The Contending’s Megan McLachlan talks to Chimp Crazy supervising editor Evan Wise, ACE, about cutting to the show’s soundtrack and how he and the editing team shaped Tonia Haddix into more than a villainess.
Editor Evan Wise is drawn to weird subcultures, from his Emmy-nominated work on HBO’s Q: Into the Storm to now Chimp Crazy, the HBO docuseries following chimps and the people (mostly women) who love them (like, REALLY love them).
“Weird stories have found their way to me in my career, and I’ve always said yes,” said Wise. “The weird story is the more fun story to tell. A good documentary takes you somewhere you can’t go or teaches you something about something you didn’t know. The weirder story, the less accessible it is to most people. If you can get good access to a strange bizarre story, that’s a great recipe for a good documentary.”
Working with director Eric Goode, Wise says that Goode Films’ method is to find an interesting subculture, put yourself in it, and wait until something happens.
“If it does [happen], you get Chimp Crazy; if it doesn’t, you don’t hear about it.”
Chimp Crazy and the Story of Tonia and Tonka
Wise says that initially, Goode was interested in capuchin moms (“Capuchins are the gateway to chimpanzees”). Then, they wanted to talk to someone who had a chimp and found Pamela Rosaire-Zoppe. Pamela led to Connie Casey, but Connie didn’t want to talk. However, a special Dolly Parton-looking woman working at Connie’s facility named Tonia Haddix did want to talk — and the rest is history.
“What the audience is seeing is how they were finding the story. The journey that Eric went through on production was the perfect way to tell the story because it’s exactly how it went.”
Wise started shaping the story of Chimp Crazy in July of 2022 after a large portion of the series’ most dramatic events had already unfolded.
“The first conversation I had with Goode Films was about a week after the authorities had removed Tonka from Tonia’s basement. So by the time I was discussing the project, Tonka was already at the sanctuary.”
Editing to Chimp Crazy Soundtrack Playlist
Many editors cut montages and other sequences to temporary music, but luckily for the Chimp Crazy editing team, they got to keep much of the music in the final product.
“We didn’t have a music supervisor and really the editing team put in songs we thought worked. That’s something we always do with every show, but it’s rare you get to keep them. So I put in the James Brown song for the confiscation in Episode 1 thinking, ‘This is the perfect song, I love this, we’re never going to get it.’ It’s a $45,000 song. No one ever wants to pay that, but it works so well, the team was like, ‘We have to get it.’ It worked like that throughout the whole series.”
The Harry Nilsson needle drop was from editor Charles Divak, while the Devo song at the end of Episode 2 was Wise’s suggestion. Adrienne Gits, who edited Episode 3, put in the Boy George cover of “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” by the Violent Femmes. And before it was Nina Simone in the finale, they had “Sugar Sugar” by The Archies (“[Editor] Doug (Abel) switched it, and it was so much better!”).
Even though the Cranberries’ “Linger” plays an important moment in Episode 3, over a montage of Haddix explaining how she stole Tonka, that wasn’t the first song they landed on.
“I tried it with ‘Hotel California,’ which was amazing and slower, and we couldn’t get it. They wouldn’t even talk to us. [Executive producer] Jeremy (McBride) said to try ‘Linger,’ and we dropped it in, and it was perfect.”
But quite possibly the most poignant moment of the series features unplanned music. In Episode 4’s “Fantasy Island,” Haddix sings along to “She” by Jelly Roll on the radio.
“It’s one of my most favorite moments in the show. I remember when that footage came back. Chuck Divak had watched that, and he called me and said, ‘I don’t know what we can use this for, but it’s really powerful, and we have to remember that this exists.’ So I wrote it down under a list of ‘Things You Should Not Forget.’ By the time we got to Episode 4 and her life is coming apart, we realized it was a perfect place for this emotional moment. It was a song she put on, and we were just filming in the car. Our DP just let it roll. It’s really beautiful. I get goosebumps every time I watch it.”
Creating Empathy for Tonia Haddix
By the time Chimp Crazy reaches its finale, the audience starts to empathize with Tonia, with Tonka taken away from her and PETA demanding she pay more than $200,000 in legal fees. Wise says this change in tone was something they were cognizant of.
“One of the most important things we talked about with Tonia’s story is that it would be really easy to villainize her, but that’s low-hanging fruit. I truly believe that she loves these chimps and that she thinks she’s doing the best thing for them. I don’t agree with what she’s doing and I don’t think most people do, but her heart is true, and we wanted to show that. We wanted to be fair to her in that sense. The loss that she’s experiencing is a real loss. To her, it’s like losing a child, and if it happened to anyone else and it was a human, you’d have so much empathy for that person. I don’t think you should turn that off. Those emotions were relatable.”
Another moment on Wise’s “Things You Should Not Forget” list is when Rolling Stone writer Cheyenne Roundtree says, “I really like Tonia. I saw a picture of her in the basement […] does she not see what other people can see?”
“That line was so important to include because I wanted to give the audience permission to feel that way about Tonia. There are a lot of facets to her, and you should look at them all. Cheyenne highlighted this human one, and I really wanted to make sure that came through.”
Chimp Crazy is streaming on MAX.
