Discovering Bigfoot: The "Patty" Recreation of Bill Munns

We hope to have the presentation made by Bill Munns at Discovery Day V available for viewing in one form or another soon, ideally as part of a DVD including the whole conference. For those of you who don't know Bill's work, he studied Film and Theater Arts (16mm and some 35mm, with cameras, editing, sound, and equipment) at Los Angeles Valley College, studied Makeup Artistry with Mike Westmore, and began a career as a makeup artist at Universal Studios in 1969. He has an extensive Hollywood Resume including freelance Prosthetic Makeup work for the Blackenstein monster in the movie “Blackenstein” 1970.

Bill's in depth research analyzing the Patterson Gimlin Film can be reviewed here at The Munns Report, as well as a list of his P&G Film accomplishments.

Model audition including a nurse to screen out
"enhancements".

These pictures are from Bill's Discovery Day V presentation, as he discussed in great detail his recent work, made possible by a Grant arranged by Dr. Meldrum, in recreating the anatomy of "Patty" using live models for in depth comparisons between her movement and various natural versions of the human form, both male and female, in costume and sans clothing. He also made several chest panels using various synthetic materials available in 1967, in order to try and recreate a costume which would duplicate the appearance of Patty and her movement. The third branch of this project was the recreation of the "costume" described by Bob Heironimus in his claim that he was hired by Roger Patterson to be the object of Roger's film. Not only has Bob been unable to describe the actual location that the film was made, let alone how to get there, but the research of Mr. Munns has now proven once and for all that the "costume", as described by Heironimus, is structurally, anatomically, and logistically incapable of portraying what is in the famous 1967 Film.

Bill describing the necessary angle for recreating Patty's head.


The football helmet head of Heironimus incapable of duplicating the correct angle for eye alignment.

One of several breastplate recreations

Models in action

(More Pictures Below)

Watch the Interview by Ro Sahebi of Hollywood Costume Designer and Filmmaker, Doug Hudson as he explains suit construction and how it applies to the Patterson Gimlin film and other famous Bigfoot images and why he also believes the Patterson Gimlin Film is the real deal: The Bigfoot Report.

And Here is the chat I had with Mike about his thoughts on Bill's work:

Nadia Moore: So do you know how Bill Munns got interested in Bigfoot, and his research on the Patterson Gimlin film?

Mike Rugg: Well to tell you the truth I don't know directly from him, so I would have to guess at that. Um, It's my guess that because he had made that Gigantopithecus replica, which he did at a time when he was doing live animal replicas. So Like when you would go into a museum back in the good old days, you’d see a poor dead animal that had been stuffed. Well that’s come into disuse, people don’t find that politically correct anymore. And so museums, brand new museums, don’t like to put stuffed dead animals in their tableaus and in their displays and so they would rather have a replica of an animal that is made from synthetic material. And so Bill Munns is an expert at that, and he told me that he did sculptures and he took them to an exhibit, and there was a woman there that was all incensed and angry because she was sure that he had killed gorillas in order to make these replicas. “That has to be a stuffed gorilla it is too realistic”. “No Ma’am I’m sorry it’s just my artwork, it is all synthetic, I created it from synthetic materials”. “Oh no” so she was picketing his thing and causing all kinds of problems. So that’s how bad it got. And then he discovered that he really couldn’t sell these things very well as sculptural pieces, even though people thought they were great, it just didn’t work, nobody had ever done anything like this, as an art piece. And so I think this just wasn’t doing well, but he made this Gigantopithecus replica, working backwards from a skull Grover Krantz did, I assume, and that’s all over the internet. And I think he realized that there’s more connection with Bill Munns and that Gigantopithecus sculpture that he made than anything he has ever done in Hollywood. And so I would guess that when he decided to look into Bigfoot a little bit when he had some spare time, maybe didn’t have any current contracts, you know there was a lull in his freelance work or whatever. And I would guess he just decided that, look at this they are fighting over the Patterson Film, you know this is right in my skill set, absolutely perfectly in my skill set. So I think he probably just decided to go give it a shot, kind of on a lark. And then I think what happened was he discovered there would be some money in this, and a way to get some work in his chosen profession. And sure enough National Geographic has paid him, he has gotten a Grant via Meldrum, via another gentleman, to help establish the reality of the Patterson Film. So I think he actually stumbled into some work that was right up his alley. Plus he was enjoying it and getting positive feedback for it. So bing, bing, bing. But he told me that it is just so frustrating, especially when he started going on the JREF forum and answering all the skeptics and stuff, and then he realized the miasma of bipolar activity amongst Bigfoot researchers and skeptics alike.

NM: Yeah and those skeptics are beyond skeptic, they are ensconced in their denial of anything that they have already made up their mind about.

MR: Ahuh, and so here he was trying to deal with Bigfoot skeptics as well as the JREF professional skeptics, well that’s what they call themselves, they’re not really skeptics they’re skoftics and that’s a problem. Yeah that’s it, so I couldn’t say for sure that’s exactly what happened with Bill, but that is my guess from conversations I have had with him. And what I have seen of his work and so forth. And Meldrum of course is trying to establish the Hominoid Inquiry, get himself a Peer Reviewed Journal that is open to things that are a little more exploratory as far as science goes. There have been other attempts in other Journals. The Journal of Cryptozoology that was done by the ISC, The Society for Scientific Exploration which I think still exists, and they publish peer articles. So it’s also possible that you can get a scientific article published in a very specific journal and that still legitimizes it, and it is still a legitimate way to publish. So you know that is a possibility for Melba if the mainline journals, like Science and Nature, don’t want to go there, she might be able to publish in a lesser journal, including Jeff Meldrum’s.

NM: Yeah, and he’s offered that publicly.

MR: Well that makes sense and that is good of Jeff to do so. Yeah, of course we asked him at the panel (Discovery Day V) when he was here, I asked him specifically you know, if someone like myself could write an article for his journal and, no, because I don’t have a PhD after my name or some other letter. Uh so yeah it’s a journal for scholars only. I think if you want to write a book report they might allow that if you’ve got some credentials of some sort. Dmitri Bayanov asked me to write a book report of his book for Jeff’s journal. I told him I would, but then I had a heart attack.... Anyway, well you asked a question, I answered it.

NM: Yes! Can you think of anything else related to Bill Munns or his work on the P&G Film?

MR: Well I think that what I gathered, and I didn’t sit down and quiz them directly, but what’s happening is there is a project being done by Meldrum, in conjunction with Bill Munns, I think they intend to publish it. I think there will be a published paper or booklet and probably a DVD where Bill will show all his experiments with costumes. So I think between Jeff’s proof and footprints with his database bank that he has been developing to back that up, combined with Bill’s work on costuming. I think they are going to join forces and put that out to try and give credit to the Patterson Gimlin Film. And we’re going to be doing something to give credit to that too, to answer all the questions with the skoftics and set the record straight, because our interview with Mrs. Patterson and Bob Gimlin revealed some facts that haven’t been discovered before. At least I wasn’t aware of them. And they put a lot of things together for me, filled in some missing pieces, so we have some new things to say about that which will be coming up.

NM: Awesome! Stay tuned…..

MR: Umm Hmm Hmm