Tiger King’ Director on the Joe Exotic Murder-for-Hire Plot and His New Project 'Chimp Crazy'

Intro hey it's guy RZ here and welcome to the great creators this is the place where I have conversations with some of the most celebrated actors musicians and performers of our time and on the show today filmmaker Eric good he had just lost the governor race in Oklahoma we were there the night that he lost he barely had any votes and the next day he disappeared poof he left his Zoo Eric is probably best known for conceiving of and directing the hit show Tiger King which became one of the most watched Netflix shows ever at the start of the pandemic but it was never supposed to happen that way Eric was originally filming a documentary detailing the lives of quirky exotic animal owners like Joe Exotic but the story took an unbelievable turn into a True Crime Story when Joe Exotic hired a Hitman to kill animal rights activist Carol Baskin I'll let Eric tell the rest so without further Ado enjoy this conversation with the director of Tiger King and chimp crazy Eric good my family had a what we called a family ranch um which my grandfather had bought in uh about 1930 um and so it was a place for my family to go uh every summer and so I spent every summer in somoma and I had a a kind of feral uh existence as my mother likes to describe it um we were just um you you know uh kids that just you know had no tether we we uh there was nothing structured we just played in The Creeks and the uh fields and catch Early life and love for animals you know caught snakes and lizards and salamanders and and that was my Summers for much of my life tell me about your relationship with animals well so um my father was a a teacher uh of Art and art history English and he somehow couldn't keep a job for very long so the longest we ever lived in one place where it's about 3 years so the one stable uh place was somoma and this Ranch where we summered and every summer you know my my Escape was to connect with animals and um we were lucky enough to have a beautiful Creek that ran through uh the ranch and we had native steel head and pond turtles and red leg frogs and things that today I you know I took them for granted back then most of those animals are no longer there they've since disappeared um but I connected with animals as a kid um because I was I don't know maybe a little bit of a loner as a CH as a kid growing up and so I spent endless hours fishing for trout and um just spending time in nature um you know I didn't grow up as I said with any structure there was no tennis classes or um summer school um my you know upbringing was mostly connecting with Wildlife um and so you know I had a informal relationship with animals my whole life I never had any kind of accolades or degrees um I wasn't good enough in math to become a biologist um so it was it was really a hobby that I and a through line that I never lost and in particularly tortoises right yeah I gravitated to reptiles uh you know snakes lizards uh turtles and tortoises and for whatever reason um you know my mother didn't like me killing things uh so keeping snakes and feeding them rats and and we had pets pet rats growing up wasn't something she liked um and she didn't like me keeping things in cages and so uh she always would say Eric you know you can't play God you know animals belong in the wild so she would let me keep an animal over the summer and then I'd have to release it at the end of the summer but Turtles and tortoises L lent themselves to sort of coexisting in the garden without a cage and somehow and they didn't eat rats and mice um mostly vegetarian so I gravitated to Turtles and tortoises primarily tortoises and you know and I I forgot to mention my parents gave me a tortoise as a pet when I was six years old a Mediterranean tortoise that they named Ajax after the God not after the detergent um and I just doed over Ajax and I would take Ajax on the plane PanAm across the United States to New York and back to California and the stewardess would always bring me lettuce to feed my tortoise on the tray flying across the country those days are long gone but I um had a pet tortoise and it had obviously an indelible mark on me um obviously we're going to be talking about on the show virtually everybody we talk to is an actor or a musician and so you're a little bit unusual because you got into um the world of film making um later in your career um and we'll get to that in a moment but I'm curious to for you to kind of talk a little bit about about your career because from what I understand you moved to New York as a young man to go to Art School um but you eventually dropped out and and got into the world of of nightclubs tell me tell me what you were what you thought you were going to do when you got to New York as a as a student did you think you would become a designer or an artist was that the idea yeah I thought I would I guess become a fine artist um my father being an art teacher you know taught me everything there was to know it seemed about Contemporary Art um and took me to museums and Galleries and um you know and really encouraged me to be an artist um and really encouraged me not to be in business of any kind you know money was the enemy for him as was the status quo so doing something different was really important um and he idolized people like Andy Warhol and so did I so going to New York and going to Parsons was the plan um I didn't last long at Parsons because I kind of felt like I'd already knew everything and of course I didn't but at the time I thought that I did um and I recognized very quickly in New York that um being you know in my early 20s that you know where the action was in New York was that clubs and places like Studio 54 were bubbling up and the Mud Club and and and the artists were gravitating to these clubs and so I thought you know what better a place to create art in a way create happenings um like you know the happenings of the 60s but put them in the context of a nightclub and make them even more elaborate um and so I just figured that I could merge you know sort of my creative um whatever creative dreams I had I could realize them through a nightclub um and I eventually found money and became a connoisseur of nightclubs in New York and at the time in the you know in the late 70s early 80s New York City was really the only place in the country where you could pull off the kind of nightclub that I wanted to do Los Angeles was um you know a town that went to bed early and people had dinner part at home and the rest of the country just didn't have the urban density uh and the art culture of New York so New York was the only place that this could happen and so that's what I did I opened a club in 1983 called area and it was overnight an instant success and what describe what made it so different I mean I you describe it as an art nightclub what what what did that mean like visually what did you experience when you would walk in well you know art the word art is such a loaded word I actually never The Birth of Area: An art nightclub described it or tried not to describe it as an art nightclub but it was you know it was a place where I really wanted to in many ways make fun of the art world but at the same time you know we wanted to shock people we wanted to um you know we um we wanted to surprise people we wanted to um uh do something that we thought had never been done before and so the concept of the club was constant flux um so we thought if we change the entire interior of the club uh every six weeks people would feel like they're going to a new club uh every six weeks and so we would reinvent the entire place you know every month every six weeks and we would have different themes some were more esoteric some were more um you know somewhere one theme would be the color red and the next theme would be the theme that was more literal like Natural History or Suburbia um and so we'd mix it up uh we did do a theme once that was called Art um and we brought in many of the contemporary artists of that time in New York City Andy Warhol to Jean Michelle BOS young and old um David hawne Keith Herring Robert Maple Thorp and um we kind of did it tongue and cheek because we also brought in artists that were not considered to be you know sort of on that pedestal as some of these other artists so we brought in low art and high art and illustr illustrators and unknown artists and Outsider artists um so we mixed it all together and um I don't know if anyone really understood that we were trying to be playful and make fun of the our world but that's what we were trying to do we brought in Peter Max and Leroy Neeman who is an illustrator for Playboy but along with Andy Warhol uh and some of these contemporary artists but um yeah I used the word art Loosely um because I don't know how else to describe it um and people have described it as the art nightclub yeah I'm just trying to just trying to kind of Imagine here you are running a nightclub in in New York in the early 80s and you get all these artists like bad and and Warhol Keith Herring I was just in Pisa in Italy and saw this magnificent Keith Herring mural that he he painted in that town um you know uh David Hackney and I I'm thinking to myself like how in the hell did you manage to get all those people to agree like was was the world just different at that time where all those people would say sure yeah I'll do it because today you'd have to go through like 17 layers of publicists and PR reps and you know all these different hurdles to get one of them there yeah it's funny you say that well you know you have to remember that um people like Jean Michelle and Keith Herring and Kenny sharf and um you know Franchesco Clemente and those people were my contemporaries we were all hanging out together none of us had any money and we were showing art together at that time I was making art um you know so we would I remember Keith Herring what were you tell me what you were doing I was doing pieces that were kind of similar to what Damen Hurst did 10 years later I would use uh Taxidermy and a natural history um as sort of the theme and build these um display cases with objects in them whether it's human skulls or you know a Taxidermy pig or um black crows and I would do these assemblages that were sort of large like large Cornell pieces um and and that grew into you know sort of more maob uh ideas like I started breeding flies house flies and pinning them uh and making sort of uh designs out of flies um and and insects but especially flies where i' make these kind of geometric patterns um and you know and Keith Herring put together a show in 19 81 at the Mud Club and I was in that show and I think I remember my piece was etes sketches uh that of course are ephemeral but I my piece sold first and I was so excited and John Michelle's piece didn't sell um but we were all in that show together Jean Michelle bosot Kenny sharf and we were all grew up together so in New York city so um we were all trying to make a mark and well conversely Andy Warhol at the time was was in a slump and so he wanted to be a part of the younger scene so to get everyone to come and participate in the context of a nightclub all you had to say to the young kids was you know Andy's going to be involved and all you had to say to Andy warhall was Jean Michelle was going to be involved wow and everyone came C did you could you have imagined back then I mean you're talking about people I mean you're talking about artists whose work I mean Warhol was of course already rich and famous but you know out and probably Herring I mean their work sells for tens of millions of dollars today right and and I think when basat died he I don't think he was wealthy a wealthy man yet what was I mean if you had gone back in time then and said look these this is going to be some of the most prized art in the world in like 20 years would you have been surprised well I always liked Jean Michelle's work um and Jean Michelle and I were you know very close um for a number of years he he went out with my sister for a number of years um and she got addicted to heroin along with him but um you know we didn't think like that back then we didn't think about money and and art as a commod commodity we thought of art as ideas and so I remember when we did the the art theme at Area at the end we took sledgehammers and broke broke down the huge beautiful Keith Herring mural that he had painted and we threw it in the dumpster we painted over the hawne uh swimming pool that he did we threw everything away I remember throwing away one of Jean Michelle's pieces and um never thinking that you know this would be something that we would commodify later um so we didn't think like that it was a very you know we thought of everything as being ephemeral yeah I mean it and and and arguably a much better time I mean that you're a New York like I I probably Madonna was hanging out with you like early you know before she became world famous you know it was just a different time in New York I remember Madonna at a bar called Lucky Strike where she was bartending sure um it was a different time and no one had any money um at least in the downtown culture of Manhattan and uh yeah you know the the word downtown when we think of that word today and think of downtown Manhattan it meant something very different you know 40 years ago right now it's like the financial district and yeah right Transition to hotels and business success expensive loss exactly yeah yeah um I mean you you would go on to kind of get into the the world of hotels and becoming a hotelier um was it clear to you that you were not going to be able to make a living off art that you wouldn't that that wasn't going to be able to sustain a life you know I just realized that I didn't want that solitary life um of you know sort of the cliche of being an artist in your Garrett you know painting Away by yourself I just realized that I would have been um you know a fake it it just it didn't call me in a way that other things did so um you know I dabbled with art in the for a number of years and then I um decided that you know I was interested in especially at that age guy when you're young you want to meet you know the opposite sex in my case and you want to um have fun and you what better way of doing that than you know putting it all into a social atmosphere like a nightclub and bring people together and of course those in those days you know we didn't have cell phones or the internet and so that was our way of connecting and nightclubs at the time were kind of like you know Laboratories for artists to exchange ideas and um it was a very fertile landscape in New York um you know night life and its relationship to the creative world and so for me that was more fun and more interesting than making arts in a solitary way um and then the leap to hotels was really not terribly interesting it was more about stability and and the just the nature of night life in New York is that it's um ephemeral and a nightclub you're really doing well if it last two years and it's great you know that's a great run I I know very few clubs in New York City that were ever really great after the two-year Mark and that includes Studio 54 and the most famous clubs um you know they they have a short lifespan and so hotels was the opposite it meant stability I could you know make sure I had some money um because nightclubs were certainly not the way to do it um it's interesting because you sort of the way you described the world you you were in was I mean you use the word ephemeral and you talk about um you know sort of these young artists who really weren't thinking about their work as Commodities and nobody was thinking about money and I think all that's true I think that's a reflection of how it was but of course you would go on to become very successful as a businessman how do you explain that I mean do you think you just had an instinct for it or a knack for it or was it you just got lucky or what because the way you describe yourself as like this you know kind of flighty just guy hanging out with a bunch of people making art and yet you would go on to have a really successful career in in the business World well wait I I I I maybe I forgot part of that story no no we worked very hard we worked incredibly hard when we had nightclubs um and we worked very hard building hotels we had incredible work ethic um and still do um and we recognized that if we wanted to make a mark and do something really good we had to do something really different and we had to do it in a way that we felt no one else had done it before and so that was true with area which was my first real Club in New York City um and and I think as when we transition to hotels you know the way I build hotels is probably very different than most people because For Better or Worse I do most of it you know with my partners ourselves so it's got our finger prints all over it we don't usually hire outside designers we don't you know have lots of Consultants we do it all ourselves we do the restaurants ourselves we run them ourselves we design them ourselves for the most part and certainly not a good recipe um I wouldn't recommend it uh for most Hotel years but it did make the hotels feel very personal um in the end and I think that had a lot to do with the success of my hotels they didn't feel corporate so you so you basically you you have this career um building hotels where you still are in the in that in that world Venturing into filmmaking and I guess around uh 20 or so years ago you start to dabble in film and really 15 years ago in Earnest tell me how that started how did how did you start to get into making documentaries well it did start before that but I you know I one of the classes I loved in high school was a film class so we would make my brother and I super eight films and we would make you know 90 minute Super Eight films which were absurd um and you know so it started very young and then when I first moved to New York City one of my first jobs was driving around Marella malani which was a film by a director named Marco Ferrari and it had Gerard j parue in it um and I just sort of got in working on Films you know as a PA and a location scout so I had this sort of very tangential sort of experience working on films in the late 1970s and early 80s um my best friend's father uh did Saturday Night Fever um he was the line producer so when I moved to New York we were working on Saturday Night Fever we worked on hair we worked on rag time a lot of Milos Foreman films um and I hated it back then but um in the 90s I went back into film and started directing music videos for bands like 9 in Nails um and I actually really loved it and and that was because you know for the first time like it was for me in high school I could do what I wanted and and so more recently the idea of filming again came about because um hotels for me had become somewhat formulaic and uh a bit redundant and um I was never as I said my father always told me you know just don't make money which you know of course later in life I realized was bad advice because I needed money to be able to you know do do things that I wanted to do not that I wanted to buy expensive cars or clothing but I needed money to be able to actually make a difference in the world and do and do things that were creative so I had been traveling all over the world in pursuit of my turtle conservation work and I remember a meeting where I was meeting with a producer one day and I said you know I really should film some of the people I'm filming around the world um and one of those people was a a famous reptile Smuggler who is sort of known as the Pablo Escobar of reptile smuggling in Asia and you know my producer friend said well how are you going to make a documentary without getting killed um but one thing led to another with my travels around the world and I eventually uh decided to start filming with a proper crew because I'd been filming badly uh using a little Sony video camera and all the footage was pretty terrible so I eventually ramped up and that was probably about 18 years ago and I just started filming this world that I was involved in which were animal people and and what was the the intention I mean was the intention maybe I'll do something with it one day well it was very loose at first and then I thought you know maybe I'd make one film on the extinction crisis um which was really what I was covering I was filming you know the guy that owns the most rhinos in South Africa in the world I was filming you know monkeys that were being bred for medical research and Marias I was filming um in Indonesia people that were collecting butterflies for the butterfly trade and birds so I was just filming all different aspects of you know sort of this this Extinction crisis that we're in today the sixth Extinction the first man-made Extinction um and you know to make it a short story one day um a producer friend of mine that had some of the footage showed it to CNN he had just done a film with Leonardo DiCaprio and CNN had passed on that film I believe and he showed CNN some of this footage and they said oh we're interested in that footage you know who's this guy and so I the next thing I knew I was making a pilot for CNN um where I was the host um which I never thought was something I wanted to do and still isn't but um and it was a series about um you know the our relationship humans relationship with animals whether it's collecting animal for exotic pets or consuming animals or wearing animals like exotic Furs or hunting animals like big Trophy Hunters do it was a a theme a show on CNN that would be covering our relationship with the animal world we made one pilot and at the time CNN had enough I think middle-aged white men Anthony berdan was still alive at the time and uh they decided not to go forward with the show so um I was disappointed but I you know pulled myself back up and eventually uh that's what led into the making of Tiger King were the uh sort of what I was filming that I didn't shoot for CNN and um I always saved the Joe exotic story and never and that wasn't part of the CNN pilot so that became Tiger King all right so let's let's talk about that I mean you were first of all your approach initially when you were when you were gathering this footage you didn't have a story like a lot of documentary filmmakers right they'll have the story outlined and then they will go match that story with pictures right and I was in television many years ago and often times I'd say you make a TV story you have an idea and then you go match the pictures or you've got a framework right and often times you have a sense of how it's going to end but it seems like you you really were just Gathering a bunch of stuff waiting for the story to emerge and and and the story that eventually would emerge was this guy that you you you ended up filming Joe Exotic is that is that how it kind of is that how it unfolded yeah I mean yeah you're absolutely right I I would never recommend to anyone that this is a smart way to make documentaries it's a crazy way to make documentaries it's amazing but it's crazy yeah it's definitely not um yeah anyway yes I cast a very wide that guy and filmed many different subcultures of this crazy animal world and you know like I said I was filming all over the world um thinking i' sort of you know somehow put one documentary together about you know our perverse relationship with the you know the animal world um and it really started uh my focus was really the reptile world and I was was filming in South Florida reptile Smugglers reptile dealers sort of the Breaking Bad of the reptile world and somewhere along the way and I think this is chronicled in Tiger King um a guy showed up with a snow leopard in the back of his van and trying to buy some venomous s snakes at this reptile dealer place and that sort of perked my interest like how can you just buy a snow leopard in South Florida Florida and that sort of was the the the Turning Point into the big cat world and I started filming big cat people and most of them uh were not terribly interesting or you know they actually were interesting but anyway I I kind of you know as time went on it it started getting narrow into Joe Exotic and Carol Basin and the characters that are in Tiger King and yes um I I ever thought in my wildest imagination that while I was filming that something as crazy as Joe trying to kill Carol would take place contemporaneously with filming and so you know when I found out that that's what was happening it was Joe Exotic vs Carole Baskin murder plot one of the most um mindboggling things I I'll never forget it um you know we've been filming Joe for number of years in Oklahoma and his zoo and his 200 tigers um and one day and we're filming simultaneously Carol Basin in Florida and Her Big Cat Rescue and we're filming some other characters Doc anel in South Carolina another big cat person and I couldn't figure out why Joe Exotic was leaving his Zoo he had just lost the governor race in Oklahoma we were there the night that he lost he barely had any votes and the next day he did disappeared poof he left his zoo and I just thought there's something missing here why would he build this Zoo 20 years later just walk away from it and then about a month later I found out I I went to the zoo and the guy that had inherited the zoo Jeff low told me that Joe had hired Hitman to kill Carol Basin and it all suddenly it all made sense and um I was blown away and I it was like one of those amazing things that happens when you're filming a documentary and of course it's gold as much as it was horrible it was just the most incredible you know gift in a way that that would happen and um yeah and and of course the pandemic happened and who could have planned that so we had a captive audience when Tiger King dropped um and so I never thought that I would even make a penny filming all these animal people and it wasn't my goal to make money and it wasn't my goal to be you know to create a tiger King but it happened it's such a compelling story and he's such a compelling character um I I wonder how you I I watching that documentary I thought I constantly thought to myself there must have been so many moments in making and filming him where you thought this isn't going anywhere or this is too weird or I don't think I could do anything with this or I might be wasting my time and if you did have those feelings how did you justify doing this work to yourself how did you say to yourself no I got to keep going oh God you know when I did the CNN pilot I was connected with a production Challenges in documentary filmmaking company to you know that would produce that show and a budget um and they gave us something like 5 days of shooting and I said this is impossible you can't make a show you know an hourong show with five days of shooting and of course when we made that pilot I added 30 days more of shooting without the production company knowing but in the making of Tiger King we just filmed when we thought you know whenever we thought we might be missing something or possibly missing a moment um you know even the most tangental character we wanted to film so of course in the end I would say half the characters we film never made it into the show if not more um which is disappointing for the for you know of course the people you film um it's very frustrating but uh it's like I said before it's not a recipe to make money uh making Tiger King cuz I can't even tell you how many days of shooting that took and you know of course it spanned um over five years the making of Tiger King um but it's not a recipe that I would follow um I I can tell you because I know right now that the our new show that's coming out on HBO about chimpanzees um also took about four years to film and I know that we shot for over 200 days um I think it was 23 day film days to make four episodes you know 60 Minute episodes uh on this chimp uh story and that yeah you know most people can't do that yeah I mean I mean just going back to to Tiger King For a Moment before we talk about the the new documentary do you have an estimate a rough estimate of how many hours of film you you captured over those five years yeah I I don't but it's it's um it would be you know to any production company it would not make sense how much we film as I said like thousands of hours it's thousands of hours it's thousands of hours how do you process that how do you even go through that and log it and stay on top of it and remember what you have and what you want to use and I can't even imagine how you organize that in your mind I don't I forget and it's very frustrating what you realize is that you could have made so many different combinations of characters that actually would have worked and you just have to make a decision in the end but it's a really good question I mean Tiger King I think there was just a a point where you know the general public was fed up with Tiger King they they had overdosed on Tiger King um and we were asked to make a second Tiger King uh during the pandemic which we did um and it was amazing that the story just kept going um kind of mindblowing to me that it just kept going but I think there's a saturation point for the public but I I guess what I'm trying to say is we could have kept making episodes of Tiger King there was so much there was so much great material and so many Incredible characters if you don't mind me asking what is your relationship with Joe Exotic like now that's a good question um I haven't spoken to Joe since he was in prison during the trial I would speak to him uh you know before he was convicted so I haven't spoken to Joe for quite some time um but I can tell you that you know I sat in the courtroom every day while he was you know uh in federal court um you know and the government had given him a a a plea deal which had he taken it he would be out of prison today I think they offered him six years or something six or seven years but he was so bullish that he was going to win um and so delusional um so by last conversations were with Joe were just having to you know listen to him talk tell me about how he was um you know not going to get convicted so it's quite sad you know that he didn't take that deal and he's going to be in prison you know unfort Introducing Chimp Crazy Ely I you know for another however long it is I think his sentence was about 22 years so he's done what six or so years um you know he'll be 80 or whatever he'll be if he gets out um you know don't get me wrong Joe did a lot of really bad things but I don't think the sence fully fits the crime um but I haven't talked to Joe of course had Tiger King not come out Joe would have never received the attention and the interest from lawyers that would that are working for him today so it was very positive for Joe but I don't think Joe looks at it that way yeah tell me um you have a new documentary out called chimp crazy and and also a compelling main character named Tanya hadex um and this is B basically about people who uh are obsessed with and keep chimps as pets um what is it about these kinds of characters that draws you to them I mean all of the people that you had in Tiger King the people in chimp crazy um you know I don't want to be judgmental about about people in any way but they're they're they're they're quirky they're they're eccentric you know they are I mean they have you have to be even Carol Baskin who's an interesting person for sure that they're all um you know they're they're different how can I say it and they make compelling characters right for sure what is it about them that draws you to to Really study them because I guess you Obsessions and eccentricities could make an argument and I'm not making this argument but one could make the argument that well they're just easy targets because they're so weird yeah I mean that's true you could you could say they're easy targets and therefore you know I'm exploiting them um because they don't know better I really that's a real Balancing Act for me um because you know this world this animal world I should first say largely is very guarded um they don't many people in the animal world don't let people in easily um they they worry that you're the federal government wanting to take their animals away they wor worry that you're an animal rights activist they worry that you're going to steal their animals there're all kinds of worries um and so they're very guarded um but to answer your question your earlier question about what attracts me to this world you know I'm interested in the animal world but this is really something more than just the animal world because it's about finding people that you know really March to the beat of their own drama and live a life that you know uh that we in New York City or in San Francisco we not aware of of of these worlds and I've always been interested in Outsider Art but also people that do things um completely outside of the mainstream and and the sort of the world that we know and people you know having lived in New York City for over 40 years everyone always thinks that you know New York City you know you have to be in New York or you have to be in Los Angeles you have to be where the action is to make films and um I really um I think there's part of me that really subscribes to John waters's philosophy or um I don't know people that are interested in subcultures outside of the world that we all know in these cities that we inhabit and so I just love going into the most you know Suburban or housian kind of world and turning over the rocks and you often are very surprised and find such interesting things going on that you could never imagine Joe Exotic with 200 Tigers wearing a mullet you know with a holster um you know gay as can be uh I just I just think there's a lot of fertile ground between New York and the and the West Coast it's remarkable that he's a real person he he's such a character yeah yeah um well people think that it's reality TV which I I find so insulting because Balancing conservation and storytelling you know these people are real people and they're 100% a real documentary yeah um so first of all as somebody I'm just curious as somebody who who who sort of involved in conservation and who had you had a foundation I think you still do um around for tortoises how do you kind of I don't know how do you kind of process even on Tiger King you know working in and seeing these places or or in the new documentary being around people who are clearly not um conservationists and and don't have the same kind of ethos around you know the protection of animals yeah I I don't want to complate what I do with conservation with these films because they're really completely you know separate um you know my interest in you know these subcultures and people that keep these animals and it it could be chimps it could be you know Tigers it could be reptiles it could be um you know tropical fish um I'm interested in obsessions and I'm interested in just people that have obsessions um I have an obsession with Turtles um but sometimes obsessions I I think could be a really great thing because it makes you want to wake up in the morning and do the thing that you love but they can also turn and become you know quite um dark obsessions but I think there's a balance but I've always been interested in people that have these obsessions um collecting um in the case of the chimpanzee world it's mostly women that want to have children forever and and this Obsession to have a child that they can shape and that they can dress like Joan Bay Ramsey like like a little pageant doll um and it's this Obsession to have a child forever and there's women that we uh filmed in this uh chip story that raised their daughter and their chimp at the same time and breastfed both at the same time and they grew up together to you know the chimp and the and their daughter so they treated the chimp as if it was um their son yeah um and so you know that's pretty interesting to me I think that's what drew me to this chimpanzee world and this monkey mom world was that it just was so unusual um and again gu my interest in this has nothing to do with my interest in conservation it's completely separate you know the only thing that I mean obviously in the end of course we care about chimpanzees and they're the ones that truly suffer often times uh in these stories and I hope that the films that we make there is some silver lining in the end um and that they're not just uh taking you into this world that people don't know but hopefully we can make some change and so I guess I guess sort of jumping on that that that idea then my assumption would be that you're not necessarily judging whether these people are doing the right thing or the wrong thing I mean in other words words there are elements and aspects of Joe Exotic that are incredibly sympathetic they they moments they tender moments in the film where you see parts of him that are very likable even though he's an extremely flawed and narcissistic person in in other areas you know even Carol Baskin you know there are parts of her that you naturally you wouldn't like and parts of her that you do like which I I guess I should say can apply to anybody any human so I I I wonder if you also take that sort of viewpoint that you're not you yourself are kind of stepping outside of your own personal you know viewpoints and perspectives and trying to just say hey you know there's Nuance here there's a lot of gray in this story yeah I think that's well said I think that I'm not trying to be the animal police I am trying to Enlighten people and obvously document these worlds and and and in that process I had a lot of empathy for Joe in many ways and I have a lot of empathy for Tanya hadex you know I actually care very deeply about Tanya hadex and her um well-being um and I'm concerned about her life after this show comes out um because Tanya gave us everything um she um opened us let us go into her world and open it up to us in the most intimate ways um and there's so many things about Tanya that are really endearing and lovely and I just hope through the process of making this documentary series that she might begin to see what others people see which she can't see right now and I just hope there's a silver lining in this story that she might have you know maybe an epiphany maybe not where she maybe will start to recognize that monkeys chimpanzees primates in general most primates not all are highly complex social animals that need to be with other animals they're like us um and to keep a chimpanzee Sol in a solitary cage um as she did she struggles to see that that may not be good for that chimpanzee right and there's this word people use today you know anthropo anthropomorphism yes you know when you read into what your dog thinks of you or what your cat thinks of you and of course what your cat really thinks of you you know is probably he's hungry and you know let's let's face it we don't even think we don't even know what our girlfriend or boyfriend thinks of us half the time so to think that you know what the chimpanzee feels about you is obviously absurd but that's what I was dealing with with this story is is how do I you know how do I somehow maybe through the process of making this story try to get these people to start to understand maybe what they're doing isn't the best thing for that chimpanzee um we'll see what happens Eric I wonder if I mean this project right and and and sort of this world that you've kind of Maybe by mistake right kind of fell into and and and of course you found great success with Tiger King um I wonder if now in order to do this kind of work right in order to kind of achieve this level of creativity you kind of have to live this life you have to immerse yourself and I can't imagine that now probably for the Last 5 Years your most of your time and and energy and mental energy was thinking about chimpanzees and that world and before that it was Tigers right and whatever it might be in the next iteration it will be that like do you feel like in order for you to kind of achieve something very special you you kind of have to shunt everything else aside and you have to it's almost like being a method actor right like you have to dive into that world and just live in that world and be obsessed with it I I think that's true in my case I I I I should have said this from the onset but I have a wonderful team of people that I work with um really talented group of people now uh making these films um so I don't have to always be doing everything and so I am able to compartmentalize my life to still do and pursue other projects and other things simultaneously to making these films and you know listen to some degree and I say this partially joking but you know it takes one to know one I do it comes easy for me because I am an animal person and I have that Obsession in my case it's tortoises and I I'm fortunate enough to have the resources to do a lot of things that these people can't um so you know I'm very privileged and lucky in that way but I can connect with these people very quickly and um I would say you're right that you really do need to consume yourself this but in my case at this stage I can you know to some degree multitask and do other things besides only uh so I wasn't only living this chimp life entirely although it was pretty consuming over the last two years I'd say yeah so tell me a little bit about what you know I mean obviously this film we're talking now it's just out at this moment but some somebody may watch this conversation in a year or two or five what what other I mean do you want to keep telling stories about these kinds of people earlier you mentioned like people who are obsessive in in other ways collectors or I think of by the way like d you remember David isay used to make these documentaries on the radio in the 90s about obsessive people right you know he made one about about the bowy a bowy hotel a flop house on the bowy on the sunshine Hotel oh sure sure of course right he now does um this other project that is escaping my mind right now but very you know this project about talking to each other um do you who do you want to tell stories about what kind I mean is it obsessives is it is it animals is it what do you think you want to keep keep pursuing you know it's funny you ask that question because I actually was working on a different documentary that was meant to come out before this chimpanzee one and for whatever reason the chimpanzee story is coming out first but I didn't want to come out with something that was so similar in many ways to Tiger King because obviously or maybe not so obvious I don't want to you know just make the same thing over and over again um just exchanging you know chimps with tigers I I think this story I should ask have you seen this the the film I I've seen parts of it so far yeah okay yeah so I hope this chimpanzee episodic series is different enough from Tiger King um but obviously there's a lot of parallels so to answer your question no I I I'd like to do um different projects they don't have to involve animals obviously I'm drawn to Eccentric topics eccentric people um but currently I'm working on a number of different projects and some of them have nothing to do with the animal world at all um of course one day I'd love to do a beautiful film on Turtles um and and just a beautiful film on Turtles and showing people the diversity and the the The Wonder of turtles turtles um there's only 450 species of turtles and sea turtles and tortoises on the planet and they're the most endangered group of animals along with primates um and so in terms of Extinction risk Turtles are very high up there with over half of all turtles facing extinction and I'd love to do something uh that really is a beautiful film about turtles and their uh biology and everything about them so um I I'd like to do different things but not only uh focused on the animal world I love Errol Morris films I love uh you know I love the Grizzly Man which is uh obviously an animal film um movie yeah I love Herzog I I I have a lot of uh you know there's a lot of filmmakers that I think are incredible and I you know I look up to thinking about about this idea of creativity and and you know earlier we we talked about you know your your your early life as an artist and and and quite an eccentric artist to say the least right I mean I mean pinning flies on the wall and geometric patterns is certainly you know an unusual um right an unusual way to to play around with mediums but I wonder do you um for you is this is this one of many things that you that you need to do like you you you almost have to do to keep your creativity fired up and and alive uh you know I think maybe so maybe so um I feel very fortunate um that you know all of these things that I did culminated uh with Tiger King um because that wasn't you know what I where I thought I would land um as I said before I thought I would be making a film about the extinction crisis and it deviated so much you know as long as things come my way that are really interesting I think I will pursue them um and I think it's very important you know to not take on too much so I I do think back to what you said before about submersing myself in the chimp world I do think you really do have to submerse yourself and and really focus um and and as you become more successful the tendency is that people throw more projects your way and it becomes hard to say no um but I think saying no is really important because you can only do so many things well at the same time it's true true it's true um Eric thanks so much thank you guy thank you very much for having me hey thanks for watching my conversation with Eric good his new four-part series chimp crazy is now available on HBO max if you want to see more videos like this one please subscribe to this channel WE Post new conversations every week and of course we are an audio podcast as well if you want to listen to this show search for the great creators at Apple podcast Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts I'm guy RZ and this has been the great creators from builted Productions I'll see you back here next week with a brand new episode take care