BONUS Interview: Josh Mankiewicz and Joe Exotic

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Speaker 3 How did you get the name Joe Exotic?

Speaker 3 Years ago, back in 2003, 2004, when I started doing educational shows at fairs and festivals and stuff like that, a little kid, I could never say my real name, which was Joe Schweiger.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 they called me Exotic Joe.

Speaker 3 And over the years, we just turned around and went with Joe Exotic.

Speaker 3 There you go. And

Speaker 3 And a brand was born.

Speaker 3 And a brand was born, yes, sir.

Speaker 3 How does one become the tiger king?

Speaker 4 You know, people on social media actually are the ones who

Speaker 4 branded me with the with the tiger king.

Speaker 3 This is sort of the marketplace at work, right? I mean, people don't really want to show up and see deer, but they they do with tigers.

Speaker 3 Tigers and bears are are very fascinating for people, you know, because

Speaker 3 they can feed the tigers with a pole and chunks of meat, and they can feed bears with a tube and marshmallows and cookies.

Speaker 1 Are those things good for bears?

Speaker 3 That kind of food? Well, uh, you know, a certain amount. Uh

Speaker 3 you wouldn't want to make that an all-day diet. So part of part of our our diet plans were we were only allowed to sell so much junk food every day.

Speaker 3 Tell me about cub petting. Cub petting, we started that

Speaker 3 back in probably 2003

Speaker 3 and it actually started

Speaker 3 in schools as an educational tool to talk to kids about the rainforest and the habitat of tigers and different animals and how we're destroying their habitat.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 3 how old were the cubs that you'd bring into schools?

Speaker 3 Four weeks. It's okay to take a four-week-old tiger cub away from its mother? That's not a problem?

Speaker 3 Okay, well, you've got to understand in captivity.

Speaker 3 First of all, most of the mothers don't know how to take care of their young properly.

Speaker 3 During the summertime, we deal with rats, snakes, rattle snakes, copperheads crawling into the fence and eating the babies or biting the babies.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 we took them away most generally to actually save and and take care of the little ones.

Speaker 3 So cup betting.

Speaker 3 People like cup betting. It's a way to get close to animals in a way that they otherwise probably never would.

Speaker 3 Right, right. And,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 it's the best way to educate people, too. And the time people sit and they pet the cup and they fall in love with this little baby tiger that they would normally never see in their lifetime.

Speaker 3 They leave with a little more respect of trying to help us save the rainforest

Speaker 3 and their habitat by, you know, recycling and using products that are not from the rainforest. So it's the best education tool there is.
Was cup penning lucrative for you?

Speaker 3 You make a lot of money off that?

Speaker 3 Well, I mean,

Speaker 3 it is what

Speaker 3 paid the expenses to build the park to be what it is today. And to the charge that you're exploiting animals for profit, your answer would be what?

Speaker 4 You can see where all the money went in in large cages and playing new cages and

Speaker 4 taking in animals that no one else would take in.

Speaker 3 There's a video where you're shooting a Carol doll that anybody can see on the internet. You've spent a lot of time speaking very disparagingly and in a very hostile way toward her.

Speaker 3 But this is way beyond some passionate argument about animal rights.

Speaker 3 Keep in mind that everything that the the news media has showed about those videos, they haven't showed the entire show either.

Speaker 3 You know, the the whole thing wasn't about Carol Baskin. You know, but

Speaker 3 the crazier we got on on the show and the more outlandish we got, the more viewers we got. We tried real calm animal shows and we didn't get that many viewers.

Speaker 3 When we turned it into Joe Gon Wild and curved it more like Jackass the Movie,

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 people just

Speaker 3 loved it. I don't why, I don't know.
You know, and it got to the point that we had fundraisers for other facilities.

Speaker 3 And hell, I raised $20,000 in two hours, you know, sometimes because we had that many viewers from being that crazy.

Speaker 3 be terminated in two minutes.

Speaker 3 Thanks.

Speaker 3 15 minutes goes by fast, that's it. Certainly does.
Call me back. All right.

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Speaker 4 This is the prepaid collect call from Joseph Penn,

Speaker 5 an inmate at the Grady County Jail.

Speaker 3 Joe Gon Wild is the kind of TV show most people never see.

Speaker 3 That was the most watched show.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 we did bring some animals on

Speaker 3 from time to time, but

Speaker 3 the way that the guys built the website was it had a chat room on the right side of the TV screen.

Speaker 3 And when you logged in, you could chat with people that were all watching the show anywhere in the world, and you could talk to me.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 it was interactive as well as just the television show.

Speaker 3 Right, right, right. And the more outrageous it got, the more viewers you got.

Speaker 3 I was and

Speaker 3 it even developed from there. Then, in the chat room, you could dare us to do stuff,

Speaker 3 and you could make a donation to the zoo. You'd call the office, and the girls would take your credit card to make the donation, and we would do the dare.

Speaker 3 And to give you an example, I don't know if you've ever run into the adult diaper people on Facebook.

Speaker 3 They're not my favorites, no.

Speaker 3 Okay, well, that's a crazy group to ever have follow you.

Speaker 3 So, one night,

Speaker 3 this person dares us to wearing the gold diaper through the rest of the show

Speaker 3 and gave us 500 bucks for it for the animals. So hell, you know, 500 bucks for 15 minutes of wearing the diaper with them diapers on.

Speaker 3 And it just got crazier from there. And the crazier that we got, the more money they donated to the zoo.
Sounds like you understand television pretty well.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 3 it's just the way it was.

Speaker 3 And then, you know, we didn't just make money for the zoo. We actually turned the joke on wild into a good thing, too.

Speaker 3 And that was we would have auctions on certain nights in order to raise money for different charities and, you know, little kids that were sick that had a last wish and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 Let me switch gears a little bit here. Why did you want to get into politics?

Speaker 3 Why did I want to get into politics? Because of the exact same reason why I'm into

Speaker 3 the Endangered Species Act or trying to have somebody killed?

Speaker 3 Laws like the Endangered Species Act. Because,

Speaker 3 like, Oklahoma introduced over 3,000 bills last year during the last election.

Speaker 3 And 3,000 more bills have been lucky to take your rights away. You actually wanted to change some laws.

Speaker 3 I've written a lot of letters to to senators and congressmen and everything else and you never hear back from them. Ever.

Speaker 3 Well, I made a big one night and I was like, how do me and you ever get hurt in this country without having to do something stupid, like blow something up or whatever.

Speaker 3 Woke up the next morning and I signed my name to the Donald Line director, President of the United States. and I may access the 37 ballots on my own.

Speaker 3 And the idea was just to sort of improve customer service.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 this was about

Speaker 3 what's right or wrong. And it got to where I enjoyed politics more than I enjoyed the zoo.
Well, that's what I mean. You were saying, you know,

Speaker 3 you write letters, nobody ever returns them. So you thought, you know, one night,

Speaker 3 maybe I'll do it myself.

Speaker 3 And America would experience sort of better customer service from their politicians if you were elected. Yes.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 3 Let's get to the other thing that got you in legal trouble. The government says that on two different occasions you approached different people with plans to kill Carol.
True or false?

Speaker 3 False. You didn't want to kill Carol.

Speaker 3 Carol was the furthest thing from my mind. Joe, I don't think Carol has ever been the furthest thing from your mind ever since Carol first entered your mind.

Speaker 3 You are, you sounds like you've had a really long feud with her and the two of you have gone back and forth and you've cost each other a lot of pride and a lot of money and a lot of business and now this has ultimately cost you your freedom.

Speaker 3 Joe's not done fighting.

Speaker 4 This call will be terminated in two minutes.

Speaker 3 All right, one more time. Calls back.

Speaker 4 Bye.

Speaker 3 Hello.

Speaker 4 This is the prepaid charges for your call have been accepted. Alright.

Speaker 3 You know, after all the threats and all the fights and all the courtroom battles and all those videos, it does not seem

Speaker 3 impossible that you would have lost your temper at Carol to the point where you would think about hiring somebody to have her taken out.

Speaker 4 No, because it wasn't making a difference because I was already exiting the zoo and the industry.

Speaker 3 But isn't this about more than just whether or not you were in the zoo business? I mean this was a long time sort of Hatfields and McCoy's battle between you and Carol.

Speaker 3 It's not, it doesn't strike me as crazy that maybe you would have wanted to have her killed.

Speaker 4 Why would I have wanted to? Because

Speaker 4 you have the industry. I was done with it.

Speaker 3 Well, at the end of the trial, when the jury went out,

Speaker 3 you feel confident? You think you're going to get acquitted?

Speaker 3 Even the lawyers thought we were going to get acquitted.

Speaker 3 So that verdict must have come as quite a shock.

Speaker 3 It comes to a shock to everybody. Even some of the reporters that were in the report with it because

Speaker 3 the day before they took just a common senses of how it was going. And the reporters were even like, well, Joe, I think you got this.

Speaker 3 If you had kept your feelings about Carol Baskin to yourself, if you had not spouted off about her, if you had not continued this feud, I understand you can't control what she does, but you could control yourself.

Speaker 3 If you would just shut up about Carol Baskin, I'm thinking you and I would be having this conversation face to face because you wouldn't be in lockup. Man,

Speaker 3 you and my husband

Speaker 3 said exactly the same thing. Me and my big mouth is what got me in here because my big mouth is what made it so easy for them to set me up.

Speaker 3 Do you think you got a shot at a presidential pardon here?

Speaker 3 I think I have a shot of honesty and justice prevailing at some point. Yes.

Speaker 3 All right.

Speaker 3 Good luck.

Speaker 3 I appreciate it. Thank you for talking with us.

Speaker 4 All right, buddy. Thank you.
Thanks.

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