Michael
Burdick, 38,
founder and director of Hunting for Bambi
Who is Michael Burdick?
Somebody with a dream and a vision to take an idea and put it into reality, and hopefully we can make it into something worthwhile... the brand name.
What were you busy with before Hunting for Bambi? ?
I've been a publisher and a discjockey.
What were you publishing? ?
House and Home real estate magazine and a bridal magazine.
And disc-jockey for... ?
Adult entertainment, for about 18 years.
What is, or what was Hunting for Bambi? ?
Hunting for Bambi is a concept of hunting women, very similar
to that of hunting deer.
The only difference is the choice in caliber of weapon, in this case, paintball guns.
How do you come up with an idea like that?
It was about five years ago, I came up with the idea and I decided to market it over the last year at the same time that reality TV was becoming popular. There's been a big shift into reality TV here in the States and I thought it was time to put it out.
The concept was ultimately going to be televised. ?
Ultimately, I was hoping to do commercials with it and everything,
I didn't think that there would be a problem. I thought I could
run it after 10 PM with commercials. Pretty much like Girls
Gone Wild does. The difficulty I had was getting anyone to let
me run a commercial (infomercial).
Before we get into these problems, could you go over the
actual game itself, how it works?
Originally, Hunting for Bambi was a concept for videos. We were making comical videos of hunting, parodies... A lot of similarities between hunting deer and hunting women. We thought It was hilarious and we noticed the huge influx of emails of people wanting to hunt and be hunted and saw an opportunity to make money. We put it together, and originally, we were going to let you hunt two women, and as soon as one is shot, the whole thing is over. We wA?ould film the whole thing and send you a video, your own reality TV video, where you would be the star of your own production. We thought it was a really neat piece. We found after meetings and discussions that we needed to spice up the actual hunt. We started drawing an obstacle course so that the girls had to get from one part of the field to another to get more involved. It made the whole thing a little more difficult. If the girl got from one end of the field to another without being shot, she'd get $2500, if she did, she'd get $1000. The purpose of flags would be to keep her in the field as long as possible. She would have to collect the flags to get the extras, $100 for every flag collected.
For the player, how much would it cost?
If we flew him in, $10,000, because of airfare, travel, lodging,
food, everything else for three nights.
As you know, we are a paintball magazine, and because of
you, paintball did get a lot of press, not necessarily good
press in this case. Are you a paintball player yourself?
Not an extreme player... have I played it? Yes. My younger player plays paintball excessively, he was really into it. I never understood... seeing him grab on to it so excessively, I decided to go and check it out with some friends. It was neat. I wanted to experience paintball from the aspect of hunting. I am an avid hunter, I can think of nothing that I like more than hunting and I saw it as an opportunity for the ultimate hunt, then. But when I would go out and play, my goal was to shoot my opponent before I was shot. The challenge of war, it's a great thrill.
You've seen recball, you've also seen tournament paintball,
what do you think of that?
My opinion of tournament paintball is that it's a very fast paced game... and... boring. Let's throw on a bunch of suits and bunch of goggles, run with our hand behind the back of the next guy and act like a quick high-speed SWAT team. It gets just completely boring. I see no comparison of that to a true A?hunt, and there's no excitement in it to me at all. My opinion is that they're out there, trying to say that they're the fastest best SWAT-like team out there, and get a big cash prize. If that's what they're into, good for them, but I'm not.
Do you think that paintball is a sport?
No, I think it's a hobby. Building model cars is a hobby as well. It's more along those lines.
You've allegedly conducted 18 hunts?
No, we used the number of 18 to fluff... what's called trade buffering, to draw attention.
How many hunts have you conducted?
When we produced the video, there were twelve hunts... of which real people being shot... There were three real hunts. And let me clarify something. My definition of a real hunt is when you have a person with a paintball gun and you have a female and she is actually hit. It's not somebody on the side making it look like she's been hit, while she's off camera. On the video, there were three hunts with no editing, or alteration. And for news crews, we've done two, so that's a total of five.
You've obviously read some of the same articles as I have...
I have not read any articles.
But you just mentioned a shot being made 'off camera', a
point raised by the Snopes.com website.
Right.
Before we really get into this, what was the first response
you got from Hunting for Bambi?
I would say probably paintball fans... saying that I was going to ruin their sport, and that was the most insane thing... I'm going to tell you that my biggest complainers maybe in percentage are paintball fans. And they have no IQ whatsoever. They're just complete bluggering idiots. I don't understand the mentality of "Oh, paintball's going to become illegal because of you!" Where are you coming from, what planet are you from?
The first initial reaction of the paintball community was
that these women were not wearing eye protection of any sort.
I think that's what really shocked the paintballA? community,
at first.
Well, you have to understand though, that if you can hold up a paintball gun and test fire it one hundred times from 30 feet, and you can pretty much guarantee that your paintball is going to land in a six by six inch area, and I'm not aiming anywhere near a headshot, sitting right there with my hunter. We know where that paintball's going, and it's nowhere near her head, I'm sorry, but I don't need goggles for that. This is not running fast behind obstacles with lots of players, this is slow motion. We're also using regulators on our guns... It's just very different.
At the same time, accidents do happen and paintball is still
an emerging sport.
Yeah? Well, more people die from professional boxing than from paintball.
Let's stay on this subject, did you think that your biggest
complaints would come from paintball players?
No, I never thought that I would get controversial enough to give them this much attention.
You've obviously read the press release from Brass Eagle,
which was sent to every single media out there.
Brass Eagle is small time, and they're trying to get some attention, so they made a press release and decided to send it to everyone, smart business plan.
At the same time, your website was pulled for a week, and
when it came back online, the girls had to wear goggles.
There was a reason we put goggles on, and it didn't have anything to do with Brass Eagle. As a matter of fact, the reason that goggles came up is because a federal regulator insisted that we put them on. There was no point arguing and it wasn't really a problem having the girls wear them. It didn't matter to us, we said "hey, if that's the problem everybody has..." You have to realize, in a time span of three weeks, we were pulled off line four times due to hosting companies being afraid and breaking their terms of service. Sabotage. People trying to extort us...
You had paintballers on one side, and then every woman's
group on the other?
I don't think so... I think that the press tried to throw
that on to draw attention.
But sentences like "hunted like dogs" referring to women
are just appalling.
There's a lot of women who like to be hunted... there's...
Let's stop here. How do you respond to the accusations of
promoting violence towards women?
It's a fun hobby and a sport, everybody's a grown-up and an adult. They want to do it and enjoy it and who are we, or anybody to say what somebody can or cannot do, as far as a form of entertainment. Our city here in Las Vegas has a big commercial out, a promotion for the tourism industry that says 'what you do here stays here.' What does that say? "Come out here and do anything you want and we'll keep it to ourselves." Bottom line is, if I'm an adult and I want to do this, who are you to tell me I can't? This is a free country.
Did you get threats?
Towards the end, I got a couple of threats. Just stupid stuff. Women are not the issue, women are some of the most supportive.
 Let's
move on to the Snopes.com affair. Who is Snopes?
Nobody.
The general opinion right now is that Hunting for Bambi was
not necessarily a hoax, but media manipulation to sell videos.
How would you respond to that?
From day one, I've always wanted to sell videos. You have to realize that if you make a product, you package it and you're done, it's a lot easier for someone to say "here's 20 bucks, give me that product", versus, "hey, I want to come down, I want to hunt, I want to film a video". When somebody wants to come, you have to fly him in, book him a room, etc. There's a lot of high maintenance. So is it good money? Yes. Is it worth the effort? Not really. But you have to have that because it's something that keeps you controversial, something that helps push forward your business plan. Their first indication (Snopes), was that we didn't offer a phone number or an address. We originally did, but we gA?ot so many prank calls, mostly from paintballers, kids... How can you run any business, whether it be IBM, or Starbucks when you're getting an influx of prank calls. Our phone bills were going through the roof because of these idiots...
So you were consciously creating an elaborate marketing scheme.
I would say this, I'd ask anybody to find a better marketing person in the world than myself.
How much press did you really get?
I think that I got more press than anybody on the planet for anything. We did Howard Stern, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, ABC, CBS. We've been on a show that isn't even out yet (Ozzy Ozbourne's wife). We were on Jay Leno's monologue two or three times, I appeared on David Letterman...
And Facefull magazine. Bottom line, you're being fined by
the county of Las Vegas for not having a business license.
I've not been fined. I have been given a citation for doing business without a license. Hunting for Bambi is a brand name for the company Real Men Outdoors Production. I am the director of this company which has a license. I am running that company, but they stated that my name did not feature on it. The reason for that is that I am not a shareholder of RMOP. I am an employee of the company, but their real legal wording is 'owner, investor, partner' not of which I am. There is, however, one phrase regarding 'any and all members of the board' and because I am on that board, my name should included on the license, but I was never told this. That was their loophole. They're trying to fine me and give me six months in jail. I told the mayor to 'kiss my ass'. The bottom line is that business will continue as usual. We surrendered our license because they selected legal moves to take the game away from us. You cannot play a game if I'm not involved in your jurisdiction. We moved our license to the state of Florida. We are still legal and still licensed though we choose not to play in the city of Las Vegas.
Will you be staying in Las Vegas?
I have always been a resident of Florida.
Your future is pretty much assured with Hunting for Bambi?
We'll be opening bambidolls.com, and we'll be able to offer by next spring Girls Gone Wild videos... lots of projects, none of which we can talk about. We'll turn your world upside down.
On your website, you have a section of 'women you'd like
to hunt', is there a particular reason why you dislike these
women? I started thinking that what these women have in common
is that they're all successful rich women. How far off am I?
Let's take one time. By the way, these names have all been submitted by people and fans...
Kathy Lee Gifford?
Annoying, winy annoying girl.
Rosy O'Donnel?
Loud-mouth annoying fat pig.
-Barbara Walters?
Class act. Great press attention, a real go getter.
Martha Stewart?
Lying, cheating, controversial-typ e issues... I'm not saying that she is, but there was a lot of controversy about that whole stock thing... A real attention getter. We had a lot of people put her name, by the way.
Monica Lewinsky?
Pig. She's just a pig, she deserves it.
Jane Fonda?
She's the biggest loser of a woman.
-Anything to do with Ted Turner.
No, everything to do with Vietnam, she's a traitor to our country.
Tonya Harding?
Do I need to comment?
Roseanne Barr?
I just can't stand her, there's a fat slob!
There were two women that were briefly on the website but
were taken out... Hilary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey, why were
they taken off?
Hilary Clinton, great piece of controversy, my opinion is a blunder to society. She was taken off because Lakana Campbell (on the company board), felt as a president's wife, she was due the respect not to be on there. Oprah Winfrey, besides my mother telling me to take her off, Lakana Campbell thinks that that she's a class act lady, a good will individual, who had no business being there iA?n any way. Lakana was directly offended by it and it came down immediately.
In professional paintball, there are a lot of women playing
paintball, would you accept a one on one paintball challenge?
If somebody was paying me, yes. I've had women who told asked me "how would you like to be hunted?" For $10,000, I'd do it a couple hundred times a day! So absolutely, if it's to my financial gain, sure.
Something you love, something you hate?
I hate Oscar Goodman, the mayor of Las Vegas. Something I love?
Lakana Campbell.
Comments
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| VIP |
| ""Do you think that paintball is a sport? - No, I think it's a hobby. Building model cars is a hobby as well. It's more along those lines" -This coming from a NUT that actually enjoys inflicting pain on naked girls without any eye protection and is looking for other nuts to buy his sick videos... somebody please take away his crack pipe!" | alex-pimienta
06/05/04 at 01:43
 | | "Okay weird-O zone. Youre right alex, where's the crack pipe?" | pauld
17/05/04 at 06:51
 | | "what a frute definitly on something" | luke
10/06/04 at 23:10
| | "How can he call hunting a sport and paintball a hobby? There is no sport in hunting something that can't hunt back. He shoots a dear from a distance that doesn't even know he is there. What competition is that? Turn him loose in the woods naked and let him see how he likes getting shot in the a**. Then ask him what he thinks of the "sport" of hunting." | djbass
28/09/04 at 11:57
| | "Your a sick freak, and pinabtalling is a sport, nutjob" | mach zero
17/08/05 at 17:17
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