- Was that acting, was that
overdoing it in Hollywood style
with him talking to the branch?
Not at all.
I'm embarrassed as to how many
times I've talked to a tree,
or a branch, or a rock.
And don't you effin' break.
Yeah, that's exactly what I'd be saying.
Hey GQ, I'm Les Stroud and
welcome back to part two.
We're gonna be looking at
more jungle survival scenes.
This is "The Breakdown."
[upbeat music]
All right, let's check out another scene
from the movie "Jungle."
[dramatic music]
So, what we have here is hallucination.
I'd be hallucinating too.
And the reality is that when
it comes to hallucination,
it doesn't take long, it
starts with your dreams.
You wanna have great dreams?
Don't eat today.
The dreams are intense.
This is how indigenous cultures
would have vision quests.
They would not eat or drink
and then the dreams would be insane.
Well, when you go this
long, like Yossi has,
those dreams become
strong while you're awake.
You start being unable to differentiate
between I'm asleep and dreaming,
and I'm awake and this is reality.
[dramatic music]
How probable is it for Yossi
to just walk through the jungle
and stumble into some quicksand?
It is very probable,
again, he's hallucinating.
He's exhausted, starving,
thirsty, the vision goes fuzzy.
You could walk into just about anything.
With everything else that happened to him,
I'm amazed he didn't just bump into
a big old hornet's nest in the
jungle, and they are nasty.
[dramatic music]
[Yossi groans]
Good little move there.
You get into a situation like quicksand,
get the backpack off.
Anything that's going to
hold you down, take it off.
Try to get it away.
If you're wearing a hat just throw it.
Get stuff off, because everything
that is attached to you
is going to be a hindrance and
is going to work against you
in tryin' to get out of the mud.
[dramatic music]
Little bit of acting going on here,
as far as the reach out
to get his passport.
That's a little bit of acting.
I mean he coulda just
sloshed and gotten it.
Good thing he didn't though.
Here's the problem with quicksand.
Every movement you make,
serves to make you sink down.
So just making big moves with your legs,
which you want to do
because you're panicking,
will actually take your neck, your head,
and start to sink you lower into the mud.
It's very dangerous.
[man speaking in a foreign language]
- And again, when it
comes to hallucinating,
remember just moments
ago he was hallucinating.
And now he's in the mud,
and even though that reality
is going to wake him out
of it, he's so exhausted
that he's going to drift back into it.
I think old Tarzan movies
gave the impression
that quicksand is like sentient,
and was working to pull you down. No.
It's just physiologically speaking,
it works to pull you down.
The movements you make, force
your body to go down deeper.
But it's not like
quicksand is sitting there
like some kind of carnivorous plant,
waiting for a human to happen into it,
so it can grab it and pull you down.
That's not what's going on here.
They wouldn't tell you
how long he was out for,
and he's probably passed out
and slipped in and out
of his hallucinations.
It's actually a good thing.
The thing that I push probably most for
in a survival situation, over
many other things, is sleep,
is getting rest.
Without rest, without, I mean this is how
you can be tortured, this
is how you can be trained
in the military, go without sleep.
Mostly going without sleep
is a mental state of torture
that I, I don't like it when I have to,
have been in those
situations in the jungle,
or the desert, or somewhere else.
In a survival situation no
sleep, it's really torturous.
But, any sleep that you can get
will give you that moment of energy
to get out of the situation.
That's what's happening here.
[Yossi pants]
[dramatic music]
Okay, so that's the
proverbial olive branch
that the jungle is kind of
putting out for him to grab onto.
It's tricky reaching
for branches and leaves.
They break, they split, they pull out.
And so getting as they would say,
it's like getting solid footing.
But getting a solid grab is tough.
In a situation like this,
it's almost the only thing
that's going to get him out.
Being active and busy
will force his body down.
The idea is to try to
get as flat as possible.
All the time laying there,
you're not going to just
float to the surface.
But, you're going to stabilize
and really at that point it's about
your mind manipulating
your muscles, your legs,
your arms, your fingers,
so you can actually picture
the way your body is and
think about the maneuver out.
And at this point, he's
relaxed enough to notice,
if he reaches out a little
bit, he can grab this leaf.
[dramatic music]
[leaves crackle]
That's the right way to do it.
You can't just grab and pull.
You have to get enough
of a hold on that branch
that that leaf is not gonna rip.
And so twisting, and twisting, pulling,
and twisting as he pulls, all
of that is giving him stronger
and stronger grab as he goes,
until he can get to the
stronger part of the branch.
[Yossi pants]
[dramatic music]
- Stay with me.
Don't you [beep] break.
- A branch like that
absolutely can be strong enough
to use to pull yourself out
of a mud hole like that.
In fact, there are very, very
thin strands in the jungle,
thinner than my baby finger,
that are super strong.
So, not knowing the species of the tree
and all of that notwithstanding,
the reality is that
the thickness of the
branch is not necessarily
going to indicate how strong it is
and some of the thinnest
vines in the jungle
are powerfully strong.
Was that acting, was that
overdoing it in Hollywood style,
him talking to the branch?
Not at all.
I'm embarrassed as to how many
times I've talked to a tree,
or a branch, or a rock.
And in a desperate situation like this,
don't you effin' break, yeah,
that's exactly what I'd be saying.
[dramatic music]
[Yossi groans]
His body is up a little bit high there
because he's in something
they've made, they've created.
He's not in a real mud
hole, they've made this
for the sake of the movie.
So he's getting his
elbow on a perch there.
It woulda been better if
he was still sinking low
and pulling himself out.
Truth of the matter is,
for the sake of the story,
he's completely exhausted.
So pulling out inch-by-inch is a reality.
[dramatic music]
They've done a good job of
realism of how it looks,
but this last moment right here,
he's basically already safe
and there's a little bit of play here
like there's a monster holding his foot.
That said, there is a ton of suction.
It's like in regular water,
if you're wearing big rubber boots,
it's hard to get out of the water,
because the rubber boots fill with water
and then that suction
kinda holds you in the mud.
There is a suction there,
I think they're just
overplaying it just a little bit.
[dramatic music]
[Yossi pants]
So much for the pack.
[dramatic music]
[thunder rumbles]
Best way out of a
situation to to back away.
You go into a yard with a
bunch of mean guard dogs,
the best thing to do is back away slowly,
because what's behind you,
you already know about.
You already know you that
what is behind you is safe.
In the situation of a mud pit, back away.
You just walked on solid ground,
that's where the solid ground is.
If you go forward, you don't
know if it's 30 yards away
before you see solid ground again.
But, in the Hollywood sense,
they gotta play the scene out
a little longer, a little more dramatic,
so it looks like he went forward.
Me, I woulda gone backwards.
Here's the thing about Yossi Ghinsberg
and his story in the jungle.
When I commented on his experience
from the perspective of
a survival instructor,
so I was a little cold-hearted about it.
He gave me the best,
strongest, most powerful story
of somebody who survived by pure will.
Everything went wrong for him.
He had no luck.
And luck is a component of survival.
It's just there for you sometimes.
He went through horrifying mental anguish,
but he kept going forward.
His will to live was one
of the strongest wills
that I've ever learned of
in any survival situation.
Next up, "Rescue Dawn."
- Duane, Duane, Duane,
come on, you have to try.
It's protein, protein's good.
Just try, hey.
- The concept of somebody not
eating quote, unquote, "food",
in this situation, when
you're really, really hungry.
That's a hard one for me to accept
because generally speaking, I
find people go just a few days
without food and anything,
if someone says here,
eat this, you just do.
No matter how squeamish you are,
I've never seen a survival student,
maybe people I've taken
out in classes and that,
not eat what is available,
no matter how much
of a creepy crawly it is.
It could be alive, it could be dead.
It could have fangs, it could have claws,
it could look real, real bad.
- [Man] I'm gonna eat that rice.
I'm gonna eat that rice.
Because it is my rice.
- You are not.
- [Man] I will eat my rice.
- You are not gonna eat that rice.
- [Man] My rice.
- That is not your rice.
That is our rice.
- I think that eating creepy crawlies
in a survival situation has
been played up so, so badly
in all of the survival shows
that are on television.
It's just become this
big melodramatic moment
when somebody's gotta eat something gross.
When the truth of the
survival situation is
that you could eat the wrong bug.
If the impression is out there
that well, a bug is just a bug,
it's gross but it's good
for survival, not so.
There are plenty of bugs that you can eat
that are poisonous and you should not eat.
Well, let's take a look at a scorpion.
Scorpions are actually quite tasty,
but you don't wanna eat a scorpion
with the stinger still attached.
So there are some nuances
to eating creepy crawlies.
Survival has been
sensationalized on television
that there are bugs that people eat alive
and it's like, ah so
gross and all of that.
And the reality is, most of
them are much better dead.
I've eaten lots of scorpions,
and I've eaten one live scorpion.
And that was really more than anything
kinda just showmanship.
It was just me saying,
oh you can eat it alive,
but, if you can get a fire
going, almost everything
is better roasted.
- [Man] I'm gonna eat that rice.
I'm gonna eat that rice.
Because it is my rice.
- You are not.
- It comes down to survival as a group.
Now that's somethin' to remember.
There's a big, big difference
between solo survival,
dual survival, or group survival.
And I will say this much,
the disadvantage of being solo survival
is you have no help for
anything, obviously.
But the advantage is that if
you were to find something
and you're alone surviving
it's all for you to eat.
But in a group situation
you have to share.
- I'm not gonna let you out of
your handcuffs tonight, okay.
Because I still have the key.
- It's like "Lord of the Flies" man,
groups and their dynamics
it just all falls apart
as time goes on.
And the thing about leadership
that's really intriguing is
it can change.
And that leader's been established through
their group activities long
before the survival situation.
And we all know that's the leader.
However, when the survival situation hits,
oftentimes that leader is not
the right person for the job
in the new situation.
And someone else rises to the occasion.
This is a prisoner of war situation,
nothing I'm familiar with,
but the laws of survival
still apply when it's a group.
And jockeying for position of leadership
is gonna happen before long, absolutely.
And that's of course
what's happening here.
They're startin' to jockey for leadership.
- You're the warden
himself, is that right,
is that right? Do I have that right?
[Dieter laughs]
- You know one way to have done this
would have been to say,
we all need to eat this.
We all need to stay alive.
We need to get our
nutrition, so divide it.
The process of doing
that, of measuring out
the mealie bugs and worms,
it actually takes it away
from being gross and disgusting
and turns it into food.
You ration until you get more,
and then sometimes you can
go great, time to pig out
and eat a whole buncha
stuff 'cause there's lots.
But if you ration and
you never get any more
then you're doing the right thing.
This is also where it gets real tricky
in a survival situation with a group,
because if someone hoards
food, or if they had food
and didn't share.
Okay next up, "Romancing the Stone."
[man grunts]
- Okay, let's make some time.
- Okay, well that's dramatic.
Let's just throw our
survival pack over the cliff
because that's just a
lot better to do that
than actually keep it on you, yeah, no!
You never part yourself from your gear
in a survival situation.
You should have your own
pack in a survival situation.
And you should hold onto it.
So yeah, sorry, two seconds into it,
and the character's already blown it
by throwing the pack over the cliff.
- You bast- [Joan screams]
- Okay, I guess that was motivation.
Why she was able to fall that fast,
well that's called movie making.
Nobody falls that quickly
without knowing it's coming.
- [beep]
[mud rumbles]
- So first of all, could a
mudslide go for that far?
Absolutely.
There are hillsides in the
jungle that go forever.
And once the rain starts
pouring down like that
those little mudslides do tend to erupt
just about everywhere.
Now, not to the point where you just fall
all of a sudden like these guys did.
But, if you were to slip on one
and start going downhill, this next part,
other than some bad camera technique
is actually kinda, sorta, realistic.
Big long mudslides in
the middle of the jungle
and they're that slippery.
So, whether realistic
they went down like that,
yeah kinda was.
[Jack yells]
- Woo hoo, oh God damn
it what a ride, hunh!
- Now that's actually kinda
realistic right there.
Jungle crazies, adrenaline junkies.
You know you get through
something that like was horrifying
and they're like yahoo.
That's why they call 'em yahoos.
Yeah, I know guys like that.
That's probably the only
time that I get like that,
because I'm not an adrenaline junkie,
but at the end of something
that coulda killed you,
and you're standing there
alive, if there's any time
to shriek for joy, that's it.
- You okay?
[Joan sobs]
I said are you hurt?
What's the matter, you
paralyzed from the neck up?
Are you hurt?
- No.
- Let's comment on the rain first of all.
Does it rain like that,
that hard, for that long
all the time?
Oh, absolutely.
I've been in the jungle before,
where I've watched it
rain that hard and harder
for eight hours without stopping.
And it can go longer.
But I'll tell ya how they
get a downpour like that.
A little behind-the-scenes movie making.
It is almost impossible
to film actual rain.
You have to have these big huge sprinklers
and it has to be really pouring hard,
even if you want to make
it look like a light rain,
it's gotta be pouring hard.
And think about it.
When was the last time
you saw a scene in a movie
where it was raining lightly.
Yeah, there almost aren't any.
Because you can't show it.
How do you show just a gentle rain.
You can't.
So every rain scene in every movie,
I defy you to find me a
scene where it's not pouring.
It's always pouring,
because that is the only way
they can make it work, so that the camera
can actually film it, so
that we can actually see it.
Here's another reality
in this scene though,
or lack of reality.
And that is that everything that he has
in his backpack, the gun, everything,
is in perfect shape.
Nothing fell out, nothing ripped off,
they went an awfully long way
and he managed to throw her pack perfectly
down to where it was supposed
to go, that's Hollywood.
Okay next up, "Apocalypse Now."
[eerie music]
That's a nice little scene there
in terms of the ecosystem reality.
You might be surprised to learn
that there's actually a lot
of sand beaches in the
interior of jungles.
It's when you get rivers,
you do get sand beaches.
It's just they're in places you
wouldn't expect to see them.
- [Man] Trekking through the
jungle gathering mangoes,
I meet Raquel Welch.
- When you're on a jungle river,
those overhanging branches,
you have to be really careful
because that is where
you will find vipers,
and different snakes,
spiders, poisonous ants,
you name it, that's where they are.
They're hanging in those
clusters of branches.
- Any poisonous snakes around here?
- You're going to be in
the Vietnamese jungle
and asking the question if
there are poisonous snakes,
then you clearly missed the memo.
You weren't payin'
attention to the briefing.
- I'm gonna go get some mangoes.
- It's so hard to find real
fruit in a jungle situation.
Most of the time you're looking
at big, fat, green leaves.
I have been in places
where I've been able to gorge on mangoes
and the only way I could do that
was they were the ones that
were fallen on the ground,
'cause I can't get up
to the tree to get them.
I've heard people say, "Oh you'll be fine,
you can live off mango, or
you can live off blueberries."
Yeah if I'm there in the
season when they're ripe
and I can actually get to them.
That's the catch when it
comes to finding fruit
in any survival situation.
- [Man] Yeah I come from New Orleans.
I was raised to be a
saucier, a great saucier.
- What's a saucier?
- [Man] You specialize in sauces.
- Actually I don't mind
this kind of banter.
I've never been in military service,
so I can't speak to that,
but I've been in lots
of situations like this,
walking through a
jungle, either on my own,
but also with other people too,
and your conversation meanders always.
You just talk about
nothin' most of the time.
Or you start to get to know people,
because what else is there to do.
And if you're not lookin'
at somethin' specifically,
like a big old spider or snake,
you're just talkin' about
nothin' and walkin'.
- [Man] Must be a mango
tree here somewhere.
- Those fans at the bottom of that tree,
are so beautiful to see up close.
Indigenous cultures would actually
use them for communication.
You could go up to it and
kick it, boom, boom, boom,
and wait a bit, and then
you hear someone miles away,
boom, boom, boom.
So they would actually do
that for communication.
I did it in the Amazon jungle for example.
Banging on one of those,
and then listening to someone
reply from miles away.
It's pretty cool.
Look at the color in that scene.
I mean this is all filmmaking
and it's beautifully shot,
but when you're in the middle of a jungle,
you get to see colors like
nowhere else, shades of things
and there's a rich, matte
finish most of the time.
There's sun in the jungle.
You can be in places where
the sun comes through.
But a lot of the times
it's this matte finish look to everything.
- [Man] They lined us up
in front of a hundred yards of prime rib.
All of us you know,
lined up lookin' at it,
magnificent meat, really,
beautifully marbled.
- Oh, big mistake in the jungle.
You don't just sit on a log.
If I were to walk outside right now,
I could go and sit down
pretty much anywhere.
In the jungle you don't do that.
You come up to somewhere
and you look around it.
You look under it.
You look on the other side of the tree.
You brush it a bit.
And then you're like,
okay, whoa, okay good.
'Cause the chance of there bein' a snake
right underneath his ass,
or ants that hurt a lot,
going right by his boot, is pretty high.
So, little sloppy there Martin.
[insects cheep]
When you've got a predator lurking about,
watching for signs is really important.
When I was in India, I was
paying attention always
to certain monkeys because
they would go crazy.
Whenever there was a tiger,
they'd start goin' crazy.
That was my warning sign.
And you can do that with a
lot of different species.
So if you watch what else is going on,
you will then begin to notice
that something has changed,
which means that something
else has entered the picture.
[insects cheep]
[tiger growls]
- If there's one thing
that makes me nervous
in different ecosystems, it's big cats.
When I was in India, had
to spend a night in a tree
because of a big tiger and
I could hear it growling.
Yeah, cats give me the willies sometimes.
The thing that's wrong with this scene
is that the tiger's
attacking from the front.
Cat's like to attack from the back.
Sharks are the same way.
In India, I wore a mask
on the back of my head
to ward off a tiger attack.
'Cause it sees your eyes.
So in this scene it's a
face-on-face encounter.
Can that happen?
Yes it can happen.
But, 99% of the time,
a big cat wants to attack you from behind.
I think a final thought on
the "Apocalypse Now" film
is that they went for
an incredibly intense,
dramatic presentation overall.
But when it comes to the
jungle it's warranted.
It's very dark and it
has an ambiance to it
that is not like walking
in the forest in Northern California.
So much more is there to be dealing with
than just whatever the
storyline happens to be,
in this case it's a wartime story.
Thanks for watchin'
"The Breakdown" with me.
Take care.
[upbeat music]
