Chimp Crazy is an HBO Original documentary series that was produced and directed by filmmaker Eric Goode (Tiger King). The four-past series debuted on HBO in August and is currently streaming on Max.
Chimp Crazy features former nurse turned exotic animal broker Tonia Haddix, who refers to herself as “the Dolly Parton of chimps.” Haddix spends her days caring for animals in captivity, though her love for one chimpanzee in particular catches the attention of authorities and an animal rights group.
Here, Doug Abel, Charles Divak, Adrienne Gits and Evan Wise - all of whom are members of American Cinema Editors - share insight into their experience on the series.
Can you tell us about your editing setups?
Evan Wise (pictured): "I’ve been working from home since COVID, so I’ve invested in a nice home-office setup. I work off of a custom-sized standing desk that I cut from a large butcher block countertop. I don’t stand as much as I should, because I have a really nice chair, a Steelcase Gesture, which has legitimately changed my life for the better. I’m still working on a vintage 2017 MacBook Pro for remoting into edit systems. Software-wise, I can use them all, but almost exclusively edit on Avid Media Composer. For this project, I finally graduated from physical notecards on my wall to a Miro board online, which I really like using.”
Charles Divak: “Since COVID I’ve been working remotely from our Brooklyn apartment. Most jobs I’m generally using Jump to connect to the office. I hurt my back a few times from some long hours in the chair, and on Evan Wise’s recommendation, I got a Steelcase Gesture. Zero back pain since. I swear I’m not a paid spokesman, just happy to not have back pain. As far as an edit system, I mostly use Avid Media Composer, which is what we used on Chimp Crazy.”
Doug Abel (pictured): “As I’ve done more and more remote work, I’ve prioritized creature comforts in my cutting room. I mean this literally, as I have a special chair by BeYou that allows the arms to fold down into cushioned ‘wings,’ so the endless parade of cats and the occasional dog can lay next to me and oversee the editing process. When not pinned down by a critter, I have a motorized standing desk that allows me to stretch out on long days. I use a single, super-wide gaming monitor that gives me more flexibility on how to arrange the Avid panes. Software-wise, Avid is my main tool, as it has been since the ‘90s, although I might branch out to Premiere or Resolve on the next project. We used Miro as our virtual index card program, which is great, and of course common tools like Google Docs to share all sorts of things. Slack is a great tool as well to keep the team up-to-date, although we didn’t use it on Chimp Crazy because we had weekly check-in Zoom calls that would often stretch to two hours.”
Adrienne Gits: “Currently, my setup is pretty simple. A Mac Mini with three monitors on a 1950s teak desk in my garage. Conveniently located next to my washer and dryer.”
How did your personal editing philosophy influence your approach to cutting Chimp Crazy?
Evan Wise: “I really value contrast and emotional/tonal shifts in my work, and I think Chimp Crazy really benefited from that. There is so much dark material in our show, so we were constantly looking to place emotional offramps throughout the structure - and even within scenes - to give people a break from our heavier footage.”
Charles Divak: “I think in any series that I enjoy watching, it’s important to vary the tone. I like to mix in moments of levity with moments of darkness. At its core, the story is pretty dark, but it also has these absurdist elements mixed in. When I first watched the raw footage of Tonia getting lip injections from a guy in a backwards baseball cap, and she’s lying about hiding ‘a monkey’ I thought, ‘What is going on here? I wanted to try and live in the absurdity of these moments as much as I could, and try to let the story unfurl around that.”
Doug Abel: “I come from a background in animal rights, and my wife has done undercover video work for PETA, so I’m always pushing for that message to punch through. That said, documentaries have to be entertaining to some extent, so I’m always looking to mine humor from the footage, especially dark humor. I think it’s also fun to wink at the audience in subtle - or not-so-subtle - ways, whether it’s a choice of music or breaking the fourth wall in some way, like using footage from King Kong under Tonia talking about her love for Tonka over everyone else.”
Adrienne Gits (pictured): “My philosophy is to work the process. Is that a philosophy or a pathology? Not sure, but it’s the only way I know how to tackle giant projects like Chimp Crazy. You can swing for the fences, but the chances of getting it right on the first pass are pretty small. You just have to accept that it might suck until it doesn’t. I felt like working at Goode made this very easy. Everyone respected and was extremely supportive of our process.”
Is there a specific scene from the show that stands out to you? What makes it particularly noteworthy or impactful?
Evan Wise: “I’m really proud of the cliffhanger at the end of Episode 2. We were so lucky to have great dramatic breaks throughout our story, but this one in particular feels like the best end of an episode I’ve ever had in my career. Keeping the final shot as one long shot was very important because I wanted to make sure the audience knew that there were no edit tricks here…This was really happening. The long, drawn-out pace of walking down the steps and through the basement really heightened the anticipation, and timing-wise, worked well with the music. I was listening to a lot of Devo at the time, and the intense build of ‘Gut Feeling’ felt perfect to use here. The lyrics also are tongue-in-cheek in just the right way since the audience - I hope - had a gut feeling through the whole episode that Tonia may have taken Tonka. When the credits hit on the lyrics, I still get goosebumps whenever I watch it.”
Charles Divak: “My favorite scene in the series was a scene Evan cut with Tonka in the basement with Tonia. Tonia is showing him instagram clips of other chimpanzees, some of which are his children. And he’s watching videos of other chimps in this glorified Instagram glossy life set to cheesy music while he’s in a smaller and smaller cage. His eyes are so human-like that you start to see Tonka kind of process what is happening. There’s this deep sadness and darkness to the scene that I found really moving.
Doug Abel: “Spoiler alert, but I love the very last scene, where we learn that Tonia was attacked by a chimp. It has that behind-the-scenes moment where she asks if the bandage covering the bit-off piece of ear is visible, and the dynamic with the crew is laid bare where her answers reveal so much. We also see in realtime her delusions battling with reality as she’s still processing the recent events. We made sure to have a light touch with the editing and keep certain moments intact — not even switching to a closer camera — to underline that nothing is being twisted or taken out of context. It’s a rarely satisfying ending for a medium where those can be hard to come by.”
Adrienne Gits: “The scene I think we all have a special place for is the one in Episode 103, where Tonia is doom scrolling with Tonka in the basement. It’s so absurd, and funny, and sad at the same time. It’s also incredibly intimate and works without any overpowering music or editing.”
What challenges did you encounter while editing Chimp Crazy, and how did you overcome them?
Evan Wise: “We had a ton of footage - around 1,500 hours worth, shot over about four years - so that was a pretty big mountain to summit, but between the four of us and our fellow writer/producer Tim Moran, we’ve watched everything a few times over. Through the journey of screening all that footage, we’d be constantly talking to each other about great things we’d seen that could help out someone else’s episode, so there was lots of passing footage back and forth. I would say this was more of an advantage than a challenge, but something unique to this show for me was that the story kept unfolding as we were editing, which meant that production almost never stopped shooting. The post team did the creative/story prep for the shoots, so if there was ever that moment - that every editor has had - where you say to yourself, ‘Man, I wish I had a shot of this, or I wish we had asked someone about that,” we could almost always get it.”
Charles Divak (pictured): “We had quite a bit of footage, probably a bit more than I’ve had on most projects, and it can be overwhelming at times. There was tons of great stuff in the Travis story. We wanted to tell a definitive, fleshed-out Travis story, but ultimately we couldn’t stray too far from our A story – Tonia and Tonka. And so there was a constant calibration of the A and B stories. Sometimes I would just remove an entire scene and just see how it played. Did I miss it? Even if the story beat was good, did it serve the story as a whole?”
Doug Abel: “Early in the edit we were feeling thin on story because the deep dives into past examples hadn’t been filmed or fleshed out yet. When spending too much time with Tonia, it becomes a bit flat and one-note. She reminded me of Tim Stark – a character who loomed large in Season 2 of Tiger King – who similarly would overstay his welcome if featured too much. So the edit team was instrumental in saving our own tushes by getting production to chase after more stories. Much of the discussions and correspondence between us and the production folks involved how to best weave the stories together, and that heavily influenced who and what was filmed to most efficiently serve the series.”
Adrienne Gits: “I struggled with the same thing I struggle with on almost every project, and that is the fact that these characters are real people and how we tell the story affects their lives. We had to make sure that it didn’t feel as if we were manipulating things too much simply for entertainment value. Fortunately, Tonia would be entertaining reciting the alphabet, so we really just had to lean into whatever she naturally did. I predominantly worked on Episode 103, and that was where we decided to reveal a different side of Tonia. You learn that she is actually a very caring person and was a foster parent to special needs kids, even adopting a child that had serious physical and mental challenges. We meet her son, who clearly cares deeply for her, and even Alan Cumming is able to empathize with her love for Tonka. Tonia is a very complex character, and to show her as just delusional would not have been true to who she is, and would not have been nearly as interesting.”
How did you collaborate with other departments and team members during the editing process? Can you give an example of a successful collaboration?
Evan Wise: “We had weekly meetings pretty much the whole time, so we were always up to date with each episode and very aware of current events as the story continued to unfold for most of the edit. Sharing and watching cuts between one another was also a regular occurrence, so we really benefited from having everyone’s brain across the series in some way. We were working remotely, but about a year and a half into the edit, the whole post team flew out to LA and spent a week together in the office. We had pretty advanced cuts of all the episodes, so we watched the whole series in one sitting and then discussed. Being together and seeing how everything played as a whole was really illuminating. That week felt like the moment that the show went from good to great.”
Charles Divak: “Most of the team was remote during the entire edit. Eric Goode (director), Jeremy McBride (EP) and Adrienne were in LA, Doug in Kentucky, Tim Moran (our excellent producer) was in Argentina, and Evan and I were in Brooklyn. We’d have weekly meetings - many, many Zoom meetings - and even more Google Docs, and collaboration was actually quite effortless in some cases. But I think the edit really took a giant leap forward when we all came to LA to work together for a week. We watched all four cuts back-to-back with no breaks. And then just talked about what we saw as a group. From that point on it felt more obvious to us what we needed to do to make the series better.”
Adrienne Gits: “The editors were constantly in touch with each other. We shared footage and scenes, and everyone helped each other stay on the rails. Tim Moran, our story producer, was incredible and always available to work through things. And we had amazing communication with production. Lissa Rivera was available any time to talk through any footage ideas we had, but also sharing her really creative solutions as well. Eric Goode and Jeremy McBride were always available. They allowed us freedom to explore ideas, but were always available with suggestions and answers when you needed them. Most of all, it was so apparent how much fun they were having working on this series and the feeling was contagious. Amazing creative partners.”
What have you learned from editing this project that you will carry forward into your future work?
Evan Wise: “As much as I like the freedom and relative calm of working from home, there are still some things that just feel different when you are in the room with your coworkers, so going forward I think I would be more open to a targeted, hybrid working situation. I also learned that I absolutely do not want to have a chimpanzee as a pet.”
Adrienne Gits: “I would say it reinforced something I already knew, which is when you surround yourself with people who really give a shit, are supportive, have a sense of humor and are incredibly talented, you can make something amazing and still have a blast doing it.”