Eric Goode looks at the bond, the love really, that exists between humans and animals, particularly monkeys, in his 4-part HBO documentary series “Chimp Crazy” premiering Sunday night.
Like his “Tiger King,” a wildly successful look at the unregulated buying and selling of big cats in America, Goode’s “Chimp Crazy” boasts colorful characters, amazing if miserable chimps and, eventually, a collision with cops, courts and a chimp-napping.
It’s all happened in the last 24 months and the saga continues.
“What’s incredible about making this documentary series is none of us knew what we were getting into,” marveled executive producer Jeremy McBride in a post-screening discussion last week.
“We just thought we were going to film some women and some chimpanzees. None of us signed up for what happened in this story.”
The women are Connie Casey, who for decades sold and bred chimps in her now-shuttered Missouri Primate Foundation, and Tonia Haddix who began as a volunteer at the MPF and ended up the center of the series.
“Connie is interesting for us,” McBride said, “because we had wanted to follow her for a while. She has this incredible need and love for chimpanzees and we wanted to understand Ground Zero where a lot of Capuchin monkeys came from. Connie was this place.
“Only to find Tonia Haddix who was a complete surprise to us. She was this person we didn’t know existed!”
Haddix, a former nurse with grown children, calls herself the “Dolly Parton of chimps.” Her passion for 32-year-old Tonka, who’d starred in Hollywood movies as a youth, leads to confrontations with an animal rights group and the law.
“Tonka means everything to her,” said Goode who estimates, “There are only 100 to 150 chimps in private homes in the US.”
Despite the court order, Tonka goes missing. Tonia, Goode revealed earlier this week, “is back in Missouri and sent me a photo just a few hours ago, lying on her couch with a monkey.
“This is a perpetual story of taking monkeys away from their mothers at a very young age and sort of pimping them out.
“I’m not Animal Police but monkeys in particular are primates who are complex social animals. They need what we need. So keeping Tonka in solitary confinement in her basement – whoops!”
Goode continued as if he had not just misspoke, “Part of me feels Tonia doesn’t realize what that chimp can do. Chimps are incredibly dangerous.
“When I was making ‘Tiger King,’ I heard people say they’d rather have a 100 tigers than one chimp. Because they are so clever! They can figure out combination locks. You can’t lock them up in a normal way. A chimp one day can turn.”
“Chimp Crazy” airs tonight at 10 on HBO/MAX