Rick Kirkham
Tiger King

TIGER KING, the Tiger King.

It is a 2020 documentary that tells the story of Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage, known as Joe Exotic.

Joe is a completely unconventional character. Psychotic, homosexual, gun lover, zoo owner, the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Oklahoma.

Joe is in his fifties, has two husbands, two crazed young men, an ex-alcoholic without teeth and full of tattoos (the first husband) and a handsome, beautiful 19-year-old addicted to methamphetamine and weed (the second) and both are heterosexual.

Joe picks his employees off the street: homeless people, ex-cons, borderline cases, former addicts, ex-alcoholics.

Joe is a jerk, treats everyone badly, has delusions of grandeur, wants and must always be the center of attention.

His arch-nemesis is Carole Baskin, a committed animal rights activist (but she also has a large park full of felines and keeps them in lousy conditions just like Joe). Carole's husband was a billionaire but one day he disappeared into thin air and now she has the billions. Joe says it was her, that she fed him to the tigers and it's not just Joe who says it, many people think it too.

Carole says Joe mistreats the felines and wants to destroy him. Joe would like to kill her. It will be a frenzy.

Then there's Bhagavan Antle. He also has a huge park full of felines and other beasts, rides on the back of an elephant, considers himself a sort of guru, and has dozens of women and 3 or 4 wives.

There would also be another guy passionate about felines, he also owns many but I don't remember his name. He's a former drug trafficker, one of the most important, it seems that he also dismembered a bunch of people in the past. But the star is Joe (and Carole).

I'm not going to tell you what happens but if it were the script of a movie (and be sure they will make a movie about Joe Exotic, America has gone crazy for him, just like I did and like the rest of the world where the documentary was distributed by Netflix) it would be a nuclear bomb, worthy of an Oscar, not to mention a Nobel prize for creativity (if it existed) for the scriptwriter and yet it's all true.

The documentary, by Rick Kirkham (who now lives in Norway and still has nightmares from what he experienced after spending several months with Joe filming) is wonderful. Since, as I said, Joe loves to be at the center of attention and you have no idea how much, it probably felt unreal to him that someone wanted to make a documentary about him, hence why there's a multitude of archive footage and live action content. We are talking about 7 episodes of 45 minutes each, not peanuts, plus an eighth episode made only of interviews with the survivors after the incredible epilogue.

Joe's daily life, the interviews with his employees (what characters, guys, after all, if you are normal how can you want to work and live for Joe Exotic?) the wonderful tigers, obviously the only innocents in this hallucinatory caravanserai. Innocents even when they happen to rip your arm off.

Watching this documentary, seeing Joe Exotic, Carole Baskin and the whole gang, I saw hell on earth like I had never conceived. A representation that exceeds the classic schemes of hell as we imagine it. Because Joe records records and sings (dubbed because he has a terrible voice) love songs, because Joe claims to love tigers. Because everything that both Joe and Carole and all the others say and do, who think they are good people and having an incredible following of people who embrace their cause, seems normal, natural when instead… well I have a hard time expressing the sensations I felt, the thoughts that crossed my mind but when I watched the first two episodes (which you really can't expect) I went to bed feeling strange, thinking about it in the dark, like when you saw a scary movie as a child.

Add to that (and fortunately) that the documentary is truly excellent in how it is shot, edited, really fantastic.

Don't go online as they will tell you the whole story and it's a fresh story, recent events, it might not be over yet. Lock yourself in at home (oops but you already are) and enter without hesitation the monstrous world of Joe Exotic.

Ps. In America, there are more tigers in captivity than free ones in the rest of the world. America is the stupidest, most powerful, and malicious country in the world and I hate it more deeply every day.