In 2013, Joe Exotic had two husbands, a dedicated staff of misfits, and over 200 tigers in his private zoo. But Joe also had a rivalry with fellow big cat owner, Carole Baskin. When their feud spun out of control, Joe found himself in a cage of his own. In this episode, host Rebecca Lavoie (Crime Writers On…) will be speaking with co-directors Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin. There will be spoilers so make sure you’ve watched all 7 episodes! A note to listeners, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this episode was not recorded in studios. So there will be a change in audio quality.
In 2013, Joe Exotic had two husbands, a dedicated staff of misfits, and over 200 tigers in his private zoo. But Joe also had a rivalry with fellow big cat owner, Carole Baskin. When their feud spun out of control, Joe found himself in a cage of his own. In this episode, host Rebecca Lavoie (Crime Writers On…) will be speaking with co-directors Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin. There will be spoilers so make sure you’ve watched all 7 episodes!
A note to listeners, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this episode was not recorded in studios. So there will be a change in audio quality.
Rebecca Lavoie Welcome to You Can't Make This Up, a companion podcast from Netflix. I'm Rebecca Lavoie. And I'll be hosting this week's episode. Yere on You Can't Make This Up, we go behind the scenes of Netflix original true crime stories with special guests. This week, we'll be talking about Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness. The seven part series dives into the world of big cat owners. There are more tigers in captivity in the United States than there are in the wild. And Tiger King explores a few of the characters who keep these animals as pets. And it also looks at the murder-for-hire plot that landed one of them in jail. That man, Joe Exotic, owned a roadside zoo in Wynnewood, Oklahoma. He had two husbands, a dedicated staff of misfits and over 200 tigers on his land. Joe's charisma and hunger for fame led him to be a country singer, a YouTube personality. Even to run for president of the United States and governor of Oklahoma.
But Joe had a rivalry with fellow big cat owner Carole Baskin. When their feud spun out of control, Joe wound up in a cage of his own. I'll be speaking with co-directors Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaikin. We'll be talking about Joe, Carole, and other big cat owners like Bhagavan Doc Antle and Las Vegas entrepreneur Jeff Lowe. We'll also be discussing why people want to own big cats in the first place and what the reality is of keeping exotic animals.
A note to listeners: because of the COVID 19 pandemic, this episode will sound a little different. Our guests were recorded in their homes and not in a studio. We also recorded them separately, so you'll be hearing two interviews in this episode. We appreciate your understanding. Now here's my conversation with Eric Goode.
Trailer Clip (Joe) Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name's Joe Exotic and this is Sarge.
Trailer Clip (Rick Kirkman) It was like a mythical character living out in the middle of Oklahoma, who owned 12 tigers and lions and bears.
Trailer Clip (Joe) I'm outspoken, good looking to party and have fun. I don't think we're just blowing sh*t up today.
Trailer Clip (Storeowner) I don’t figure you are.
Rebecca L So co-director Eric Goode, thank you so much for talking to me.
Eric Thank you for having me.
Rebecca L So we saw a little bit of this in the documentary, your origin story with encountering this story, shall we say. What did you think this would be when you first started filming it and thinking about it?
Eric Well, I've been involved in the exotic animal world my whole life. My parents made the mistake of giving me a pet tortoise when I was six. And I think I suffer from a bit of late adolescence and I continue to have turtles and tortoises and reptiles. And I've been filming around the world for quite a long time, sort of in an ad hoc way. At one point I thought, you know what? Let me try to do this in a more professional way. And I connected with Fisher Stevens and with Rebecca, who I'd known previously and talked to them about this world. And we started our journey five years ago. And I knew from the outset that it was really an interesting subculture in America, much like, you know, the pathology of Best In Show. And so what interests us was the psychology behind keeping these animals. And just as much as the issues surrounding the animals, we were interested in the people that did this.
Rebecca L Yeah, I was interested in them, too. I mean, I have some experience with horse people. I used to ride horses. And I don't know if you know horse people. But they also can be very colorful characters. But these big cat people are on another level. And you talked with them a lot. Can you just talk about what it is like being face to face with Joe and all the other characters who are in this big cat community for this film?
Eric Yeah. I mean, it's unbelievably fertile, colorful group of people. I mean, arguably more exotic than the animals they keep. And I would say, first off, it was hard at times to access these people. And so there was a, you know, sort of a courtship that had to take place to get entry to some of these people. Because on the macro level, there's a war going on between the animal welfare organizations, PETA, Humane Society and these people that are exploiting exotic animals for profit. And so they're, they really have an existential fear that, you know, people may infiltrate and destroy their livelihood. And that includes me. And so they were very guarded and secretive oftentimes about what they do. And so, yes, at first it was very hard at times to access some of these people. But oftentimes their vanity or their narcissism trumps their common sense. And they really do want to talk and show off. And, you know, after all, probably part of the psychology of keeping these animals is the attention that they received from them.
Clip (Carole) The minute you meet one of these people that has an exotic cat. First thing they do is they whip out those pictures. Look at me. I'm holding this cub. Look at me. I'm petting this tiger. Look at me. I've got this cat on a leash. It's all about. Look at me.
Rebecca L The other thing I keep thinking about too, watching them is that they kind of have a lot in common with some of the cult leader figures that we’ve seen in other Netflix documentaries. I’m thinking about the Bagwan and the head of the Rajneeshi.
Eric Absolutely, these people create their own little universe with their own set of rules and ultimately, obviously in the case of Joe Exotic, that world he created effectively where he was the king of his own kingdom, ultimately that was Joe’s downfall.
Rebecca L But then you also, I think, do a great job giving us a hint of how Carole Baskin also has created this community where, you know, it's almost like, you know, for lack of a better comparison, sort of a volunteer pyramid scheme that she's created.
Eric Yeah. I mean, that's fascinating. You know, again, the pathology surrounding this, I think Carole and her arch enemy, Joe, had surprising amounts of commonality. They both want to have tigers and lions surrounding them. They both use these animals to elevate their status in their world. And they both use the cats to attract, you know, their followers. I think tigers and baby chimpanzees and orangutans are incredibly sexy and attractive to a lot of people. And so people see these places and say, I want to be a tiger trainer or I want to be a keeper. And they get effectively, you know, indoctrinated into these worlds, whether it's Carole's Big Cat Rescue world or Joe Exotic’s world.
Rebecca L There's a lot of mystery around Carole Baskin. It's very hard to tell how much of it's really mystery and how much of its really lore that has been built up around her by people who hate her.
Clip (Doc Antle) The lady who runs Big Cat Rescue, who seems in my opinion, to be completely out of her gourd. And seems, in my opinion, to have killed her own husband, potentially.
Clip (Joe) Carole Baskin’s husband. They can’t find his body, and we believe that she fed him to the tigers.
Rebecca L But she does have a very mysterious backstory. Some people imply that her second husband came to a not-so-great end, possibly at her hands. I'm not sure how much of that is just what, you know, Joe and his friends want us to think. I'm curious to know just what you think of all of that and how you struck the balance in just telling us stuff without making it too salacious or having it take over the whole film.
Eric I mean, yeah, you could absolutely explore that whole situation. What occurred with Don Lewis, her late husband. You know, and we didn't have the time and the resources. It wasn't really our motivation to really solve a cold case. But Carole's complex and complicated. Of course, Carole started out doing precisely what she's against today. She was an obsessive cat collector and breeder. And now, of course, she is fighting to do just the opposite of what she started out doing. It's hard to know Carole's true motivation. I mean, one of the things I found really interesting about Carole was that she had no interest in seeing cats in the wild. She she didn't have the intellectual curiosity to see a tiger in the wild or alive and had never made the effort to do so. And she really just wanted to be a cat woman.
Rebecca L So there had to have been characters that didn't make it in a documentary, even though we met a lot to did, very, very colorful characters. I can't think of a character who wasn't colorful. Who else would you have loved for us to get to know who didn't make the cut?
Eric There were so many unbelievable characters. You know, there was a couple in Nevada outside of Vegas that were unbelievable. It was an ex-military guy and his wife who was this blonde vixen living out in the middle of nowhere with tigers and lions. And they were you just couldn't make them up. There was a guy in south Florida named Tiger Dave, who, you know, could barely support himself and his house was in foreclosure and he had tigers. But he, you know, just ranting and raved about how these tigers were chick magnets and how many women he had in his life because of his tigers. Yet he had no money. You know, there was Tippi Hendren, you know, Melanie Griffith's mother, who was in the Hitchcock film that has Shambala and her tigers and big cats. But, you know, like I said, reality is stranger than fiction. You couldn't make them up.
Rebecca L So one of the things I wanted to ask you is how much of a gift is it when you're making a film about somebody who already has like millions of hours of footage of themselves and a TV producer who's basically been living on their compound forever. How much of that footage were you able to use? I know that you've incorporated some of it. We wouldn't have seen many of the things otherwise.
Eric Yeah. It's a gift and a curse because you have to go through so much of it. You know, at the end of it, you know, we could have actually made a 20 part series, we had so much footage. And so, you know, it's challenging as a filmmaker to decide what to keep and what not. And unfortunately, so many great characters fell on the cutting room floor. They just didn't make it into the series and they deserved to be. So that was the challenge, having so much content.
Rebecca L Right. You don't have to make all that B-roll of like someone just walking around that you then used over and over again. Your B-roll was somebody's leg being bitten by a tiger, which is extraordinary.
Eric This film, this story unfolded, you know, contemporaneously. And so, you know, I was on a plane every week to Oklahoma, to South Carolina, to Florida, covering this story as it unfolded. And frankly, the story continues to this day. You know, we eventually had to say, you know, we have to stop. And thankfully, you know, Netflix had parameters. And that really was good for us. Otherwise, I'd still be filming.
Rebecca L I have some questions about some other sort of fuzzy areas in this story. I mean, we have a federal agent, toward the end of the documentary, laying out what appears on paper to be a very concrete case against Joe with all of these different parts. Of course, there's the money stuff, there's the animal abuse stuff, there's the murder-for-hire stuff. But then when you actually talk to the people involved in particular, kind of people close to Joe, they make what to me is a pretty compelling case that like none of them are sophisticated enough to actually pull off anything this complicated. What do you think? I mean, was this murder-for-hire plot a real thing, in your opinion? I mean, and again, how did you draw that line and what to show us and how we should think about it?
Eric I mean, you know, I'm not a detective and I'm not an FBI agent. But, you know, it's hard to know what to believe. But there's no question that, Joe, asked people to, you know, go kill Carole Baskin. Did he really mean to do it? I really don't want to comment on that. But I, you know, he was set up in the end by an undercover U.S. Fish and Wildlife agent or an undercover FBI agent. And at the time that he was set up, I think he began to, you know, smell something or recognize that there was something off. And I wouldn't be surprised if he began to suspect people around him were, in fact, setting him up. Jeff Lowe and James Garrettson in particular.
Clip (Jeff Lowe) I told James the day before Alan left, Joe paid him to go kill Carole. James brought the FBI and I started spilling my guts.
Rebecca L That is a complicated moment for me because as much as I have my own feelings about Joe, and just because of his treatment of animals, I also see him as a complicated character. But then Jeff Lowe really kind of takes him for a ride and steals his whole thing from him. Did you ever find yourself feeling empathy for Joe when you were going over all this and sort of seeing how it all played out?
Eric Yeah, of course, I have empathy for Joe. At the same time, there's no question that Joe did wrong. And, you know, I've I've talked to Joe since he's been in prison. And I you know, I think the irony. You know, what's really interesting about Joe and quite fascinating is, you know, effectively he's doing life in prison. But he has a surprisingly good attitude about it. He called me two days ago or three days ago, but he called me in such high spirits because the Netflix series was coming out and all, the all the prison guards came singing a song to him the other morning, you know, basically praising him as their star in their jail and how excited they were about his series. And so, you know, Joe, the vanity, the narcissism, the ego is so strong that he is.. Here he is in jail. And I know that he is celebrating right now. And it just loves the fact that he's on billboards in Times Square and in Hollywood. So it's really interesting.
Rebecca L So I think a lot of true crime fans will watch this documentary. I think a lot of people who are interested in stories about animals and environmentalism will watch this documentary. What do you want, viewers, no matter why they started watching, to take away.
Eric Well, I want them to enjoy the ride in particular. You know, at this unbelievably surreal time that we're living in. It may be a reprieve from what we're experiencing right now. But ultimately, I hope that people see that we were fair and that these characters speak for themselves and that they can reach their own conclusions about the ethicacy of keeping tigers and lions in captivity. And I hope people really see that each character has a human side.
Clip (Joe) Tell all the hunters, lay down their guns. Tell them that the tiger needs a little bit of love. Let him run the jungle…..
Rebecca L And co-director Rebecca Chaiklin, it's so great talking with you.
Rebecca C Thanks so much for having us on your show.
Rebecca L Rebecca. I would love to hear how you got involved with this documentary. We heard about Eric's journey, his previous relationship with animals. What about you?
Rebecca C So I worked for Eric when I was in college. And then many years later, we were at a super posh dinner party together. And he started telling me about this crazy world in south Florida, of all these exotic reptile dealers. And he was saying it's sort of like Breaking Bad, but instead of selling meth, they're selling exotic reptiles. And he was telling me these really outrageous characters who are in it. And so he sort of piqued my curiosity. I knew nothing about this world at all. And we went down to South Florida to see if we could get access, because it was a super, super secretive, cloistered world. And people were really suspicious of anybody who wasn't part of it. But Eric sort of had this credibility and access because he knew all of them in a previous incarnation in his life.
Rebecca C So we went down and he took me to this notorious reptile dealer's place. And I think he probably told you the story of how this guy had just been bitten by a venomous snake, showed up wanting to buy a new one. And lo and behold, on a 110 degree day in Miami, he opened the back of his van and there was a snow leopard sitting in the back of it. And both of us, because there are only a few thousand left on the entire planet. Our jaws just dropped. And these are animals that have no immune system because they live above the frost line. And to see one in one hundred percent humidity on 110 degree day in South Florida was pretty jaw dropping, to say the least. And so it set us on this journey into the big cat world.
Rebecca L Well, I want to talk about that journey, because I imagine when you started thinking like this could be a project, you thought it was going to be one thing. But as even the viewer can see, so many things happen during the production of this. How did your concept of what this was gonna be change over the filming period?
Rebecca C It changed, it had so many incarnations out cause it was a long process. I mean, I think for both of us, we set out wanting to do a piece that had entertainment value and had some humor, but really was dealing with the ethicacy issues of keeping these big cats in cages. There is this pervasive practice of keeping these animals in America. That is super secretive. But there are more tigers in captivity, in backyards, basements being kept in private ownership in America than there are tigers left in the wild. And that, to me, was just jaw dropping . And so we went on this journey into this world. And it just so happens that people who decide they want to keep lions as their pets happen to be a very colorful, charismatic, crazy group of people that, you just couldn't make these characters up.
And it was tricky. We really struggled a lot with the fact that the characters oftentimes they and their colorful lifestyles and their cult like facilities trumped many of the issues that we were really interested in addressing in the piece. And it became more character driven and less issue driven, which is a good thing in terms of filmmaking. But we really struggled with like, are we messaging enough? And neither one of us, I don't think, ever wanted to hit people over the head with. We wanted to tell a story where people came to their own conclusions. But then the characters and then the ensuing drama and whole crime element definitely took this on a very different path than where we started.
Rebecca L I'd love you to talk a little bit about the cults, really, that are built around some of the main characters in this story. I mean, Joe Exotic has this cult of people who have nowhere else to go. I mean, there are a lot of his employees. People around him are very down on their luck. They are very dependent on him. Of course, Doc Antle has his extremely culty situation with all of those women that he, you know, tells them how to live, how to eat, what to wear, et cetera. And then, of course, Carole has her own like little volunteerism pyramid scheme situation. What do you think the relationship is between the cult leader personality and the desire to keep these giant wild animals?
Rebecca C I think there are a number of factors that lead...have led to some of these characters ending up in situations that have a lot of characteristics that we equate with cults. And that is that it takes a tremendous amount of time and energy from sunrise to sunset to take care of these animals. It's super demanding and they're not super profitable unless you have a situation like Carole where she's bringing in money for the sanctuary. And I think her donors are on a whole other level.
So they end up recruiting young people who want to be around these animals. The animals are super enticing to a lot of young people. As a matter of fact, Joe, it was well-known, had a practice which ended up on the editing room floor. But in Oklahoma, they have a local paper called Jailbirds where they post the mug shots of every person who is just been arrested and sentenced. And people who are coming out of prison. And so he would go through oftentimes he would look for young, cute boys with sexual offense crimes and he would recruit them to come and work for him. And he gave them a substandard but he gave them a place to live and some food, even though it may have been expired Wal-Mart meat. And and a structure. And they became part of this misfit family that he had.
Clip (Saff) Joe definitely liked to hire people who that was their only option.
Clip (Worker) Don't try this at home, kids.
Clip (Saff) And his reasoning for it was, if this is all they have and it's decent, they'll work hard enough to keep it.
Clip (Worker) Kept me sober, not drinking. Keeps me from getting in trouble.
Rebecca C So and then Doc. Doc, for the most part, recruits young women who come from mostly quite poor families in rural areas and who are enchanted with exotic animals. And so working with him gives them an opportunity. It's their dream to work with a tiger, a lion and elephant. And his place is very posh for most of them. They can, even though their living conditions are like the manicured area for the public, feels very posh for them. And so it's extremely alluring. And even Carole has her own... I mean, it's not nearly as deep or as intimate in terms of the relationships. But she has young people who love big cats from all over the world spending like their last savings to come for the opportunity to work for nothing and be on the sanctuary and also live in trailers and work around the clock so that they can be near these animals.
Rebecca L How much time did you spend at Joe's park, at Carole’s park, at Doc's park? How much time were you around these animals and these people?
Rebecca C A lot when we started counting up shoot days, it was well over two years of shoot days over the course of five years.
Rebecca L Wow.
Rebecca C Yeah, it was... We did a lot of filming just thousands of hours and it could have gone in so many directions. And there were so many characters we had to cut out and just, you know, rabbit holes that we could have gone down with really fascinating themes and stories.
Rebecca L Was it difficult to be up close to the conditions that these animals were subjected to? And, you know, know that you wanted to show them, know that you wanted to document them, talk about them as a big theme of the film. But you also needed to continue to get access to the people who were keeping the animals in these conditions. How difficult was that a line to walk for you?
Rebecca C There were times where it was extremely difficult. I felt it was abject cruelty in a lot of places what the animals were being subjected to. But it was, it was also really interesting for me to get out of the New York City bubble and really understand that it wasn't so black and white and these were people who had grown up in different cultures and had very different feelings. They've grown up on farms and ranches and in very American culture where animals are there to serve us. And and so they didn't perceive it that way. And as a matter of fact, most of them spent every working hour that you could imagine taking care of these animals and love them. And so they didn't see it the same way. And so for me, you know, I have my own opinions. But it was really interesting and eye opening and very human to see, you know, we we all come at things from different perspectives. And so I was able to respect and appreciate that as well. Even though I didn't agree with it.
Rebecca C Well, I'm just gonna tip my hand. I'm very fascinated with the idea of how these subcultures, they they form very strong bonds and they also form very, very deep rifts and the most extreme feuds. I find that fascinating. What about you?
Rebecca C I mean, I had no idea that this culture existed before we started this project. And, you know, I'm grateful that Eric took me into this wild world that he was very aware of. And yes, I think part of the fact that they're so secretive and it's very cloistered, it breeds very extreme eccentric characters, and there's intense loyalty and competition within it. And it's in many ways, I think what they're doing to the animals at the end of the day is quite violent. Even just the way you have to feed these animals. Just the reality of it, of these sick cows coming in, sick horses coming in and then shooting them point blank and cutting them up and bringing the parts into the cages for the tigers to rip them apart. It's the right thing to do because you don't want those animals to go to waste. But there's a lot of brutality involved in it. So it doesn't surprise me that the characters themselves end up being brutal when they have a falling out with each other.
Rebecca L Yeah, I mean, its brutality in the guise of love because as you said, they talk about the love they have for the animals constantly. And then there's all of this, you know, all the stuff you do to other animals in order to keep these animals alive. So what about Joe? Do you feel any empathy for him?
Rebecca C I definitely have empathy for Joe. I'm actually quite fond of Joe. Even though I know he's done terrible things to both a lot of the people around him and was very cruel to a lot of his animals. I had tremendous respect for the fact that he was in the middle of the Bible Belt and rural Oklahoma living like this Liberace-like character singing country music. And with his 200 tigers. And interestingly enough, Joe also was the victim of pretty extreme sexual violence as a child, a very young child. And he's damaged goods. He's and he went through a lot in terms of being a young gay man in rural Kansas, Wyoming and Oklahoma. You know, he also, he was such an open book. He was sort of like a dream character. And his downfall was his narcissism and his insatiable desire to be famous and would say anything and do anything for attention and said a lot of really stupid things and did a lot of really stupid things. And it's now landed him probably in prison for the rest of his life.
Rebecca L What's your relationship like with him now? I mean, I. I'm just curious.
Rebecca C I mean, I talk to him. I talk to Joe all the time. And it's always that tricky situation when you're a documentary filmmaker and somebody gives you access to their life and their life story. And and so I feel a real responsibility, even though I think he did some terrible things and he deserves to have to take responsibility and I guess be punished on some level for those things. I also have a lot of empathy for him. And and so we stay in very close touch and we bicker. And we also I think, you know, I give him a lot of support in times that are really…. It's been a really, really tough couple of years for him.
Rebecca L Rebecca, was there a particular piece of film, a person, a storyline that you were heartbroken to have to leave on the cutting room floor of this documentary?
Rebecca C Yeah, there were other people who were part of this world who ended up not in it. For example, Mario is, warrants his own series.
Clip (Mario) Back then, I sold drugs to maintain my animal habit. I got to a point was on the phone saying “Mario’s Drug Store, specializing in marijuana, cocaine and quaaludes. Anybody who enters to come get it. Including you, Miami-Dade Organized Crime Bureau.
Rebecca C He grew up in Cuba, came to Florida and ended up through a bizarre set of circumstances running one of the largest drug cartels out of Miami for about a decade and a half. And then he was eventually arrested and sentenced to two 100 year sentences in prison. He ended up working with the feds, allegedly may have been involved with bringing down Pablo Escobar, got out early and immediately went back to his passion. He told us on many account, occasions, that the reason that he got involved with dealing drugs in the first place, because he was completely straight edge and didn't even do them early on, was that he had this exotic animal habit that he had to support and it was super expensive. So he got into dealing drugs to raise the money to support his habit. He also... his father was involved in the Cuban resistance against the gangs of Fidel Castro. He worked as a CIA contractor. He was in the Bay of Pigs. And it ties into this whole story of CIA black ops operations, because I believe that they were working directly with the CIA and with the cartel that he ran with his father. And so it's a very, very interesting, complicated story
Rebecca L I did love him in the brief appearance we saw. He's the Scarface guy, right?
Clip (Mario) Sometimes they say that I’m the prototype for Scarface. The money coming in suitcases to the bank. I did that, but not with a fat guy in the van. It was a Corvette. I did it by myself. I will call the bank and the banks. They'll have 10 tellers and sit back there. And of. It was all counting of machines.
Rebecca L So a lot of true crime fans will watch this documentary, Rebecca. And a lot of people who want to see a compelling story about these nutty big cat people will want to watch this documentary and probably people who are interested in issues around animals and what we can do better with animals will watch it. What are you hoping all of those audiences might take away that they didn't go in expecting when they sat down to watch this on Netflix?
Rebecca C On one level, I hope that this could be a fun escape, a moment of reprieve to sort of sit down and binge watch and take a deep dive into this colorful world. On another hand, I hope that they will come out of watching it with some reflection on the fact that wild animals don't belong in cages. And in places supporting the local communities around that habitat so they don't just pillage the forests and savannas of everything that's on it. But we really have to focus on protecting natural lands.
Rebecca L Well, the film is Tiger King. Rebecca, it was really wonderful talking to you.
Rebecca C Thanks so much. I really enjoyed it.
Rebecca L And that's it for this week's episode. Thank you to Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin. And if you want to hear more of my thoughts about Tiger King, check out my other podcast, Crime Writers On... You can find this show on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and wherever else you get your podcasts. Make sure to subscribe rate and review this show. That way you won't miss next month's episode about the Innocence Project. You Can't Make This Up is a production of Pineapple Street Studios and Netflix. I'm Rebecca Lavoie. Stay home and keep streaming.