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American Freak Show
Chimp Crazy and Tiger King director Eric Goode doesn’t seem to care that his nonfiction work doubles as exploitation. Should we?
HBO’s Chimp Crazy, which serves as the doc maker Eric Goode’s follow-up to Tiger King, spends sizable chunks of its four episodes considering the strangeness of Tonia Haddix, the exotic-animal broker who abducted her chimpanzee Tonka in a bid to outrun PETA. His reputation among the Joe Exotics, benign four years ago, is now infamous due to Tiger King ’s success, so much so that he had to utilize the ethically dubious tactic of deploying a “proxy” director for Chimp Crazy, essentially an admission of his inability to infiltrate this under-the-table world populated by variations on the Florida Man meme. The show follows the succession drama that breaks out at the Texas Renaissance Festival after its patriarch figure, “King” George Coulam — a wildly wealthy octogenarian who’s still hunting for dates online and intends to die by assisted suicide should he live to the age of 95 — announces he’s stepping down from the business.
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