Binge watch
How to create an instant cult hit? Start by calling your movie Cocaine Bear. Actor-director Elizabeth Banks explains
It’s rare that a film’s title doubles as its elevator pitch, but here is Cocaine Bear, a movie about — what else? — a bear on cocaine. Made by the American actor and, more recently, director Elizabeth Banks, the horror-comedy-thriller tells the story of a black bear that embarks on a murderous rampage through Georgia. There are drug jokes, there is death: Paddington, this ain’t. And, if the joyful reaction to the trailer is anything to go by, people really dig this bear who can’t get enough of the white stuff.
“I think it is a great reminder not to take everything so fucking seriously,” says Banks, 49, of the film’s irreverent approach, on a Zoom call from Los Angeles. “It’s like going to the amusement park and getting on a roller coaster.” Somehow, the film, which is out in February, is based on a true story. In 1985, a narcotics officerturned-drug smuggler dropped 40 containers of cocaine from a dangerously overloaded plane. Months later, a black bear was found dead in Georgia, next to clawed-open bags of the jettisoned drugs. An autopsy revealed the bear had consumed over 30kg of coke, valued at almost $2m. “Pablo Escobear”, as he came to be known, was promptly stuffed and now resides in Kentucky.
Banks’s film imagines what the bear got up to on his bender, which mostly involves terrorising people who have come down to the woods, not expecting quite such a monstrous surprise. The cast is suitably eclectic, populated by cult character actors (Margo Martindale), comic types (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and prestige TV stars
(Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys). And a little like the amped-up bear, the film will cover a lot of ground. The big theme, the one set out by marquee creature-features like Jaws and Jurassic Park, is man vs. nature. “As a reminder, nature always wins,” Banks notes. “That’s something I felt like we needed to be reminded of, especially when we fuck with nature. And that’s what the drugs did.”
But it is also about parenthood and “following in your parents’ footsteps”, says Banks, who is married to Max Handelman, a film producer, with whom she has two sons. Russell’s character is searching for her child, while Alden Ehrenreich, playing the son of a “Mafia guy from the Midwest”, is trying to retrieve his father’s stash from the woods. Speaking of legacy: Ehrenreich’s dad is played by Ray Liotta, in his final film performance. The Goodfellas actor died in his sleep in May 2022 at the age of 67. “He just came at it, full force,” Banks says. “I’m so grateful that he blessed our silly movie.”
Known for her zany, perfectly timed performances in franchises like The Hunger Games and Pitch Perfect, this “silly movie” is Banks’s third outing as a director, following on from Pitch Perfect 2 (2015) and Charlie’s Angels (2019). “My confidence is growing, and I hope that you feel that in the filmmaking,” she says. It also meant a firmer grip on all aspects, from script suggestions to marketing. Even the film’s title, potentially dangerous territory for some distribution partners, was non-negotiable. “I felt that if I were to take on this movie, I needed to make a film that lived up to the title, and so the title was really important to me.”
But perhaps the greatest challenge was finding the titular star. No actual bears were harmed during filming, which took place in Ireland (County Wicklow stood in for the woods of Georgia). Instead, a human “bear performer” by the name of Allan Henry — who trained under motion-capture supremo Andy Serkis — subbed in for the beast. (To help the cast out, he wore bear prosthetics.) Even once CGI was added, Banks could still see Henry’s “soul” in the bear.
There wasn’t much footage of bears on coke available for research purposes, which was both a blessing and a curse when developing the film’s visuals. “We had a little leeway with the bear because it’s on cocaine, and nobody knows how a bear would actually act on cocaine,” Banks says. Instead, the team researched the behaviour of different bear species (black, grizzly, sun and panda) alongside the visual-effects company Wētā Workshop to ensure the animal’s coked-up movements were plausible. The production crew looked at these bears’ vital stats — how fast they can run, how high they can jump — and jacked them up. “Everything in this movie has some basis in reality, which I’m proud of,” Banks says. “You believe all these things could be happening, but it also tells you that this is a supercharged bear.”
I wonder if, amid all the drug-fuelled anarchy and woodsy murder, it is possible to feel sorry for the real-life bear, who died alone in a cave with a stomach full of cocaine and no one’s ear to chew off. Banks whole-heartedly agrees. “This bear is collateral damage in the broken war on drugs,” she says. “I thought that the movie was a great opportunity to tell a vengeance story on behalf of that bear.” Perhaps revenge, a dish traditionally served cold, sometimes needs a side order of bloodshed and blow. ○
‘Cocaine Bear’ is released in cinemas on 24 February