Double-Takes: Intersections between Canadian Literature and Film

The Director’s Medium: Richard Attenborough’s De-Authorization of Grey Owl

Albert Braz 169 The Director’s Medium: Richard Attenborough’s De-Authorization of Grey Owl Albert Braz “Most aspiring authors get their punishment at the very outset; mine, no doubt, will come later when it will hit the hardest, and I am waiting for the crash any time now.” —Grey Owl Richard Attenborough’s 1999 film Grey Owl raises a series of questions about its relation to its subject and, in the process, the relation between cinema and literature. While the film purports to be “based on a true story,” it never identifies its source, or sources. The sole screenwriter listed is William Nicholson, yet anyone familiar with the writings of the trapper-turned-conservationist will recognize that Grey Owl borrows extensively from its eponymous subject ’s bestselling memoir Pilgrims of the Wild. The film itself draws much attention to the 1935 text, to the point of creating the impression that Grey Owl wrote not four books but a single one. Thus it is rather perplexing that Attenborough (or Nicholson) would conceal the conservationist’s authorial contribution to the work. One possibility may have to do with the fact that Grey Owl is divided against itself. More precisely, it is a historical film with an ahistorical premise. On the one hand, Attenborough sanitizes the story of Grey Owl by focusing almost exclusively on his relationship with his Mohawk (fourth) wife Anahareo, downplaying his serial marriages and his chronic substance abuse. Yet, on the other hand, Attenborough seriously undermines Grey Owl by suggesting that his transformation from a white Englishman into a ScottishApache half-breed is transparent, a view that is contradicted by none other than the historical Anahareo, who in her two memoirs about her life with the champion of the beaver insists that it was only after his death that she came to realize that he had no Indigenous ancestry. However, the more likely reason Attenborough fails to acknowledge his massive authorial debt to Grey Owl Richard Attenborough’s De-Authorization of Grey Owl 170 is that cinema is a director’s medium, and directors like to cultivate the myth that they are the real authors of the narratives they film, a task in which they are often assisted by screenwriters. Grey Owl was, in many ways, a cinematic figure. He came of age during the early days of motion pictures and was profoundly affected by the new art form. For instance, he opens Pilgrims of the Wild with an “alert, silent, [and] watchful” man standing outside a lone cabin by a lake in the wilderness. The man, though, is not admiring the view. Rather, he is facing the cabin and in front of him there is “a motion picture camera, trained on the door, which is closed” (3). The camera soon catches two beaver spilling out of the loghouse, one “erect, and bearing in his arms a load of earth and sticks” and the other “hauling a six foot stick which she skillfully manoeuvres” (4). Moreover, Grey Owl’s reliance on film is not restricted to the visual effects in his writings. One of the reasons his books became international bestsellers is that he supported them with brutally demanding lecture tours; during his second British visit in 1937, in three months, he gave “138 lectures,” some to audiences of “over two thousand” people (Dickson, “Passing” 16, 20). By all accounts, Grey Owl was a magnetic speaker, a natural storyteller with a compelling message about the urgent need to stop the destruction of the environment (Dickson, Wilderness Man 241). That being said, it is generally accepted that he owed a considerable amount of his success to the fact his lectures were illustrated with short documentary films about the beaver he was raising, films with titles such as Beaver People and Beaver Family (Smith 123–124; Morris 172). Grey Owl’s relationship with film has continued since his death in 1938, the year he would turn fifty. He has been the subject of some powerful films, notably Nancy Ryley’s 1972 television documentary. Unfortunately, Attenborough’s movie is not one of them. Like several other of Attenborough’s films, such as Gandhi and Chaplin, Grey Owl is structured as a flashback. It opens with a journalist inquiring from Grey Owl if he knows someone named Archie Belaney, which is of course his birth name. After a pregnant pause, Grey Owl says yes. Then, as if he has been waiting for this moment for some time, he asks the journalist: “What...