They Called Him Mostly Harmless documentary on Max- remember the OT Thread on this?

McCandless was a selfish idiot that committed slow suicide.

the McCandless story has always kind of fascinated me. i think partly because as men, many of us can relate to the side of him that just wanted to go strike it out on his own and let come what may. i mean regardless of how you feel about him, the dude did some pretty epic shite prior to biting it. i can respect that. fate ended up catching up with him when he bit off more than he could chew, and that was that. that's the end of the story.

but the endless hero worship and revisionist history that has made him out to be some sort of folk hero who, like you said, is nearly equivalent to touching the face of God, it's ridiculous. the Jon Krakauers of the world (who should damn well know better) are to blame for this fetishization. the movie they made about him made it ten times worse.

unrelated (well, semi-related), i've been backpacking deep in Denali, and i even hiked a little of the way out on stampede trail near Healy. it's an amazing place.

I don’t really recommend it as a high level documentary. It’’a cool if you want to watch it, but it’s pretty slow and insignificant. A guy died in a tent. It’s just a lot of people remember the story because it had a local angle.

We watched it last night as well. I agree that it was pretty unsatisfying. I think that its cool that laymen try and figure out these cases, especially with so many incompetent, apathetic police departments.

But a lot of these sleuths get way too crazy with it, harassing people based on a hunch, being nasty to moderators, basically witch hunting.

Sucked that we didn't get to hear anything from his family, and the ex-girlfriends talking about serious abuse seemed shaky because there was nothing to corroborate their claims. Not saying that they were lying, just that the documentarians seemed to do no further research on the claims, or they didn't show it at least.

Pretty sad that none of the people who knew him seemed to care that he was gone.

The show was weirdly interesting, and held my attention the whole way.

The lady in Richmond who delivered laundry and lived in a motel with her sister is perhaps one of the more pathetic people I have ever seen.

This show actually gives me some hope that disappearing without a trace is possible.