Netflix Series: Tiger King

In the "truth is stranger than fiction" category comes this 7-part documentary on the rivalry between competing big cat sanctuaries, that escalates to the point that one of them took out a murder contract on another.

Drugs, polygamy, weird personalities, big egos, spotlight seekers, and guns compete with exotic animals for the most attention-getting element of this larger-than-life story.  You can't make this shit up. Everyone has secrets. Nobody is who they seem to be. Who is "the bad guy" and who is "the good guy" keeps shifting.

I am reminded of John Aspinall, a British gentleman who used his horse race gambling profits in the 1970s to open a private zoo, where he raised all the animals from cubs and interacted with them.  The scenes of him rolling around with a full-grown gorilla and wrestling with huge tigers affected me deeply, when the documentary "A Passion To Protect" was shown on PBS in 1982.  Aspinall was a controversial figure, first because exotic animals were not seen as pets back then, second because he employed non-professionals to help take care of them, third because he got in there with all sorts of deadly animals and wrestled, and not the least, because five of his staff were killed by his animals in separate incidents.  His staff were less cautious, hadn't raised the animals, and forgot they were still wild animals.

Nevertheless, Aspinall had success breeding animals that zoos and less-naturalistic preserves never did, and he eventually earned begrudging respect for his accomplishments.

For YEARS I looked for the documentary on DVD, but it's never been re-released.  Finally, a few years ago, I discovered the whole thing had been posted to YouTube, so I downloaded it and made my own DVD - along with a second doc by the same filmmaker about the Aspinall Foundation, carried on by John's son Damian after he passed (peacefully) in 2000.

Quote :

People are so obsessed with this real-life story that there’s already a fictional adaptation in the works.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tiger-king-miniseries-cast-kate-mckinnon_n_5e7d0a04c5b6256a7a273521

Because -- apparently -- you CAN make this shit up.

I got about 2 min in saw the captive Snow Leopard and cried. I fucking hate documentarians. Just sat there and filmed one of the most endangered species ever and did jack shit. You'd have had to have weaponry to keep me from taking that leopard to a sanctuary. Fucking fucks. I hope they get eaten by their cats slowly.