INTERVIEW: Matt Moneymaker travels U.S. in search of Bigfoot on Animal Planet show
Finding Bigfoot, a reality series that follows a team of investigators as they search for clues of the elusive sasquatch, is the brainchild of Matt Moneymaker, the man behind the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. Along with Cliff Barackman, James “Bobo” Fay and Ranae Holland, Moneymaker travels around the United States talking to eyewitnesses, gathering audio files and searching for the mysterious and controversial legend.
His adventures will continue on Animal Planet Thursday, March 31 at 9 p.m. with Finding Bigfoot’s two-hour season premiere. Moneymaker was tight-lipped about what fans can expect on the new season, but he did allow a few details.
“Well, they’re going to hear a lot of witnesses,” he said in a recent phone interview. “They’re worth watching because we go places, talk to a lot of people. We see things.”
On the April 7 episode, Moneymaker and company head to the Klamath Reservation in southern Oregon to investigate eyewitness accounts from several locals in the area. “I had heard for years that the Klamath people had encounters with these animals,” he said. “We went there, and we were really blown away by how deep it is in their culture.. … It is a huge, huge area that is mostly unpopulated.”
Another episode finds the team heading to Tennessee and actually running into other members of the BFRO. On the two-hour season premiere, Monemaymaker works with the Supernatural Bigfoot Group, whose members advance a theory that sasquatch is, well, “beyond this world,” as Animal Planet puts it. The BFRO has its doubts about this theory, but they lead a joint expedition anyway.
“There are so many very good witnesses with so many intriguing encounters,” Moneymaker said.
The BFRO investigates rural areas where there are many other animals, such as places with a salmon run (out west), or snakes and amphibians (down south). Rain is also a common feature of their points of interest. “The places that are marshy or just jungle-y, full of snakes, full of birds, full of all sorts of things that a predator could go after,” Moneymaker said of the hotspots.
What the audience sees on Finding Bigfoot is not necessarily the entire picture of the many investigations. For example, the town-hall sessions where eyewitnesses gather and share their stories are usually edited down to a few minutes on the series. However, at those town halls, the BFRO team members are weighing each of the eyewitness accounts and filtering them through a process of elimination.
“A lot of it is listening to the witness and listening to the circumstances of what they saw to try and boil it down to, well, there was either a Bigfoot right there in front of them in plain view in the headlights, or the person is lying,” Moneymaker said. “In other words, it couldn’t have been one of these things that are kind of a shadowy thing saw at the corner of their eye as they were driving down the highway at night. Those things, we could go there, and they’re just going to tell you what little they saw. You’d be like, well, maybe or maybe not.”
Moneymaker needs to believe the eyewitness in order to pursue the lead, and after decades of talking to individuals who claim they’ve had encounters, he has become skilled in the art of storytelling.
“You can question them a million different ways, and you can basically sort out the ones who are telling you matter of fact something about what they observed, and the other ones in that process you’ll trip them up enough if they’re making it up,” he said. “Sometimes we’ve had witnesses where we think that’s the case, but we think they’re not going to … communicate well enough to be able to deal with all the questions that we’re throwing at them either because they’re too young or they’re not good talkers. And we’ll work with people we know we can ask a million questions to and see how they react like we would with your average person.”
There are numerous skeptics of sasquatch’s existence. Moneymaker seems to welcome all viewpoints and pursues these supposed creatures in the spirit of adventure. He understands that it can be frustrating when BFRO doesn’t capture evidence as convincing as, say, the infamous Patterson-Gimlin film of the late 1960s. “I understand how they’d be frustrated about it,” he said. “It frustrates the hell out of me to watch the show and know that when stuff happens the audience couldn’t hear what we were hearing, very frustrating for me.”
Moneymaker did promise that on the new season there’s a “really good howl” that is the first in the particular state they were investigating. He called it a “big male” sasquatch.
“We have a TV crew that’s really so focused on just recording the cast members, and that’s really all they’re concerned about,” Moneymaker explained. “And we do the best we can to make sure they also report what’s going on around us, as we try to do that ourselves. … Sounds are usually what we get, but obviously the focus is trying to get stuff on video. We’ve got video cameras around us. We’re supplied with that. We carry the thermal imagers.”
The team has changed somewhat in its investigating over the years, and one of the most profound differences is that they are bonafide reality-TV stars. When they show up in town to investigate, locals know who they are. That notoriety has helped.
“What’s great about the fame and the notoriety of it is in the areas where sightings happen and farmers or ranchers have encounters with them, those people are so aware of our show that when we go to those areas, I could walk up to any farmer and knock on the door,” he said. “And the people will know who I am or will have relatives who are big fans of the show. The notoriety of the show, that opens gates for us that were not able to open in the past, and for that I will be forever grateful.”
For Moneymaker, who has been investigating since the 1980s, there is still so much to learn and so much to be amazed by. “Most of those witnesses actually had an encounter,” he said. “What they are describing is what these animals actually did, so if you’re fascinated by these creatures as I am and some of the other people are, what the witnesses are telling you, that’s the way humanity is going to learn about these things more than any other way.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
that moneymaker is an absolute moron. He knows so much about big foot that no else knows.
He does no know what he talking about!!
Bigfoot is the bites animal walking in the woods. why would he hide his prints?
He better be careful trotting through the woods at nite.
I would get the greatest pleasure seeing Bigfoot knock him on on his butt.