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Warning: The following story contains mild spoilers for unaired episodes of HBOsChimp Crazy.
If you would prefer to experience the September 8 finale with wide-eyed, capuchin-like naivete, read this later.
Lets see if we can get them to mate.
Its a very violent mating ritual.
We wait a few minutes, but alas, theres no circling, no flipping, and no mating.
When we get back outside, theres a surprise waiting.
In a nearby paddock, a large tortoise has mounted one of its neighbors and is thrusting with gusto.
Those are radiated tortoises from Madagascar, Goode says over the sound of their clanking shells.
They have a strong appetite for sex.
And theyre both males, says Rouot.
Well, says Goode, thats what happens when you deprive them of females.
But its main real-time story line follows Tonia Haddix, an exotic-animal broker from Missouri.
Also, you need luck.
How does Goode manage to be in exactly the right place?
They must have made her do it or made this story up.
But theres nothing inTiger KingorChimp Crazythats not documentary.
I could understand people being skeptical, though, because what are the odds?
This is presumably by design.
The docs title has only just been finalized, and Goode has mixed feelings about it.
HBO likedChimp Crazy,but it wasnt my favorite, he says.
But HBO was worried people wouldnt know how to pronounce it.
And for a moment I wanted to call itApeshit,but they didnt like that either.
(I used to play a lot of street basketball, he says.)
He insists on giving a tour anyway.
His compound now spans 100 acres.
Most documentarians, needless to say, do not have their own Xanadus.
But Goode, 66, came to filmmaking late, after being fortunate in other careers.
Goode was a multi-hyphenate creative director before everybody in New York claimed to be one.
It made him wealthy and a little famous.
In person, Goode is friendly but reserved.
Its a light shyness, says the stylist Elizabeth Saltzman, whom Goode dated in the mid-1980s.
(Now single and never married, hes on remarkably good terms with many of his ex-girlfriends.)
Hes not scary or unapproachable.
you’ve got the option to see it in his body language.
Hes the Oh, golly, me?
The 99-year ground lease pays him $125,000 a month to begin.
The building, 360 Bowery, was recently finished.
I gentrified the poor neighborhood, he says.
Now hes making films.
Goodes greatest preoccupation, the one that all the others seem to revolve around, is reptiles.
His obsession began at age 6 with a pet tortoise and spiraled from there.
I always had two separate lives.
But I could also talk to people about animals.
Whenever I took a vacation, I would go some place where there were reptiles.
He fully expected to find one, even though they had been extinct since the 1940s.
They were rediscovered later, in 1990, though, so he wasnt totally wrong.
Its population has grown by several hundred animals since.
Im sure youre wondering what makes me different from Joe Exotic.
He had tigers; I have tortoises, says Goode.
The conservancy has purchased about 100,000 acres of protected habitat around the world.
He hopes the proceeds from the BBar land deal will keep his conservationist initiatives going after he dies.
Still, anybody who thinks this much about turtles must be at least a little touched.
I can understand the feeling of wanting the animal that you cant get.
He couldve written a million dollars in there if he wanted to.
Goodes reptile interests were his doorway into documentaries.
Then he realized that some of those traffickers made pretty interesting subjects.
It occurred to him that docs might let him do something similar.
Joe Exotic and chimpanzees could very well have been themes at Area.
Goodes technical filmmaking experience was limited.
As a kid in Sonoma, he shot Super 8 movies with his brother.
Later, he co-directed music videos for Nine Inch Nails and Robbie Robertson.
Whenever I do anything, I just assemble a group of like-minded people and we figure it out.
Many of the people who work on his docs are also multitaskers from nontraditional backgrounds.
James Liu, a producer onTiger KingandChimp Crazy,was first a veterinarian at the conservancy.
But I know enough about animals to connect with them.
No one else could have gotten into that world.
They recognized Eric as one of their own.
Goode has two additional advantages over most documentarians: time and money.
As streaming services invested heavily in documentaries this past decade, documentaries themselves changed.
In 2017, CNN hired Goode to create and host a pilot for a show about animals.
They told us, You get five days of shooting for a 50-minute program.
And I was like, How can that possibly work?
The pilot was not picked up.
The part that made it really difficult was CNN owned everything we shot and we couldnt use it again.
Luckily, I knew in the back of my mind that I didnt want to give them Joe Exotic.
(Left/Right did not respond to requests for comment.)
Now, Goodes approach is more traditional and, crucially, self-funded.
Hell also change plans if something better comes along.
Maybe these interviews will amount to something, but more likely they wont.
What I cant stress enough is the amount of footage that falls on the cutting-room floor, says Goode.
Of course, now Goodes own production company is extremely successful.
I realized at a certain pointTiger Kingwas going to do well, he says.
But not that well.
The series debuted in March 2020, when much of the world was mandatorily couchbound under COVIDprotocols.
On his way back from a shoot for season two, Goode was pulled over in Texas for speeding.
The cop processed his information and then asked, Did Carole do it?
Tiger Kingwas life-changing for its subjects, too.
At first, most were happy with the attention and found ways to monetize it.
Eventually, the opportunities waned and a bitterness set in among certain members of the cast.
The series, they decided, had made them look like a bunch of animal-abusing polygamous yokels.
Let me show you something lovely, says Goode.
Garretson has sent Goode the same image, hundreds of times, of a cartoon middle finger.
All of this animus made shooting ChimpCrazymore complicated.
The community of private exotic-animal owners is small and tight-knit, and afterTiger King,Goodes name was mud.
So he came up with a workaround: He lied.
Be warned: What follows is an account full of spoilers forChimp Crazy.
Goode had been filming monkey moms for years, even beforeTiger King.He was fascinated by their psychology.
Its a lot about the selfish need for attention they get from having a chimpanzee, says Goode.
But it also serves a maternal need.
Thats how incestuous all of this is.)
I just made myself look like I was part of the crew.
Her animals had a record of violence.
Sourcing the monkeys is highly involved and illegal, says Liu.
In the 90s, Tonka had been an actor, starring inGeorge of the JungleandBuddywith Alan Cumming.
He told me, Hes six now, so hes sexually aggressive.
He would probably make a run at shag you on live television.
Goode knew just who to call.
Id interviewed Dwayne for another project, says Goode, and he had the perfect credentials.
I had no filmmaking experience, Cunningham says.
I saw spider monkeys, kangaroos, and all sorts of things in there.
Soon, theyd won Haddixs trust.
She agreed to participate and allowed cameras onto Caseys property.
Cunningham began interviewing her.
We just didnt think he would hand it off the way he did.
But nobody bought it.
We knew she was lying, says McBride.
It was just hard to prove at the time.
In February 2022, PETA offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to Tonkas return.
Tonka was, in fact, still alive.
Under oath, she tearfully described the moment she found Tonka dead.
And then she led Cunningham to her basement where the chimp had been living in a cramped enclosure.
We were like, So where is Tonka?
And she said, Oh, hes here.
Hes right below where weve been sitting for the last five hours.
Haddix claimed Tonka was happy.
In the doc we see him eat McDonalds, drink soda, and play with a tablet computer.
Goode consulted with experts, showing them footage of the chimp and asking them to analyze his body language.
When we saw Tonka in that cage, he was rocking back and forth, says Goode.
That tic is what happens when chimps are held in captivity.
We might call it clinical depression.
Around the same time, Goode noticed that his proxy director was acting strangely, too.
Had Cunningham turned double agent?
He and Tonia became very, very close, Goode says.
They were calling and texting off-screen.
I would bet that Dwayne knew Tonka was alive before we did.
(Cunningham denies this: I found out after the Zoom call with the judge.)
Eventually, Goode and his crew, and even Cunningham, decided to intercede on Tonkas behalf.
Theres a conundrum that comes up over and over with people that are illegally keeping animals, says Goode.
When you have a chimp, there are only a few options.
They shared their findings with PETA, and in June 2022, Tonka was extracted from Haddixs basement.
On the weekend of Tonkas removal, she invited Cunningham to her home.
I remember Jeremy saying, Under no circumstances should Dwayne go into that house.
Theres no way we can risk him walking into a trap, says Goode.
But Dwayne felt comfortable, so I said, Lets just trust his instincts.
Cunningham strapped on a hidden camera and, in a scene out ofSerpico,went to visit Haddix.
Whats crazy about that footage is that you know everyone else in the house knows Dwayne was the rat.
Look at how her son looks at him, says McBride.
But Tonia didnt want to believe it.
Im gonna stop that production, she said.
I actually became friends with Tonia, says Goode.
But I dont want to give myself too much credit.
It turned out that she will talk to anybody about her case.
Haddix characterizes her relationship with Goode differently.
Were not friends, and he knows I dont like him, she tells me.
She says she has largely made peace with what happened and takes some responsibility.
Nobody wanted to touch it, though, because of PETA.
The suit was later dropped.)
Cumming went to visit shortly after Tonkas arrival.
Theres something magical about the fact theyve got their little islands and theyre in tribes together, he says.
Tonka looked like he was in such great shape, healthy, fit, and just happy.
They see her as the devil, he says.
You would hope that she would start to understand why what shes doing is so horrible.
But its easy to vilify Tonia from afar.
I hope that shell see some benefit from this and that the end justified our means.
Goodes means have been vindicated before.
Some ofTiger Kings critics worried that the series was too entertaining for its own good.
Reviews called it exploitative and sensationalist.
Animal-welfare groups complained that any conservationist message it might have had was lost among its narrative curveballs.
Tiger Kinggot so much ridicule by people that felt we werent highlighting the cats enough, says Goode.
But the net result was that it did a lot to make real change.
Chimp Crazys moral should be easier to grasp.
Im not trying to be the animal police, and Im not PETA.
But do I think people should keep a chimpanzee?
They make terrible pets.
Maybe its my jaded New York sensibility, but Im less interested in that stuff.
If youre only talking to people who know the issue, it doesnt really do much.
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