THE REHEARSAL DOESN’T MATCH! WELL, NO KIDDING. 🙄 Well, that didn’t take long. The moment Capturing Bigfoot became available, the Bigfoot faithful fast-forwarded straight to the newly discovered footage and began doing what they do best: finding reasons to dismiss anything that threatens their cherished beliefs. “The costume is different!” “The walk doesn’t match!” “The location is different!” “That’s obviously a man in a cheap suit!” Yes, congratulations. You’ve discovered the concept of a REHEARSAL. 👏 Nobody is claiming this is another camera angle of the famous 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film. The documentary presents it as earlier practice footage, made while Roger Patterson was working on a Bigfoot documentary. A rehearsal. A practice run. A prototype. Different costume? Entirely possible. Different performer? Likewise. Different location? Why not? The point of rehearsing is to figure out what works BEFORE the finished production. Bob Heironimus later claimed HE was the man in the suit in the famous film. But the most entertaining objection is already emerging: “THE REHEARSAL WAS FILMED AFTER THE PATTERSON-GIMLIN FILM!” Oh, really? Let’s examine that magnificent piece of reasoning. In 2022, Teresa Brooks brought filmmaker Marq Evans a reel of 16mm film that had been kept in a safe belonging to her late father, Norm Johnson, who had connections to the original filmmakers. Bill Munns, a longtime defender of the Patterson-Gimlin film, personally examined the reel. He identified it as original Kodachrome II camera film bearing a 1966 manufacturing date code. That date establishes when the film stock was manufactured, not when the images were photographed. Munns correctly makes that distinction, and he favors the interpretation that this was a later recreation. Fair enough. The date alone cannot settle the question. Now consider the idea that Patterson himself filmed this AFTER he and Gimlin had filmed a REAL, living, previously undiscovered giant primate in October 1967. AFTER that miraculous encounter, he decided to make an obviously fake Bigfoot film? With a DIFFERENT costume? A DIFFERENT performer? At a DIFFERENT location? To create evidence that could someday destroy the most extraordinary discovery of his life? And then let that footage survive for decades in a safe, waiting to be used against him? Of course, someone else could theoretically have made a later imitation. But then identify who made it, when, why, and how that original camera footage wound up in Norm Johnson’s possession. Here’s where Occam’s razor becomes useful. We have a filmmaker known to have been developing a Bigfoot documentary, a newly recovered film of what appears to be a crude Bigfoot production, and the famous 1967 Patterson-Gimlin footage. The rehearsal explanation deserves serious consideration. The provenance and chronology deserve scrutiny. But notice the difference between investigating the evidence and desperately searching for a reason to reject it. For the true believers, the conclusion was settled before they pressed Play. If it resembles Patty, it’s dismissed as an imitation. If it differs from Patty, it’s dismissed as unrelated. The film stock can be from 1966, but the footage MUST have been shot later. Every detail becomes another reason to preserve the one conclusion they refuse to reconsider: Patty was real. Scrutinize the reel. Question its date. Investigate its origins. Absolutely. But if your explanation is “they filmed a REAL Bigfoot, then made a FAKE one to undermine it,” you owe us a motive. What was he rehearsing AFTER the greatest wildlife discovery in history? His own downfall? 🙄