- "Cocaine Bear" is loosely based on a black bear in 1985 who died after eating bags of cocaine.
- Elizabeth Banks talked to Insider about creating a horror comedy off that headline-grabbing incident.
In September 1985, pounds of cocaine suddenly came out of the Georgia sky. Soon after, a 175-pound black bear was found dead after eating it. A lot of it. Now, what happened from the time the cocaine hit the ground to when the bear died has been wildly imagined for the big screen in the movie "Cocaine Bear," which hits theaters on Friday.
Directed by Elizabeth Banks ("Pitch Perfect 2," "Charlie's Angels") and produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller ("21 Jump Street," "The Mitchells vs the Machines," "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"), this outlandish horror comedy has become one of the most anticipated movies of the new year, thanks to its trailer going viral when it premiered in November. It has close to 16 million views to date.
But we can't even blame moviegoers for being so excited. The computer-graphic magicians responsible for the amazing effects in the "Lord of the Rings" and "Avatar" movies are behind the cocaine-fueled CGI bear, and what they pulled off is glorious. For 90 minutes, viewers get to watch the bear wreak havoc on anyone who crosses its path. There's even a scene where it does a line of coke off a severed leg.
The movie stars Ray Liotta, Alden Ehrenreich, and O'Shea Jackson Jr. as dealers trying to recover the drugs, while Keri Russell plays a mother in search of her daughter (Brooklynn Prince) and friend (Christian Convery) who are hiding in the woods after coming across the bear.
Over a Zoom chat with Insider, Banks opened up about the tireless research she did on the true events, the gory scene she decided to take out of the movie so audiences wouldn't "throw up" leaving the theater, and what Prince and Convery actually swallowed for the scene where their characters try cocaine.
Banks feels the bear jumping into the ambulance is the movie's iconic moment
After seeing the movie I thought about how cocaine is such a curiosity within pop culture, whether it be "Scarface" or the "Cocaine Cowboys" documentaries or even Rick James famously saying on "Chappelle's Show" "cocaine is a helluva drug." While making this movie did you get any clarity as to why we love cocaine tacked onto anything?
You know I didn't. Truly, the thing that struck me was just that it had really happened, that people dropped drugs out of airplanes into fields for people on the ground to pick it up.
I think anything that is illicit and dangerous, there's going to be fascination with that. And the idea that we could add something illicit and dangerous to a dangerous wild animal, well, those two things went together like peas in a pod. They both make the other better. The bear makes the coke better and the coke makes the bear better.
Was there a scene in this movie that you felt could potentially be a very memorable moment, like the ending of "Scarface" or the Rick James episode of "Chappelle's Show?"
The very first thing in terms of the CGI was the bear sneezing the cocaine, and I think we thought that was going to be the essence of the whole movie. But then we designed the ambulance chase. I do not use any slow motion in the movie except for one moment, and that moment is the bear jumping into the back of the ambulance.
That was very intentional. I'm not a huge fan of slow-mo in action sequences. This movie didn't require anything like that. But I did feel that we needed one moment where you just went, "Oh shit." Because other than that, I wanted the bear to be realistic. We didn't push it too far, except for that one moment.
And that ends up being, I think, the iconic moment of the movie.
I will say the entire ambulance sequence is a major highlight in regards to not just the comedy element but also the gore.
Yeah, audiences have really reacted to that one. [Laughs.]
It was easy to get people to test screen the movie, but the first screening didn't feature the bear
How deep down the rabbit hole did you go in regards to what really happened? Did you go out to the mall in Kentucky where the supposed real cocaine bear is stuffed and on display?
I went pretty deep. Our production designer went and met Pablo EskoBear, that's the name of the stuffed bear.
So you are confident that stuffed bear at the mall is really the cocaine bear?
100%. And in regards to what happened, we saw the necropsy report from that bear. We know exactly what happened. When it OD'd, literally all of its functions shut down. Its heart basically burst, its liver burst, and the bear was found surrounded by the drugs that were dropped.
We also got the police report from when they found Andrew Thornton II (played by Matthew Rhys). You see in the film that there was a real news story about it. Tom Brokaw did a report. We put it in the movie. And then we recreated in Ireland the shots from the footage of the accident. The way everyone dressed, the people in the background, that came right out of the research.
When you test-screened this, did Universal literally just say to people off the street, "You want to see a movie where a bear does cocaine?"
The only thing they got was the title. We had a really high blind recruit rate because people were just like "What the hell?" So we got people easily, but the hardest part with those early test screenings, we did three total, but the hardest part of the initial one was we didn't have a bear.
It was animated, we were just testing out the story and seeing if it worked, like, did it confuse people? Did we need all these characters? But people were confused, they asked if the bear was going to be animated. Then that final test screening, we then had the CGI bear, that's when we saw the audience light up.
I really wanted this to be as close to 90 minutes as possible, I mean, you get it, the bear is high on coke and killing people, you don't need to spend a lot of time with this. But because of that, there were a lot of great character beats that did end up on the cutting-room floor and they were heartbreakers.
Keri Russell had a beautiful opening scene where she's singing in her kitchen and her daughter is annoyed with her singing. So that set them up as being a little disconnected. Maybe that will be in a director's cut.
A gory death scene of the hiker played by Kristofer Hivju was filmed, but Banks took it out of the movie
Is there a gory moment that you're still bummed didn't make the cut?
Everything that I wanted in is in the movie, but I did pull out some gore toward the end. Kristofer Hivju, who plays the hiker, we show an amazing prosthetic of his ripped-off face that's the aftermath of an attack with the bear. We also filmed his death, but I took it out.
I felt by then the point had been made of what's happening. I wanted the audience to be a little more on the emotional ride of the third act. It's coming to a close, and I wanted people to leave happy and not be freaking out and wanting to throw up.
Did you have someone on set to teach the kids that drugs are bad and this is all just make-believe?
Listen, this movie is not pro-drug. That's obvious. We are not glorifying drugs in this film. So the kids got that. They weren't interested in it. And their parents were there the whole time. They were well supervised.
Sugar and salt mixed together doubled for cocaine in the scene where the kids try the drug
There's a scene where the kids each swallow a knife-full of cocaine after they dare each other to do it. What did you actually use for that sequence?
It was mostly sugar but we did add a little salt because we wanted their reaction to be as real as possible and I felt if we fed these kids just sugar, I don't think they are going to think it tastes bad. So there was a mix of salt.
What's next for you directing? Is there any movement on you making "Invisible Woman" for Universal?
Oh goodness. That's really a question for Universal. But nothing is happening with that one right now. I don't know what I'm going to direct next.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.