The Official Chimp Crazy Podcast with Tooth & Claw | Episode 1 | HBO

♪ (HBO INTRO PLAYS) ♪ ♪ (PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYS) ♪ WES LARSON: I'm Wes Larson, one of the hosts of Tooth & Claw podcast, and this is The Official Chimp Crazy Podcast, produced in partnership with HBO. Chimp Crazy is a four-part docuseries that tells the stories of chimpanzees in captivity in the United States and the people who will go to any length to keep them. The first episode is available now on HBO and Max. This week, we're talking about the first installment of Chimp Crazy. I'll have a conversation with the filmmakers, Eric Goode and Jeremy McBride, about how they became interested in this world of private primate ownership and how they got started on this series. If you're looking for a more in-depth exploration of the series, with recaps, analysis, and exactly happened in each episode, check out The Official Chimp Crazy Podcast on Tooth & Claw, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so now we're going to talk more about the first episode with the director, Eric Goode... ERIC GOODE: Hello. WES: ...and the executive producer, Jeremy McBride. -JEREMY MCBRIDE: Hi, Wes. -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 is this just something that you naturally stumbled on? ERIC: 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 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. WES: Jeremy, how are you the... kind of the genesis to him breaking into the chimpanzee world? JEREMY: 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 has historically infantized 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. WES: Yeah. Mission accomplished. JEREMY: Yeah. So we kind of went around a lot about it and just started to kind of canvas the US without really understanding the issues. And so I think with the backstory with Peter Laufer, which we see in episode one, if you really want to understand chimps in America, you have to know and understand Connie Casey. ERIC: 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 'cause we could share stories, 'cause 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 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 of these animals in her bedroom, but a cage. JEREMY: Also the Plexi-- the glass. ERIC: 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 Plexi 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. -WES: Wow. -ERIC: 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 100 tigers than one chimpanzee because chimpanzees are so intelligent, so dangerous." You can't use combination locks. You have to use a key lock 'cause they'll sit there all day, and figure out the combination, and escape. You know, 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. JEREMY: Yeah. You know, just kind of following that now, that background, obviously our interest was like, "We gotta 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, Tonia Haddix, 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 Tonia 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. WES: Yeah, that was my next question for you guys. JEREMY: 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 found Tonia. WES: 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. ERIC: 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 because 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 in 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'd 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 thought, "God, Dwayne has the right credentials to get into this world." Not to mention he'd been a circus clown for Ringling Brothers and Barnum & 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 'cause I can no longer be a clown at Barnum & Bailey, so I can empathize with you." And so he connected on the animal rights front. WES: 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 manage to be a director? ERIC: Well, so 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 filming, and we could talk to him while he was filming. JEREMY: But also, Eric, you were there a lot of the time, too. ERIC: Right. 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, Tonia Haddix, and he befriended Tonia to the point where they became actually very good friends through the course of making this documentary. WES: 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 in 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 Tonia 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 Tonia Haddix, when you started to see her in these pieces that you were getting back from your film team? JEREMY: 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 learned in the end of the show, a chimpanzee goes missing. And obviously, the suspicion is it's Tonia. It's a funny thing. Everyone asks, "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 Tonia really became a focal point for us is around the circumstances surrounding Tonka, the missing chimpanzee. ERIC: 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 Tonia Haddix, we didn't know what to make of her at first. But as we dug deeper and as-- obviously as things developed, that chimp going missing, the story got more and more interesting and more 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. WES: Well, I'm really interested to see a montage of all these people that didn't make the final cut. JEREMY: But it makes a good point, though. You know, 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 Rosaire, this wonderful woman who's 77 years old, who's spent her entire life training chimpanzees, being around chimpanzees. That's her life. And there's no vacation. There's-- 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 chimp in a cage. And yes, that's not great. Right? 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. WES: 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. ERIC: 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. WES: Yeah, I know we're going to get into some of those stories that serve as warnings for chimp ownerships further-- 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 a 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, or anyone? JEREMY: Obviously, I'm sort of-- Eric's a little bit more... Eric 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 Rosaire, 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 a really interesting setup. It 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 Chance, the chimpanzee that was really in love with Space Odyssey and also these other films that we had him watch. WES: A Kubrick fan. JEREMY: Big Kubrick fan, a big Leo fan. He 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 should we do?" Like, 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 was 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. WES: I think that's interesting 'cause you see even clips of her as she's doing her performances with her 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 is 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 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. ERIC: Yeah, they absolutely have favorite TV shows they like to watch over and over. There was a chimp that we filmed that only watched Avatar over and over and over. But yes, they're like us. WES: 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. And 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. JEREMY: Yeah, it's sort of like a shark attack. I know you did the Shark Week stuff. It's like the same tension exists when you're swimming in water, and the shark's there, and you know at any given time something could happen. I mean, that's really-- that's by, certainly by choice. ERIC: 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 gotta 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. WES: Yeah, I think that's a great point. And you know, 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 a 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. ERIC: 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 gotta throw you some, maybe some fun candy every once in a while, and you'll be happy." But it's like putting a person in a cage. WES: Well, give me episodes two through four, and I'll be happy for a few hours at least. (ALL CHUCKLING) 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 note 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, from a-- 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. ERIC: 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 Galápagos Islands. So I'm not 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-- 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. JEREMY: The Thing I just say is, for better or worse, they were the entry point to the story. It was a lawsuit involving PETA. And that tension was really interesting when you think about both of these subjects' motivations. You have this-- And on the polar end of the spectrum, like, an extreme side of the spectrum of people between Jared and Tonia in this kind of melodramatic way. It became a really interesting story and conflict. And showing that, I think, is really, really a beautiful thing. ERIC: 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 am what we call someone who's very much for animal welfare, which is very different than someone who's an animal rights activist, which is the PETA 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. You know, 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 Necker 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. -The problem with-- -WES: And be a billionaire. ERIC: 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. WES: One other-- I guess one other question I have for both of you then is, I think we've talked a lot about the pull 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, like, "I own this powerful animal. I own this chimpanzee. I own this crazy exotic animal." And I am 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. ERIC: 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. JEREMY: 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, Tonia would always tell me she was so mesmerized by the relationship that Tarzan had with his chimp. 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. Look at Disney. You know, Disney's taught us that for a long time. And you can't-- It's hard to-- It's 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 interests. That somehow it was fine 50 years ago to have this and celebrate it, but now we can't. So it's very complicated. WES: 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 your minds have been so connected to it. 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. -ERIC: Thank you, Wes. -JEREMY: Thanks Wes. -WES: Yep. -♪ (PENSIVE MUSIC RESUMES) ♪ That's it for this episode. A big thank you to our guests, Eric Goode and Jeremy McBride. The first episode of the HBO documentary Chimp Crazy is available to stream now on Max. Tooth & 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 Nguyen, Michael Gluckstadt, and Erin Kelly at HBO. ♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪