It Could Happen Here - Why Watching Actors Get Maimed By Big Cats Gives Me Hope For The Future

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Robert explains why he repeatedly returns to Roar, a movie where the cast and crew are repeatedly for-real maimed by giant cats, when he needs to feel optimistic about the future of the human race.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Israel Gutierrez and I'm hosting a new podcast, Dub Dynasty, the story of how the Golden State Warriors have dominated the NBA for over a decade. The Golden State Warriors once again are NBA champions. Today, the Warriors dynasty remains alive in large part because of a scrawny 6'2 hooper who everyone seems to love. For what Steph has done for the game, he's certainly on that Mount Rushmore. Come revisit this magical warrior's ride. Listen to Dub Dynasty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith.

And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless, d***less version of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless, D***less Me. I'm the old one. I'm the young one. And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard. Sounds innocent, doesn't it? A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language. It's for adults only. Or listen to it with your kid. It could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless D***less Me on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever. You

get your podcasts. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? How? Goes lower? From Blumhouse TV, iHeart Podcasts, and Ember 20 comes an all new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery

of his vanished boyfriend. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi. What's the way to find a missing person? Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously. Listen to The Hook Up on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. My name is Brendan Patrick Hughes, host of Divine Intervention.

This is a story about radical nuns in combat boots and wild haired priests trading blows with J. Edgar Hoover in a hell-bent effort to sabotage a war. J. Edgar Hoover was furious. He was out of his mind, and he wanted to bring the Catholic left to its knees. Listen to Divine Intervention on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Callzone Media. Hello, everybody. It could happen here, here, and this is Robert Evans. We're a show about things falling apart, and boy howdy, they sure seem to be doing just that as they always are and have been for years. In fact, anticipation of the end times, I think, is probably close to the number one to be doing just that, as they always are, and have been for years. In fact, anticipation of the end times I think is probably close to the number one hobby in the United States at this point.

I suspect if you counted up the dollar value of all the collapse-themed movies, books, prepping gear, monetized social media content, and of course, religious sects in the country, the apocalypse would be one of our big industries. Doomsday prepping alone was an almost $1.2 billion business last year, and it's expected to more than double by 2030. Our popular fiction can't even imagine a better future right now. 90% of modern future media takes place during or shortly after an apocalypse. The odd exception today, like Bong Joon-ho's recent Mickey 17, is so rooted in Trumpist politics that we only catch occasional glimpses of anything beyond it.

In other words, in our fiction, there's no respite from the news. We watch a slow-motion, self-inflicted global economic collapse and then relax with shows about mushroom zombies or literal wage slaves created by mind control surgery. In other words, it's bleak out there. Tomorrow could be the day Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, or uses the military to occupy Greenland, or like one of a dozen equivalent horrors we all just know are coming in some form or another, even if no one can say when. And I'm not here today to tell you how we're gonna get past all of that or fix it

because I don't know. So today, I'm just here as a merchant of hope. My job is to convince you that our species will someday get past our bullshit and perhaps even lay claim to the stars. And no, Elon Musk isn't going to have anything to do with that. But in order to convince you of all this, I'm going to have to talk about a movie.

It's called Roar. And it is, technically, a 1981 comedy adventure film about an American naturalist. This guy lives on a nature preserve in Tanzania filled with big cats. His family comes to visit at the same time as a grant committee shows up to evaluate his project, which has an unclear goal he's apparently just trying to prove people and giant cats from all over the world can live together, which the movie shows they can't. It's really immaterial what happens in the plot, all I can tell you is how Wikipedia describes it.

I've watched this movie dozens of times and I have very little idea what it's supposed to be about. This is because, in any given scene, the script is only ever a vague suggestion, as each scene starts with actors trying to read lines and evolves into those same actors trying to survive while being mauled by dozens of lions, tigers, and panthers. I should probably step back a minute to explain some things. Roar is largely the brainchild of Tippi Hedren and her husband Noel Marshall. If you're on the younger side, Tippi Hedren was the female lead in a little movie called The Birds.

It is a horror film and also an early apocalypse flick by Alfred Hitchcock. It's often credited with inventing modern horror cinema. Hitchcock himself sexually and psychologically harassed Hedren, but his worst actions came during a crucial scene where Hedren was attacked by a flock of birds. Up to the day of filming, Hitchcock had assured Tippie the birds used in this scene would be animatronic. But when the time came to shoot it, she spent five days having hundreds of live birds hurled at her in huge numbers by the crew.

Hedren later described it as brutal, ugly, and relentless. Cary Grant, her co-star, told her she was the bravest woman he'd ever seen. Now whatever other impacts this had on Tippie, she has no discernible fear of animals after this point in her life, though she really should. Her husband Noel is a bit more of a mystery to me. He was an agent, a producer, a film investor, and a serial entrepreneur whose best financial

decision was putting money behind what became The Exorcist. In 1969, he and Hedren were in Mozambique while she starred in the film Satan's Harvest, about which less is said the better. This is only relevant because during their time in Africa, they observed a pride of lions lounging about an abandoned home. And this gave them an idea. They wanted to make a movie about poaching and conservation, something that could use the power of film to save these majestic creatures being threatened by humanity.

All four of their children agreed to star in it and to help with production. But there were immediate snags. They wanted the film to be set in a big cat sanctuary, but actual lion tamers warned them that it was flat out impossible to keep so many large felines together safely. This would eventually prove to have been very accurate advice. After a while, one tamer introduced them to their first tame lion, and for reasons known only to God, he suggested to this traumatized movie star and her family of charmingly deranged Californians that they could just get their own big cats and train them by adopting animals confiscated from their previous owners, generally

sketchy zoos and circuses. So a lot of these cats had never known the wild and they'd often been badly mistreated. Given that this was the 1970s, we must assume that some had been confiscated property of coke dealers. Tippie and Noel had no professional or legal qualifications to care for dozens of big cats. When the authorities eventually found out, there was trouble, although since Hedren and Marshall were rich, they bought their way out of said trouble by purchasing a rural compound and having a house built specifically for they and their dozens of apex predators

to live. While Lions had inspired the initial vision, the compound in California soon filmed with big adopted cats of every kind. Tippi and her husband took them in and raised them among and around their own children who came to see the animals as something between pets and family.

When they actually started filming the movie that became Roar, making any kind of movie had become secondary to the act of caring for these many, many giant, traumatized kitties. As I noted earlier, the plot to Roar is kind of immaterial. I've never watched it with the sound on. I can tell you, though, that none of these cats were trained in any really meaningful way, which meant that every scene devolved into the same spectacle. The cast, surrounded by dozens of giant cats, stumble through a few lines before one or all of the cats

begin to bite and claw them, at which point each scene becomes about surviving from one moment to the next. Roar took more than five years to film and more than a decade to actually make. No cats were harmed during the production of this movie, but more humans were injured than in any other film production on record.

Of the 120 or so cast and crew on Roar, more than 100 suffered significant injury, often more than once. Yann de Bont, the cinematographer, had his scalp ripped off by a lion, requiring 120 stitches. He went on to make Speed and Twister. Melanie Griffith, Tippie's daughter and a future star herself, left production at one point because she was worried a big cat might rip her face off. She ultimately returned and immediately had a large chunk of her face ripped off, requiring extensive surgery. This all sounds horrifying and impossible to justify. But before you make a final judgment, I want to remind you of two things.

One, for all its horrors and severe injuries, fewer people were killed on the set of Roar than in Alec Baldwin's recent film Rust. The second thing that you must remember is that Roar is a work of art, on the level of Moby Dick. If you watch it enough, among the right people and in the right headspace, you can come to a deeper understanding of every facet of human existence. I've taken a lot out of it over the years. Recently, it has convinced me that we will one day get over our bullshit and escape the present hell that our species seems mired in. I know that doesn't make much sense now, but give me some time. I'll

explain why. But first, it's probably time for some ads. Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok. You come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her. And I was like, what? Like it was him? I was like, oh my God. It was shocking. It was very shocking. I'm Jen Swan.

I'm a journalist in Los Angeles, and I've spent the past few years investigating the story behind the viral posts and the extraordinary events that followed. I started investing my time to get her justice. They put out something on social media so I'd get calls in the middle of the night all the time. It's like how do you think you're going to get away with something like this. Like you killed somebody. It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. This is their story. This is my friend Daisy. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. you get your podcasts. I'm Israel Gutierrez and I'm hosting a new podcast, Dub Dynasty, the story of how the

Golden State Warriors have dominated the NBA for over a decade. The Golden State Warriors once again are NBA champions. From the building of the core that included Klay Thompson and Draymond Green to one of the boldest coaching decisions in the history of the core that included Clay Thompson and Draymond Green to one of the boldest coaching decisions in the history of the sport. I just felt like the biggest thing was to earn the trust of the players and let the players know that we were here to try to help them take the next step,

not tear anything down. Today, the Warriors dynasty remains alive, in large part because of a scrawny six foot two hooper who everyone seems to love. For what Steph has done for the game, he's certainly on that Mount Rushmore for guys that have changed it. Come revisit this magical Warriors ride.

This is Dubb Dynasty. The Dubb's Dynasty is still very much alive. Listen to Dubb Dynasty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Cyrus the Great of Persia was a conqueror, and he tried to increase his empire by marrying Tamyrus, the widow of the king of the Masanggedi people. She refused his offer, and so he decided that he would invade her kingdom instead. Turns out that was a big mistake. To hear the full story of Tamirus's bloody revenge,

listen to the latest episode of Noble Blood, available now. New episodes of Noble Blood every Tuesday. Listen to Noble Blood on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless, dickless version of me, and that's the name of our podcast,

Beardless, Dickless Me. I'm the old one. I'm the young one. And every week, we try to make each other laugh really hard. Sounds innocent, doesn't it? A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language. We're back. Get your podcast. We're back. And the first thing I need you to understand about all of these fucking cats is that in every mauling caught on tape, and there are dozens of them, I see no anger or malice in the actions of these cats.

I don't even see hunger. It's clear to me as a cat owner that the cats didn't see these people, Tippi and her family and the cast and crew, as prey or as a threat. If anything, they saw them as fellow big cats, cousins and close kin, who they extend a kind of familiarity and perhaps even a kind of love that, since they are cats, is expressed primarily by batting at them with claws that hit like bowie knives embedded in the hood of a speeding Camry.

If you have cats of your own, you understand. Now, given that nearly every person on this film was badly injured, including Tippie, who got gangrene from infected cat wounds, and all of her children, you might feel inclined to judge who or no or both of them for risking their kids' lives to make this insane movie. I understand the impulse, but I believe it to be an error. The first thing you need to see, to understand the deeper dynamics going on with war is a picture from a Playboy magazine photoshoot of Tippi's husband and co-star, Noel Marshall. He's in his office, on his typewriter, and this fully grown male lion gets up on his

desk because it wants attention. Again, normal cat behavior. Despite the best efforts of this animal, who has to weigh 500 pounds, Noel Marshall won't stop focusing on his work, and so the cat, inches away from his face, roars. The sound of a male lion's roar is deeply imprinted on all of us, an epigenetic memory passed down by the handful of our ancestors who heard the sound up close and lived to tell the tale. It has such a foundational impact on our mind that Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer, the film studio,

used it to open every movie they made from 1928 on. I believe they did this because the sound is a sort of hack to compel our attention. It pulls an audience out of whatever state of mind dominates their outside lives and makes them more attentive to the film that is to come. And so the first thing you need to understand about the people who made Roar is that Marshall, upon having a living adult lion inches from his face roar, gives the creature a look that says, hey man, can you give me a second? I'm like, I'm in the middle of something.

I bring this up so that you will understand that these were not people operating on anything close to the same wavelength as you and I. Their lives and their choices are, to outsiders, inconceivable. There's another great photo from the set of that Playboy shoot. While the camera people roamed the Hedron compound, one of them caught a shot of Tippi's adolescent daughter, Melanie, jumping into a pool. An adult male lion, which she must have considered to be in some way a member of the family, sees this girl passing by in the corner of its eye and that motion ignites an instinct

inside it. So, like any cat of that size in the same situation, it reaches out to bite her. Afterwards, the Hedren family and the cast and crew had complicated feelings about what happened that extended to the present day. Tippie divorced Marshall almost as soon as the filming finally wrapped. She has alleged that while Roar was being made, he utterly ignored her well-being. She also does not seem to have ever seriously considered leaving. She later wrote that she, quote, was into it every bit as much as he was, and that production

was an obsessive, addictive drama. John Mitchell, Noel's son, who acted in the movie and like everyone else was mulled repeatedly, came to own the rights to roar when his dad died in 2010. "'Dad was a fucking asshole to do that to his family,' he said recently. He also said this, "'It was amazing to live through that. I should have died many times, but I kind of want to do it again.'" If you have any friends or family who have survived extended periods of heavy combat, there's a good chance they may have expressed a variation of the same feeling.

This is because trauma is sometimes a drug. Taking it can be more than just hell. It's often also a high, which is one thing that drives a lot of people crazy. I need to take a moment, away from roar, to talk about some people that I met in 2017 in Iraq during the desperate and ferocious urban combat against ISIS. The closer I drew to the front, the more guys I met who were elite veterans of the Iraqi Special Forces.

They did the bulk of the fighting. These were mostly young men, ranging from the tail end of their teens to their twenties. Many had grown up in places like Fallujah, fighting from the time they were seven or eight, sometimes younger. They'd been born into the US occupation in many cases. Their earliest memories were as runners, ferrying supplies and information to the older men and teenage boys who did most of the fighting. When the opportunity presented itself, they sometimes dropped grenades or improvised explosive

devices on US troops, most of whom were teenagers themselves. Now they fought against ISIS in close quarters, building to building, a few weeks at a time. Periodically they'd rotate off the front and would go to Erbil, an hour or two away. Many of them were gangsters in their spare time, running drugs and guns in brothels. They spent their days off in a drunken haze of Turkish amphetamines, then they would drive back to the front in new, brightly colored Mustangs and Dodge Chargers, the trunks full to bursting with so many machine guns and rocket launchers they could only be closed with bungee cords. The guns and rockets were useful at a distance, to soften up enemy positions in the impossibly

dense warren-like urban environment of Mosul's old city. In every building on every block, the fighting terminated with door-to-door, room-to-room battles, where the most useful weapons were hand grenades, combat knives, and pistols in that order. I don't know if any of these guys were at that point that I met them, capable of feeling what you or I would recognize as fear. These were the men and boys whose bodies formed the cutting edge of the fighting against ISIS and Mosul.

On occasion, when they kidnapped ISIS fighters, some of them committed war crimes with the ease and with as much thought as you and I give to breathing. This is bad, of course. Unforgivable. But I've never really given much thought to judging them for it. Where would I even start? A thing I've come to understand in my travels is that human beings are capable of contorting themselves into the most incredible shapes in order to fit into the times they're forced to live in. This has been the story of our entire long journey on this earth, and if there is one reason our species has survived above all the others, it is our capacity for infinite variety in infinite contexts.

We can make ourselves into anything if we're given the right incentives, and to an extent you can't judge individual humans without judging the incentives the world we collectively create presents for them. We evolved and we still live in a world where trauma and pain are inevitable, and those of us who survive the worst things that life can throw at us tend to become addicted, sometimes, to the cause of the trauma, but nearly always to the people we experience it with. This is why the cast and crew of Roar often reported feeling almost addicted to spending time among these gigantic predators, and it's why many kept coming back despite being repeatedly maimed.

Roar happened because the core cast and crew exhibited radical empathy for roughly 140 large cats and for each other, and almost exercised zero critical judgement beyond that point. Now I will understand if you still feel that nothing could justify the decision of two parents to risk their children's lives in such folly. And I know this essay is supposed to be my ultimate enduring optimism about mankind's potential, and I'm gonna get to that, but, you know, we still live in 2025. So first, here's ads. Imagine you're scrolling through TikTok, you come across a video of a teenage girl, and then a photo of the person suspected of killing her.

And I was like, what? Like it was him? I was like, oh my god, it was shocking. It was very shocking. I'm Jen Swan. It was him. I was like, Oh my God. It was shocking. It was very shocking. I'm Jen Swan. I'm a journalist in Los Angeles, and I've spent the past few years investigating the story behind the viral posts and the extraordinary events that followed. I started investing my time to get her justice. They put out something on social media, so I'd get calls in the middle of the night all the time.

It's like, how do you think you're going to get away with something like this? Like, you killed somebody. It's the story of how and why a group of teenagers turn to social media to help track down their friend's killer. This is their story. This is my friend Daisy. Listen to My Friend Daisy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Israel Gutierrez and I'm hosting a new podcast, Dub Dynasty, the story of how the Golden State Warriors have dominated the NBA for over a decade. The Golden State Warriors once again are NBA champions.

From the building of the core that included Clay Thompson and Draymond Green, to one of the boldest coaching decisions in the history of the sport. I just felt like the biggest thing was to earn the trust of the players and let the players know that we were here to try to help them take the next step, not tear anything down. Today, the Warriors dynasty remains alive, in large part because of a scrawny six foot two hooper who everyone seems to love.

For what Steph has done for the game, he's certainly on that Mount Russmore for guys that have changed it. Come revisit this magical Warriors ride. This is Dubb dynasty. The Dubb's dynasty is still very much alive. Listen to Dubb dynasty on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Cyrus the Great of Persia was a conqueror, and he tried to increase his empire by marrying

Tamiris, the widow of the king of the Massengedi people. She refused his offer and so he decided that he would invade her kingdom instead. Turns out that was a big mistake. To hear the full story of Tamyrus's bloody revenge, Listen to the latest episode of Noble Blood, available now. New episodes of Noble Blood every Tuesday. Listen to Noble Blood on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith.

And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless, d***less version of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless D***less Me. I'm the old one. I'm the young one. And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard. Sounds innocent, doesn't it?

A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language. It's for adults only. Or listen to it with your kid. It could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless D***less Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. So here's my best step at explaining why I find Roar inspirational. There's a scene about three quarters of the way through this movie, after roughly an hour straight of watching the Hedren Marshall family and their friends get repeatedly mauled for real by giant cats. And in this scene, John Marshall finds a dirt bike and engineers a scenario that I am certain has never happened before or since in the history of this planet. He rides away from the home where his family is trapped and draws several dozen lions,

panthers, and tigers away by making them chase him. The cats assume this is a game and repeatedly try to murder or maim him. But he continues, building up speed in an ever greater tale of the most lethal killing machines to evolve on this planet. You can see from the look in John's eyes in this scene that he has no idea if he seconds away from death. It would have been physically impossible to stop or control this number of giant cats. The only reason this number and variety of lions, panthers, and tigers would ever have

existed together at any previous point in world history would have been across a distance of thousands of miles of rugged wilderness. But thanks to Tippie and Noel's insane dream, and thanks to the deranged and utterly unjustifiable commitment of many of the crew and their family, a moment of utter novelty occurs where this singular assortment of big cats watches as a man fleeing in terror from them on a dirt bike does one of the sickest jumps in film history

and lands directly into a river and then keeps riding until he is charged by a juvenile African elephant, which the Edrons also kept on their property. In its uniqueness, this moment has to rival, if not exceed, the moon landing. After all, considerably more men have stepped foot on the moon than have achieved

what John Marshall does in this scene, although some of that may be due to the fact that it is extremely illegal for anyone today to even try. And this is why I encourage you to watch Roar, my dear friends, during the dark times. Not because it's a good movie, but because it reveals what is best about humanity. What piece of art could better illustrate the infinite possibilities within us? If a group of human beings can learn to live among lions and tigers, despite the constant guarantee of severe injury,

without really understanding why, is it so mad to think that perhaps we too can transcend the barbarities of our age and become something better, or at least, something far stranger than money-grubbing fascists. I don't know how we escape the darkness that seems to encroach a bit further with each passing day, but I do know this. If we can make war, we can do anything. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonedmedia.com, or check

us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. I'm Israel Gutierrez, and I'm hosting a new podcast, Dub Dynasty, the story of how the Golden State Warriors have dominated the NBA for over a decade. The Golden State Warriors once again are NBA champions. Today, the Warriors dynasty remains alive, in large part because of a scrawny six foot two hooper who everyone seems to love.

For what Steph has done for the game, he's certainly on that Mount Rushmore. Come revisit this magical Warriors ride. Listen to Dubb Dynasty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said podcast. A lot of bad language. It's for adults only. Or listen to it with your kid. Could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out.

It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless, S***less Me on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? How?

Goes lower? From Blumhouse TV, iHeart Podcasts, and Ember 20 comes an all new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi. And what's the way to find a missing person?

Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously. Listen to the hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. My name is Brendan Patrick Hughes, host of Divine Intervention. This is a story about radical nuns in combat boots and wild haired priests trading blows with J. Edgar Hoover in a hell bent effort to sabotage a war.

J. Edgar Hoover was furious. He was out of his mind and he wanted to bring the Catholic left to its knees.