The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Chimp Crazy’ Review: Girl Bossing Too Close to the Sun

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

Justin Sayles and Jodi Walker create a monkey island to recap ‘Chimp Crazy,’ a four-part HBO docuseries. They start by discussing the complicated nature of its virality, Alan Cumming’s major role in the search for Tonka the missing chimp, and PETA’s heavy involvement in the case (3:12). Along the way, they talk about the eccentricity of Tonia Haddix and her story (17:14). Later, they unpack series director Eric Goode’s use of a proxy director and the blurry ethics around that tactic in documentary filmmaking (34:52). Hosts: Justin Sayles and Jodi Walker Producer: Kai Grady Additional Production Support: Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, guys, your boy Johnny Bananas here. The Challenge Season 40 Battle of the Eras is finally upon us. I'll be covering every episode with all your favorite challengers on my podcast, death taxes and bananas on the Ringer Reality TV podcast feed, and on the brand new Ringer Reality TV YouTube channel, where you can find full video episodes all season long. So buckle up, come along with me as we see who will be crowned winner of the Challenge Season 40 Battle of the Eras.

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Like, where's Tonka? My name is Justin Sales. I am the content lead for culture here at the ringer, and today we are discussing Chimp Crazy. The new HBO Mac series by the People Behind the Tiger King that wrapped up Saturday night, And I'm joined by my dear friend, the co-host of We're Obsessed and an aspiring monkey mogul, Jody Walker. Jody, how are you feeling today? I appreciate that introduction, Justin, but I do not have what it takes. And I know that to be true after watching a chimp be stolen to the tune of Linger by the Cranberries.

I just, I don't have what it takes. But I am glad to be here continuing to carve out our sort of strange, documentary true crime niche of the prestige TV podcast. I was actually, that was actually going to be the next thing I was going to say. This is our third time together on this feed. And each time we've covered an HBO docu series, we did the Jinks part two. Then we did Renfair where I asked you to play fuck marry kill with three very strange people. And I apologize for that.

I've been told in my personal life I need to apologize to you for that. It's okay. It only required a few uncomfortable conversations with higher ups. Other than that, it was like, just kidding. Now we're doing Chimp Crazy. And I have to ask, how do you feel about this life we've carved out for ourselves doing this? I mean, I want to be extremely clear that we have carved it out for ourselves. No one is asking us to do this, really.

I keep slacking you and being like, hey, I just watched the first episode of Chimp Crazy and I'm absolutely flying. I would like to talk to you about this. And this one, Jim Crazy was kind of a strange ride because it did catch on. But I think it took, well, it's only a four-episode series. But I didn't see people start talking about it until episode three, really. And then people started watching it as opposed to, you know, Renfair, which was just a personal interest of ours, really. I never saw that take up. And the jinx, you know, had all of this mileage going into it from the original season.

And while this is by the director of Tiger King, it's different and it didn't exactly have that heat going into it, I think. But I think people have gotten on board over the course of these four episodes. I have sold it to our producer, Kai Grady, as prestige Tiger King. And I don't know if I'm just saying that for myself. But there might be something to that. I will say to justify this whole excursion, I read that it was the most watched HBO series. since before the pandemic. It's a docu-series.

So people are watching this, and I have seen it catching on, and I imagine now that it's wrapped, and Tanya Haddx and Tonka are just woven into our cultural fabric. We will start to see more people talk about chimp crazy, or at least I hope, for the sake of this feed and for, you know, the chimps everywhere. Yeah, yeah, it's wild. Like, I read that too, how popular it's been,

and I feel like I haven't totally gotten that sense from just the general zeitgeist. But I think, and uh-oh for us, it's kind of hard to talk about because it does have that, you know, spectacle element of true crime and of like a docket series like this and even of Tiger King a little bit.

But it's also sad and dealing in a lot of like really sad sort of tropes of pets, but also of like human behavior and what the people who are drawn to this kind of thing are dealing with. So it makes sense that everyone's not like on Twitter, you know, just losing their minds exactly. They're on Twitter having like deep kind of concerning conversations. There is something that is so unrelatable and relatable about the same time about all these people who I think in a normal type of series might just be the straight villains. With the exception of Connie Casey. I don't, I don't, we might.

get into her a little bit. We will discuss all the main characters in depth, but I left this series very conflicted about how I felt about someone like Tanya Haddix. I left this series kind of understanding how these people got here, even if I don't condone it, even if, you know, like my life will not lead me to a place where I am adopting chimps and setting up sanctuaries for them in my basement. You see how broken people get to this place. That's exactly right. I think like everyone has their vices. It is extremely interesting for your vice to be buying and containing this one very specific, very human-like kind of exotic animal because you are trying to fill some hole inside of yourself. You know, like we've seen lots of documentaries and lots of things about

substance abuse and even sort of other kinds of animal abuse for power or. money. But those really aren't the things at stake here. Like, what is it stake here? Are kind of lonely people who can't figure out a way to relate to other people because they do need some sort of control or some sort of power or some sort of 24-7 return of love and investment into this creature. And so inexplicably, there is a small, but not that small group of people who have chosen chimps. What's the old saying hurt humans, hurt human zes? Right.

Yes, that is correct. I think you are saying that exactly the way it's always been said. Look, enough for my torture twists on idioms. I think that what we should do is get into a quick recap, and I presume if anybody is listening to Chimp Crazy podcast, they don't need a full recap. but let's run through the very crazy events that happen in this series just briefly. And I should say right up top, we will be covering all four episodes. So if you haven't finished and you don't know where Tonka is right now,

I suggest you turn this off right now or just put it on mute so that way the streams continue to rack up. But like Tiger King, Chimp Crazy is a deep dive into the world of exotic animal trading, except instead of big cats, this time it's big primates. Specifically, it's chimps, mostly centered in a town that I never heard of called Festus, Missouri. But as we find out, there's pockets of this all around the country, including some very famous stories that will come up. The story of Chimp Crazy is mostly centered on few characters. There is Tanya Haddicks, the Dolly Parton of Chimps. Tanya is an exotic animal broker and a former nurse with big lips.

She's got a few big wigs and a big hole in her heart that can really only be filled by Tonka the Chimp. Tonka is also one of our other main characters and becomes kind of at the center of the entire story. But Tonka was also a movie star. He was in Babe Pig in the City. And notably, he was in a movie named Buddy with the actor, Alan Cumming, who also becomes one of our main character. Jody, you sent me a list of things that you want to talk about today, and the only thing in all caps was Alan Cumming. Go. It's just unbelievable. And he hits the scene early. Like, it's in episode one, you are, for,

I feel like for a split second, you're like, oh, Alan Cumming is talking about this. And then you're like, oh, Alan Cumming is getting a title card. Alan Cumming is funding this mission to ultimately find Tonka. Alan Cumming works very close. with PETA. So he is basically like one of our main PETA characters. And he also has this very, at least attempted, not as much. I think he pulls it off. I think it's a little more attempted by the docu series itself, this sort of like attempted humanity that he, whereas the sort of the sort of PETA straight general counsel characters do not offer a lot of like, well, we do have empathy for Tanya and how she feels about this chimp.

Alan Cumming says that a lot. He understands because the reason he's so passionate about finding Tanka, making sure he's safe and has a good home, is because he worked with Tanka back when you were still allowed to do that. And he also really loves him and understands how you get overly involved with these animals and kind of start to think that they're people, even though they're animals. You mentioned Pita, and Pita is the other big character in this story. And specifically there's their general counsel, and then there's another lawyer named Jared Goodman, who is very buttoned up.

He projects his very competent. He's kind of a perfect foil for Tanya Haddix. They get into a stalemate over what Where's Waldo was actually about at one moment, at one moment. And it just shows how they view the world differently. But PETA looms large over this series. Jody, can I get a gut check? What was your vibe on PETA going into this? This doesn't sound great.

But I feel like I hadn't thought about PETA in a while, you know? I think they've been a little quieter than they were for a while. And so it was like as I was watching and as I first met Jared, who you mentioned, who Tanya pretty exclusively calls Pee-Wey Herman when she's not calling him a dick, bastard or a nerd, which she does frequently. Or what does she say? She says, I would say he's the devil's spawn, but I know he has a mother. I mean, she's got some bangers on her.

You got to give her that. She said she's been watching his Facebook to see if his wife breaks up with him. We're going to get into Tonya in a minute. Tanya is a fantastic character. So sorry. Yeah, I think when I first met Jared, I was like, oh, yes. Like, this is a guy who knows what is right and right. who sort of like deserves to get his mission done.

And I didn't come away not thinking those things in the end. But I don't think that ultimately that Tanya is painted as the villain and Pida is painted as the hero. They are gruff. Their intentions and motivations are not always like totally clear or heroic. And they shouldn't be. Like, you shouldn't be trying to be the hero or the savior. That's a big message of this docu-series. But I did appreciate that I think that they were,

there were a lot of cut-toes that showed them being sort of, sort of harsh and, like, not understanding of the emotion that goes into situations like this. And that's all they see themselves as well, I think. You know, like, we are an arbiter of justice, not, of good necessarily. So it was interesting watching that. And for me, that developed, like, over the course of four episodes.

There's some context that I want to get into at the end about how PETA has handled the post-series stuff that I find interesting. I can say, and this is something that I always say that I will never admit on a podcast, and then I admit probably two or three times a year. And I did this on our last podcast together is that I am vegan. I don't eat turkey legs at Renaissance spheres. You know who else is vegan now? Tonka.

Tonka. Yes, Tonka is vegan now. We'll get into that. As a vegan, just an awful sentence to say out loud on a podcast. You didn't have to say that. I didn't have to say it like that. I didn't have to say it like that. But here we are. But I of course have a lot of feelings about PETA and they're not all positive because look, man, like despite announcing this to thousands of people on this podcast right now, I don't go around like walking around trying to advertise it. Right. Like, and my whole thing is like just. just do your own thing, let people do their own thing. And that's obviously the opposite of what Peter's doing, but they're just like, publicly they are so in your face about everything. And it, I understand that, like, you know, to get people's attention, you have to do stuff like this. You have to, like, go outside the Met Gala and with, you know, whatever, right?

Like, blood all over, like, the costume, right? Like, I get it. But I think it obscures the good work that they, do because I think PETA has such a terrible reputation among the general public and honestly among a lot of vegans that you don't know that they're working on things like this, which after watching Chimp Create, like I had no idea about the exotic animal brokering market. And I mean, through Tiger King, I learned a little bit through this. I feel like I learned more through this than I did through Tiger King.

And yeah, PETA really seems to be doing great work on that front. and we can get into like the the way they handle it specifically with tanya a little bit later on but a lot of it is gets really obscured by some of the flashier things that they do by some of the more attention-grabbing kind of public-facing grocer things that they do and i don't know um i think you talked about the way that pita developed over the course of the series um the your perception of them. I think a lot of that, I think the director of the series, who is Eric Good, who becomes a character in his own right, I think he's not quite sure what to make of PETA and this. And I also, you know, Eric Good is, I think, a really compelling figure. So for anybody who isn't aware,

he is the director of Tiger King, which actually he makes everyone aware of in the first episode. He finds himself in the middle of this story and also a big, big journalistic ethical mess, possibly two or three of them throughout the course of this. And we'll get into them. But I can't believe this guy got lightning to strike twice, right? Like he got Joe Exotic and then he got this. Yeah. And it's crazy.

Well, sort of, except that if you think about that he is dealing exclusively in the world of exotic animal owner and breeders, I think that's an eccentric kind of person. I do think that you're running into Joe Exotics and Tanya's a little more left and right than you are just like at Trader Joe's. So, I mean, it is, there's like, there are certainly like some luck and skill elements

coming together, but he's also identified an extremely interesting, but very small work. world. So good for him on that. I mean, look, I can say, and I'm going to sound like a broken record, because every time we talk about true crime documentaries that somehow required me to announce that I was vegan, but also the fact that I did a true crime podcast last year called the Wedding Scammer, which was centered on a very eccentric, strange man that I had come in contact with. I don't have another one of those guys hanging around. Like, I had a really good story on that. I'm just saying right now, there might be a second season in the future.

I just don't have another one of those people in my back pocket. I don't know that many weirdos. So yes, like he is focused on this one specific world, but even as I'm out here hunting for more weirdos, it's not as easy to find compelling weirdos doing strange shit that will let you into their world as you think. Oh, for sure. Yeah, like that will let you in. And I mean, I think that we see, though, that that's the difference here is that he found

one person who let him in, and that is going to become increasingly difficult to find someone who will just naturally let in exotic animal exposure director, Eric Good. So let's just do it. Jody, Tanya Haddix, style icon, girl boss, what else can we say about her? What did you think of Tanya Haddock's as a character? She certainly did Girl Boss too close to the sun. That is for sure. She's so interesting, and I think that is what sets it apart from Tiger King.

And, you know, he has found these two really strange creatures, but they're so different. Like, I see Joe Exotic as, like, an upper and Tanya as a depressant. Like, they're just really different breeds of weird. And it does make it, you know, I think I came to the place that, like, Tanya is, um, her motivations are selfish. She's very selfish. And that is very human.

But she's much less seemingly much less interested in the sort of like creation of spectacle, uh, that, that Joe Exotic was interested in. And that does, it does sort of like morally clear her of something, but she's just so self-involved and self-motivated and very selfishly then pretends whether she knows she's doing it or not, like that motivation is to care for something else. I'll probably get a little more into this, but it reminded me a lot of like Munchausen by proxy. And the, you know, our most famous case of that, Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who did ultimately, you know, find a way to have her caret

who was not caring for her well killed. Like, it's this very, you know, it's different to see it in an animal, but the type of person who finds themselves doing something like this, like Munchausen by proxy, a mental illness, thinking that an animal is messaging something to you, putting a lot of human characteristics on an animal, insisting that an animal is 98.6% human DNA and not focusing that the fact that that leaves 1.4% animal that makes them very, very, very different than you is really interesting to watch

from a human behavior perspective, but also very sad for the animal and sad for the human too. Tanya Haddicks at one point declares that blingy is my deal. And I just wanted to say the second that she said that, I was like, girl, we know. We know that blingie is your deal. Okay, but my favorite thing, like one of my, like my favorite continued tactic throughout, which is like maybe not incredibly kind, and it is something that Eric Good does, like even in the visualization of how he directs these series, is like each new episode, you get one more peek into her beauty regimen,

and every time she's getting her lashes done or getting her lips done at a nail salon by a man in a backwards hat, something I've never seen. as someone pretty interested in beauty and aesthetics. She always is like, I like to keep it natural. I could go bigger, but I like to keep them kissable. I like to not do too much. She says she's conscientious about her look. She is very conscientious about her look.

I think that as more people start to meme this series, I would not be surprised if the moment of her getting her lips done to open episode two, it becomes kind of the focal point of that. As a big fan of the Sopranos, I enjoyed that they opened. Did you, did you, do you ever watch the Sopranos? I haven't. Don't kick me off the pod. There are a few things I still have to get to.

Look, for CHATV, Sopranos, maybe. Chimp Crazy, definitely. This is probably just my sick brain, but they opened the final episode of Chimp Crazy with the same exact shot. They opened the final episode of the Sopranos. I don't know if that's intentional. What's the shot?

What's the shot? It's basically an overhead shot. And Tony and the Sopranos, obviously, and Tanya and the, in Chimp Crazy, an overhead shot. This basically makes them look like they're waking up like in a casket. That has to be intentional. It has to be because in that opening scene, I was like, why are they doing this? Like, and she says, I'm ready. And so I was like, was it her choice to open like this?

I sort of doubt it. I don't think she has like a ton of creative vision outside of her own look. So that's interesting. I also want to shout out really quick because I might forget to bring this up later on. Probably my favorite shot of the entire series is one of the final ones, which is her on a boat and a bikini waving the flag that says don't tread on me. Yeah, that's the meme, Justin. That is the meme.

That is the meme. As I was saying that was the, no, that is the meme. That is actually, that's going to be my new profile picture when this goes up. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terseptitide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off.

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I cannot believe she or they just said that. So yeah, perfect framing. Look, I'm going to give out some free advice. Our producer of narrative pods here, the narrative podcast lead Vikram Patel, when I was making the wedding scammer, I said, I wanted to make seven episodes. He said, well, you need six cliffhangers. And I'm like, that's fantastic advice. And I give that advice to everybody who's coming to me and say, I want to make four, okay,

do you have three cliffhangers? Do you have four cliffhangers? They had three cliffhangers. They had three really good cliffhangers, including... Let's just start there. The cliffhanger at the end of episode two. The revelation that Tanya had been hiding Tanka, that Tanka was not, in fact, dead,

that Tanka was in Tanya's basement. Now, it was probably the most what-the-fuck moment. I've had watching a documentary I don't know, maybe since the jinx. There has to be one sense then, but like, there, this was, you knew that Tonka was alive. You just did not, in your heart, you knew that he was alive, right? Because, like, how are they making this series if he's not?

Like, why are they focusing so much on this insane court hearing where Tanya is, like, putting on fake tears and forgetting to turn her microphone off as she calls Charitya Basterd, which is just a fantastic moment. But the reveal of it, that just so casual, like, we won, okay, now we just have to keep him hidden. It's just such a great moment in documentary making. Yeah, because like the shocking moment,

it really isn't that Tonka is in the basement. It's almost like you know he's in the basement or in the yard or somewhere the whole time. It's that she up and admits it And she doesn't even do it like an admission. She just says it. And she's saying it's like she doesn't understand. And to the documentary's great credit,

part of what makes it such a shocking moment is that they have allowed us to know her up to this point, like to understand that she is someone who is so blinded by her love for this chimp and her desire to have him in her life, that she completely blindly accepts saying, we won, we won. When she didn't win, they said,

if there is evidence that this chimp is alive, you will be in contempt of court. And she takes that as a win. And when she looks at her husband and says, we won, we just got to keep him hidden, he is not blind. And he looks like he wants, to crawl under the basement, under the house.

And like you just, I mean, he just looks dead into the camera and is like thinking, what are you doing? I can only imagine how many times a day that thought occurs when you were married to Tanya. But like the shock, for me at least, didn't come in that Tonka was down there. It came in that she admitted it. She had chose right then to admit it.

She had a documentary camera crew in her house and had chosen to do this, knowing that what she's doing is in contempt of court, it's so crazy. It also leads to, in the next episode, some really crazy moments. We were slacking very briefly this morning about the sequence set to linger by the cranberries, which we're Tanya and an accomplice,

so basically the context of why, and I think if you're just like half-washing, it's kind of easy to mis like, kind of like some of the finer point. So the chimps lived at Connie Casey's compound, for lack of a better word. And then PETA and the sheriffs were ultimately after that at first, right? But Tanya worked for Connie Casey and at one point she had the chimps signed over to her. Like the chain of ownership on the chimps gets a little murky at some point. But when the sheriffs and PETA show up to remove the chimps from Connie Casey's place, one is very,

missing and it is Tonka, the famous chimp that Alan Cumming had foreign bond with, because of course it is. It turns out that Tanya had relocated Tanka to her home. And to do this, they had to sedate Tonka, put him in a box, drive to a holiday inn, and then lug him up a flight of stairs at the holiday, and they couldn't even get a ground level floor. They had to lug this sedated chimp in a box up a level of stairs. My first question is, do you think that was the craziest thing that happened at that holiday end that day? I think it was a holiday inn express, so you know those things.

You're crazy. I don't know. What's so funny about the Holiday Inn is she specifies that it was 2.4 miles from the house. And we also know that she had to be two miles away when the chimps were taken. So it's like she's decided to follow that. rule while also kidnapping a chimp from PETA. Like she was like, you know what?

I'm going to do your two-mile thing, but I am keeping one of the monkeys. When the, when the sheriffs get done with all of that, they, we find out that Tanka is living in Tanya's basement in this, you know, this basic, very, very basic, probably has some of the similar amenities as a Holiday Inn Express. It's tiled, you know, it's a finished tiled basement. They said, he gets this view. just look out this window and it's just her, it's just, you know, her deck. That's actually like in the final episode when she's sort of like proving that it actually was good conditions.

And she, it's almost like we have, we, she thinks we're under the impression that he only got to stay in his enclosure. And she's like, no, he had full access to this finished basement. He could look outside right here. And it's like, Tanya, can you hear yourself? He couldn't go outside. He's a monkey. That's the thing. They were, Tanka showed, I think, so many obvious signs of distress.

But Tanya, who claims to love this chimp so much, she's blinded by her own obsession, right? And I think obsession is one of the key themes of this series, right? It's, we come across all these people who are obsessed for looking to fill this hole within them. And these chimps end up, they end up filling this void either, like, you know, somebody lost a husband and they become even more obsessed with chimps. Tanya is, Tanka is providing this level of connection that she doesn't feel she's getting from her own children or her husband. But she is so blinded and she's doing it for such selfish reasons that she doesn't recognize these obvious signs of distress, right? Like the way that he's behaving in this small enclosure.

And I, and she's showing him TikToks and Instagram videos and like, she's like, she's like, this is what we do. And it's like, these chimps, I don't know. They, if they are people, if we are to accept the argument that they are like people, that they are 98.6%. And we do not, to be clear. But if we were to, if we were to accept Tanya's and Pam's and everyone's arguments on their face value, that these are people, would you do that to another person?

Would you lock them in your basement and just force them to be there and not give them anything besides an iPad where, by the way, Jody, Tomka had an email address? She says, I mean, I hope he doesn't email, but if he does, it is what it is. And actually, you know, even thinking about the email address and the like insane reveal when she's like, he has a kid's iPad, he can email if he want to, hopefully he doesn't, really points to what you're saying is like, if we accept that like a lot of these women who keep male chimpanzees, that is always the dynamic. If we, if we, you know, are like, yes, they're just like us, but better, you know, is kind of what

they're saying. They're just like us, but they're more capable of love and they're more capable of loyalty is kind of what Tanya says about the chimps. Like that Tanka will be more loyal to her than her husband will. That's why she loves them more. She also says about the little monkeys, which are kind of like starter monkeys, the Capuchins. She's like, Capuchins are great, but chimps are better because you can shape them in your own image. And I think we all know parents like that, you know. I think everyone knows a parent who's

maybe had children for not exactly the best reasons, but hopefully they've come around in the process. Like, hopefully they've figured out how to view their children as autonomous, independent beings from themselves. And that is the draw to the chimpanzee is that it's not like your child. Because it's not a human, because it's an animal, and you can exert some amount of control over it. And that's the draw. And like, that's what they, that's what they can't see or can't allow themselves

to see, is that you can love humans, like you can love, a human. chimpanzee, but you have to see them as humans because humans won't allow you to not see them as humans. You actually are not seeing the chimps as humans. You are seeing them as something you deserve to control and put in a cage and make behave the way that you want it to behave until you go too far and it eats your friend's face. Well, you could always feed a happy meal. For me, for me, like yes, the reveal that Tonka is in the basement and Tanya says it out loud, is kind of the biggest what the fuck moment. But like my mouth was a gape with each new human snack I saw these people give the chimpanzees.

And like that's the thing is the insistence because Tanya is obsessed, but what she's obsessed with is being a savior, like is saving something and loving something and saving it. And so that's, but to balance saying that you are giving Tanka the. best life possible and absolutely, like, hosing him with happy meals and power aids is delusion. Wasn't there also a moment? Was it Tonka or was it another chimp that was getting the Reese's Pieces, uh, whipped

cream? Whip cream, the Reese's branded flavored whipped cream. It was in the, it was at Connie Casey. So it could have been Tonka. It was an everybody likes it sort of thing. And even hearing Tanya say over and over and over. over this is their favorite. You can't know that.

They can respond in a really excitable way, but you can't know if that's their favorite. I didn't even know that was, I didn't even know that food existed. I mean, this is going to be the most, like, close to elite, like, guy who has opinions about. I have to feel, Justin,

that if you are vegan, you are not eating Reese's artificial dairy whipped cream. That's what I'm saying. But, like, that was the most Missouri part of this to me, the fact that that existed. And I apologize to all the fine people. That is so mean to Missouri. As if this documentary isn't mean enough to Missouri.

It's just wild to me that we're getting all this access to things. And we get it because of, I think, oh, quietly, what the fuck moment, which comes very early on in the first episode, which is the reveal that Eric Good, the director, the director of Tiger King, has to use a proxy. director to make this. And Jody, have you ever considered the phrase proxy director before this? No. My, I had not.

And I think you're right. It is like a more subtle what the fuck moment because I think you run into the ethical and journalistic dilemmas the more this proxy director goes on.

Is it Dwayne? It's Dwayne. Dwayne Cunningham, who by the way, they use him because he has a history with exotic animals, including spending some time in prison because of his dealings with them. With lizards specifically. He says something like, I have a relationship with the federal government. And then it like cuts to a headline that he was dealing in lizards. And I don't know how much Dwayne got paid, but it wasn't enough because this became a lot more than just proxy director, whatever that is. but I think like the first clue, and sort of to their credit, they do expose these kinds of things. Like the first clue that this is maybe not ethical or right

is that when Dwayne gets hired to be the proxy director, he says, I didn't know what that was, and then I Googled it, and then I still didn't know what it was, because it's not a thing. You're a fraud, you know, like you're a fake, you're a spot. you're infiltrating and you're playing a part. It's light espionage or a heavy espionage in this world.

And just to clarify for Dwayne, if he's listening, what a proxy director is, is Dwayne was sent in because Eric Good rightfully understood that if he was openly the director of this, Tanya and all of these people, well, I guess, I don't know, it was never clear on whether the other people interviewed knew that they were being interviewed.

Like, I don't know if Pam, the woman in Florida who breastfed the chimps. I don't know if she, it was never said that Dwayne was interviewing her. That could have been Eric. But Tanya and Connie Casey specifically were under the impression that Dwayne Cunningham was the director of this.

And Tanya trusted him because he had this relationship. She says at one point, I'm good at figuring out people. I know that you love animals. She doesn't believe that Eric Good loves animals even though like, you know, it's kind of his whole deal. He's making these things, it's coming from a place of, look, we could talk about whether Tiger King was sensationalistic or opportunistic, but I think ultimately Tiger King did a lot of good. I think that like the attention

it brought, even though we all remember Carol Baskin, even if like the whole murder for plier, murder for hire subplot ends up taking bigger space in our mind than like even some of the big cats involved in this. I am never going to financially recover from this is, you know, is a thing that just enters into my mind every time I'm, every time I have a crazy weekend, which, you know. If I get a snack with my coffee, I'm never going to financially recover from this. I think about it constantly. It's, um, we remember Tiger King for those moments, but there was legislation passed to protect

big cats based. And I'm not talking about the. the podcaster. I just keep on sound like I'm talking about the podcaster over on part of my take. But the legislation passed to protect Big Cats that came about that wouldn't have if Tiger King wasn't a legitimate sensation.

So I believe that Eric Good is operating from mostly a good place, but having to use a proxy director to do this is funny. Because in what case is deception okay? with this, right? Like, if it's survey, we see, like, undercover investigations on the local news all the time. Like, they send in, like, a secret shopper who buys the thing, right? They send someone, like, into the back room of the restaurant and you see that. It's like, oh, my God, right?

Or, look, I come from a place where the mob was, uh, it was very woven into the fabric of everyday life. I can't say that I, as a, as a general MO, I support snitching to that level. However, if some good comes out of it in a world like this, is it okay in your mind, Jody? You know, I don't know. I think it like it comes to that breakdown of like what is the good that you're doing? Because once Eric Good does get introduced into the story and does get literally introduced into Tanya, right before he's about to meet her, he says something like, you know, well, I'm the villain. here. Like, she sees me as the villain, and he says, like, but we all see ourselves differently, don't we? It's all about how we see ourselves and how we see the stories that we're telling.

So it comes, I think, to this breakdown of, like, she says that she recognizes in Dwayne that he loves animals, but a distinction that the documentary is often sort of subtly drawing is there's a difference between loving animals and protecting animals. And that's sort of, like what the whistleblower from Connie's compound says is like, you know, I loved being there and I loved those animals, but I guess we just saw love differently and you can't. And so she also went undercover and also, you know, blew the whistle. Like I think that, I think that choosing to protect animals over the people who love them is, is good, you know, like is a moral net good. The complication here is that Eric Good is also motivated to tell a story and to tell a compelling story.

And that's where he really gets into murky water is that this story becomes most compelling when it enters into the most morally troubling territory once you find out that she is kidnapped a chimp. And they let that go a long time before they expose it. I think that like some journalistic integrity is certainly compromised within the making of this documentary. And that Eric Good and this team of storytellers do not create the law. And, you know, I think like the jinx got kind of lucky in the timing of what they found out and when they found it out and how they presented it to the police because they would have had a similar question on their hands. How do we tell this story in the most interesting way while perhaps divulging the most interesting thing at the right time? They hold on to this information. They keep making the documentary and not telling the police until it comes out,

until Dwayne records Tanya saying that she's considering euthanizing Tanka because he's in so much pain and he has congestive heart failure. And which, by the way, we find out he never had congestive heart failure. which is... He was just overweight from a bad diet, which, you know, also is not a moral bad when you have control over it yourself and are not being hand-fed Reese's whipped cream. It's...

Jody, you just went to Vegas last week for Kobayashi versus Joey Chestnut. That's correct, yes. How does their diet... How do their diets compare to Tonkas? In the moments that they are competing, they're pretty similar, really not thinking about what they're ingesting, just going pure id and animalistic competition. In the moments that they are not competing, their diets are a lot more similar to yours, Justin. Vegan, careful, devoid of Reese's whipped cream and power aids.

Yeah, because they're humans who can control what they're consuming. fantastic stuff. My first, like, real jaw-dropping moment in this series came from something that wasn't related to Tanya. It was related to Connie Casey, and that was maybe the jaw-dropping moment. So when I first learned about this series, I said to myself, I said to my girlfriend, Nicole, this is obviously going to cover Travis the Chimp at some point. He's famous in your house.

I didn't know. didn't know, Justin, we talked about this. Whereas in my house, my boyfriend kept saying, when I was like, I'm watching this wild show about a woman who keeps chimps, he was like, oh, is it the woman who got her face eaten? And I kept being like, no, it's a different woman. And then turns out, yes, all of these people are related. They're all related. It's a very small world is the thing, right? Like, you think that it would be just with how big the country is and where all these, we're bringing in different species. You figure it'd be like very,

that not everyone would know each other, but these people are just all two degrees away from each other. And Connie Casey is, seems to be the nexus of a lot of these things. She is, she is the son that the exotic chimp trading world revolves around. Because Travis the Chimp is the story of the chimpanzee in Connecticut, who basically,

ripped off the face of a friend of its owner. And this has been a very famous story. It was, it inspired some moments in the movie, Nope, the Jordan Peel movie. And the reveal that comes halfway through episode two, and it's very quiet, but that Connie Casey was the one who procured Travis for Travis's owner. I think to me was like my first true jaw-dropping moment of the series. Yeah. I mean, for me, it was the whole thing because that was not a story I was super aware of. I think I'd heard it vaguely like a chimp attacked a woman.

But for me, my real relationship to that story was from Nope. So meaning that when I watched Nope, I didn't really know that it was related to a true story. Oh, really? Yeah, but I really liked that element of the story. I was just like, oh, what an interesting tie-in. to, you know, like the themes of, can you tame a predator and how we use animals for spectacle? Like, I thought it was a great tie in it.

I did not know that it was related to something real. So for me, like, putting that together in real time was sort of like juvenile and dumb. Like, I should have known about that story. But, like, when I saw Charla, who had been attacked in The Vale, I was like, that was the clicking moment. like, oh, that's what's happening, or that's what happened. Stephen Yun has this experience as a child actor

and watching this young monkey actor go chimp. I think of that child actor as Alan Cumming, who also worked with a monkey and then sort of like had a moment to reconfigure what that means, like what seeing these chimps as chimps means versus seeing them as human means. and he redirects and decides to see them as chimps and attempt to protect them because he loves them

and he loved that experience of working with them. We see that Stephen Yun in the movie, Nope, continues to create spectacle around these kinds of things and kind of like doesn't learn the lesson. We're talking about this over on industry too. Like over on the industry recaps, like to what extent are you able to learn lessons in your life? and how does that affect your happiness?

Like, I have learned in therapy that in order to create change in your life, you actually have to look at negative emotions head on and perhaps not replace those negative emotions with a chimpanzee, which is what we see in the case of Sandy with Travis, Sandra with Buck. And these are being paralleled for us

with, like, extremely, obvious cut tos to Tanya of Tanya with what she is doing with Tanka. And it is what ultimately brings the documentary team to the decision to turn this over to Pita because they keep all of a sudden they keep saying it's like Buck the chimpanzee where in both instances Buck and Travis were killed by the police in this sort of like strange euthanasia suicide by cop because the owners did not take the necessary steps when they should have taken them

and it ended up in a dead chimp and ultimately no one wants to see that for Tonka and it really feels like where it's headed. But it's wild that none of the, like, Sandra, which was Travis's owner, she ends up trying to buy another chimp. That's the button. That for me really was like the craziest moment is that you hear because I didn't, it's like I buffed up on the Travis story and I knew what I knew from Nope.

I didn't know. And I bet most people didn't know because the way that this information comes out is through a recording of a call with a medium. because Sandra wanted to be able to reconnect with Travis and she does a call with a medium and we find out that a year after her chimpanzee clawed her friends face off and nearly killed her, she co-bought another chimpanzee a year later. First of all, the biggest grifter in this story

is definitely the chimp medium. Second of all, I was unaware that you could, bifractional shares of a chimp. I thought you were going to say the biggest grifter was Pam, the circus breastfeeding chimp owner, because you can't really buy a fraction of a chimp. I think that Pam kind of used Sandra and Sandra's extreme loneliness and sadness to get $20,000 is my personal take. Yeah, we even, when Sandra goes down to visit, Pam even jokes about it.

about how Chance was, chance decided to sleep in Sandra's bed with her, which is, you know, we can unpack that or not unpack that. I'm fine either way, Jody. But, um, so no thanks for me. Yeah, because she knew, because Chance, quote unquote, knew that I was his mom. And it's like, she kind of like says it with this kind of like knowing laugh. Like, oh, you, you really thought you crazy woman that like, we were just going to split this chimp

and that you're going to pay 20,000 bucks and you could be other mommy. Oh, Pam's cackle is actually one of the main character. Pam is not a main character, but her sort of evil laugh is. And then, yeah, they go on to co-purchase this chimpanzee chance who lives in Florida with Pam and Sandra can go visit because no one's going to let her have a chimpanzee in Connecticut. And that chimpanzee sort of mysteriously dies at a very young. young age. I would not say the documentary pushes the mysteriousness of it a ton, but I found it very suspect, especially because Pam has put her flag in the ground and she says, these chimps will not live a better life at the Florida sanctuary, which is where PETA takes the chimps that they rescue as to this seemingly amazing Florida sanctuary with several islands and communities and professionals who are trained with chimps, which notably none of these women are, except sort of Pam, but she was trained in the circus.

I don't know the credentials on that. She says there is chimps will not do better in the Florida sanctuary cut to her chimps funeral who has died at 15 for unknown reasons. She says, God bless God. She does say God, God bless God for giving this chimp to me. and isn't that just like an absolute thesis statement of how these people are thinking about the way the chimps come to them?

God bless God for there being no laws that are technically keeping me from doing this. I love that like at one point in the Travis the Chimp story, they're like, well, you know, Travis escaped and they were able to pass in a city ordinance that was like, you have to have a permit for a, for a primate over 50 pounds. And I'm like, great law, great start.

Like, that's all we could get on the books. And then they're like, but they don't enforce it. Like a lot of these laws are not enforced. And I will say this about PETA. You know, they do a lot of work. Like you said, like something that comes out of this is like, oh, it's not just throwing red paint on fur coats. It is like a lot of red tape and legalese and like doing the difficult minutiae

of tracking this stuff down. But they also repeatedly say, literally say, we left no stone unturned in finding Tonka. And Tanya says she invited them to her house. And they don't, I don't understand the not going to her house. I mean, Tanya's full of shit. But like, a lot of these laws that aren't enforced, and that's not to do with Pita.

That is, you know, federal law. A lot of these laws that aren't enforced lead to the cycle that we see over, and over with these three monkeys that we focus on. Travis, Buck, and Tonka. And that is that the laws that are put in place isolate the owners and the chimps that they have. And because of that isolation, the chimps become more aggressive. They might one way or another, but we see all of these women sort of recede back to their houses with their chimps, at which point the chimps grow older into adult males and attack someone. We're spending a lot of time.

I feel like we could talk about this all day. I want to get to the final big what the fuck moment that I had here. And then I, you know, I think you want to rattle off some of the smaller, what the fuck moments. We probably hit most of them. We had a lot of them.

But, you know, we can hit one right now because we're talking about the three chimps that this is focused on. We talked about Buck. We talked about Travis. We, of course, talked a lot about Tom. We did not talk about Ricky. Ricky.

We haven't talked about Ricky. Also don't totally know how Ricky died. So on the course of the cranberries scored escape route from Festus, what we don't see is the intermediary period where Tanya doesn't have Tanka for six months. And maybe that is when Pita went to her house. And maybe she actually is a little more conniving and a little better planned than she comes across when we see her sketch out a unicorn in episode two for her zoo that is ultimately revealed to be the childlike drawing of a four-year-old. Maybe she is kind of duplicitous because she takes Tonka to a different sort of off-the-books chimp sanctuary, which is run by Sai, who is a sort of like mun-unuched. municipal government criminal. He has been, uh, he says that he is no longer considered trustworthy

because he, he stole like $350 from his township and bought a hot tub. $350,000. Excuse me. I'm so sorry, $350,000. We know he bought a hot tub. We know he bought a snow cone machine. I think he bought like a wildebeest and then don't totally know where every, all of the rest of the money went. Um, but he does still have chimps. And so Tanya sort of hides Tonka amongst his other chimps because one of his older male chimps, Ricky, has recently died so Tonka can pass as Ricky both in life and in death. Because when it comes time to present evidence to PETA that Tonka has died, Cy digs up Ricky, who is already beheaded because Cy wanted to keep his scy.

skull and when Tanya comes back to get Tanka, she drives back to the Lake of the Ozarks with a monkey carcass in her backseat and Tanka in the front. That's a little creative license. I don't know where the monkeys were, but they were both in there.

And she said, if I got pulled over, I would have been in big trouble. It was like, yeah, no shit, Tanya. You're already in big trouble. I'm going to guess that wasn't the craziest thing that happened that day at the McDonald's drive.

drive-through either. The Holiday Inn and the McDonald's drive-thru both saw more crazy things that day than Tanya with Ricky's body in the trunk and Tonka riding shotgun. R-I-P Ricky. Well, my final what-the-fuck moment is quite simply the ending of the series. And, you know, so we get to the final episode and Tonka has been removed from Tanya's house. He is placed in this in the Save the Chimps sanctuary in Florida. Alan Cumming gets to go visit. Do you think Tonka knew that Alan coming came? Alan Cumming tearing up

and watching Tonka in the distance? I don't think he did. It seemed like maybe part of the sanctuary is like no human interaction from like past human friends because it didn't seem like he really got access to the island.

I do. Also one thing I wanted to call out so I, did you happen to catch the New York Magazine profile of our Eric Good. I saw it. I haven't read it yet. So one thing, and this is where the Pita, like, you question a few things. I understand this, but I end up questioning this because let me pull up the quote.

Good says that he wanted to end Chimp Crazy by reuniting Haddocks and Tonka, but Pita and Save the Chimps wouldn't allow it. They see her as the devil. I don't think she's ever seen a primate in the wild, and it would be so good for her. I got to say, I see both sides. But it's wild to me that Alan fucking coming gets to go there. I mean, I understand why Tanya is not there, right? Like, I'm not necessarily suggesting that. But I also see what good is saying.

Like, if you, if the point is not just to be punitive, if the point is to show this woman, like, this is how they're supposed to be living. Like, this is him happy. This is him in his, now he has his whole, you know, his whole network of other chimps, you know, he is now assimilated, right?

Like, this is what his life is supposed to be. That is, like, an education moment. And, like, if we want, we've seen what has happened with some of these other women

that their chimps die in horrific fashion, and then they try to go get other chimps. The point is to break this. If the point of PETA is to break this, how do we do that, right? Like, because this is a,

we said this is a very small world, and if there were like certain entry points into this world and like Connie Casey and Tanya being two of those, how do we break that? I don't know. Maybe I'm just being a little too polyanish and being like, just let Tanya see the chimp a little. But like, I don't know.

Like I don't. Right, because what people say over and over and like what the Rolling Stone journalist says about Tanya, she was like, I really liked Tanya. I felt a lot of empathy for her. And then I saw the photos of where Tonka was living while he was with Tanya. And I wondered, can Tanya not see this? And there is, like, there's a repeated pattern of Tanya can't see what other people are seeing

because she is too consumed with her need to be loved, with her need to save something, with her need to fill a void. And, you know, sweet Alan coming when he's going to the facility. is like, I hope that Tanya sees this and realizes that this is better for Tanka. I hope she sees this and feels better. Like, he really does want her to feel better, not worse. And it ain't going to happen.

She's in her mid-50s. These lessons aren't, we're not getting through. The series ends on Tanya recounting a story where she's, basically like she needs a fix, like she needs a chimp fix, right? And she goes to visit a friend of hers who has a chimp, which, again, it's just, I know that she's in a different world than I am, but it just seems to say to me, she's like, I went to go visit a friend who had a chimp.

It's like when you want to, like, swim in the summer and you're like, oh, my friend has a pool. My friend has a pool, right? She climbs into the enclosure, thinking that she's going to, like, I guess, roll around with this chimp. I don't know what she thinks is going to happen. But this chimp who is not Tonka, who is not like someone that she has a connection with, attacks her. And literally bites off part of her ear.

Did he bite or do you rip it? I can't remember exactly. But part of her ear is severed. The tip of her air is severed. And you see it. You see it. And it could have very easily been a Charlott and Nash situation. And she says that she has nightmares that she goes to sleep.

She closes her eyes and she just envisions this attack. but that she would own a chimp again. And the series ends on her basically saying that she was inspired by Save the Chimp. And she wants to buy an island and create a monkey island where she will live among the chimps. Yeah, because what's the difference? She says, I want to do what Save the Chimps does, but I'm there. I want to create an island of chimpanzees and I live among them. And while I have great empathy for, you know, any broken person, including myself,

this moment is like, oh, this is the most selfish woman alive. Like, I want to do what I've already done and what I've seen harm monkeys and harm others. And then I want to do it tenfold. and I want to be there because I'm the important part of this, not the chimps. Jody, have you ever seen the documentary Grizzly, man?

No. I think it's actually an amazing companion piece to this. It's a Werner Herzog documentary, so you get that wonderful narration in his German voice,

where he tells a story of a man who went to go live among the Grizzlies in Alaska every summer and doesn't end well, but it's a really, it's a very similar story about a broken person who is trying to fill this void within them. And it's heartbreaking and it's poignant. And I don't know if the ballot of Tanya Haddx is necessarily something I would describe as poignant, but it is fascinating. And I do ultimately hope that some good comes out of this,

right? Like, this isn't, this seems wild to me that this is legal in America in the year 2024. I just, I don't understand it. Yeah, I mean, I think it's going to educate people a lot. Like, I mean, even just, you know, I found myself when they introduced the idea of the chimp parties and like that Connie Casey's husband very evidently has had his nose bitten off by a monkey and then is bringing monkeys to these parties, I was like, if I had been, you know, like in the 90s as a kid or a parent, like, would I have done that? And now the answer is no. Like, let monkeys be monkeys. So I think that will come of it. Also, what will, I guess, come of it is that I will now be watching Grizzly Man very close to my favorite holiday of the year, which is fat bear.

week, which also takes place in Catmai National Forest. Get on top of it. Guys, any parting thoughts? I'm inclined to end on a good note, and that is that Tonka has been living in this sanctuary since 2022 with 222 other chimps. He was overweight then when he came in, and now he's healthy. And from the LA Times, he eats a vegan diet and treats are not of the fast food variety, but rather watermelons on the 4th of July

and apples covered in sugar-free caramel and nuts. So look, looks like Pete is winning on all counts. They got them eating vegan. They got him, they got them out of there. They sprung him from the clink. And they got Jared on their side.

A pee-wee-Herman, I would not want to be at odds with. Anything else, guys? Did we miss it? We missed a lot because there's just so much here. You know, I do feel like you cruise past pretty quickly that Pam breastfed a chimp once, But now that I've said it again, I feel comfortable departing from chimp crazy.

And on that note, look, guys, I think we learned a lot here today and learned nothing. So I'm glad that we got to do this. Thank you to everyone for listening. Thank you for Jody for joining me on another one of these adventures. I'm sure we'll be back when we do the Turtle documentary that Eric Goods inevitably working on. Thank you to Kai Grady for producing. And remember to check out all the great offerings we have here on the Prestige TV. podcast, including Jody Walker, discussing industry with Charles Holmes, including Joanna Robinson

and Rob Mahoney discussing slow horses. I'll be back discussing the penguin. Thank you all. Until next time. This episode is brought to you by Netflix's remarkably bright creatures. What if a Pacific octopus held the key to a mystery that could heal your heart? Well, that's Tova's reality. An elderly widow working at an aquarium. Tova forms an unlikely friendship with the crumudgeonly Marcellus, whose remarkable intelligence leads her to a life-changing discovery. Remarkably bright creatures is now playing, only on Netflix. Hey, Mama, thanks for making all my favorite recipes. Hi, Ma. Thanks for your unfiltered advice.

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