Project Grizzly

Dir: Peter Lynch

1996

*****

Project Grizzly is one of my favorite documentaries of all time, although it takes certain liberties. I’m not sure how well Troy Hurtubise was treated either, although he has become a hero to everyone who has seen it. Hurtubise is a scrap-metal merchant turned inventor, a successful man but still somewhat troubled by an encounter with a grizzly bear during a camping trip in 1984. Since said encounter, which he was lucky to survive, he has become obsessed with developing a bear-proof suit. The film follows Hurtubise for five months as he finally develops the "Ursus Mark VI” through its final stages. The Ursus Mark VI is a huge suit of amour inspired by the film RoboCop, although it looks a lot more like the ED-209 had a baby with Metal Mickey (google it kids). It cost $150,000 to make and is fast becoming an obsession gone too far. As he finishes the suit, it goes through a vigorous set of resilience tests. This sees Hurtubise throwing himself in front of moving cars and standing in front of giant logs that are swung from trees (Ewok style). These tests, while important, seem to get bigger, sillier and go on for some time, as if Hurtubise is stalling. Eventually, Hurtubise sets off to the forest to look for a bear to attack him, leading to a humbling and hilarious conclusion. At this point it should be said that this is all true and not a faux-documentary (or Mockumentry). It’s clear that director Peter Lynch is in it for the human interest side of the story and he does make the most of Hurtubise’s colourful nature. Hurtubise would later criticise the film for making fun of him but a legion of fans reminded him that he is a legend soon after. A year following the film, Hurtubise was awarded the 1998 Ig Nobel Prize for Safety Engineering by the scientific humor journal Annals of Improbable Research, which he accepted in good humour. To be fair to Hurtubise, the Ursus Mark VI isn’t his only invention. He also invented Firepaste and Angel Light. Firepaste is a white paste that, when dry, is flame and heat resistant. It has a consistency and texture similar to clay when wet and dries into a gray ceramic material which resembles concrete. The impetus for firepaste came from a failed fire test with the Ursus Mark VII where the metal exoskeleton heated up, popped the air bags and left Hurtubise with numerous burns. For a demonstration for the media and military in summer 2004, he made a thin mask of the material, put it over his face, and aimed a specialized blowtorch at thousands of degrees directly at the mask. The temperature was intentionally much hotter than the temperatures reached by the Space Shuttle on reentry. A thermometer located between his face and the mask measured no appreciable temperature change below the mask after nearly ten minutes, and the integrity of the material stood strong. Angel Light, according to Hurtubise, is a device that makes walls, hands, stealth shielding, and other objects transparent. He claims that beams from the device have the side-effects of frying electronic devices and killing goldfish. After testing the device on his own hand, Hurtubise claims he could see his own blood vessels and muscle tissue as clearly as if the skin had been pulled back, but the beam caused numbness and he began to feel ill. He also claims to be able to read the license-plate on a car in his garage from his workshop and see the road salt on it. There are no pictures or any sort of objective, verifiable evidence to support these claims made by Hurtubise but at this stage I could never doubt the man, I totally believe in him. He’s Canada’s finest. You know you’ve done something right when you’re parodied in an episode of The Simpsons anyway. This film is hilarious and full of entertainment value but it also has a lot of heart. Hurtubise is an endearing character, full of energy that it is impossible not to feed off. I feel that he might have been taken advantage of somewhat but I believe he has profited from it, at least, it has been advantageous towards some of his later projects. It’s a glorious film, overlooked by most but adored by all who see it.