The Way Back: Will Yetis Be Scene Stealers?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on December 15th, 2010
The Way Back is going to be released soon, and yet it is hardly being discussed in the cryptozoology blogosphere.
What is The Way Back, you ask?
It is only a well-funded big tent motion picture, directed by Peter Weir, starring Colin Farrell, Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, Saoirse Ronan, and Mark Strong, featuring the reallife escape of prisoners from the Siberian gulag.
This is the long-rumored film that is loosely based on a book entitled The Long Walk by Slawomir Rawicz, which details an encounter with two Abominable Snowmen or Yetis (actual drawings of them shown above and at the bottom).
But will the movie skip the Yetis and only show the human versus nature melodrama of The Long Walk? Could the book’s major subtle focus on the alleged sighting of these Yetis be ignored by the moviemakers?
Certainly, no one linked to the film is talking about the Snowmen angle. That seems strange if there were Yetis in this film.
There are no Yetis in the trailer.
Maybe there are no Snowmen in the movie?
The release dates for The Way Back are December 29, 2010 (limited) and January 21, 2011 (worldwide).
Of course, it would be ironic if the Yetis are left out of The Way Back. The book The Long Walk was specifically written because of the encounters with the Abominable Snowmen.
As the story is told…
In 1954, a young English journalist named Ronald Downing traveled to the Midlands to call on a man about whom he had heard only fleeting reports. This man, Downing had been told, was a reclusive Eastern European traveler who had had the strange good fortune to see a yeti — an “abominable snowman,” the legendary, supposedly humanoid inhabitant of the high Himalayas. The London Daily Mail, for which Downing wrote, was financing a Himalayas expedition of its own to find and photograph the yeti, and Downing was charged with obtaining a suitably colorful background story.
The factual nature of The Long Walk has been the center of a storm of confusion in recent years. Incredibly popular, it sold over 500,000 copies and is credited with inspiring many explorers. Over the years, critics of the book’s accuracy have included Peter Fleming (the brother of Ian Fleming), Eric Shipton and Hugh E. Richardson, a British diplomat stationed in Lhasa.
In 2006, the BBC unearthed records (including some written by Rawicz himself, some Russian) that showed he had been released by the USSR in 1942 and that the book may have been based on the story of another Polish soldier, Witold Gliński. In May 2009, Witold Gliński, a Polish WWII veteran living in the UK, came forward to claim that the story of Rawicz was true, but was actually an account of what happened to him, not Rawicz.
The Long Walk was ghost-written by Ronald Downing based on conversations with Rawicz. It was released in the UK in 1956 and has been translated into 25 languages.
In the controversy about the reality and backstory from The Long Walk to The Way Back, I’m afraid the story of the Yetis may have been lost. I certainly am interested in seeing that part of this incident remembered and further researched.
Here’s how Harry Trumbore imagined The Long Walk’s Yeti…
…in The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates (written in 1999, with Patrick Huyghe), where the story is detailed on pages 110-111.
A giant tip of the snowcap to correspondent and cryptozoology blogger Cameron McCormick, who pointed out the initial idea to me for this inquiry.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Yeah ever since the trailer came out I confirmed that this was indeed the story I was thinking of, I wondered this myself. But did Rawicz add in the Yeti story to spice up Gliński’s story? Has Gliński confirmed that the Yeti part is true?
I would be annoyed, but I really get the feeling they’re going to skip over that part in the movie.
I suspect they will leave out talk of snowmen from the film completely.
Just like they will leave the Percy Fawcett account of his encounter with the Maricoxi in the 1914 jungle of the Mato Grosso in his “Lost Trails, Lost Cities” from the new Brad Pitt movie adaptation of the bestseller “The Lost City of Z” coming soon to theaters.
I think David Grann (the author) left the account out of his book to portray Fawcett as a more “credible” explorer. I am just guessing though.
It would be great if the screenwriters decide to insert the account into the movie “The Lost City of Z” even though Grann did not.
Sounds to me like there is going to be no mention of Yetis anywhere in this film. It’s unfortunate but mainstream media tends to snigger at such things and mention of Yetis just wouldn’t “do” for a serious movie even if the account might well have been true. That’s just the way it is. Frustrating.
I would think they would actually play up that angle to increase more interest and mystery IF it was included. Methinks not…but I would like to be wrong.