As a teenager, I volunteered at a local dog shelter that specialized in taking care of larger dogs. Huskies, German shepherds, pitbull mixes—if it was the kind of dog that could knock you over, there was probably one in the kennels. Dogs from puppy mills and hoarding cases showed up frequently, but a startling amount of shelter dogs had been surrendered by their owners. People liked these big, beautiful dogs in theory. Once those pups were full grown, though, some pet owners decided they were too much to take care of or realized they were never equipped to handle the dog in the first place. Little attention was paid to the dog in all of this, the one impacted the most as they were shuffled through homes or left in less than ideal living situations.
Dog rescue is, of course, very different from chimpanzee captivity. But HBO’s new docuseries Chimp Crazy centers on that same tension of human wants versus animal needs, often depicting the subject with heart-wrenching clarity. It’s upgraded work from director Eric Goode, whose previous series Tiger King took over early pandemic pop culture with its kooky characters and complicated conspiracies. There is a Joe Exotic-esque figure at the heart of Chimp Crazy, but thankfully Goode is more concerned with the animals this time.
Chimp Crazy follows the scandal surrounding Tonia Haddix and her work at the Missouri Primate Foundation. She was declared unfit to care for the seven chimpanzees on the property following a lengthy investigation and legal challenge from PETA, but when the authorities came to transport the chimps to a sanctuary, only six were present. The seventh chimp, former Hollywood star Tonka, was gone. Tonia claims he passed due heart failure; PETA representatives are convinced he’s alive and that Tonia is hiding him. The series is essentially about this battle of wits and subterfuge, but it rounds the proceedings out with important context as well as a moral conundrum faced by the documentary team.
That conundrum adds an interesting layer to the series, which makes a smart move to address the elephant—or rather, the tiger—in the room. Chimp Crazy began filming with Tonia in the summer of 2021, after Tiger King blew up and made any documentary crew, especially one led by Eric Goode, persona non grata in the exotic animal community. So, Goode hires a “proxy director” named Wayne Cunningham, a former circus performer who’s gotten into legal trouble over his animal dealings in the past. Wayne knows the exotic animal world, and he’s the perfect person for Tonia and her colleagues to trust. But that trust is built on a lie, and the longer the series goes on the more Wayne has to grapple with that. As Tonia admits increasingly incriminating information this makes for a fascinating commentary on the documentary genre itself.
The other thread running through the show tells the unfortunate stories of chimp owners. There’s the infamous Travis incident in Connecticut, where Charla Nash was brutally mauled by her friend Sandy Herold’s pet chimp. Goode weaves talking heads with images from the scene, accompanied with the harrowing audio of Sandy’s 911 call. Then there’s Buck in Oregon, whose owner Tamara Brogoitti called in the police to kill him after he attacked her daughter. More recent and far less documented, this story has a few holes and could have used more time, especially since members of Tamara’s community all but accuse her of setting up a gruesome situation that would justify Buck’s swift and brutal death.
These stories of violence serve as a way to ground Tonia and her delusion. She’s obsessed with her chimp charges, extolling how “you can shape them into being you.” Tonia delivers plenty of chilling lines that speak to her imbalanced relationship with the animals, especially Tonka. She says she loves how chimps “don’t grow up and get a mind of their own,” and she frequently refers to the apes as her “kids.” It doesn’t take a degree in psychology to see how much this lady projects.
And though Chimp Crazy spends (too much) time on Tonia getting her lips plumped or her lashes done, it’s not these moments that reveal how far removed from reality she is. It’s the instances when she swears she’s the best caretaker for these animals as she feeds them chicken nuggets and chocolate milk from McDonald’s, or when she insists that Tonka is happy because he has his own iPad and email account. One genuinely tragic beat sees Tonia showing Tonka Instagram videos of chimps off her phone through the plastic wall of his enclosure; she says he loves it while the animal just stares blankly at the screen in front of him.
Chimp Crazy is far from perfect, running out of steam in its fourth and final episode and suffering a bit from the Tiger King syndrome of focusing too much on peripheral figures. Actor Alan Cumming is heavily featured, thanks to his history working with both Tonka and PETA. He’s a welcome middleman, representing how far we’ve come in understanding animal rights, though his presence can feel superfluous. The series also has a major missing piece in Connie Casey, who ran the Missouri Primate Foundation after spending decades breeding and selling chimps, and who refused to speak with anyone. It’s frustrating that she’s able to escape answering for any of the suffering—both human and animal—she caused.
On the whole, though, Chimp Crazy exposes this shocking, frequently disturbing world of chimp ownership very effectively. While chimpanzees are the series’ focus, it also forces the viewer to confront their own relationship with animals. How much of that relationship is you projecting onto that creature, and how much are you actually doing for it?
