I mean, look. Joe lip-synched most of his songs. You know.
What, is that not him singing?
Rich!
The true crime story that you guys ended up telling throughout this series is wild,
but going back a step, how did you even find out about big cats in America?
Well Rich, I've been involved in the exotic animal world since I was a child,
and I was an obsessive collector of reptiles as a kid,
and so I'd been peripherally involved with these people most of my life.
I knew nothing about this world,
and he started telling me about this crazy world in south Florida,
where these very colorful people were trading exotic reptiles,
and it was like
But it was super secretive, and people may not allow us to film with them.
But he has this incredible access, because he spoke their language.
So you have an in to exotic animals already,
but how did this particular story start?
Rebecca and I, five years ago,
began in south Florida, filming, not knowing where this thing would go,
a reptile dealer and smuggler that I'd known.
And the very day we got there,
a guy showed up wanting to buy a venomous snake,
and he had a snow leopard in his van.
We were shocked that someone could buy a snow leopard.
And that set us on this journey to understand big cats in America.
But I will say this:
you know, America is unusual.
You can own an AR-15, you can own basically a machine gun,
and you can own tigers, so it's...
It's, you know...
Go figure.
That's how we take care of Isis, right there, buddy.
So by this stage you've found a story, right?
What was the initial ambition for this documentary?
I mean... You never know for sure in a documentary,
but we definitely, I think both of us
expected this to be much more, sort of,
meets
We wanted to do a piece that looked at
the ethics of keeping wild animals in cages.
We never thought that it would end up
in this crazy true crime direction.
We were always very honest about our intentions, and of course,
who would have guessed that the story would have gone where it had gone.
It took a life of its own.
I think we wanted to one, humanize people,
even if we completely disagreed
with some of their practices and thought they were cruel,
and also we didn't want to make a didactic documentary
where we were telling people what to think and feel,
but more allowing them to get there on their own,
and see that this is not an ethical practice for these animals.
And when you met Joe Exotic,
did you immediately go "Yes, this is it, this is the documentary."
These people were so interesting on so many levels,
the polygamy, the sort of quasi cults,
the drugs, their persona, the mullet, the guns...
To be living the way he did in the middle of the Bible Belt
in rural Oklahoma...
It was wild!
It was wild.
And then to have this revelation that Joe,
in fact, or allegedly,
had hired hitmen to kill Carole...
That just... You know,
put it into the stratosphere. How could you ask for something even crazier?
Hey everyone, it's Carole at Big Cat Rescue.
Today, Joseph Schreibvogel Maldonado-Passage,
also known as Joe Exotic,
was arrested for seeking to hire someone to murder me.
How long did you guys spend filming this?
Five years.
Wow, okay.
And I have to say, I was always amazed over five years,
that they were as willing to continue filming.
That, you know... I kind of couldn't believe that we were able to continue it.
I always thought, and I still do actually,
that the story would continue, and in fact,
you know, what was the cut-off date
was really based on Netflix's schedule.
You know, if we hadn't worked with Netflix,
we may be still filming it. But I'm glad we did.
Sorry about that!
-I'm glad we did. -No no no, it's great.
You've been a great partner.
No, but it was the contemporaneous nature of the story,
like you said, the story really is continuing,
as we speak.
And once you'd found this amazing collection of interesting people,
how did you approach them and win their trust to start filming?
Joe and Carole were quite easy to access,
you know, as we began to look into the world of big cats,
because Carole has this message, and she's very on point,
and she wants to get it out there, and she's super calculated,
and passionate about it.
So immediately she was like,
"Great, somebody's doing something about this crisis in this country."
I live, eat and breathe
ending the captivity of wild cats.
Joe has this insatiable desire to be a star,
so the second we rang up,
he was like, "Please!
Come, bring the cameras, the lights, the action!"
I'm going to try and get some good shots,
so make sure you get me some promo pictures in there.
Doc was super tricky, he never dropped his guard,
but it was filming him keeping his guard up which, you know, was like...
He would stop himself mid-sentence
and correct himself over and over again
until he thought he had the perfect take.
So I'm Dr. Bhagavan Antle.
B-H-A-G-A-V-A-N. Antle, A-N-T-L-E.
Dr. Bhagavan Antle.
Doc absolutely feels like the one
who was most trying to control the way he came across,
and almost direct himself.
You know, he would tell us that our documentary that we were working on,
that we were making,
would never go anywhere.
He would say, "You don't know what you're doing, no-one cares about this.
This is boring." And he'd say that in the middle of filming.
Doc definitely got to direct us endlessly.
I mean, it was funny, and at other times it was just...
It was hard to take.
We're going to film my crib here. You go to the front door
and I'll go open it and say "Hi, come in."
-Good idea. -Okay?
I like that Doc is better at directing than we are.
-Hey. -How you doing, guys?
-Hi, it's Eric. Good, how are you? -Doing good. Come in.
Doc starred in his own feature film, you should really check it out.
These YouTube films that he makes are unbelievable.
Save the jaguar, save the world.
Save the tigers, save the world.
We're going to save the chimpanzees!
Save the tiger, save the world.
So I cannot think of anything more uncomfortable
than somebody showing me their music video.
How did you guys deal with some of those surreal, funny interactions?
I can't tell you how many times I would have to leave
because of the insanity of the exchanges that were going on
and I couldn't control, I couldn't hold it together, I was laughing so hard,
and I'd have to sneak out the back of the room.
Somehow he's a much better poker face than I am.
We had moments where we almost peed our pants.
And I think one of the moments where I couldn't control myself,
Rebecca was in the same boat, was when we were viewing videos with Carole Baskin
in her living room.
You know, basically... And she was so proud of these videos,
you know,
for us they were just so unbelievably funny and absurd.
We're kind of popular.
I mean, look. Joe lip-synched most of his songs.
And he would literally go up to people, you know, with his album,
and say that he's number three on the charts.
I have my first two albums that I did.
This is my first album,
And there's 28 songs and 16 music videos.
And it was so shameless
You know, that he could actually do that.
Take himself so seriously, when of course, it wasn't even his music.
-You know...
Rich!
I'm kidding.
When this story started to unravel, and you found out how deep it goes,
were you ever worried about your safety?
That's a really good question.
It's hard to know when...
you're really in an unsafe situation.
-Alright--
I think, definitely, there was often fear.
Are they going to throw us out, physically?
Was there some revelation that might have happened
between the last time and the next time?
It's funny, once you get access and you actually start speaking to someone,
somehow you get comfortable, even if you're talking to someone
who couldn't be more different than you on every level.
Ethically... You just find comfort. It's really interesting.
What are your feelings now, after the fact,
about how this story ended?
That is probably one of the...
You know, the most difficult aspects of this whole journey,
was to see someone that we...
you know, obviously became close to in many ways...
Rebecca and I have both spoken to him quite a bit recently.
We're not fooled by Joe.
We knew that Joe would say what you want to hear.
But people aren't black and white. You see...
As Rebecca says, you know, the... sort of, wonderful aspects of Joe,
being such a contrarian,
openly wearing his gayness on his sleeve, and everything else, um...
I think the criminal justice system
sadly is a business.
It would have been a much more humane ending,
having a sentence and a conclusion that wasn't quite as fatal.
Although he was deserving of some form of punishment,
I don't know if life was the right punishment.
My feeling is that
Joe inflicted incredible cruelty on animals,
and he deserves to be punished for that.
I also feel as though,
if Joe had had the means to have a good lawyer,
he most likely would not be serving time for murder for hire.
There are just so many questions around
others' involvement and what actually happened.
And as Eric said, he lied all the time,
so we don't know where the truth actually lies.
Thank you guys, I really appreciate it.
-Thank you. Bye. -Bye Rebecca.
-Thanks. -Bye.