LOS ANGELES — By all accounts, Rocky was one of the most gentle and affectionate animals in Hollywood’s vast exotic menagerie of performing lions, tigers and bears — until the day the 700-pound grizzly bit down on the neck of a veteran trainer and killed him.
To some animal-rights activists, Stephan Miller’s death Tuesday was a tragedy waiting to happen for an industry that should be retiring wild animals in favor of computer-generated images. But to members of Hollywood’s tightknit community of exotic-animal trainers, it represented a rare but accepted hazard in an industry they insist is no more dangerous than racing cars or fighting fires.
“If it came right down to it, if the same protocols were in place, I’d wrestle the bear again,” said veteran trainer Joel Almquist, who tussled with Rocky hundreds of times as he prepared the grizzly for his scene in the movie “Semi-Pro.”
In the film, which received the American Humane Association’s “outstanding” rating for its handling of Rocky, Will Ferrell agrees to wrestle a bear to promote his semi-pro basketball team.
In reality, the actor never got close to the beast, with a trainer acting as a stunt double and a person in a bear suit standing in at times for the animal.
But something went terribly wrong when Miller, 39, put the bear through a similar workout at his cousin Randy Miller’s Predators in Action exotic-animal compound 100 miles north of Los Angeles. His death is being investigated by the state Department of Industrial Relations, and the bear’s fate is still undetermined.
Although stressing that they weren’t there, several animal handlers and monitors insisted it must have been an accident.
Almquist figures the bear simply got too excited and bit down harder than it meant.
“Bears do nips or bites sometimes, and it’s not an aggressive thing, it’s like a get- your-attention thing,” Almquist said. “If Rocky did pinch Steve with his mouth, if he grabbed on his neck and got him in the wrong spot, that obviously could be fatal.”
That kind of risk isn’t acceptable, says Lisa Wathne of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
“We frankly are not surprised that this incident happened,” she said. “No one should be surprised when a captive wild animal follows its natural instinct and shows aggression toward humans.”
Hollywood animal trainers make up a small, guarded community, and several were reluctant to speak publicly about the accident last week, saying they did not want to draw the attention of animal- rights groups. But they insisted privately that their film and TV work is regulated by the American Humane Association and that their animals are well cared for.
“We’re not talking about some guy in Arkansas with a tiger in his yard,” said one trainer with 18 years’ experience. “There’s only about 20 companies, and only about 14 with exotic animals, in this business. And this is pretty much the first death that I know about in our industry.”
Still, Wathne said, advances in technology are beginning to make it possible for Hollywood to stop using animals in favor of computer-generated images. “Not only is it more humane for the animals, but it’s safer,” she said.
Trainers acknowledge that computers are being used more and more, but they argue that such images still look fake in close-ups. To some extent they’re right, said Oscar winning animator Richard Taylor of “Lord of the Rings” and “King Kong” fame.
“Like CGI with people, the great challenge with animals is to create the intense emotional interplay between the characters on screen,” he said, adding that audiences can sense when it isn’t perfect.
