In the third episode of the HBO documentary series Chimpanzee crazyDirector Eric Goode is having a crisis of conscience. He knows that his main subject, Tonia Haddix, kidnapped a chimpanzee named Tonka and lied about it, secretly hiding the animal in her basement for a year and pretending the monkey died, a claim she repeated during a court hearing amid ragged sobs. Now Goode has learned that Haddix is so stressed about the situation that she plans to euthanize Tonka. He wonders if he needs to intervene.
“Should we extradite them?” Goode, who previously led the pandemic phenomenon Tiger Kingasks Peter Laufer, a reporter and documentary filmmaker who has also covered exotic animal cases. “Or do we continue to follow the story?”
“As journalists, we don’t want to do anything that is morally and ethically wrong,” Laufer replies. “You have to hope that the end result is more positive than negative. Is there a greater good?”
Goode eventually reports Haddix to PETA and shares a voicemail in which she describes her plan to euthanize Tonka. (She later says she never intended to kill the animal.) As in the Chimpanzee crazy In the finale, Tonka is rescued by authorities and taken to the PETA-run animal sanctuary in Florida, where he now lives among his fellow chimpanzees. Haddix faces possible criminal charges and must repay PETA $225,000 in legal fees.
The result suggests Chimpanzee crazy has achieved a higher goal: It has moved Tonka into a more suitable living environment, held Haddix accountable for her actions, and demonstrated the dangers of attempting to domesticate animals not intended to be roommates for humans. But it can only accomplish these things by resorting to means that are, to use Laufer’s words, morally and ethically wrong. In order to gain access to Haddix in the first place, Goode and his team completely misrepresent themselves to her. Goode, a notorious figure in the exotic animal world due to the success of Tiger Kingknows Haddix and other key sources wouldn’t talk to him if they learned his identity, so he hires a stand-in director: Dwayne Cunningham, a former circus clown convicted of illegally smuggling exotic lizards into the United States. Cunningham tells Haddix he’s the filmmaker in charge, never explains Goode’s involvement, and builds trust with the Missouri nurse by posing as an ally to her cause.
Not only is this a clear violation of journalistic ethics, but it is also a deception that reeks of hypocrisy. Chimpanzee crazythough mostly matter-of-fact in its approach, spends a lot of time highlighting Haddix’s many lies and the way her love for Tonka clouds her ability to understand that keeping him in a basement isn’t the best thing for him. In contrast, Goode initially presents his decision to hire a shadow director as a semi-routine documentary procedure and the only option he has given his reputation. The series never sufficiently questions how Goode’s determination to get what he wants on film matches the means Haddix goes to in order to keep Tonka in her possession. Chimpanzee crazy is really a portrait of individuals—Haddix and the other chimpanzee owners in the series, as well as the filmmaker who captures their stories—who refuse to acknowledge that they are putting their own desires above what is right.
As Lane Brown notes in his recent profile of Goode, the former New Yorker made a career out of developing flashy nightclubs and restaurants in Manhattan before getting into filmmaking. Then, as now, he displays an instinct for the dramatic that can benefit his projects for both good and bad. In Tiger King and, to a lesser extent, Chimpanzee crazyGoode can’t resist the opportunity to photograph his subjects in ways that make them look particularly freaky. At one point, cameras follow Haddix as she gets a spa treatment, frequently focusing on her plumped-up lips to make them look even plumper. After Tonka is taken away from Haddix, she is asked if anything can take the chimp’s place in her life. Goode immediately cuts to a scene of her eating doughnuts and drinking cans of Coke. The finale devotes an unnecessary amount of time to footage of Haddix crying in her car while listening to a Jelly Roll song, practically daring the audience to laugh at her pain.
Back in 2022, in the middle of Chimpanzee crazy Production, reporter Cheyenne Roundtree published a Rolling Stone Article in which she revealed to Haddix that Goode is actually directing the documentary series. Haddix replies that she would never have agreed to be filmed if she had known who was behind the camera. In Chimpanzee crazy In the finale, Cunningham confesses to Haddix that the documentary crew ratted her out to PETA and apologizes to her. He seems to feel remorse, but only to a certain extent. “Tonia always knew we were making a documentary, and I always told her, ‘Don’t say anything you don’t want the whole world to know,'” he says in the documentary.
After the article comes out, Cunningham tells Haddix that Goode is waiting nearby and would like to speak to her on camera. It feels like Haddix was blindsided with information she should have learned sooner.
“I’m the bad guy here,” Goode admits to the camera as he waits to see if she’ll talk to him, which seems necessary for the project now that he’s outed. “But we like to think of ourselves differently, don’t we?”
“Why do you think we do this?” asks a voice behind the camera.
“We like to believe in our own truth,” he says. Before he can think more deeply about what he means by that, Chimpanzee crazy Cut to the next scene, where Goode sits down with Haddix and tells her, among other things, how much he empathizes with her connection to Tonka. But that comment—”We like to believe our own truth”—hangs in the air, demanding further elaboration.
When Goode says he’s the bad guy, he’s referring to his role in secretly betraying Haddix. During his conversation with her, he doesn’t mention the lie that got her into his docuseries in the first place, nor does he apologize for it. He does, however, ask his source why she’s talking to him now. She says she hopes the documentary will convince PETA to let her visit Tonka. Haddix still thinks Goode is on her side.
Throughout the documentary, one gets the feeling that behind the scenes things are happening between Cunningham, Goode and other senior production members that they are keeping from the viewers and Haddix. In this Rolling Stone In this article, for example, an unnamed source says that crew members were “troubled” by Tonka’s care, but also “uncomfortable” with the ethical question of whether Haddix could be in the dark about who was behind the documentary.” The documentary does not adequately address these issues, nor Goode’s shenanigans.
In the final episode, before speaking to Haddix, Goode interviews Roundtree about her article. She talks about how she, like Goode, empathizes with Haddix’s love for Tonka. Then Roundtree describes seeing photos of Haddix standing in the small basement enclosure where Tonka was kept alone for so many months. “I wonder: Doesn’t she see what other people see?” asks Roundtree.
It is Goode’s job as a filmmaker to show viewers the full picture of Haddix and the way in which her relationship with Tonka functions primarily as selfishness in selfless disguise. His images are powerful; perhaps the saddest scene in Chimpanzee crazy is of Tonka, whose eyes express deep loneliness as he lies in his cage staring at cellphone photos of other chimps while Haddix describes how happy he is. While Goode’s treatment of Haddix is not as obviously harmful as her treatment of Tonka, he does not seem to consider that he has rationalized his behavior in a way that is not so different. Nor does he seem to see what other people see. As a documentary filmmaker, his job is to convince viewers that his truth The Truth and the only one they should accept. That’s hard when you tell your audience right from the start that you’re a liar.
