Rebecca Chaiklin
Rebecca Chaiklin
Rebecca Chaiklin is a film director and producer. She is best known for her work on Lockdown, USA (2006), Another World (2014) and Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness (2020).
Education
Chaiklin holds a Bachelor's degree in Film/Cinema/Video Studies from New York University.[5]
Career
In 2006, Chaiklin took part in Tribeca Film Festival and was a nominee for Best NY, NY Documentary Feature for her work on Lockdown, USA (2006).[1]
Filmography
Tango of Slaves (Documentary) (assistant producer) (1993)
Men Make Women Crazy Theory (Short) (producer) (2000)
Last Party 2000 (Documentary) (producer) (2001)
Poster Boy (producer - produced by) (2004)
Lockdown, USA (Documentary) (producer) (2006)
Bling: A Planet Rock (Documentary) (producer) (2007)
Forgiveness and Justice (Documentary) (producer) (2009)
Beyond Right and Wrong: Stories of Justice and Forgiveness (Documentary) (producer) (2012)
My Decisions (Documentary) (producer) (2012)
Another World (Documentary) (producer) (2014)
Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness (TV Mini-Series documentary) (executive producer - 2 episodes) (2020)
Peter Marino: Beauty and Power (Documentary) (co-producer)
"Tiger King"
Rebecca Chaiklin and her fellow director Eric Goode began seven-part docuseries Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness in 2015.
The origins of "Tiger King" actually date back to Chaiklin's college days, when she got to know Eric Goode. She recalled:
"Eric is a pretty well-known character around New York City.
He's a successful nightclub (owner), hotelier, restaurant owner of super-trendy fabulous places, and when I was in college I worked for him at one of his super-groovy clubs.
I was a door girl; I used to stand out at the ropes and let people in with my clipboard.
And we became friends."[4]
"Then we sort of drifted apart and then we had met up and I was doing documentaries.
We were at a dinner party together, and I always knew he kind of had this passion for reptiles....
So, he was telling me about this really wild world that he was aware of in South Florida where people were dealing these exotic reptiles.
He described it as sort of 'Breaking Bad' except for they were dealing exotic reptiles instead of meth.
It piqued my curiosity."[4]
As chronicled in "Tiger King," the pair made a reconnaissance trip to see if they could get access and ended up taking an unplanned detour into the cryptic world of big-cat fanatics.
Chaiklin said:
"We were there and this guy shows up and his thumb, literally half of it was hanging off because he'd just been bitten by a venomous snake, and he was looking to buy a new venomous snake to replace that.
As he was leaving, he opened up the back of his van and there was a snow leopard in it.
I almost fell over because there's only a few thousand left on the entire planet.
And it was hot, humid - I forget, it was July or August - in South Miami, and it was a crazy place to see a snow leopard.
And it just set us on this journey where we were like, 'How is this possible?
Where did it come from?
And how many other people are keeping big cats like this?' So, one question led to another."[4]
Those questions led the filmmakers to Wynnewood and Joe Exotic, who named what was then called the G.W. Exotic Animal Park after his late brother. In an interview with The Oklahoman, Chaiklin said:
"It was immediately apparent that this world was a super-colorful world.
It was a world that most people didn't know about because it's quite secretive and hidden, and it had incredible characters in it.
But we also wanted to do something that really raised people's awareness about the fact that there was a lot of cruelty to the animals going on."[4]
"Of course, this whole true crime element with Joe and Jeff and James and how that all unfolded - and what had actually unfolded - we never in a million years thought it was going to take this whole true-crime twist.
It was just never in the cards when we started out.
So, there were a lot of unexpected turns in this process."[4]
Chaiklin told IndieWire:
“We started going around to places in Florida, where every few houses somebody has some crazy exotic animal in certain areas in their backyard.
It was really stunning to me how pervasive this was.
We thought it would be much more issue-oriented and we had no idea that it would take the twists and turns that it would end up taking.”[3]
“We were blessed in this project in having subjects that were obsessed with filming themselves.
Narcissism was a common thread, and all of them constantly wanting to be on camera was every filmmaker’s dream.
So there was this plethora of footage, and it was just the gift that kept on giving for us.
Honestly, there was so much archival that we probably, to this day, have not watched every second of it because it was so overwhelming.”[3]
“Managing it was huge.
We had a story that was unfolding every day, practically.
If somebody was in the field, all the footage was coming in from shooting 18 hours a day.
Then having to make decisions and get it into the edit, it was kind of wild.”[3]
Chaiklin said about the feud between roadside zookeeper Joseph Maldonado-Passage, best known as Joe "Exotic" Schreibvogel, and Carole Baskin, a sanctuary owner determined to put him out of business:
“They were completely obsessed with each other.
We would go to film with Carole and [her husband] Howard, and all they would do is talk about Joe, literally just from morning to night.
And then we’d go to film with Joe, and all he would do is talk about Carole.”[2]