amazon right now
is back in the day, the store had what it had.

(49:30):
It didn't have this infinite supply, and like when Titanic
came out, there was like any copies, so the whole
back wall was Titanic. But you would go and look
for other movies and if they didn't have the one
movie you were looking for, well you're like, well we're here.
So it kind of forced you to pick something you
probably normally wouldn't pick out. Yeah, and then you end
up you end up loving it. Like, you know, Reservoir

(49:52):
Dogs came to mind. I wasn't looking for Reservoir Dogs.
I was looking for something else, and then that was
out and I picked that up and I ended up
became a huge Quentin Tarantino fan, you know.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
Yeah, And and most of your choices were based off
of cover design.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Cover design, and actually when film Laurels, you know, the
Little Sun Dance the film Festival, gold Leafs actually meant something. Yeah. Yeah,
you're like, oh, this must be kind of cool, but yeah,
it's just a different time now. It definitely is. And
that is another reason why I wouldn't have made this movie,

(50:28):
because there's so many it's and it is flooded and
some some some independent films are great, some are not. Some.
You know, my first film had major issues in it.
I mean, the first part of it, which I'm going
to re release, I'm going to cut out. It looks
like a bad seventies porn in the beginning, just by
the acting. You know, it's because we were rushed. It
had nothing to do with the actors. It was because
we were rushed. But yeah, I wanted to put out

(50:52):
something that like, will this hold people's attention, because now,
more than ever, we have shorter attention spans. And so
uh that's why I opened it. That opened it with
the cow and the creek. You know, I got dead
cowum blood all over the side of my house. That's
in the trailer. Yeah, you know. And by the way,
I did release two weeks ago. This is an easter egg.

(51:13):
I release a trailer that opens with orson Wells and
He's standing there in a black hat and he says,
ladies and gentlemen, by way of introduction, this is a
film about trickery and fraud and lies. And then it
cuts to the trailer.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
Oh cool.

Speaker 1 (51:33):
Yeah, so there's an easter egg right there that tells
you everything. It goes back to what I'm saying about
the Bigfoot community. Critical thinking. Use of critical thinking will
keep the Bigfoot research in the community authentic, incredible.

Speaker 2 (51:49):
One final question. Have you had any of your own
experiences with the unexplained, whether it be UFOs, ghosts, whatever.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
Yes, I've had something, uh a couple of years ago
that was pretty traumatic. And I'll say this and I'm
actually I'm really glad to ask that question. Matt. I.
I when I was younger, I went to Catholic school,
I went to Baptist church, I went to I diated
a girl, and I was out in Guita and went

(52:22):
to didn't go to a Mormon cathedral, but I was
around Mormons. I've been around a lot of different religions
and I've always believed in God. I've had my struggles
with God as far as you know, like you know,
why does why do good things have to happen to
or why do bad things have have to happen to
good people? And some things just don't make sense. You
can't wrap your head around it, and you're like, well, you know, yeah,

(52:43):
I struggled with it. You know, I struggled with it.
But I will say this to answer your question. A
couple of years ago, I had some things that were
very hard to explain and it terrified me. And I'll
say this, I I never used to talk about praying
a lot. I would talk to God in my own

(53:06):
on my own times and terms, but I was never
a big church guy. I'm still not a big church
guy as far as like the pageantry of religion and
what takes place, you know, for that hour on Sunday, right,
But I talk to God now more than ever, and
I will say it's given me peace with what I've
experienced a couple of years ago, because without it, it

(53:27):
was it was pretty traumatizing. I don't want to get
into it too much, but I will say praying now
has taken that that trauma away, and it's helped and
it's it's made things a lot better and easier to
understand for me for sure. And that's just me and
and I am not listen. Please, anybody that's listening, I

(53:51):
am not preaching. I am just sharing, that's all. I'm
sharing my own no different than you sharing your experience,
you know, uh what you were telling me earlier before
we got on. Yeah, yeah, so I'm just for me.
That's that's how I was able to make peace with it.
But yeah, I have experienced something that was terrifying that

(54:11):
I really can't explain, but I found peace with it
through actually my connection with talking with God, and it's helped.
It's helped a lot. Like I helped in ways that
I can't even I can't explain away if I wanted to.
And I'm like, yep, he's somebody's looking out for me.
So I kind of answered your question, but kind of didn't.

Speaker 2 (54:31):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
Yeah, I'm not gonna let it go. We're gonna have
to talk privately about it.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, we can do that. We can
do that for sure. Mark.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
I appreciate you coming on here man and talking to
me about your documentary. I know I had to twist
your arm a little. I'm glad you changed your mind,
but I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
Man. You got me too, it was. It was awesome.
I really and I look forward to, uh, you know,
hearing hearing what people have to say about it, especially
after they watch it or just listen to your pod.
So thank you for the opportunity.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
Matt Oh for sure the town that cried Bigfoot Mark Dawset.
I'll put a link somewhere on probably the Facebook page again.
I posted the trailer there and a link to it before,
but I'll do it again. You really enjoyed it, highly
recommend it. Check it out. Have you had your own
encounter with Bigfoot or something else you can't explain, and

(55:22):
you'd like to share your story on Bigfoot Crossroads, Email
me a Bigfoot Crossroads at gmail dot com. Check out
the website Bigfootcrossroads dot com. You can find links to
social media, past episodes, merchandise, everything you need all in
one place. And until next time, remember there's something in
the woods.