in 2002, more than three decades after he first saw the film, morris goes public with his story. i started announcing that s our gorilla suit. that s the gorilla suit that other magicians, another 10 or 20 magicians across the country use the very same suit. that s our suit. it s not a real bigfoot. but morris revelation comes too late for many of the film s believers. people are so taken by the things they fall for. they re hugely invested now. now they re fools if they were wrong. and as soon as you come in and rain on their parade, you find utter hostility. the first reaction was no, you re lying. that is a real bigfoot. how is it possible that this thing could fool people? the suit was all right. it wasn t the very best gorilla suit ever made, but it was okay. but in broad daylight, did not look like a real animal.
where a person s eyes show. i said you get some makeup and put it around the person s eyes that are wearing the suit and it will blend into the mask itself. they also wanted to know how to make it large and massive. and he wanted some extra material. he s going to have to change the head. he s going to have to put these and this is brilliant on roger s part these pendulous female breasts which everybody thought wow, that s the kind of detail nobody could make that up. it s so credible and believable. well, the check arrived and i sent the suit out to him. he called me back and said, listen, you can see the zipper in the back of the suit. i said, well, that s easy to overcome. just get a hair brush. brush it back and forth across the top of the zipper and it will disappear. that was the last i heard from him. until he sees his gorilla suit on tv. my wife is in the kitchen. i say army, come here. you ll want to see this. she walks in and said oh, look. there s our gorilla sui
i talked with phil morris about this in retrospect, seeing how entrenched this film has become, i think he feels he probably should have come forward. we set out to verify morris story and found bob heironimus, who says he is the man in the bigfoot costume. they have since become friends. roger patterson told bob walk like a gorilla. bob was a rodeo cowboy. he had no idea what a gorilla should walk like. he walked like a normal person walking down the street and kind of waved his arms back and forth and thought that was real show business. bob has the size, the gait to be bigfoot, to give it life. and i think this is important, there are people still living who remember seeing a bigfoot suit in the trunk of bob s mother s car. when it comes down to it, it s hard to improve upon phil morris
as the source of the costume, bob heironimus as the guy in the bigfoot suit, and roger patterson as producer, director, and whatever else of this film. just as patterson stood by his story, so, too, does morris. rick baker, who is academy award winner eight times, said to me one time, he said, phil, that was the worst gorilla suit i ve ever seen in my life. and i said, yes, it s true. but think about this. that there were over 10, 20, 30 million people who saw that film of bigfoot walking through the forest and they thought it was a real suit. that s absolutely amazing. at the end of the day, when you ve watched this figure stride and you looked at it, i m inclined to agree with the late john napier from the smithsonian who remarked famously, i can t see the zipper.
but perhaps no one is more dubious than this man, and for good reason. i m sitting in my living room at home watching television, and the announcer comes on telling a story about these two rodeo cowboys who were out in the forest and ran upon a bigfoot. and i look, and here is our gorilla suit walking across the screen. originally a vaudeville entertainer in 1967, roger morris makes and sells gorilla costumes. i received a call from this man who says he s roger patterson. do you have a gorilla show? no, no, no. are you a magician? no, no, no. he says we re playing a gag on people as a joke. how much are the suits? according to patterson, morris had several specific requirements for the suit. he wanted to know did it look like a real gorilla? what about around the eyes,