Why I both hated and loved the movie Cocaine Bear

I’m sure you’ve heard of Cocaine Bear. It’s kind of hard to miss. It’s kind of ridiculous. It’s about a bear on cocaine. 

Your imagination fills the answer to the question: what happens if a bear is on cocaine?

The true story, according to Wikipedia, is a lot less interesting. Cocaine from a smuggler’s plane found its way into the wild habitat of an American black bear, who ingested it, and died.

That’s it. No murderous rampage. 

But that tiny news tidbit from almost 40 years ago inspired the screenplay writer, Jimmy Warden, to consider the question: What would happen if you gave an apex predator narcotics?

A very powerful question, what if. 

Many writers play with this method for speculation, inspiration, and development, Stephen King and Neil Gaiman both advocate this trick to get stories going.

• What if aliens were trying to communicate with us but we just haven’t discovered the communication yet?

• What if cats were sent to Earth to destroy the planet but they ended up liking it so much they forgot their original mission?

• What if there really are ghosts in our machines?

I just made those up, obviously, but what would happen if you asked yourself “what if?” What would “what if?” unlock for you?

I haven’t figured out how to use this trick for nonfiction –  but I’m sure someone else has. What if?

Back to Cocaine Bear. It’s considered “comedy horror,” and I thought it was both silly and gruesome. I didn’t particularly like it as a movie, even though I’m a sucker for 80s nostalgia, because much of it was so over the top and not probable. There is something truly horrifying to me about being exposed and vulnerable in nature, so I think the movie preyed on one of my deepest, darkest fears. (For an amazing nonfiction book about how to find meaning in surviving a violent bear encounter, please read In the Eye of the Wild by Nastassja Martin.)

The best part, for me, was how the writer took inspiration and created a story out of it:

Warden found himself with a finished screenplay based on a kind of true story, a handful of Wikipedia entries, and a whole lot of imagination. “I just wanted to entertain myself,” Warden says. “Screw a studio — I didn’t think people would read it.” (From The Hollywood Reporter, Feb. 26, 2023.)

If that’s not the addictive magic of writing, I don’t know what is.

What did you think of Cocaine Bear? And what do you think of the power of “what if?”