[This story contains spoilers from the third episode of Chimp Crazy, “Head Shot.”]
Tiger King the intense and sordid sequel by documentarian Eric Goode Crazy Chimpanzee has been airing on HBO for the past two weeks. It focuses on the tense dynamic between exotic animal broker Tonia Haddix, the retired Hollywood chimpanzee Tonka who she claims to love more than her own children, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the activist group that has been pursuing a long-running legal effort to have the primate transferred to an approved sanctuary.
In the penultimate episode, which aired on September 1, viewers learned that Haddix, who had previously claimed Tonka was dead (she provided evidence that he was cremated), was stashing her “humanzee” in her Missouri basement. “Do we report it?” Goode asks, on camera, “or do we just keep following the story?”
Haddix appears increasingly anxious as the chimp hunt intensifies. Actor Alan Cumming, an animal rights activist who starred alongside Tonka in the 1997 family comedy Companyattracts international attention for matching PETA's $10,000 reward for information leading to Tonka's location. “They would literally send me a hit man, I swear to God, if they thought they could do that,” she says, adding, “They'll never leave me alone. I'm fucked.”
Toward the end of the episode, she tells a key member of the production team that Tonka is in congestive heart failure and that a veterinarian has scheduled an imminent appointment to euthanize him. Soon, Goode is seen with PETA's lawyer, who reveals her admission.
The Hollywood Reporter spoke with Goode, who in addition to his Emmy-nominated filmmaking efforts is best known as the founder of the Turtle Conservancy, about the Gordian knot of complexity and complicity he found himself in with this new project, which is set to become the most-watched HBO documentary series in years.
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How did it happen? Crazy Chimpanzee happen?
While I was filming what became Tiger KingI discovered this subculture of women who keep primates. They call themselves “monkey moms.” I know a lot of these niche groups: the tropical fish people, the reptile people, the bird people. But the world of monkey moms was especially strange and curious. For them, it's like having children. So, I started digging. Through them, we eventually got to Tonia. But it took two years.
What did you take with you from this experience? Tiger King to this?
You just don't know what's coming until you're there. If there's a story. You go into it hoping.
This time it's a different world than Tiger King.
Tiger people, they are macho. “I have a tiger, I have a Lamborghini.” It's this accessory. With these women, it's much more of an intimate bond with these apes. They think they can be surrogate children, and then, as time goes by, they have to think about castration and shock collars once they go through puberty, which is much earlier than humans. With chimps, it's about five or six years of age that they're no longer manageable.
Tonia repeatedly states that Tonka is more important to her than her husband and children. What do you think?
This wasn’t the first time I’d heard these monkey moms say this. Sometimes they said it more jokingly. Tonia had several relationships. I think her first husband died of some drug-related cause. She recognized that she could trust these chimps more than any human she knew. She had more control over their fate.
Director Eric Goode, Crazy like chimpanzees.
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Crazy Chimpanzee It's full of characters, including the “proxy director” you hired, Dwayne Cunningham, who has been identified as a circus clown.
I was working with Dwayne on my project in the reptile trade world. He was a comedian on big cruise ships. He was smuggling rock iguanas from [Caribbean] islands and spent time in prison for this.
Dwayne was never supposed to be the “proxy director”. But he's the one who met Tonia. Then we started following her.
Tonia really trusted you, or at least Dwayne. You filmed her at a lip injection appointment and at the tanning salon. How did you get that intimate access?
She is alone open! (Laughs)) She was very familiar and intimate, and she just let us into her world. I had no I don't know whatThis is just Tonia.
Did Tonia's trust make it harder for you to reveal that you and Dwayne had cheated on her?
Oh, yeah. Dwayne had gotten really close to Tonia. Dwayne wouldn’t tell me everything. So, I had to sit Dwayne down. He was a rebel. It was really hard. He would open up and tell Tonia things that I wouldn’t get through to. I think Tonia is lonely sometimes and she really needs a friend, and Dwayne was her friend. And Dwayne was like, “Tonia, don’t tell the directors anything you don’t want the whole world to know.” He was very protective. So, Dwayne knew things before I knew them.
It was frustrating. I sat down with Dwayne. We filmed it, but it didn’t end up in the show. Part of me wanted to include that conflict, that struggle with Dwayne. I didn’t know Dwayne that well. Dwayne is someone who believes that people should keep animals. He wasn’t so clear about where Tonka should be. He saw this endless care and love for Tonka. So, he wasn’t so convinced that Tonka should go.
PETA plays a leading role here, as Tonia's antagonist, fighting with her for her monkeys and to find out where Tonka is.
I am not an animal rights activist. If anything, I am a conservation biologist. I care about keeping species alive. PETA, with my work with tortoises, has a tough time with their hardline views on eradicating rats in the Galapagos. But I am aligned with PETA here.
How long did you continue filming between the news of Tonka’s existence in Tonia’s house on the Lake of the Ozarks and the notification to PETA?
I mean it was a matter of months. The first thing I did was call some primatologists. I asked them if you can tell if a chimpanzee is really depressed, which is what Tonia had said.
The thing is, I thought this woman was going to lead us to other people who were keeping monkeys and gibbons. That this was the direction we were headed. But she got involved in this lawsuit with PETA.
So when he finally said he was going to put Tonka down and that he had a vet appointment to do so, we alerted PETA.
You've done tigers. You've done primates. What's next?
When I first started filming, it was about the reptile trade. The volume and scale is just huge, and there are a lot of similarities to cartels in the way it works. I've been working on a project about that, and I want to finish it.
But there is so much more out there. I am always interested in telling stories about species we don't talk about: invertebrates! The trade in butterflies and insects. Or dynamiting coral reefs to catch tropical saltwater fish.
Crazy Chimpanzee releases its last episode on Sunday 9th September at 10pm on Max.