Wild America

Wild America is a 1997 American adventure comedy film based on the life of wildlife documentarian Marty Stouffer. The film was directed by William Dear, written by David Michael Wieger, and starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Devon Sawa, and Scott Bairstow. Plot In the summer of 1967, Marshall Stouffer is chased in Fort Smith, Arkansas, by his two older brothers, Mark and Marty; the brothers love using Marshall to film him in stunts, which he dislikes. Occasionally, Marty and Mark will show footage of their antics in their garage to all their friends. Marshall repeatedly and secretly gets even with his brothers by pulling revenge pranks of his own, like cleaning the toilet with his brothers' toothbrushes and filling their canteens with downstream river water into which they had been urinating. Mark and Marty have a dream of filming dangerous animals around the country, and the dream starts when they find a rare, special camera in a shop where they have their films developed. Despite their father Marty Sr.'s insistence that they cannot afford the camera, he relents after their mother, Agnes, says she will give them her "vacation" money that she has been saving for several years. Marty and Mark purchase the camera & begin planning their trip. Their father is against this idea. The three brothers start camping. First, they miss a shot at catching an eagle, then they go to film some alligators, and start by seeing a man who was attacked by an alligator. As they go in a swamp on a boat, Mark throws some bait, but it lands in the trees. Trying to retrieve it, his clothing gets stuck in a branch underwater and he starts to drown. Marshall and Marty drive the boat and try to save him, but it crashes into another branch, which sends Marshall flying into the water. Marshall gets a knife from Marty and cuts Mark loose, but Marshall is now dealing with a bigger problem: he and the alligator are face to face. However, Marshall is able to get back on the boat in time. When they get back to the hut, the alligator man (Strango) tells them about how back when he served in the Korean War, he befriended a fellow soldier named Phil. Strango and Phil would exchange stories about their wilderness adventures. Strango would talk about hunting alligators and Phil would tell tall tales about bears. This rouses Marty's attention and he asks about it. Strango states that Phil was talking about a cave full of hundreds of bears somewhere "out west."