Tonia Haddix’s love of chimpanzees is, ahem, bananas.
“Monkey love is totally different than the way that you have love for your child,” she says, and that’s because “when you adopt a monkey, the bond is much deeper” than one with a biological child. “I love these chimps more than anything in the world, and I mean more than anything—more than my kids, more than anything,” she states at a later point. “It’s the best thing since peanut butter,” she admits. “It’s like your love for God.”
This, it’s clear, is not just run-of-the-mill affection, and HBO’s four-part docuseries Chimp Crazy, which premieres Sunday, Aug. 18, is anything but an ordinary non-fiction affair. Directed by Tiger King’s Eric Goode, this exposé about another corner of the exotic animal trade is a startling portrait of need, delusion, and the cruelty it begets, all of it perpetrated in the name of compassion and adoration.
It may not be quite as bonkers as Goode’s prior phenomenon, yet it’s an intensely compulsive and layered saga of outrageous personalities, daring crimes, absurd cons, reckless behavior, death and dismemberment, and—perhaps most intriguing of all—media ethics.
Thanks to the notoriety he earned in the exotic-animal arena with Tiger King, Goode knew that he couldn’t pursue a documentary about domestic chimpanzee ownership, breeding, and commerce on his own. Thus, he hires longtime animal lover Dwayne Cunningham—who twice spent time behind bars for working in this industry, following a career as a Barnum & Bailey-trained clown—to serve as his proxy director.
This subterfuge works like a charm, granting Goode access to the Missouri Primate Foundation established by Connie Casey, a legendary owner and seller of chimps, who despite allowing the documentary crew inside opts to not be on camera. This isn’t the case, however, with her volunteer Tonia, who’s so obsessed with chimps that she lives on the property, spending even more time with them than she does on tanning-salon visits and lip-filler injections, which—along with her big blonde hair and enhanced bust—explain why she calls herself “The Dolly Parton of the chimps.”
Tonka and Tonia Haddix in Chimp Crazy.
HBO“Chimps are my whole thing,” Tonia cheerfully announces, partly because “you can shape them into you.” More specifically, she likes that they’re akin to children, and she refers to them as her “kids” on multiple occasions throughout the series.
This is true of all the chimp owners featured in Chimp Crazy, who are consumed by the same sort of intense love as Tonia, as well as a similar type of fantasy. Through contemporary footage, home movies, archival photos, and news broadcasts, Goode presents countless instances of Tonia, Connie, lifelong chimp owner Pam Rosaire, and others cohabitating with chimps as if they were adorable, immature humans.
Bathing, eating, sleeping, playing, and watching movies (including 2001: A Space Odyssey) together, these adults treat their primate pals as their offspring. While their profound regard for their animals is genuine, it’s also exceedingly over-the-line, to the point that it resonates as a symptom of their desperate desire for perpetual parenthood with eternally adolescent children.
Individuals such as Connie and Tonia additionally see chimps as a veritable gold mine. The Missouri Primate Foundation began as Chimparty, a company that rented out primates for birthday gatherings as well as to Hollywood productions, and their star attraction Tonka was featured in numerous movies, including George of the Jungle, Babe: Pig in the City, and Buddy, where he developed a close bond with actor Alan Cumming, who appears in Chimp Crazy due to his efforts alongside PETA to rescue the chimp from his harmful circumstances.
Cumming speaks adoringly about Tonka in new interviews, and his feelings are as sincere as those expressed by Tonia. The difference, however, is that Cumming recognizes that, no matter his connection with Tonka, the animal’s welfare comes before his own interests.
Chimp Crazy.
HBOWhile it’s not illegal to privately own a chimp in the United States, that doesn’t mean it’s healthy, safe, or humane, and courtesy of a whistleblower, Tonia and Connie soon attract the attention of PETA, whose lawyer Jared Goodman becomes the bane of Tonia’s existence. Through legal motions, PETA successfully argues that the Missouri Primate Foundation is an unsuitable home for its seven chimps, all of whom are ordered by the court to be relocated to a sanctuary.
Yet when authorities arrive to transport the animals, they discover that Tonka is missing. Tonia’s explanation is that Tonka died following a long illness, and that she has his cremated remains to prove it. Jared and his PETA colleagues don’t believe it, thus initiating a search and further litigation aimed at getting to the bottom of this mystery.
There are surprises galore in Chimp Crazy, not simply regarding Tonka but also about Tonia’s past, the lengths to which she’ll go to get what she wants (and protect what she has), and the tangled relationships that define this out-there milieu. For context about the dangerousness of private chimp ownership, Goode revisits two related tales—about Sandra Herold in Stamford, Connecticut, and Tamara Brogoitti in Pendleton, Oregon—in which unspeakable tragedy befell those who thought they could treat chimps as members of their family.
Those horror stories cast the proceedings in a graver light, and are catalysts for the series’ finale, when Tonia’s actions threaten to put herself, her primate charges, and anyone in her orbit in potential peril.
In its home stretch, Chimp Crazy becomes about itself, insofar as Goode and Cunningham are forced to grapple with the fact that if they don’t interject themselves into this saga, lives may be lost. The question of whether a documentarian should remain detached from that which they’re covering is an age-old question that receives no definitive answer here, but the filmmakers’ decision does, for better and worse, impact Tonia and Tonka’s fate.
Ultimately, though, the real jeopardy Tonia faces is of her own making, and the state in which Goode finds her during their last interview is stark proof of the ugliness, idiocy, and brutality of the exotic-animal industry—just as her refusal to see it as such, and her continuing dream of living among her adopted primate progeny, speaks to the delusion which drives it.
