Episode 483: Doc Antle Reveals Mysteries Of Carole Baskin & Tiger King
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode of Entertainment Tonight we talk to Dr. Antel from Tiger King about his new documentary, "Joe Exotic" and how he got paid for his work on the hit documentary "Tiger King".
Transcript
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30 seconds did you ever think you would make it i feel i'm so close i could take sweet victory
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i know this life meant for me yeah why would you bet on goliath when we got bet david
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value taming giving values contagious this world of entrepreneurs we get no value to haters how
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they run homie look what i become i'm the i'm the one i'm patrick by the way host of item and
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today we're gonna have some fun because we're talking to doc antel from tiger king yes doc
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antel from tiger king and he's gonna reveal how much money he got paid from this documentary
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that got 65 70 million viewers you're gonna be shell-shocked how much they actually paid
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doc antel doc thank you for being a guest on the entertainment today thank you thanks for having
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me so so let me ask you i mean i i had a chance i'm at work one of my graphic designers nancy is
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talking about tiger king pat you gotta watch it it's amazing the story of joe exotic so they go and
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create a meme of me dressed as joe exotic i still have no clue what's going on they post it on
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instagram everybody's thinking i watched it then i said look you know let me see what these guys are
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talking i watched the first episode one night i find myself you know staying up to three o'clock
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in the morning watching this flipping show of tiger king i couldn't believe i did that so
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have you had a chance to watch the whole thing beginning to end yeah i got to watch it you know i took
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the time and looked through it it's a quite the salacious sensationalism ride you know one thing
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it definitely is not is a documentary it is just a wild tv ride made by some really good editors
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so one thing it's really not as a documentary wow so you would call it is this one of those things
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qualified to say uh uh a docu a a fiction based on some true stories yeah you know a docu drama it's a
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it's a it's a great tale and there are some big truths in there like that carol baskin killed her
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husband you know there's some big points big powerful parts but there's a whole lot of tall
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tale that's getting rolled along as well so has it done good for you has it done like when it came out
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were you happy this was coming out or were you kind of like indifferent about it i mean it was a
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disaster in certain ways it made a lot of outrageous claims against us and and what we do and how we what
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we're really working on i worked on another program for three years it was a hbo show about uh
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environmental protection about tiger conservation um it included richard branson on his lemur
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conservation program and a guy that was a turtle conservation guy we were doing a whole program
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of how private people were able to produce great results for worldwide conservation we worked on that
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for a few years and then uh this march i just happened to see a trailer for tiger king and i
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saw i was in it and i was like what is going on and i called up the director producer um eric goodin said
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what the heck's happening here dude this is this looks like i'm in this and i did not give you
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permission for that i have a contract with you for absolutely not this what's happening and you know
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he went oh well they took it from me it all went away i bulk sold everything i made this special with
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you then i made this other stuff with joe exotic and i went and interviewed carol the two weren't really
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supposed to mix up but uh the guys who produced for netflix um the show fire festival which is really yes
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good train wreck crazy thing as well yes that guy took all the information he edited it and he made the show
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out of it eric the producer director he claimed it was out of my hands they took it away uh it's not
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my fault uh don't worry about it did you ever get paid or no no never died get out of here nothing
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nothing are you freaking kidding me it's just it just it just fell off the map went went rolling along
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and i told him how can you do this you know we don't have papers for this we only have the original
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show and it says a one use only on the contract and so you know it's all going to be greater minds
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than mine that will fight it out and decide uh who gets a dollar so i know i know uh joe exotic has
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got what 94 million dollar lawsuit he has against them i know a bunch of things are happening like
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that are you doing something with these guys or no you're just kind of leaving it out because it's
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bringing a bunch of marketing to you well i mean yes i've got guys i'm just trying to get paid for
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all of my footage and all the work they did gathered up uh images from programs i've done
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for the last 25 years they pulled them off of an ftp site and then just stacked them into a show
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when i never told them they could use a single image and the show's filled with me out so many
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images on the show of tiger people are me over the last 35 years there's images me as a kid
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working all kinds of big cats on there and i don't think people even can recognize it because
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now i'm an ofg i'm an old fat and gray now and uh when i had that big shock of black hair
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and huge mustachio i looked like a different guy yeah but you still got the look though yeah i can
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still see the fact that you were you're a stud with women it's very obvious you got the charm and
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you got the looks so by the way do you know the number how much money these guys made off it or no
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i haven't heard a cash figure i mean i heard 78 million people have watched it so far
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i think it depends on how you do the click you know there's a click where you saw a part of it
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and there's the click where you binged it and knocked down the seven hours so i guess it just
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depends on whose uh statistics you're looking at but it's a runaway hit certainly the biggest things
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in the world these days i get a lot of contact from australia from england from the netherlands
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all kinds of places around the world um are have tiger king fever so so uh chappelle got paid what
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chappelle got paid 60 million for his special i believe i think seinfeld's now getting paid like
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120 or something like that and that's for one hour think about it so this is seven hours
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and i don't even think they got as many downloads as you guys got so if that's the case the number's
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got to be a reasonable number on what they're getting paid with it yeah be again this this story
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you're watching this you're kind of at first you're like oh this joe guy is an absolute scumbag
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they're like oh my gosh joe's a good guy look at this carol baskin wait a minute this other doc guy
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this womanizer who's got 28 wives this guy who believes in polygamy look at so it's going back
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and forth now i did some research and i noticed based on what i'm reading you don't have three four
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five six wives these are just girlfriends of yours or women that live on the campus with you or some of
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them are employed so what's the real story here yeah we have this big family here there's 25 of
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us that live here we live here because we also have a hundred big cats that we're working all the
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time big adult lions and tigers we make full contact with all the time that requires people to have real
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strong relationships with those animals they have to be seeing them every day the team has to get
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together to take them in to bring them out to wander in the forest with them whatever it is we're
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working on and so that team is a live-in team about half that team are my relatives my son and my
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daughter and my other daughter their children my nieces nephews my mama lives here a bunch of us are
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that family that live here and run the facility that other people have come on came on when they
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were young have stayed for decades because it's an incredible lifestyle an incredible opportunity
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to be exposed to wildlife in such a different way than anywhere else in the world
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so from that there have been a variety of ladies that have come in they live here they work here
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and they take care of stuff and yes i have been dating some of them for decades and they all know
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about each other of course we're all hanging out here it's just uh not exactly what everybody else
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thinks of as a normal lifestyle but but you are a qualified womanizer would you say that would you
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say you're good with women i mean that that smile i can see that smiles work many times
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i don't i don't know that that's a womanizer that gets a little bit negative you know
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i hope i'm a charming guy and with women but a womanizer seems like maybe i'm treating them wrong
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these girls live large their lives are big and great they're super talented earners they're
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characters that go out and work so hard they benefit from it themselves their family come and live with
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them um the girl china who's on the show uh she's there and she's got her sister living with her
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they've helped run things with me here for the last 20 years they're super quality ladies that just
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make the whole thing rock so so i would assume i am 41 right now okay i got an eight-year-old a six-year-old
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and a three-year-old i got a three-year-old daughter i am very uh thankful for there not to have been
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instagram or snapchat when i was 18 19 20 years old because i just don't want any of that stuff
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to be seen by my kids because if they see some of the footage they're gonna have to explain themselves
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why that's their grandpa or anything like that does some of that priority with the wording and
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the language and the life you live as you get older kind of like well you know i don't want to
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talk about it right now i'm a grandpa right i got kids i got grandkids i don't need to bring that
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up is that kind of what phase your aunt sure to some extent certainly 20 years ago i'm 60 when i was 40
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years old life was more footloose and fancy free i traveled way more i lived on a lot of big hollywood
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sets i made ace ventura and jungle book and dr doolittle i lived out hollywood a lot of the time
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i traveled around the world and did a lot of different films and stuff so of course you know
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you're in your 30s and 40s it's a different life than you are in your 50s and 60s and you know things
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are slower and faster according to you know how engaged you really want to be running a mop
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and you know i found fabulous girls who stayed on you know for decades and they're so reliable and
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so good at their job they are able to take care of my other kids which are these big chimpanzees and
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orangutans and elephants and tigers and they make the stability of those relationships which are very
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extensive you know every single night we have sit down dinner with giant chimpanzees they come in
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we cook dinner with them they sit at the table and that's why we're the last ones in the western
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world that has these great big apes that come in and interact with us it's a it's a bygone era that
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anybody even knows how to do that any longer which do you prefer animals or human beings
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people are phenomenal we have emotion and we have capacity to be incredibly cool most people are lost in
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their sauce and are living on social media and they don't know which way is up so those guys i'd rather
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hang out with an elephant or a monkey but if you're really living to your ability well you have this
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incredible insight into the creation and all the things that are so great about it there's nothing
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like great human art to inspire but i love a chimpanzee to come down and uh eat an orange with him and let
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just how much he likes his orange is pretty amazing that's got to be cool not now to some of the guys
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that are watching this maybe they want to get a few tips from you they don't have tigers to brag with
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women they don't have chimpanzees what what kind of tips would you give to single men who aspire to
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have a little bit of a game in their life that maybe they're not that good at it right now they want
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some tips maybe it's a it's a friend of yours maybe it's a younger son of yours who's struggling with
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women what advice do you give to men on how to you know go out there and be decent with women
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well there's two sides to it there's the simple premise of be good do good be kind be compassionate
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if you're stable everything around you becomes far more stable the the really difficult thing that no
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one wants to hear um of how on earth you have two girlfriends at once and they know about each other is
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you have to be incredibly blatantly honest from the very beginning that's not how relationships form
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we tell these great big fairy tales that we watched on disney and we put people full of these
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fantasable tales of how it should be could be how we feel in doll nothing's there and um i think that
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that destroys a lot of relationships so blatantly honest is the hardest thing and it's the only thing
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to make those lifelong connections so so when you have two relationships you just kind of tell them
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listen i'm an open relationship type of guy here's where i'm at is that kind of been your approach
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not exactly but you know more uh we just have this big family and and within this big family there is
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so many jobs and so much stuff to do you are welcome to be here live this life and do the stuff
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you want a relationship with me uh that would be just grand but you don't nobody's forced no one has
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to do anything you want to be involved you can be involved if you don't it's hot in this kitchen and
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you can certainly leave and it's that way every day it's a very intense situation to think that
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these great big 600 pound eight foot tall guys are coming out and interacting with us every day
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it's really a military series of maneuvers every day just how to open the door just how to come around
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and exist with this type of precision i bet makes you have an incredibly intimate connected relationship
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with anyone that you're doing that with you must rely on them so heavily and you have to get timing
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with them it's like a perfect ballet and you're doing that perfect ballet day and day and day in and out
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and if you screw it up someone's gonna bleed maybe someone's gonna die and you can't allow that so
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the relationship is really thick in so many different ways where you're relying on people
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in a manner that 99.999 percent of humanity never approaches this type of lifestyle or do they want to
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it's too intense it's too precise people want life to be a little more free and simple and flowing
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ours is that way with very rigorous rules and i think that that helps make it all work out what
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what's the worst accident you guys ever had on your park
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really the driving in cars right getting getting having somebody rear in me at 70 miles an hour to
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stop sign on sunset boulevard in miami boom you know collapsing the back of the car giving everybody
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whiplash headaches and trauma and drama and unfortunately i've been in probably five serious
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car accidents where i wasn't driving and that's the worst thing that's happened to me but big cats
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we virtually had nothing happen i got all my fingers i got i still got everything in place
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um we're very careful with what we do and we've had the great opportunity to know a couple hundred
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tigers over the last 40 years and out of those we found dozens who love to do the work they want to go
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out with us they want to swim they want to go in the forest they love the new sights and sounds and
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smells those big cats are incredibly connected to us the ones who don't like it then those don't have
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to be out with us and maybe they move on and live at some beautiful zoo somewhere or do something else if
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they think that uh people aren't their best buddies now let me ask you for me i'm big on asking uh birthdays
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like if i'm interviewing somebody you can't ask in job interviews but i'm always curious to know what
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your birthday is you know when you're born when you're doing this how much how much do you see
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a trend with people who like certain type of animals and how their personality is dog people cat
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people tiger people chimpanzee or people who don't like animals or like birds have you seen a trend with
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that your substance you're in that world or not at all you mean like like they're a leo or a
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sagittarius no no no what i mean was like a you know dog people you trust tiger people you got to
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be careful with you know cat people you got to be careful with tiger people are independent like
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have you noticed a trend there with people or not at all sure every guy i know that has a real
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full-time work one-on-one with tigers which i mean i've only known a dozen in my life there can't be
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but a few dozen in the world everybody i know like that is pretty much very centered on their own life
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not very social they don't go out they don't go do stuff they rarely drink they just are not a guy
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that is out doing stuff they live a very centered personal life all the guys i know that do that
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are girl crazy now i don't count joe exotic that guy's not a tiger guy that guy's scared of tigers
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he doesn't have great big tigers that love him he doesn't have a relationship with numerous big cats
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and other wildlife he doesn't have wildlife that respect him and that he enriching their lives is his
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high value activity for us we have those big guys out running a high-speed lure going 40 miles an
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hour across a whole track we've built for them that's a regular occurrence that out the open for
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our tours at the middle beach safari and also just for enriching activity we have several huge pools and
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ponds and we swim every few days we've got big tigers in the pool little cubs learning to swim and we do
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that activity with them joe is in another world joe is about joe joe is looking for the world's greatest
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party you know he was he was trying to find it in the midst of that he od'd on drugs a few times
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he made and spent millions joe had a lot of money when he started you know the joe i met 15 years ago
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he had brand new everything bought anything he wanted he had some old oil money from texas that
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was his family money and uh he blew through a lot of it and in the end uh the snitch jeff lowe and
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probably the other guys that were there involved um they kind of bled that last money off of him and
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he went broke had a public defender for a murder for hire for charge which i think uh helped get
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him a 22-year sentence but you know jeff uh lowe and james garretson they kind of bled out the last
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of that i think from joe's uh last stand there in oklahoma before he ran off to florida now have you
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joe and carol ever been the same place together no we never have i've never met carol carol's
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been attacking me viciously for decades this lady has just had a thorn uh that she's just been stabbed
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with and has my name on it i guess she's always been after me even though our place is literally
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a hundred times nicer than hers bigger more beautiful incredible setup such great healthy
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beautiful animals carol's really had a very hard time uh showing anybody anything but a derelict
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run-down junkyard of a place i mean places across america i've seen i've seen hundreds of them
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versus the worst one in the country wow you know there's no place as back woodsy funky as that joe
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had way too many animals and way too tight of a space he had some nice habitats and a few things set
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up but mostly he had a dog pound where it was habitat after habitat after habitat too small
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and the animals are boxed up you know so i've never really got to deal with carol at all except in
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uh sending her notifications from attorneys to take down uh images and letters and ideas that she's put
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up a few times and joe i met a few different times um through the zoo industry him he was trying to
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improve his facility he was contacting people that i was helping out about how to have better food how to
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have better habitat how to build things better um for the big cats he talked about that and then
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five six years ago he came to myrtle beach and he actually because myrtle beach is a tourist town with
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20 million visitors and there was a big circus show in town joe supplied some tigers for that circus magic
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show and uh they had trouble where they were keeping them what was happening people were complaining so we
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went down and looked at all of it said hey what's it like how's this all going and then we can help you
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with bigger space maybe get your animals outside do something else for you then the show closed down
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but in the interim i had to deal with him a few times went to dinner with him one time just to talk
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about it next door to the the big theater that was here in town and uh i had you know that was my
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biggest joe experience during that time his staff were all around and they came through our attraction
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the myrtle beach safari and they saw the attraction and took tours and he was like that's what i want
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i need to build a place just like that from that reference a lot of people think that we're uh
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friends somehow and he says i'm his mentor which i think i'm mentor to people all over the world
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who want to build world-class facility because ours is just of that scale and we've had the time and
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opportunity to put tens of millions of dollars into a single place which makes it have a lot of flash
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and a lot of incredible habitat yeah doc if you're if you're the best in your world who's the second
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best in your world there's single habitats that are really well set up at several zoos you know that
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i've seen got it the stuff they do at bush gardens in tampa is a beautiful setup i think there's been
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several places that have built great setups but nobody else does what we do the other place i see
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personally that looks beautiful over and over don't say the name right is latif bakun's place
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who is the president king whatever it is of um united arab emirates he has an incredible facility
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there it looks like you know he's dropped 100 million on it i mean it's it's exquisite and the
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animals look incredibly well cared for i have mutual friends who work there and and live there and i think
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that that place is run world class but when when you were building your business what was your uh
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you know like a business model you were saying i'm going to be good in this area this is where i'm going
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to win i'm going to focus on this area what was your vision with the company and the business you
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were building what was going to be your number one focus in the beginning in the early 80s you know i
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started out um really just doing uh just having that first couple of tigers i was working for exxon oil
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who's a big oil company who used to have a tiger as their mascot put a tiger in your tank they were
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my biggest patron and i helped them work on their tiger conservation program i started running a more
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of a tiger conservation program with them the uh exxon valdez crash the big old uh oil tanker that
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they had gotten so much trouble for they were environmentally the bad guys they quit the tiger business
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i took on everything that they were doing and ran it myself from there right at that same time of
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being the exxon tiger guy hollywood contacted me at length and asked me to come work for them and
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i went and did a 500 movie and television jobs great big fortune 500 ads and i produced that stuff
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like i'd say ace ventura jungle book dr gulittle mighty so young and some great big flops like the gardens
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of stone francis ford coppola worked on it for a year incredible big film no one ever hardly saw it
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but i learned a ton by watching how that movie was made i did the same thing with dino de la rintas
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with a movie called date with an angel just being on the set and watching how they produced and light
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it and do it i got a real good feel for presentation of wildlife in a unique way from there things like
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making eddie murphy into dr dolittle and jim carrey into the pet detective i said i could do that for
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everyone i could create a vibe at my place where you get to feel like you're dr dolittle you get up
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close and personal with these animals in an incredible perfect setting beautiful jungle habitat
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nothing that looks like a set of cages everything natural and organic not like a zoo which is designed
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to have hundreds of thousands of people come we're having 10 000 people come in an entire year
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super limited premium experience and that model was for me to make what you saw here look like the
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perfect set of a movie where you would feel like if you were there you had landed in shangri-la people i
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want them to pull up and say god i wish i lived here and that's not what you do when you go to the zoo you
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might say i'd love to have those animals but you don't say this is where i wish i live when people come
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here they're like this is the coolest pool the greatest fire pit the most incredible buildings
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the coolest place to hang out and just chill is just right here the great food the vibe whole five
00:24:55.400
star experience that is what i was pushing towards i also stole some of that from going to five star
00:25:01.480
resorts going to the malamala preserve in africa which is this the greatest most pristine police of
00:25:07.080
uh property in africa the presentation of how well they treat you how they're always there with a drink
00:25:13.320
with a a cooler hot towel to wipe your hands off with or cool your neck and i took a lot of those ideas
00:25:20.360
and applied those to the experience at the preserve being this five star squizid experience where you're
00:25:28.040
just in the jungle you always wish you could have visited so only ten thousand per year that's about all we
00:25:35.400
can handle yeah a regular tour is maybe 35 to 55 people you know right now with the covet just edging
00:25:43.320
off the governor just gave us permission to open back up some of these are going to have 10 people
00:25:48.680
those 10 people are going to get a heck of an exclusive you know more people should uh take
00:25:53.320
advantage of this one moment probably by summer with tiger king fever uh you know every tour will be full
00:25:59.560
so are your ticket prices still 600 are you going to raise them my ticket is very much like an airline
00:26:05.720
ticket of it's 339 to come in and it's dynamically priced as the tour comes fuller the price escalates
00:26:14.280
so that the tour doesn't get too full and so that each day is able to have a set amount of people
00:26:21.400
where it's still profitable but not where we're just gonna have 200 people come on a tour we're always
00:26:26.920
gonna stop before we hit capacity so what's high low if lowest is 339 what's the most i'll pay for a
00:26:33.000
ticket 639 okay got it and you could buy a photo package and other stuff it can it can get quite
00:26:40.200
expensive but it's nothing like taking a trip to africa you know i take people every year to africa
00:26:46.440
that's 12 000 a person to go to africa it's nothing like a nice vacay to thailand where you might see
00:26:52.360
some tigers and elephants but not in the luxury you do here and you're not going to get in and out
00:26:56.920
of thailand for five grand even if you're on a budget and that's a third world country where uh
00:27:01.240
things are cheap so it's a bargain if you're just coming with your family of four and you can probably
00:27:07.080
get in and out for a couple grand and you'll have an experience like no one else in the world
00:27:11.960
tons of celebrities have come and done it and uh tons of people that are just real avid wildlife
00:27:18.920
um enthusiasts that want the most out of their experience who are some of the who are some of
00:27:23.480
the people that have come to your park sheesh i mean you get you can see some of the beautiful
00:27:28.680
shots i have beyonce kissing my chimps you know and i have uh oh adama kasu the great big linebacker
00:27:35.800
was down came swimming and played with bubbles the elephant uh man i'm bad with names um any presidents
00:27:42.440
any politicians i saw jimmy carter one time he came and saw me i saw um president bush one time
00:27:50.040
saw us as well but i went and saw them at events god i didn't do it um you know i've had kings and
00:27:55.720
queens from around the world meet me at events because i go and do wildlife fundraising events
00:28:00.920
and i show up with elephants or pimps or tigers and i have people interact and meet them and therefore
00:28:07.640
open up their hearts and minds to wildlife and their wallet and get them to donate to international
00:28:13.320
wildlife conservation like what we run the rare speciesfund.org or big international groups that we
00:28:20.840
team up with to try and get new policies passed new laws put into place to protect wildlife around the
00:28:27.080
world i like the whole twelve thousand dollars for one person to go with you to africa right so it's
00:28:33.240
twelve thousand so and how many people do you go with when you do that our trips to africa max i think
00:28:38.920
is about 35 the most we ever took usually it's about 15 to 20 people go with us every fall we take
00:28:45.000
a trip there it is a life-changing slice of africa because 99 of africa is overloaded and overpriced and
00:28:52.600
you don't get to see the good stuff but the right piece of africa it's like you are shaking the hand of
00:28:58.680
god you're connected to a wildlife pristine environment that seems like this could be eaten
00:29:04.680
it is so unique but even in africa it's 99 gone the wildlife of africa is on the brink wildlife
00:29:11.880
across asia and africa both are having incredible trouble and wildlife conservation is in dire need
00:29:18.920
over there and right now with the corona out no tourism has happened there are so many wildlife
00:29:24.520
facilities that are in uh dire straits animals are even starving to death and dying because
00:29:29.640
no one's come by to hand over that dollar for an experience that's western money that makes the east
00:29:34.840
front so you're seeing you're seeing the effects of coronavirus also hurting animals not just
00:29:39.320
businesses so animals are taking a hit as well i think thousands of animals are dying poaching is
00:29:44.680
through the roof you know the poachers are out there taking advantage of everybody being hidden out
00:29:49.480
and poaching is rampant across africa and asia i mean it is big big business how are you being
00:29:55.480
affected by the pandemic i mean easter is an incredible time in myrtle beach often the town
00:30:01.320
of myrtle beach which has 150 000 hotel rooms is no rooms available in the entire town who can get a
00:30:07.240
million people here over the easter season and we have no one here it just dried up and we have to
00:30:13.080
stay at home order all businesses closed mandatory so you're just uh sitting here staring at an
00:30:19.000
incredible facility that's just devoid of people and devoid of that income so it's been super costly
00:30:26.440
and it's painful we hope it'll turn around we're talking about opening the beaches in the next days
00:30:32.520
or for sure in the next couple weeks we're we're waiting for the governor to make new ideas so so
00:30:38.200
how are you keeping your team sane how do you keep them calm during these times how are you talking
00:30:43.080
to them what are you telling them fortunately we live on a 50 acre preserve where there's just beautiful
00:30:48.680
open space and we're just we're still swimming we still all had family cookout time and easter and
00:30:54.280
we live along this big beautiful river we still let the elephant go down there and swim and play
00:30:59.000
the big thing that changes is the boats fly by on the big river it's a 500 foot wide river they scream
00:31:05.160
out carol killed her husband over and over tiger king but a whole lot of carol did it i mean that's the
00:31:12.280
mantra of the season so so how certain are you she killed her husband i don't have a video but i've
00:31:23.800
seen the stuff that's poured out from the show and i've been on this story for the last 15 plus years
00:31:31.080
it sure seems like carol did it whether she covered him in sardine oil or not that might be a question
00:31:37.960
but that she did do it seems like fruit from watching all this information roll in now would
00:31:43.800
that be an effective way of doing it would that would that actually work if she did do that with
00:31:47.960
sardine oil or cod liver whatever it is i've never tried it i meant to do it i need to do an experiment
00:31:55.000
for social media i need to you know maybe put one shoe with sardine oil on it and one with the
00:31:59.560
chanel number five it would get tons of millions of views i need to do it does sardine oil work i've got
00:32:05.560
to get that going right now so since since you're uh you know you're good with women lincoln once
00:32:13.400
said you know the best thing to do uh with an enemy is turn him into a friend have you ever tried to uh
00:32:19.640
make carol a friend the first couple times that she attacked me i was running my program in miami
00:32:26.360
i've had a show that ran down there for 15 years and she attacked that show because i was a guest closer
00:32:31.480
to her backyard she wasn't as popular as she has been lately well free tiger king different kind
00:32:37.560
of popularity now and she just wrote this outrageous slanderous article into the miami
00:32:42.600
herald and i wrote her back and said i'm sorry you are deeply confused she was just talking about
00:32:48.120
the poor quality of air and facility and place and like there's nowhere like us there's no vets that
00:32:54.600
like our vets there's no facility like our place you've made a mistake she wouldn't even respond
00:33:00.120
she just wants to have that one track mind of i am the mother theresa of all cats and everybody but
00:33:07.080
me is doing it wrong especially if you make contact she's just of that vibe like so many it's too
00:33:14.040
dangerous to do this it cannot be done safely i'm 40 years of doing it entirely day in and day out
00:33:21.960
i've had more than one million guests make contact with big adult tigers because my adult tigers met
00:33:27.800
guests until 2005 after the siegfried roy meltdown that took place i always let my big adult tigers
00:33:34.520
meet guests and i have tigers wandering through crowds for so many feature films and on so many movie
00:33:40.200
sets and she says that can't be done well of course it can it's a joke i've done it for my entire life
00:33:46.920
and carol just wants it to be something else um it's a matter of teamwork and skill and understanding
00:33:54.120
the rules and the language of the wildlife you're exposed to the real experts that i know have had
00:34:00.520
no accidents there are people that do but every time something comes up it's there's a secondary
00:34:07.560
problem there's substance abuse there's somebody uh too far too tired they brought a person in that
00:34:13.640
they knew shouldn't be there and that person um got hurt no one's ever been killed by a random tiger
00:34:21.560
except at the san francisco zoo where the guys on christmas day some time ago maybe a decade ago
00:34:28.680
were playing around on christmas day they had a bb gun they were smoking dope they were kicking and
00:34:34.040
hanging out and somehow at the very end of the day a tiger climbed out and ripped up three of them and
00:34:40.040
killed one of them and that's the only place and so that tiger was in a habitat in a place doors closed
00:34:46.520
of what's supposed to be a world-class zoo um so tigers are incredibly reliable if you know the
00:34:52.840
rules just like driving right i got friends and family members have died driving everybody knows
00:34:58.600
somebody's been in a terrible car accident if you go to the store today and you decide to drive there
00:35:03.880
backwards you probably have an accident if you pay attention to all the rules it's less tigers are the
00:35:09.560
same thing the rules are just more complicated but you can follow along and accidents with tigers
00:35:15.960
need not happen well why do you think power many powerful men have this desire to own a white tiger
00:35:22.200
you know what what what is it what what do you think it is is it a control thing is it a they relate is
00:35:27.320
it i feel like i'm also you know somebody that's of power what do you think it is with this infatuation
00:35:32.840
of big tigers i think you get two things a tiger is ultimate sexy beast you look at him and he is
00:35:40.600
magnificent to touch him he feels magic his his hair is always perfectly clean he feels amazingly
00:35:48.920
strong and beautiful even as a cub he's super cool and he maintains that throughout his life but just
00:35:54.840
gets bigger and bolder i think that people love that and are attracted to them but i also think what
00:36:00.760
takes place is people who have already had a lot and done a lot like mike tyson he's already king of
00:36:07.000
the world so much is going on he says i've got this you know indulgent lifestyle that i'm spending
00:36:12.280
millions of dollars a year i'm living in a house that's tens of millions of dollars what accoutrement
00:36:17.240
would be the next super cool thing i think tiger comes to mind for a certain kind of quality of life
00:36:26.040
a certain class of guy says i'd like to have a tiger live here it would be super cool the problem
00:36:31.480
is nobody goes about understanding the rules first so they can't develop a relationship with that tiger
00:36:38.200
they also don't understand the incredible amount of time but they don't devote themselves to the tiger
00:36:43.560
enough but the tiger's a year old it's 250 300 pounds and it's biting and it's and it's jumping and even
00:36:49.880
if you're mike tyson it's too much no one's ready to really fight an eight foot tall 600 pound guy
00:36:57.320
that's got 10 knives like wolverine implanted in his hands he's too much he's got to really love what
00:37:03.880
you're doing with him or you're going down doesn't matter who you are so so big part of it is attention
00:37:09.320
because i know you said early when i asked you about people that own tigers you said you know dozens
00:37:13.880
of them and most of their personalities are they're very to themselves you know they put the time into the
00:37:19.080
can't into the tigers and all of that so for private ownership uh what are the laws right
00:37:24.360
now with private ownership to own a tiger can somebody own a tiger today in us or no
00:37:28.520
only in a few states i mean in south carolina where i am it's illegal in most of the states
00:37:33.320
certainly all of new england it's been illegal for a long time there's a few places alabama
00:37:38.840
maybe nevada um i think there's four or five states that are the only ones left where you can
00:37:44.120
privately keep a tiger if you have tons of money michael jackson had private tigers and private
00:37:49.480
chimps in california of all crazy places because he has unlimited access to funds if you have unlimited
00:37:55.480
access to funds you build a zoo you put it wherever you want you put in zoo staff you bring in zoo
00:38:00.200
veterinarians you bring in animal trainers and it can be whatever you want if you want to blow millions
00:38:05.640
of dollars a year at it mike tyson did something similar but he got a little shafted and hired people
00:38:10.920
that hoodwinked him and bought got the wrong stuff and the wrong people in the wrong way
00:38:15.560
what's next for you i mean i know obviously you run your business here are you working
00:38:18.680
on any major projects any major things that's coming up obviously outside of the pandemic that
00:38:22.520
was taking place the preserve here is always growing you know we just finished an incredible
00:38:27.160
great ape house we have 12 great apes orangutans and chimps and gibbons that all live up there
00:38:32.680
that's our our in-house project you know what's got to be done right now is there's got to be
00:38:37.080
tiger king too it needs to be tiger king too the truth and i think that there's room for that i
00:38:43.240
think we're i have a lot of people approaching us on how to put it together i think that there's some
00:38:48.520
good pieces in there that'll happen i think the myrtle beach safari youtube channel may have information
00:38:54.120
coming up about it soon um we're hoping that something else can be done because there's a lot
00:38:59.080
of unanswered questions a lot of stuff there i don't know if we're going to get any new footage of joe
00:39:03.160
joe but uh you never know have you a lot of our guys talk about how close carol baskin looks to
00:39:11.400
hillary clinton have you seen that as well or no that that picture going around with the two of them
00:39:15.800
oh yeah you get that right stare and that right kind of like i'm coming for you look um they're both
00:39:21.960
pretty spooky girls i mean the two of those women are are highly intense and seem like uh if you do
00:39:29.080
something wrong um you might wind up covered in sardine oil imagine if they ran a company together
00:39:34.440
what it would look like nobody would want to mess with them that'd be too much that'd be too much so
00:39:40.360
maybe if because i heard somebody opened the case and they're now investigating here again i don't
00:39:45.000
know if there's any truth behind that or not is it i've heard the case is open i think that uh
00:39:50.200
you can see a lot of the information on um bcrwatch.com that's like a watchdog site for carol
00:39:57.240
baskin and all things big pet rescue and i believe that the sheriff has opened the case back up i
00:40:02.200
think there's new reward money out there i think that a woman came forward and said i was married
00:40:06.840
to the hitman and put an affidavit out who knows how it all goes i think uh her for her to go to
00:40:13.880
prison for murder without a body 25 years later probably pretty complicated not normally happens
00:40:20.760
in the united states i don't know that that goes on if that happens i think there's definitely going
00:40:25.640
to be a need for tiger king too if that happens because people will not i mean they can't wait
00:40:31.240
for that all of a sudden for a couple months the most hated person in the world became carol baskin
00:40:37.160
i don't know how that happens but it is what it is so let's do a quick speed round doc i'm going to
00:40:42.040
give you a couple names tell me the first word that comes to your mind all right rick kirkham
00:40:49.400
entertainment tonight i'm not sure if that was what it was but he seems that dude michael murdoch
00:40:54.120
don't know okay alan glover belongs in that bathtub he just he should have stayed there
00:41:03.400
jeff lo snitch snitches need stitches joe exotic a lost lonely guy with a silver spoon that just went
00:41:15.320
way too far with with the help of those same snitches how about howard baskin
00:41:20.280
he's kind of like uh a pair of sandals with socks on it just doesn't quite look or fit right
00:41:30.120
last one carol baskin oh my god i mean just just satan's ilk for big cats i mean just been the
00:41:38.200
worst thing in the world for them destroying the species destroying people's understanding of them
00:41:43.000
just uh big cat satan big cat satan carol baskin well if if anything formulates and builds up i'm
00:41:51.000
sure the i'm sure i know for a fact 75 78 million people can't wait for part two if something happens
00:41:58.120
with her and i'm i'm uh hoping this investigation goes a little deeper i'm sure there's a lot of
00:42:02.520
other people want to see what happens with the end of this story but like you said 25 years doc and uh
00:42:07.640
his uh tiger sanctuary the ritz carlton of tiger sanctuaries in myrtle beach uh south carolina
00:42:13.720
having said that doc thank you so much for making the time for uh being a guest on valutainment
00:42:17.480
thank you come on out you bring those kids bring your wife come see this experience it's life
00:42:21.960
changing come try it i look forward to it i look forward to it thanks everybody for listening and
00:42:26.360
by the way if you haven't already subscribed to valutainment on itunes please do so give us a five
00:42:31.720
star write a review if you haven't already and if you have any questions for me that you may have
00:42:35.960
you can always find me on snapchat instagram facebook or youtube just search my name patrick
00:42:41.160
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00:42:46.840
being said have a great day today take care everybody bye