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 just run-of-the-mill affection, and HBO’s four-part docuseries Chimp Crazy, which premieres Sunday, August 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.