Giganto: The Real King Kong… Part I

Well the show finally aired and so I can give some of my own thoughts on it and how it came about now. I was kind of on a gag order not to discuss the work until it actually got aired. I am very happy that the show came out the way it did and that even those dyed-in-the-wool Bigfooters are happy with Doug’s work once again.

For a while now we (NAAP) had been discussing putting together a major expedition concerning the study area Owen Caddy and myself have been working in for many years. Dr. Jeff Meldrum took on the monumental task of organizing it and many new and innovated techniques and methods were developed for it. We had a pretty good line on getting it funded but at the last minute that source decided to go a different route and produce something of their own… which they did and pretty much sucked at it I might add.

We still had our own plan though, which we had been keeping top secret, part of which entailed some preliminary work in the area. So a smaller 30 day outing was devised and planned for the summer of 2005… pretty much on our own dime. Jeff did have a couple of investors contributing but nothing on the order needed for the bigger plan.

I took on the task of documenting the entire trip out and began setting up for it when Doug Hajieck of White Wolf Productions and the producer/director of Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science called and said that he had a new show on the books for the History Channel. What he needed was an expedition and wondered if I could put something together for video work. I said it sounded interesting and would think about it. He also talked with Jeff about it and so talking amongst ourselves a little later about having him do a partial documentary on the preliminary expedition we agreed that it might actually help in further funding the larger trip planned for the future. My own documentary was going to be used basically as a “reel” for the participants to use in showing what potential investors would be buying anyway.

Doug’s show was actually about Gigantopithecus blacki… not Bigfoot, but he thought that he could elevate the general public’s awareness of the possible Asian link to the legendary figure with such a show. It would add context through a five-act treatment, at 10 minutes per act and involved a current North American expedition looking for relic giant apes and current research concerning Gigantopithecus. Travel would reach from Europe to China, with the Pacific Northwest in the middle.

The History Channel tied up my hands though with a clause that we could not use anything we found or filmed on the mini-expedition for 1 year after the first airing of the show. We felt we could live with that, in fact, it could take much of that time to produce something that much larger.

Rick Noll About Rick Noll
Rick Noll has been actively searching for the Sasquatch since 1969 and continues his pursuit with extended field trips into the Pacific Northwest's most remote regions. Rick has worked with Peter Byrne, René Dahinden, Grover Krantz, John Green, Jeff Meldrum and the BFRO during all this. He helped with many documentaries on the subject including Animal X: The Skookum Expedition and Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science.

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