'Bigfoot' Sues: Takes on New Hampshire Over Expulsion From Mount Monadnock
Performance artist Jonathon Doyle kicked off Mount Monadnock for lack of permit.
March 10, 2011 — -- When self-described performance artist Jonathon Doyle put on a Bigfoot costume and started videotaping himself on New Hampshire's Mount Monadnock, just about everyone was more amused than scared.
"We would ask people if they had seen Bigfoot," Doyle said. "People gave us funny answers. Even little kids got into it. ... We were just having a good time and being creative."
But New Hampshire park rangers were anything but amused and ordered the 30-year-old Doyle off the mountain, saying he didn't have a permit to film there and hadn't posted the required $2 million bond.
Now, Doyle is suing the state with the help of the local ACLU chapter.
"We are suing the state because the state put too many impediments on his rights," said Barbara Keshen, an attorney with the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union.
Keshen said that Doyle should have the right to go back and complete his video and anyone else should have "the right to commit small-scale expressive activity without government interference or government censorship."
The Bigfoot Project is just the latest in a series of creative stunts for Doyle. There was the "Batmobile" that he built and drove around in, and the time he dressed as an angel and stood in the middle of a church service.
"I'm interested in the threshold between fact and fiction," said Doyle.
The facts of the case are not in dispute. In September 2009, Doyle and a couple of friends decided to make a movie on the top of Mount Monadnock. The joke was that Doyle would dress up as Bigfoot and run around beating his chest and then ask people on camera if they had "seen" Bigfoot. The whole thing was being recorded with a $150 video camera.
Doyle since has posted his videos on YouTube. In the video, one hiker said he was "terrified" when he "saw a big hairy beast." And two young boys described their encounter with Bigfoot.
But park rangers failed to see the humor and ordered Doyle off the mountain. The rules and regulations in the New Hampshire park system require that film crews must pull a $100 special use permit 30 days in advance. To them, Doyle was just another filmmaker working without the necessary permits.
But in the lawsuit, the NHCLU said that the requirement of a permit infringes on Doyle's First Amendment rights to free speech and expression.
Doyle called his project "low-impact" and compared it to friends documenting a trip to a scenic mountain, rather than a big Hollywood movie production.
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