The footage of Troy Hurtubise’s work almost speaks for itself. There he is, being filmed in the Canadian wilderness on a 1980s camcorder, wearing what appears to be a blend of hockey pads and police riot gear, readying himself before a colleague bludgeons him in the head with a large wooden beam. He gets back up, apparently ok. In later videos, he is found wearing something more like a Robocop suit as he is seen being bludgeoned with more beams, run into and sent flying across a meadow by a full-size pickup truck, throwing himself down a steep hillside as his limbs flail helplessly, and absorbing the full contact of a large log swung down from a pendulum like the booby trap used by Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Predator.
Ostensibly, these videos are objective documentation of Hurtubise’s sincere development of an armored suit to protect the wearer from a grizzly bear attack, after Hurtubise had a scary run-in with a bear during a 1984 camping trip. But naturally, the videos are also just simply and undeniably funny –– Jackass-style footage of a man being absolutely worked and then cheerily popping back up, over and over again.
In the 1990s, a filmmaker named Peter Lynch turned Hurtubise’s life and work into the subject of a feature-length documentary film called Project Grizzly, which received critical acclaim, developed a cult following, and is said to be a personal favorite of Quentin Tarantino. The film explores some of the space between Hurtubise’s complete sincerity and the raw slapstick comedy, sketching a more human portrait about what it means to spend a life building a grizzly-proof suit.
Obviously, Hurtubise’s life’s work is scientifically dubious. Carrying something the size of an astronaut suit on a camping trip is as impractical and ridiculous as the idea of a test for the suit that assumes a grizzly bear might be driving a 1980s Ford full-size pickup. But present in the footage, in between the insanity and the comedy, is the purity of a man in his element, exemplifying genuine purpose, dedication, and courage, right before a comically oversized log sends him sprawling down a ravine.
