{"id":633028,"date":"2024-09-02T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-02T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/eric-goode-talks-tonia-and-tonka\/"},"modified":"2024-09-02T06:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-09-02T03:00:00","slug":"eric-goode-talks-tonia-and-tonka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/eric-goode-talks-tonia-and-tonka\/","title":{"rendered":"#Eric Goode Talks Tonia and Tonka"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n [This story contains spoilers from the third episode of Chimp Crazy<\/em>, \u201cHead Shot.\u201d]<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n Tiger King<\/em> documentarian Eric Goode\u2019s intense, sordid follow-up Chimp Crazy<\/em> has been unfolding on HBO over the past couple of weeks. It centers on the fraught dynamic between exotic animal broker Tonia Haddix, the retired Hollywood chimp Tonka she claims to love more than her own children, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the activist group which has pursued a lengthy legal effort to have the primate sent to an app<\/a>roved sanctuary.<\/p>\n

\n In the penultimate episode, which aired Sept. 1, viewers learned that Haddix, who\u2019d previously claimed Tonka had died (she\u2019d provided evidence that he\u2019d been cremated), was keeping her \u201chumanzee\u201d hidden in her Missouri basement. \u201cDo we turn her in?\u201d Goode wonders, on camera, \u201cor do we continue following the story?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n Haddix appears increasingly anxious as the chimp-hunt heats up. Actor Alan Cumming, an animal rights activist who starred alongside Tonka in the 1997 family comedy Buddy<\/em>, draws<\/a> international attention for matching PETA\u2019s own $10,000 reward for information leading to Tonka\u2019s whereabouts. \u201cThey would literally send a hitman after me, I swear to God by that, if they thought they could,\u201d she says, adding: \u201cThey\u2019re never going to leave me alone. I\u2019m screwed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n Near the episode\u2019s end, she\u2019s told a key member of the filmmaking team that Tonka is in congestive heart failure and that a vet has scheduled an imminent appointment to euthanize him. Soon, Goode is seen with PETA\u2019s lawyer, revealing her admission.<\/p>\n

\n The Hollywood Reporter<\/em> spoke to Goode \u2014\u00a0who aside from his Emmy-nominated filmmaking efforts is known for being the founder of the Turtle Conservancy<\/a> \u2014 about the Gordian knot of complexity and complicity he\u2019s found himself in with this new project, which is poised to become HBO\u2019s most-watched documentary series<\/a> in years.<\/p>\n

\n ***<\/p>\n

\n How did Chimp Crazy<\/em> happen?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n While I was filming what became Tiger King<\/em>, I came to learn about this subculture of women who keep primates. They call themselves \u201cmonkey moms.\u201d I know many of these niche groups \u2014 the tropical fish people, the reptile people, the bird people. But the monkey mom world was particularly odd and curious. For them, it\u2019s like having kids. So, I started digging in. Through them, eventually, we eventually got to Tonia. But that took two years.<\/p>\n

\n What did you bring from doing Tiger King<\/em> to this?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n Just that you don\u2019t know what you\u2019re going to get until you\u2019re there. If there\u2019s a story at all. You go in hoping.<\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s a different world this time than Tiger King<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n The tiger people, it\u2019s macho. \u201cI\u2019ve got a tiger, I\u2019ve got a Lamborghini.\u201d It\u2019s this accessory. With these women, it\u2019s much more of an intimate bonding relationship with these monkeys. They think they can be surrogate children, and then as time goes on, they have to think about castration and shock collars once they go through puberty \u2014 which is much younger than humans. With chimps, it\u2019s about five or six years of age that they\u2019re no longer manageable.<\/p>\n

\n Tonia repeatedly states that Tonka is more important to her than her husband and her children. What did you make of that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n This was not the first time I\u2019d heard that from these monkey moms. Sometimes it\u2019s said in a more joking way. Tonia\u2019s been through a number of relationships. I think her first husband died of some drug-related death. She recognized that she could trust these chimpanzees more than any human that she knew. She had more control of their destiny.<\/p>\n

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Director Eric Goode, Chimp Crazy.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Max<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n Chimp Crazy<\/em> is full of characters \u2014 including the \u201cproxy director\u201d you hired, Dwayne Cunningham, who\u2019s identified as having worked as a circus clown.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n I had been working with Dwayne on my project in the world of the reptile trade. He\u2019d been a comedia<\/a>n on large cruise ships. He smuggled rock iguanas from the [Caribbean] islands and did prison time for that.<\/p>\n

\n Dwayne was never meant to be the \u201cproxy director.\u201d But he\u2019s the one who met Tonia. Then we started following her.<\/p>\n

\n Tonia really trusted you \u2014 or at least Dwayne. You filmed her at a lip-injection appointment and at the tanning salon. How\u2019d you get that intimate access?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n She\u2019s just open<\/em>! (Laughs<\/em>) She was very familiar and intimate, and just let us into her world. I didn\u2019t have any je ne sais quoi<\/em>. That\u2019s just Tonia.<\/p>\n

\n Did Tonia\u2019s trust make it harder to reveal that you and Dwayne had betrayed her?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n Oh, yeah. Dwayne had gotten very close to Tonia. Dwayne was not telling me everything. So, I had to sit Dwayne down. He\u2019d gone rogue. That was really difficult. He was confiding and telling things to Tonia that weren\u2019t making it to me. I think Tonia is lonely at times and really needed a friend, and Dwayne was her friend. And Dwayne would say, \u201cTonia, don\u2019t say anything to the filmmakers that you don\u2019t want the whole world to know.\u201d He was very protective. So, Dwayne knew things before I knew them.<\/p>\n

\n It was frustrating. I sat down with Dwayne. We filmed it, but it didn\u2019t end up in the show. Part of me wanted to include that conflict, that struggle with Dwayne. I didn\u2019t know Dwayne well. Dwayne is someone who does believe people should keep animals. He wasn\u2019t so clear on where Tonka should be. He witnessed this endless doting and love with Tonka. So, he wasn\u2019t so convinced that Tonka should leave.<\/p>\n

\n PETA has a starring role here as Tonia\u2019s antagonist, fighting her over her monkeys and the whereabouts of Tonka.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n I\u2019m not an animal rights activist. If anything, I\u2019m a conservation biologist. I care about keeping species going. PETA, with my own work with tortoises, I struggle with their hard-nose point of view on eradicating rats in the Galapagos. But I\u2019m aligned with PETA here.<\/p>\n

\n How long did you keep filming between learning of Tonka\u2019s existence in Tonia\u2019s Lake of the Ozarks house and informing PETA about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n I want to say it was a matter of months. The first thing I did was call up a few primatologists. I asked them about whether one can tell if a chimp is really depressed, which is what Tonia had been saying.<\/p>\n

\n The thing is, I thought this woman was going to lead us to other people who were keeping apes and gibbons. That this is where we were headed. But she was caught up in this lawsuit with PETA.<\/p>\n

\n So, when she eventually said she was going to put Tonka down, and said she had a vet appointment coming up to do it, we notified PETA.<\/p>\n

\n You\u2019ve done tigers. You\u2019ve done primates. What\u2019s next?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n When I first started filming things, it was about the reptile trade. The volume and scale of it is just vast, and there\u2019s many similarities to cartels in how it works. I\u2019ve been working on a project about that, and I want to finish it.<\/p>\n

\n But there\u2019s so much else out there. I\u2019m always interested in telling stories about species we don\u2019t cover \u2013 invertebrates! The butterfly and insect trade. Or the dynamiting of coral reefs to collect saltwater tropical fish.<\/p>\n

\n Chimp Crazy releases its finale Sunday, Sept. 9, at 10 p.m. on Max.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This story contains spoilers from the third episode of Chimp Crazy, \u201cHead Shot.\u201d] Tiger King documentarian Eric Goode\u2019s intense, sordid follow-up Chimp Crazy has been unfolding on HBO over the past couple of weeks. It centers on the fraught dynamic between exotic animal broker Tonia Haddix, the retired Hollywood chimp Tonka she claims to love…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":633029,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/tonka-tonia-haddix.jpeg?w=1440&h=810&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[151579,151580,1524,5045],"class_list":["post-633028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-chimp-crazy","tag-eric-goode","tag-hbo","tag-tiger-king"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}