Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - The Official Chimp Crazy Podcast: Episode One

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

In the first episode Wes, Jeff and Mike dive into the wild world of private primate ownership in the United States. Then Wes speaks with filmmakers Eric Goode and Jeremy McBride about the genesis of this series and what it is about chimpanzees that make them so irresistible to the people who love them.  Watch Episode One of the HBO Documentary Series Chimp Crazy on Max.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, I'm Wes Larson. I'm a wildlife biologist, a wildlife expert, and co-host of Tooth and Claw. And this is the first of a very special series of episodes that we're producing together with HBO's Chimp Crazy. Chimp Crazy is a four-part documentary series about primates in captivity and the people that will go to any length to keep them. And we'll be recapping each episode of the show, as well as talking to filmmakers and even some primate experts, to really dive into this wild and secretive community. And the first episode of Chimp Crazy is out now on Max. And for any new listeners who found us through Chimp Crazy, we're Tooth and Claw. I co-host the show with my brother Jeff. And Jeff, do you want to introduce who you and Mike are?

Yeah, I'm Wes's little brother, Jeff. I was his field tech with a Black Bear project. And I know a lot about animals for someone who didn't study them or doesn't really read books ever. But I don't know a lot for if you're a wildlife biologists like Wes. And who's our third. host, Jeff. Mike, tell us two sentences why you're chimp crazy. Oh, this is not part of the assignment. I like chimps just fine. Let's get that out there. But I'm the producer of tooth and claw. You're so much more than that too, Mike. You know? Yeah, you're chimp crazy.

Anyway, on tooth and claw, we tell stories about animal attacks, but rather than sensationalize these stories, we really get into the biology of the animals. And then we arm listeners with knowledge that can help them prevent similar encounters, and we give them some great conservation info. I think all of us agree that all three of us love animals, we just want to give them a fair shake. Is that, is that fair to say? Oh, yeah. Yes. Got to give them a fair shake.

All right. So before we get into the recap, a quick spoiler warning, we're going to be talking about episode one. So episode one, spoilers are ahead. Mike, you hate spoilers. Don't do it. Maybe you should just tune out, Mike. I watched the episode, Wes. So that's kind of like the ultimate spoiler.

Oh, I spoiled everything about episode one. Yeah, I feel like you're still going to get mad. Exactly. And some strong language in these episodes, just so everyone knows. HBO, you know. If you're out there listening to this and you haven't seen episode one, it's really good. Just go watch it and then come back and listen. All right, well, let's get into it.

So we're going to do a really quick recap of the episode storyline. The first person we hear from in episode one is Tanya Haddix. And she tells us a bit about how raising a primate is pretty much better than having kids and that you naturally love your monkey babies more than your human babies, which really seems to be a theme among all the people that we're going to meet in this community. And I think it's one of the more interesting themes that we're for sure going to talk about. Monkey love is totally different than the way that you have love for your child. If it's your natural born child, it's just natural because you actually gave birth to that kid.

but when you adopt a monkey, the bond is much, much deeper. I'm sorry, there is nothing like holding, loving being around a chimp. It's the best thing since peanut butter. Also, a quick disclaimer, chimpanzees are great apes. They're not monkeys. Both apes and monkeys are in the primate family. So primate is the big circle, and apes and monkeys are both in smaller circles. Do you guys get that?

Got it. Yes. Can you guys tell me the other great apes? What are the other great apes? Guerrilla and orangutan. Exactly. And then the lesser ape is the gibbon. Gibbon species.

The intro really makes it seem like this is going to be a crazy story. There's lots of shots of law enforcement. Tanya's talking about giving up her life for a chimp. We quickly meet some of our other main characters. We meet Pam Roseir, who's a circus chimp trainer. We meet Connie Casey, a Missouri chimp breeder. And we also meet the filmmakers. And Eric Good is the dude.

director. At heart, he's a conservationist. He's fresh off making a little documentary you might have heard of, Tiger King. Tiger King burned some bridges in the exotic animal community for Eric. So we learned that he's hired a proxy director for this film. And that guy is Dwayne Cunningham. He's essentially an undercover director. Also, I should mention that we are going to have an interview with me and the filmmakers right after this recap. So they're going to be able to get into these characters' motivations a bit better than I can. Dwayne, the undercover director, meets Tanya and Connie at the Missouri Primate Foundation, which is run largely by these two women,

and we get a look into the foundation, which really seems to be held together by threads. It doesn't seem like it's in like a great state. But ultimately, word of the conditions that the foundation gets out, and PETA gets involved. Alan Cumming was in a movie with one of the chimps from the foundation, a movie star chimp named Tonka, and he personally gets involved in the fight to rehome the foundation chimps.

Well, first of all, to fix up this foundation and then ultimately to try and rehome them. And we'll get more into Alan Cummings' relationship with Tonka and chips in the entertainment industry later. But for now, we should probably just really mention that Tanya especially really hates Pita. I think that comes off pretty clear in episode one that she's not a fan of Pita or anyone that works for Pita. What'd she say? There's that little fucker right now. There he is. There's a little fucker now. Yeah. When she sees their lawyer.

Oh, it's so good. PETA ultimately tells Connie and Tanya that they have to fix up the foundation or the chimps will be taken away, but they don't do the required fixes. So Tanya and Connie fight against the lawsuit. Connie ends up signing the ownership of the chimps over to Tanya to try and kind of mess up the lawsuit, and that decision brings Tanya to the forefront of the case. Ultimately, Pita files motions for the chimps to be taken to Project Chimp Sanctuary, and they get the U.S. Marshals and local law enforcement to make sure the transfer goes smoothly.

luckily the chimps get one last happy meal before they're taken away. Chimps love happy meals. I knew that part made you hungry. The LeBron James Space Jam happy meal. I could spot that from a mile away. Was it? Was it really? Space Jam themed game?

Yeah, it was. But we end on a twist. There was supposed to be seven chimps in the transfer, but only six were rescued. Tonka, the famous movie star chimp, close to. friend to Alan Cumming is missing. So crazy. So that's the recap. Let's dive into some of these themes. Let's talk about some of these characters. But before we get started, I just had a question for both of you. Coming into it, did you guys really have any strong feelings about chimps in general,

or chimps in captivity or chimps in the entertainment industry? I mean, I like chimps a lot. I think I like the most unethical version of them the most, which is kind of sad. But like I'm sucker for like a chimp calendar where they're all wearing different clothes or like just chimps dressed up in like suspenders or snowboarding you know what that's i'm the target audience for that yeah it's crazy to think we bought dad that calendar to put over the urinal in the garage with chimpanzees and probably at least one of those chimpanzees came from connie casey when you think about it which is why we've covered a story before on our show So I know what they're capable of.

And for anyone who doesn't know, the story we covered was about Mo the chimp. And actually, Wes, why don't you just describe it real quick? Because I'm kind of forgetting the finer details. Sure. Mo was another captive chimp who I think did a little acting as well. But he belonged to a family who lost control of him. They had to put him in a shelter. And when they went to go visit him in the shelter one day,

two other chimps escaped and attacked them incredibly violently. So it is a really interesting story. with some really crazy twists and turns. Right. But I still feel like I was a little naive coming into this documentary because like Jeff, you always see footage of,

they're usually in like denim overalls with a little like twirly cap. You know, they're like looking really cute and playing really friendly with the people that own them. But I think the more time you spend with footage and getting to know the world

that these chimps exist in, there's a lot more leashes and a lot more cages and a lot more captivity that really has to be in place in order to like, be safe from these animals. So usually you're seeing like adolescent chimps in funny clothes is what we see is the public.

But behind the scenes, it's not quite that it turns out. Yeah, they talk about that in the documentary in this episode, how generally after five years, you have to retire a chimp from acting because it's grown out of its infancy. You know, it's like not a baby anymore. And they start acting like adult chimps and they're not manageable anymore. So all of these chimps that we grew up in movies and whatnot that look really cute or you see Michael Jackson holding one or whatever. What was this chimps name? Bubbles?

Yeah. Those were all really young chimps. And they, you know, they were about to be retired. Yeah, I'm glad, Jeff, that you brought that up because I think it's going to be fun that we kind of have three different views between the three of us. Yeah. And I know that you don't want the chimps to ever suffer, but I also know that you're a big fan. of like a chimp in an outfit. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, for me, I know a bit about these animals. I know how highly socialized they are. I know that their troops in the wild are really complex. So seeing them in captivity does affect me. And especially after we did the mo, the chimp story, and we learned how badly that can go. And we know about Travis. And I hope they bring up Travis in this documentary,

because if you've never heard anything about Travis the chimp, this is the chimp that attacked a woman, essentially ripped her face off, blinded her, really tore up her limbs. And then that victim, Charla Nash, later went on Oprah to reveal the damage that Travis had done to her. So for me, I've kind of always feared him. Like, I've always thought this is the animal I don't want to be in a cage match with. This is the one that I've talked about that. Like, I was trying to say I might have like a 10% chance against a chimpanzee because I outweigh him a little.

Yeah. And you're saying, like, no, it's like zero percent. But like, do you think like the best UFC fighter has a chance? I don't know. I think when we talk to our primatologists, we're going to have to have you come on and ask that question specifically. So we'll make that happen. But pretty much chimpanzees rocking anyone's world. Yes, that's what I think.

Let's get into our characters. Speaking of chimpanzees rocking people's worlds, let's start with Tanya. Does someone want to describe her general vibe really quickly? First of all, I would not be surprised to see her asking. for a manager somewhere. Okay. I think people kind of know what I'm saying. And then just seems like she needs attention.

Like Dwayne does such a good job. He, like, I don't know if you said, but he was like in clown school. He worked in circuses. We're going to get to that. It seems like he's very, like, familiar with these type of people. And he does such a good job just complimenting her on all the things she wants to be complimented on. Breaking down her defenses.

And then you can just tell, though, she wants. to be on camera. She wants, she wants, she wants the attention. And also, like, the living condition of the chimps, like, no wonder they love seeing her. No wonder they, like, love interacting with her. And she just, like, seems to love that as well, you know. Yeah. And, and she, she self-describes herself as the Dolly pardon of chimps. Everybody compares me to Dolly. I don't know why, but they do. I'm the Dolly Parton of the Chimps. Or I'm the crazy monkey lady. whatever. And there's this really great scene that you see her getting her makeup done and like she has pretty wild lip fillers and eyelashes and stuff. And it I think it's really helps to set up kind of

how bombastic she is. Like this is a big personality. All right. Well, a bit of background. She's a nurse from Missouri that got wrapped up in this world of captive primates years ago when she started raising capuchin monkeys. It's a pretty small monkey, a new world monkey from South and Central America. But then when her human children graduated, she's like, capuchins, nah, that's nothing. Give me a chimp. So she finally meets Connie Casey at a paid chimp encounter, and it's the best experience of her life. She says it was like up to that point, the best experience. She's had kids that graduated all the stuff. But that's what stands out. And she's instantly addicted. It kind of made me wonder if I ever got to hold a baby chimp. if I would be addicted too.

I know Jeff would be. Yeah, for sure. Did this make you want to hold a baby chimp? Of course. Yeah, they are pretty cute. Yeah, like they, I don't know, they just seem so. I can understand why it's like the number one animal for a lot of these people to have as a pet.

Because like they just so cute, but then like you can dress them up, you can treat them so humanly, but it's still a pet, you know? Well, that's what she says, actually, is that compared to capuchins, you can form these chimps into whoever you want them to be. I love the capuchins, but I had always wanted to chimp. The chimp's even way better than a capuchin. You can shape them into being you.

Which, you know, maybe explores a little bit of exactly why people get into exotic animals and chimps specifically, but you just kind of have like full rain to do whatever you want to them. All right. Let's talk about Pam quickly. She's not in this much, but we have to talk about Pam Rosair. She's the circus chimp trainer that's walking at the beginning of the film, she's watching the ape scene from 2001 of Space Odyssey. And her chimp is absolutely losing its mind. Wes would be like annoyed if he was there.

He'd be like, someone shut that chimp up. I'm trying to watch this movie. This is Stanley Kubrick. This is a classic. It's a masterpiece. And maybe if you guys don't remember her, she's also the one that gains some notoriety for breastfeed. her chimp at the same time as her daughter.

I come in one day and she's got Dallas on one booby and the chimp on the other. And I go, whoa, what are you doing? That's really all we hear from Pam in this episode. But then we get to Connie Casey. And I think she's a really important character to talk about. She's the chimp breeder. And it kind of feels to me like she's the godmother of the U.S. Chimp Trade.

At first, I thought she was probably going to be our main subject. You can tell that she really doesn't want anything to do. with cameras or attention. Connie, to me, feels like our true, like, chimp head in this movie. She got her first chimp in 1972 as a wild-caught chimp. We should definitely bring up that you can't do that anymore. The Endangered Species Act ended the flow of wild-caught chumps into the U.S. But her and her family started getting more and more chimps and breeding them

and also adopting adult chimps that people could no longer handle. And, Jeff, you brought up a good point when we were talking about this, that it does kind of show that she does have some good qualities, the fact that she's willing to rescue these chimps that people can no longer take. Yeah, at like that point in the episode, I was like, well, at least she's like bringing in the troubled chimps and not just only raising babies. To me, it does kind of feel like Connie, in some ways, has her heart in the right place. But they start keeping a few of these chimps.

They put them in movies and TV. They start doing chimp parties. And with that money, they built the cubs. Chimp Party, which later turns into the nonprofit Missouri Primate Foundation. Okay, we're going to talk about the filmmakers quickly. They're also themselves an important part of the episode. So Eric Good is the director. He's pretty animal obsessed.

He seems like a kindred spirit for us. We'll be talking to him later as well as executive producer Jeremy McBride. But we're going to let them tell more about their own stories. We definitely need to talk about Dwayne Cunningham. He's got an interesting background to one of you guys want to expound on kind of where Dwayne comes from. Sure. So he was professionally trained to be a circus clown.

And that's where he fell in love with exotic animals. And it kind of made him a natural fit for Eric to bring him in to help make this documentary happen. But there's a quick little flash to a news clipping that said he'd been sentenced to prison for 14 months. I don't know exactly what that was. I think it was smuggling, smuggling animals. Was it smuggling? He seemed pretty open about like, I used to behave like these people.

Like I used to be in this world. Yeah, but it made him like a perfect fit to be both on like the production side of things, but also relate and be very personable with the subjects of the documentary, Tanya and Connie. Yeah. You can tell they instantly trust him. Yeah.

So we should also talk about Tanka. Tonka's the chimp that's probably the one we spend the most time with. And he's the one that's missing at the end of the episode. He's a famous chimpanzee. He was in Georgia the jungle. and also in the movie Buddy with co-star Alan Cumming, which for me was probably the best surprise seeing him in the documentary. Jeff, you watched Traders, right?

Yeah, I've watched Traders. He's so good in it. He's a great host. Nightcrawler. Oh, he's nightcrawler. I mean, it's been fun seeing him in the documentary because he's just got a good voice. He's like got a great presence.

So it's like, oh, wow. Alan Cummings. He seems really... I want to see the movie, Buddy. I haven't seen it. I know. We got to watch it. The three of us should watch it together.

Yeah. He seems really reflective about his time with these chimpanzees too, which I thought was really interesting. He's very honest about it, which I really liked. Well, and like it seemed to me like he got the same feeling as like some of these ladies or people who own chimps, whereas just like I've never loved anything as much as this animal right now. But like he at least was able to take a more rational approach to it and be. like, well, maybe I should think of what's best for this chimp that I love so much.

Yeah, but I do love how honesty is with himself about that. Definitely. And it was touching to see him have that moment because he was led to believe that the Tonka had been retired, quote unquote, to a nice peaceful life. And he just kind of envisioned Tonka roaming around the city, sitting at cafes. That's what I was going to bring up. I love that idea of Palm Springs like that. I would move things like. I know.

It's just like retired chimps all over. Right. Yeah, I was going to bring that up. It's so funny that he thought that that's where they went to Palm Springs. We got to play that club. My understanding of what happened to Tonka after his Hollywood career ended was that he retired to Palm Springs. That's what I was told. And every time I'd go to Palm Springs, I always think of Palm Springs is like old people and gay people. And then retired chimps that was added to my list. So I kind of always expected to sort of bump into him. Decades later, he learns that they're just sitting in cages doing literally nothing all day every day for a game. years and right i just i thought that was a really it was a nice energy to have in the documentary i like

alan he's my guy he's boris and golden eye yeah i'm a i'm a right-and-die-dye for him all my life all right we also meet pita and their representative who's jared goodman he's lawyer and general counsel for pita we get some great pita montage footage i love a good montage i think we'll talk about pita more as we go on but it's definitely a really this is a great montage i love the like to like last one, whether the chimp has a gun. All right. So some points to talk about quickly that I want to get through. One question I had for both of you is why do you think chimpanzees specifically have such

a pull over these people? I think they can show human compassion better than like any animal and they are very willing to. It's like a dog that can hug you. Very affectionate. Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, like I have a ball python and I don't. I like. it's cool. There's no emotional connection there. But even just watching the documentary you start to emote with the animals on screen. So I just think they're really easy for people to kind of form a connection with. Yeah. So there's that side of things definitely. And I don't discount that at all, but also near the beginning of the episode, someone says something to the effect that it's really empowering, which is maybe a little more sinister side of the equation. But when you're adopting a chimp it's kind of like all of a sudden you have a child in effect that basically you can make do

whatever you want and you can show it off and you can become famous just having a chimp well and also there's that lady i think she has a capuchin but she has that closet just like jammed pack full of outfits for it and eric was like i don't have this much clothes and she's like oh really And he's like, yeah, of course not. No, I think that's a really good point. And they do say that explicitly that they love these animals because they can turn them into what they want them to be. And you can't do that with the human children, but it seems like you kind of can with the chimpanzee, or we're going to talk about Travis and stuff later. I also, it's interesting that Pam says we share 98.9% of their DNA.

And I have heard chim people say that before. just like for context, we also share 97% of the DNA of a mouse. Any mammal has a lot of the same DNA, but chimpanzees are the ones that we are the closest to in the animal world. I do think we should talk about the Missouri Primate Foundation and just the conditions there. Connie and a few of her employees, volunteers, family members, were running chimp party and it started going off the rails.

Someone gets his nose bit off by one of the chimps, which is pretty crazy. Oh, man. So they end up turning chimp party into a nonprofit. They open the Missouri Primate Foundation, but it doesn't fix their problems. And when we see it, it's a pretty gnarly looking place. It kind of had some Zanesville vibes to me. Real quick, for people who don't know, like, what do you mean by Zanesville?

What's Zanesville? Yeah, we actually recently did an episode on Zanesville, but it was this guy who had a big menagerie of exotic animals in pretty squalid conditions as well. and then he went in, opened up all their cages, and then killed himself. So they all got out. It was this whole big fiasco. In Ohio, right? It was in Ohio, yes.

That's why I said Zanesville. That's where that was located. So yeah, good catch, Jeff. Thanks for bringing that up. Anyway, when they show these chimpanzees within the enclosures, you see them doing a lot of really interesting behaviors, like rocking back and forth, banging on the glass, things that chimpanzees only do when they're not behavior.

naturally. Those are technically natural behaviors, but they're really rare behaviors that you only see when they're not socialized properly. So there are some really telltale signs of these chimps being in distress. That clip with Tanya when like your first meeting her, where the chimp just like swings into the glass and then falls. And Wayne just has his mouth open and she's just like doesn't react at all. It's crazy. Yeah. Or there's a scene where she's trying to lock in a chimp and she's not able to and it's like Jesus this is not good so the conditions are pretty squalid these chimps are essentially living in prison and it gets so bad that finally one of the volunteers angela scott calls pita and it brings up something else i wanted to talk about which is

the involvement of pita in all of this and we're going to talk again we're going to talk more about pita but i just like really quickly how do you guys view them in the context of episode one none of their like in that montage of their what was it of just like their ads and like their campaigns there was nothing that i thought was i thought it was all very dramatic and very big but there's nothing i thought was like too extreme that they shouldn't have done that so far i haven't really seen like so far i kind of like beta i think yeah i mean in the context of episode one i am basically a hundred percent on their side in this specific case. I'm realizing that I haven't really ever done much of my own research about PETA. I just hear people say like PETA sucks. They're super obnoxious and they actually

are bad. It's like I've always kind of taken everyone at their word. And maybe they are. I'm not saying that they haven't done bad things, that they aren't doing bad things. But there's a lot of information I think. I just have never been made privy to. So I've got I've got some reading to do. Yeah. We'll talk about them more. I have really new. feelings about PETA too, but I do agree with you guys that in the context of at least this episode, they do really seem like the good guys. One thing with PETA too that, like, I appreciated in the episode and I think Connie and Tanya have to kind of accept. It's like they gave them opportunity is clearly not good enough living conditions. And it wasn't just straight to like,

we're taking the chimps. It was like, you have to make huge changes. And they just didn't. Yeah, it seems like they did the bare minimum. And so Peter was like, nah, you know. One other question I wanted to ask quickly, it seems crazy to me, you know, after Tiger King, seeing the story of Joe Exotic and how that dude essentially put it all out on display. And now there's these chimp people that are pretty much showing all of their little dirty secrets and stuff. I have a hard time understanding why they would ever let a documentary crew come in and film. It's just like hard for me to conceptualize that.

In Tanya's case, she says something when she's out in front of the courthouse, I think at the end of the episode, where she's talking to a friend, this is a free country, this is America, this is totally legal. We can do whatever we want. So there's like a lack of self-awareness. And then earlier in a meeting with Dwayne, I think she was mentioning something about how they just want to get their story, their side of the story out there. So they invite these people into their home. And it's just like what you're thinking you're going to show us

that's going to convince us that you have a righteous cause is just not. And I think in her brain, at least in her brain, Tanya, I think genuinely believes that there's nothing wrong with how she is interacting with these animals, how she's treating them and where they're keeping them. It's really wild. But like, I mean, Connie, I think kind of feels the same way. I don't think Connie felt they were doing anything wrong.

But Connie doesn't want to be on camera. To me, Tanya and Joe Exotic are very similar people in that they have big personalities. They use big animals to draw attention towards themselves. And they want to be on camera. They want all the attention from like all every just like they want attention. You know? Yeah. Even their appearance like just shows that they want attention.

Yeah. I think that's a really good point. And coming up in future. episodes personally I really hope we see more of Tanya I think she's one of the more compelling characters I want to learn more about her psychology I want to learn more about her background I just think she's really interesting I hope we get to figure out what happened to Tanka I'm already kind of on the edge of my scene yeah what the heck it's crazy how about you guys what what are you looking forward to and one it's crazy is Tanka like the famous gym Alan Cummings friend close

personal friend yeah I don't know I feel like it can go a lot of ways. Yeah. You know, I'm a little bit twisted, so I want to see, like, a little bit more chimp violence on humans, a little bit fighting back. You want chimp footage, too, baby chimp's as much as possible. I think there's some good foreshadowing of that

when Tanya almost gets her hand ripped through a cage. Or what made me really wince was there's some footage of this, it was a television program or something where a chimp was just kind of hanging out on set with a bunch of kids and stuff. And it reminded me of Nope. You know, in the movie, Nope, the chimp situation there. So it's like something is going to happen here. And it's going to be really, really bad and bloody.

Cool. Yeah. Cool. Cool. All right. So before we wrap up, I do think there's one last thing that we really need to talk about, which is the end of the film. We see that Tonka, the chimp is missing.

They rescued six chimps, but one of them wasn't there. And it was Tonka, the famous chimp. that we'd been following throughout the episode. Do you think that Tanya just let it out? Like, what do you think? Where do you think Tonka is? So here's my theory. We're talking about Dwayne, this guy,

who has a past of smuggling animals, you know? Maybe he's got, he's a little bit of a recidivist. He's back in the game. He saw an opportunity. He stole Tanka. He's on the run. Yeah. Maybe, I don't know.

I genuinely have no idea. To me, it kind of set it up like Tanya took Tanka. Uh-huh. Because she's saying, like, I can't live without a chimp now that I've had chimps. So to me, I don't know if you can just, like, put a chimp in your house. And it's just like a dog. Yeah.

Like, actually, I know you can't. I know an adult chimp is, like, a really hard thing to have. But, yeah. I don't know. To me, that made the most sense. Like a chimp, a chib napping. Yeah. In the establishing shot that you talked about already, West,

Tanya was just like, I would do anything. And it's like, well, let's see her, put her money where her mouth is. Then I guess, see where this goes. Yeah, I think that's the thing I'm looking forward to the most is just figuring out what happened to Tonka. I really hope we get that in episode two, which is going to be out next week. So I can't wait. Can't wait. Can't wait. I'm strapped in. I'm ready for more.

How many of these are there? There's going to be four episodes. We need more. We're like that chimp watching 2001. All right. Well, now we're going to, I'm going to talk to the filmmakers and we're going to get a little bit of behind the scenes perspective from them. We'll talk about the film itself and the characters a bit more. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft.

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All right, so now we're going to talk more about the first episode with the director, Eric Good. Hello. And the executive producer Jeremy McBride. Hi, Wes. Hey, guys, really happy to have you here. I'm super excited to dig more into this crazy world of Chimp Crazy. So something I just wanted to get into right off the bat is how did you guys come around to the topic for this film. Why chimpanzee owners specifically, why the Missouri Primate Foundation, was this already on your

radar or was this just something that you naturally stumbled on? So I've been in the animal world my entire life and mostly focusing on reptiles. And maybe 15 years ago or so, I began filming around the world, just animal people, people with the most white rhinos in the world, primates for medical research, butterfly collecting, tropical fish, reptiles. And one of the strangest subcultures of animal people that I did not know about for much of my animal life was the world of monkey moms, women that want to keep primates, both monkeys and chimpanzees, as babies, effectively, and dress them as their own little children and basically they turn these monkeys and chimps into people. And so that just seemed like a very odd subculture

of animal people that I was not aware of up until about 12 years ago. And so I started to film some of them in Florida. And these were young women that mostly had capuchin monkeys, but also other monkeys, spider monkeys, squirrel monkeys. But I didn't break into the chimpanzee world until I started working with Jeremy. Jeremy, how are you the kind of the genesis to him breaking into the chimpanzee world? That's a great question. I mean, I share the same ideas Eric has around this kind of, you know, this kind of heightened psychology of those obsessed with captive chimpanzees, you know, and I think to a degree a lot of, a lot of culture is historically infatized it a bit to kind of create this kind of picture of these animals in such a way that you've seen throughout our history

that excited my interest really early on with Eric. And then we started to kind of shoot a lot, more kind of research and development, I would call it, R&D, for discovering characters, which ultimately at the foreground is really our most important aspect of our process, is finding really eccentric, exciting characters that we want to follow in stories. Yeah, mission accomplished.

Yeah. So we kind of went around a lot about it and just started to kind of canvas the U.S. without really understanding the issues. And so I think with the backstory with Peter Loeffer, which we see in episode one, if you really want to understand chimps in America, you have to know and understand Connie Casey. So Peter had written a book called The Dangerous World of Butterflies that I read one time. And so somehow I met Peter after reading this book. And Peter and I became good friends and would talk a lot because we could share stories because we were both fascinated by this world of exotic animals. in the United States, all different subcultures.

So Peter told me that he was trying to gain access to this place in Missouri and couldn't. And eventually, he effectively ambushed the woman. He just went there to Missouri and I think called her or knocked on her door. But short story, of course, he gained access and went into this place. And he was just blown away. And this is a guy that's covered, you know, all kinds of stories. You know, as a journalist, he's covered wars. in the Middle East and I interviewed people in prisons around the world and gone into very dark places,

but nothing prepared him for what he saw in this small town in Missouri, Festus, Missouri, going into this woman's home and how she had turned her home effectively into a cage, not only a cage for these chimpanzees, but a cage that she lived in. And her bedroom was basically, her bed was built into a cage so she could live with some. some of these animals in her bedroom, but a cage. Also the plexy, the glass. Well, yeah. Yeah, and then she had built this extension onto her home that was even bigger than her home.

That was basically like a prison for monkeys with a plate glass or plexy framed window. So she could look into this prison effectively with all these chimpanzees. And at one point, this woman had more than 40 chimpanzees living there at one time. Unfortunately, Peter would be the last journalist to ever interview Connie Casey. And I should just preface living with 45 chimpanzees is like living in a, I don't know, basically having 45 bombs ready to go off. I mean, this is like, you know, this is like almost an impossible thing to do. Because having made Tiger King, all the tiger people told me,

I'd rather have a hundred tigers than one chimpanzee because chimpanzees are so intelligent, so dangerous. You can't use combination locks. You have to use a key lock because they'll sit there all day and figure out the combination and escape. And they know how to render you helpless because they go for your face, your genitals, and your hands. So anyway, living with 45 chimpanzees in a house in suburbia in Missouri struck me as just being bizarre. And I wanted to learn more. Yeah.

You know, just kind of following that now, that background, obviously our interest was like, we got to see this place. No one's ever documented. No one's actually seen the visual form. It's only been hearsay. And suddenly, after a year and a half of filming, we see this local news pickup of this very eccentric woman, Tanya Haddock's, speaking to camera, saying, over my dead body, are they going to take these chimps away? And it was all surrounding this multi-year issue of PETA trying to take these animals away from Connie Casey. And it was only a matter of time. So that was basically in the film, literally six weeks before confiscation.

we identified Tanya as a subject. And we had to, in that time, think about how do we get in? You know, what do we do? Obviously, like, there was a lot of things happening simultaneously, including recruiting Dwayne. Yeah, that was my next question for you guys. So all that was happening simultaneously. And I say it in the sense of, like, it wasn't so calculated.

It was kind of what's going to, how can we assemble the best team to increase our chances to get the best story? and that's how we got Dwayne and how we phoned Tanya. Yeah, my question was just about Dwayne and how, you know, it's so obvious in episode one, how quickly he manages to get access to the Missouri Primate Foundation. And Eric, I know you know this. There is a certain language among people that are wildlife obsessed or wildlife professionals. And if you speak that language, you do tend to get access a little bit quicker than someone else might.

And I just felt like having him be your proxy director after some of those. bridges were burnt for you personally seems like such a great move. So I'm curious how you found him and what the actual logistics are of having a proxy director, how that works when you're filming. Well, listen, this is my first rodeo with proxy directors. So I was learning along the way. But the animal world, I should just first say this, the exotic animal world, the people that do this stuff tend to be very guarded and they don't let just anybody in. that anybody could be an animal rights group undercover. It could be the feds.

It could be people that want to come and steal your animals. And so there's a whole host of reasons why people don't let you in so easily. And so the key to these documentaries that Jeremy and I make is access. You know, I knew the aftermath of Tiger King, my name was maybe not the best name to be introducing myself after Tiger King. They didn't want anything to do with Tiger King. Oh, no, I'm not filming with you. You made Tiger King. And so I had to, Jeremy and I had to find a proxy director.

And we've been working on another project that has to do with the reptile world and knew a guy who had been arrested and convicted and put in prison for some reptile-affiliated charges. And we also knew that he had worked with chimpanzees. And so Dwayne's name rose to the top. We just, you know, we just thought, God, Dwayne has the right credentials to get into this world. Not to mention he'd been a circus clown for Ringley Brothers and Barnum and Bailey. And so he had a bone to pick with the animal rights groups.

So that was really effective to be able to go in there and say, I know how you feel because I can no longer be a clown at Barnum and Bailey. So I can empathize with you. And so he connected on the animal rights front. So I guess building on that a little bit, I can see how he was perfect in so many ways for this role. The one that I think I'm most curious about, though, is he obviously is not a film director. And so how does that work? How do you have a proxy director still managed to be a director?

Well, so a good question, Wes. We made sure that Dwayne had a very strong team when he went into the field that really, one person in particular that really understood the animal world and could also speak that language, but also had, you know, some skills with directing to some degree because he'd been working with me for so long. So I felt, sure, there was a risk in all of that. And there was one other piece, I should say, that later down the road, we started being able to actually watch in real time what was happening with the technology we have today. We could actually see what he was filmed. and we could talk to him while he was filming.

Also, Eric, you were there a lot of the time too. Not that, you know, like... And then I was there a lot of the time, sort of behind the scenes. Not where our subjects could see me, but I was also around. And Dwayne, his job really wasn't to be the director. You know, it was more the producers that were on the team,

but his job was to be the one that befriended, this case, Tanya Haddicks. And he befriended Tanya to the point, where they became actually very good friends through the course of making this documentary. Yeah, I'm excited to see more of that relationship as it develops. Jeremy, you just brought up a little bit ago

how characters are so important to you as you both are filming these pieces and these documentaries. And I did feel, as I watched episode one, that, you know, that first half, it's kind of like you're searching for your main character and then Tanya emerges. And suddenly you can really see that

as much as the case, kind of, she became the front person in the case against the Missouri Primate Foundation. She also seems to kind of emerge as the main character in this film. What were your first reactions when you saw footage of Tanya Haddix, when you started to see her in these pieces that you were getting back from your film team? We didn't really know what to make of it, to be honest. I think it was really concentrated on this attraction to the world of Connie. And then, as we learn in the end of the show, a chimpanzee goes missing.

and obviously the suspicion is it's Tanya. It's a funny thing. Everyone asked, how did you know, when did you know? Everyone kind of knew, but no one could really figure out how. And that was what led us into the next phase of this. So that's when Tanya really became a focal point for us is around the circumstances surrounding Tanka and the missing chimpanzee. When we started this chimpanzee project, we didn't start with Connie Casey entirely.

We started more with these monkey moms. And so when we finally discovered, Tanya Haddicks, we didn't know what to make of her at first. But as we dug deeper and as, obviously, as things developed, that chip going missing, the story got more and more interesting and more centered around her. But what people don't know, both with Tiger King and this project, probably more people fall on the cutting room floor than the people we actually film. Well, I'm really interested to see a montage of all these people that didn't make the final cut. But it makes a good point, though. You know, what, what?

also was so important to us. This relationship challenges our notion of family and the place of animals in our lives. And you start this project with a woman like Pam Roseira, this wonderful woman who's 77 years old, who spent her entire life training chimpanzees, being around chimpanzees. That's her life. And there's no vacation. You are, you are a caregiver for life. So I think if you have that kind of backdrop of how we enter this world because you could edit chimpanzees in cages a certain way and you feel sad and you feel like really bummed out. You don't want to watch it. That was kind of very conscious for us. We want people to understand the love that they have that people have for them and show some humanity within those relationships. So it's not so stark when you're kind of looking at

this image of a chimpanzee cage. And yes, that's not great. Obviously we learn about what the chimpanzees need, and sometimes it's often more than one can provide. But it's hard to hide the compassion that one has for it. And that was really intentional for us. I feel like that really stood out for me. It seemed like some of these owners to me, that was the draw for them, is that this is an animal that requires their constant care and nurturing. And it seems like there's a lot of similarities between people that own chimpanzees. There tends to be kind of a lot of behavioral similarities and shared backgrounds. A lot of them do tend to be women. And I'm just curious if you guys could talk about that a little bit, like if you saw patterns between all the different people that own chimpanzees privately.

There's nothing more adorable than a baby chimpanzee. It's like a baby tiger's adorable. But once it grows up, you got to feed it, you know, whatever amount of meat a week. And it's expensive. And what happens with these chimpanzees is these women, largely, not only, fall in love with a baby. They raise it as if it's their baby, often loving it more than their own children, because they never say no. The chimp does whatever they want. And after five, six years, they get big. And after seven, eight years, they can get to 200 pounds of muscle. They become very, very difficult to manage for most of these women. No longer do they have the cute, cuddly little beautiful chimpanzee baby, but they have this animal that can kill you so quickly.

And so the story repeats itself, right? The chimps tend to be stuck somewhere in isolation once they get that large because they are that dangerous. So the story tends to be a sad story in the end. Yeah, I know we're going to get into some of those stories that serve as warnings for chimp ownership further. Yeah. Or chimp ownership further down the series. But as a bear expert, someone who's been very close to grizzly bears, polar bears, lots of very dangerous animals, I would much rather be in a room with the grizzly bear than an adult male chimpanzee.

Just because I do have a basic understanding of how dynamic and socially complex and emotional they can be. And it's not just an animal that's food motivated. It's motivated by so many different things. And I was curious if you guys had any safety concerns, were you ever worried about the safety of the team or the camera crew? crew or anyone. Obviously, I'm, I'm sort of, Eric's a little bit more, Eric's a group has grown up loving animals and being around all sorts of different animals. I love animals too, but, you know, I'm a little, I'm not exactly like hanging out with chimpanzees all the time. So, and I've learned so much. So obviously, I'm terrified and I get our crew there. And yes, there's like safety concerns

and we're trying to do all these precautions. But at the end of the day, like, what can you do? you obviously have Pam in this case Pam Rose there which we see in the opening shot this space odyssey moment that scene was such an incredible thing to get and so we basically shot it was really interesting setup was raining that day remember and she has this kind of very narrow house and we're shooting on both sides of the house the scene of her on the couch with with chance the chimpanzee that was really in love with space odyssey and also these other films that we had to watch a Kubrick fan with a big Kubrick fan uh big leo fan uh he was was in one of the movies with Leo. But what I remember mostly that was so terrifying is when he

would smack the floor, it would reverberate. And she lived in a very hollowed out, large kind of campus. And you could hear the echoes of the floor slaps. That was so, I couldn't even wear my headset with the audio because it was so loud. And it was terrifying. And our crew was like, what did we did? One guy walked off. I mean, it was really, it was really interesting. But the only time I got really scared is when she says don't move. And her saying that to me was really scary. And he was kind of approaching the camera by the window. And it was frightening. But at the same time, you felt secured at the same time with the keeper and the person, the owner. But it's hard. I mean, it's thrilling at the same time to kind of cover this moment that no one really gets to see. I mean, that's obviously so

intentional, Wes, like Eric and I's effort in this process. We wanted to capture stuff that people don't see. I think that's interesting because you see even clips of her as she's doing her performances with their chimpanzees. They are, you know, they know their routine. They know what to do. That is something that I think a lot of people have seen as a performing chimpanzee. But what we haven't seen is what they're doing the other 20 hours of the day, you know, and they're obviously, again, a really dynamic animal. So just putting one in a cage is very isolating for them. So it's interesting to see how some of these women have actually made these chimpanzees part of their family and they they socially interact with them on such a high level. I thought that was a really interesting part of this

episode seeing that kind of interaction. Yeah, they absolutely have favorite TV shows they'd like to watch over and over. I was a chimp that we filmed that only watched to Avatar over and over and over. But yes, they're like us. Yeah. I do have to imagine though, like an animal that has the intelligence of a toddler, like any toddler, if you break that routine and if you don't give them what they want, it can turn into a very different animal very quickly. For me, again, as someone who understands a bit about chimpanzees, there was this air of tension throughout the entire episode knowing what they're capable of and seeing this kind of casual close relationship. Yeah, it's sort of like a shark attack. I know you did this shark week step. It's like the same

tension exists in you're swimming in water and your sharks there and you know at any given time something could happen. I mean, that's really, that's by, certainly by choice. There's a word in the animal world that I'm sure you know, Wes, which is the word enrichment. And I think it actually started with bears that you got to give bears something to do in a cage. So put their food in ice so they can work to get it or put it in a ball. But there's no real level of enrichment that you can give a chimp in captivity in most cases. Yeah, I think that's a great point. And yeah, like you were mentioning with the bear, it's really just giving them some food, shelter, mating opportunities, and a little bit of enrichment. And they're a pretty happy animal, but they don't have complex

social structure in the wild. They're not these animals that have like chimpanzees, this fission fusion thing and these complex troops. It does seem like a uniquely hard animal to keep happy in captivity. And I'm really fascinated by that. It would be like saying, I can put you in a cage, Wes, and give you enrichment. All you need, Wes, is a TV, and I got to throw you some, maybe some fun candy every once while you'll be happy. But it's like putting a person in a cage. Well, give me episodes two through four and I'll be happy for a few hours at least. So one other thing I wanted to bring up and it's kind of a tricky subject. But, you know, in the context of this film, we have PETA's involvement. It's very easy to see them as kind of the good guys. But I did know that you guys included

this great montage of a lot of the different campaigns that PETA's run, some of the more extreme kind of tactics that they often use. And I'm just curious on a personal level how it was including PETA in the film, how you feel about the organization. I have such nuanced feelings about them. I'm curious what yours are as well. Well, I would first say they were an important part of the story. So we covered PETA. They were not partners in making this with us, making this film. It's a pity that PETA is so polarizing when it comes to other organizations, conservation biologists, people in the animal world. There are areas where I work in my professional life with tortoises, for example, and I have a very hard time with PETA because PETA won't let us

eradicate the animal, invasive animal, in this case, maybe a rat or a mongoose or some other invasive animal that's killing endangered tortoises, say the Galapagos Islands. So I'm not always always in sync with PETA, okay? But in the case of the welfare of chimpanzees in captivity, in this case, I was somewhat aligned with PETA, but I would never say that we are or want to be the animal police like PETA. I personally keep animals. I just don't know if a chimpanzee is the right animal for the average woman in America to keep. They require incredible needs. They have incredible needs, and you need to have real resources to be able to keep a chimpanzee. So I think in this case, we kind of wanted to make fun of PETA a little bit, as you pointed out, by showing some of their

campaigns and be a little bit tongue-in-cheek with PETA. But we are aligned with PETA sometimes, and we're sometimes very much not aligned with PETA. The thing I just say is, for better or worse, they were the entry point to the story. It was a lawsuit involving Pita. And that tension was really interesting when you think about both of these subjects' motivations. You have this, on the polar end of the spectrum, like an extreme side of the spectrum of people between Jared and Tanya in this kind of melodramatic way, it became a really interesting story and conflict. And showing that, I think, is really a beautiful thing. I think what's important just to make it very clear is that we are not and I am not a hardcore animal rights activist.

I'm what we call it someone who's very much for animal welfare, which is very different than someone who's an animal rights activist, which is the Pita category. Animal welfare means we care about if you're going to keep a chimpanzee or you're going to keep whatever animal, keep it and give it a good quality of life. Don't let it suffer. And that's where we as filmmakers lie.

But having said that, we tried to make this film without overly editorializing our views and to let the viewer come to their own conclusion at the end as to what's right and wrong or where you land. And we felt it was important to not insert our sort of voice of God views on what's right and wrong. It would make for a very boring and tedious series had we done that. I know people that keep primates. Richard Branson has lemurs on his island in the Caribbean on Neckar Island.

He does a very good job keeping lemurs, but he has a tropical island that he lives on, and he can create huge enclosures with many lemurs so they can have a very similar existence as they do in Madagascar. So I think if you have the resources and the ability to keep animals properly, I think, yes, you should be able to keep those animals. If you're a billionaire. Yeah, he's a billionaire.

But I think if you're very rich or you live in a place where climate and the ecology is similar to what that animal needs in the wild, like you can keep those. I think chimpanzees, you know, I think it's very hard to keep a chimpanzee in the private sector unless you have a lot of resources and do that well and make that animal happy. I guess one other question I have for both of you then is I think we've talked a lot about the pole of this animal and the way that people get so attracted to them and why they are such an appealing animal to own for these people that have that predilection toward exotics to begin with. But I also think there's another side of this coin. And I do think we see this on full display at different points throughout this episode is this need for attention too and need for. Or like I own this powerful animal. I own this chimpanzee. I own this crazy exotic animal.

And I'm curious how much of that you feel comfortable kind of showing, like how comfortable you feel tapping into that need for attention as you're recording these subjects. Oh, there's no question that plays into the pathology of why these women keep chimpanzees. Like, I'm the chimp lady. It's like saying, you know, I have a Lamborghini. The ego, the status plays a role in it. If you think about it, too, Wes, a lot of that comes through influences of cinema and pop culture, of the time in which a lot of these people were around.

So Tarzan, Tanya would always tell me she was so mesmerized by the relationship that Tarzan had with his chin. Those influences have created these ideas in their heads around wanting to humanize and anthropomorphize other things. So anthropomorphism is not like a new idea. Disney. You know, Disney's taught us that for a long time. And you can't, it's hard to, hard to be judgmental on that because of the circumstances in which someone grew up in. At the same time, some of it was an influence by commercial interest. That somehow it was fine 50 years ago to have this and celebrate it, but now we can't. So it's very complicated. Yeah. Well, I can't say enough about how much I loved episode one. I can't wait for two, three, and four. You guys said,

you know, you've been doing this for four years and, and your minds have been so connected to I got just a taste of that after watching this first episode. It's all I've been able to think about. So I'm really excited to talk more about the other episodes as they come out. And I just wanted to say thank you again for joining us, Eric and Jeremy. Thank you, Wes. Thanks, Wes. Yep.

That's it for this episode. A big thank you to our guests, Eric Good and Jeremy McBride. The first episode of the HBO documentary Chimp Crazy is available to stream now on Max. Tooth and Claw is hosted by Jeff Larson, Mike Smith, and myself, Wes Larson. It's produced by Mike Smith with additional production services provided by Pod People. Special thanks to Tina Wyn, Michael Gluckstadt, and Aaron Kelly at HBO.