“The White Powder Bear” directed by Elizabeth Banks hits Brazilian theaters this Friday (30) and tells the story of a bear who eats considerable amounts of cocaine by accident.
When the trailer was shared on social media in November 2022, some netizens considered the story too “crazy” to be true. However, a real case from the 1980s served as the basis for the film’s script, which mixes satire and terror.
Is the story real?
Without spoilers, in fact a bear ingested a lot of cocaine and died of an overdose – contrary to what happens in the film where, when eating the substance, the animal enters a state of hallucination and becomes much more aggressive than normal.
The case took place in 1985, in Georgia (USA), when a former police officer who became a drug trafficker was transporting 40 packets of cocaine on a plane. For a reason still undiscovered, the American began to drop the drug in the air and jumped with a parachute with some packages tied to his body.
Found dead in a house, the autopsy revealed that his body weight added to the weight of drugs prevented the parachute from opening. The airborne packages landed in a forest where the 80-kilogram bear lived.
A note published in The New York Times reveals that “cocaine was apparently dropped from a plane piloted by Andrew Thornton, a convicted drug trafficker who died on September 11 in Knoxville, Tennessee, because he was carrying too heavy a load while skydiving.” .
The December 1985 story goes on to say that “the agency said the bear was found on Friday in northern Georgia among 40 opened plastic containers with traces of cocaine.”
According to the coroner, the animal’s stomach “was literally stuffed to the brim with cocaine.” It took the person who found the dead bear about three weeks to inform the local authorities and therefore only between 3 to 4 grams of the substance in its bloodstream were detected. There aren’t many studies on cocaine doses in bears, but a fatal dose for a human of similar weight is about 7 grams.
nicknamed Cocaine Bear which gave its name to the film’s original title, and Pablo Eskobear (combination of the name Pablo Escobar, one of the most famous drug dealers, with “bear”, which means bear in English) local authorities stuffed the animal and turned it into a tourist attraction.
Nowadays, the “cocaine bear” is part of the culture of the region and even t-shirts and mugs stamped with its face can be purchased in a virtual store.
The White Powder Bear
The script signed by Jimmy Warden brings the story of the plane crash, but develops bear behavior after eating the substance.
The cast is formed by Ray Liotta, Keri Russell, Alden Ehrenreich, O’Shea Jackson and Jesse Tyler, in addition to other names that give life to a curious group of policemen, criminals, tourists and teenagers.
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m Robert Neff, a professional writer and editor. I specialize in the entertainment section, providing up-to-date coverage on the latest developments in film, television and music. My work has been featured on World Stock Market and other prominent publications.
