‘Monsters of God’ Director Eric Goode Breaks Down the Finale Reveal: ‘He Was Like an Alcoholic Running a Liquor Store’

[Editor’s Note: The following interview contains spoilers for “Monsters of God” on HBO.] One would think that director Eric Goode would have a better handle on securing interviews for his passion project “Monsters of God,” given his high level of familiarity with the exotic reptile trade it documents, but coincidentally, that all went to hell after the release of his Emmy-nominated documentary series debut “Tiger King.” “After ‘Tiger King’ came out, people just didn’t want to be portrayed as some crazy toothless hillbilly in Oklahoma. So they were very guarded after ‘Tiger King’ came out, regardless of my backstory and my knowledge of reptiles,” the documentarian told IndieWire during a recent Zoom interview. “It was actually a deterrent having had ‘Tiger King’ behind me. It made it harder to access people. But as long as I could get my foot in the door, then yes, my fluency in knowing about reptiles and being able to talk in Latin words of different species—yes, that made it easier. There was a comfort with the subjects that I was interviewing that they understood that I understood and we’d been to exotic places, Madagascar and other places. But to get in the door in the first place, no, ‘Tiger King’ was a liability for me.” Tom Crutchfield, one of the O.G.s of exotic reptile smuggling in America that’s heavily featured in the series, has even outright said he would have never participated in “Monsters of God” had he seen “Tiger King” before agreeing to participate in the project. However, the paradox of it all is that despite “Tiger King” being a major reason Goode was able to land “Monsters of God” at HBO, the former would never have existed without the latter. “Monsters of God” has been over a decade in the making tracing back to the days when Goode, as a successful artist turned hospitality entrepreneur, co-founded the Turtle Conservancy, and hired a pair of young New York filmmakers to make PSAs for him. Eric Goode attends the LA Premiere of The HBO Documentary Series ‘Monsters Of God’ at Vidiots on August 06, 2026 in Los Angeles, California.Savion Washington/Getty Images for HBO “To be fair to Josh and Benny Safdie, they really were on a trajectory to be filmmakers. I was on a trajectory to just do whatever my creative fantasies directed me to do, whatever medium it might be,” said Goode, downplaying the idea that those projects were not just the birth of his filmmaking career, but the Safdies as well. “They were really pursuing a career in film and I was more of a dilettante, to be fair. I had dabbled in filmmaking. I directed music videos in the early 1990s, and I made Super 8 movies in high school extensively, but I wasn’t on this trajectory to be a filmmaker earlier in my life necessarily, more an artist.” When Goode hired the pair, who would go on to make films like “Uncut Gems” and “Good Time” together, “we started working together in a very ad hoc, funny way, and that evolved into them becoming filmmakers. But I don’t take any credit for that, that’s for sure.” But “the work that I was doing with the Safdie brothers evolved into, yes, having the privilege of being able to make more documentaries,” he said. In fact, “Monsters of God” actually started in collaboration with the Safdie brothers in 2014. “In the summer, Josh and Benny came with me and we ran around South Florida and filmed some of these characters early on. And then other things got in the way over the years,” said Goode. Still, all these years later, Josh Safdie and fellow Oscar-nominated “Marty Supreme” screenwriter Ronald Bronstein are credited as executive producers on the series. Where “Monsters of God” really differs from “Tiger King” and “Chimp Crazy” is that it is not so reliant on the personalities it features. “Don’t get me wrong, I could have found really crazy, insane reptile people that free-handle cobras and get bitten and almost die, and they’re really insane. But this story wasn’t about just finding the freakshow of the reptile people. It was more about finding this story that goes back over half a century and weaving this story into a documentary so people understand the history of the reptile world in the United States,” said Goode. Though the docuseries, which finished its five-episode run on September 3, does not necessarily have the same type of plot twists his projects have become known for, like “Tiger King” subject Joe Exotic putting a hit out on his rival Carole Baskin, or “Chimp Crazy” subject Tonia Haddix kidnapping a chimpanzee, the “Monsters of God” finale does have a reveal that ties the nuances of the project all together by including a certain former US Fish and Wildlife Service officer. Ken McCloud, hepatologist, former Lead Agent for Special Operations, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.A24/Goode Films “Ken McLeod started his life working in a reptile dealership in California, not law enforcement. He wasn’t holier than thou, but somehow he became an undercover agent for US Fish and Wildlife Service and got into law enforcement, but he could have just as easily ended up as a zoo curator, a reptile dealer, and he happened to be on that other side of the fence,” said Goode. “During his tenure at US Fish and Wildlife, everyone thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s so valuable. He knows about reptiles.’ ‘Oh, he’s taking all the reptiles and bringing them to his house and doting on them. He’s such an angel.’ But meanwhile, he really wanted those reptiles. He wanted to live with those reptiles. He was like an alcoholic running a liquor store in a way. He was like this guy that nobody really realized that he had the fever.” That is, until McLeod retired from the service. “He figured out a way to orchestrate having this very endangered animal, similar to having a panda bear in your house. He happened to have this very rare [ploughshare] tortoise from Madagascar in his house, and he’s had it for the last 20 years, not just in his house, but in his bedroom with him and his wife,” Goode explained. “It’s deeply selfish and unfair to keep a tortoise that’s critically endangered, arguably extinct in the wild, in your house for 20 years and not bring it and put it into a bonafide breeding program or do something. That animal could contribute to the survival of the species. So for that guy to do that, it’s analogous with a drug enforcement agent having cocaine in his garage after he retires and selling it to the neighborhood or something. How? What the fuck?” However, Goode believes that some bad apples should not have to spoil the whole bunch. “The whole story of ‘Monsters of God’ is really about unintended consequences and how imperfect the whole process is: the animal cops, the animal dealers, zoos, myself, etc. And hopefully we do better going forward, but it really was a cautionary tale about the extinction crisis we’re in today, that some of the very laws that we put in place to save species actually do more harm than good sometimes.” Even the participation of subjects like Mario Tabraue or Anson Wong, who are known internationally for their criminal record, are depicted with that nuance. “That’s sort of the really big reveal that sometimes it’s only the bars that separates the guard from the prisoner,” said Goode. Ploughshare tortoise egg at the Turtle Conservancy breeding facility.A24/Goode Films Ultimately, the only factor of the exotic reptile trade that lacks the voice of its representative mentioned most in the documentary is the zoos. “Tom Schultz, the curator of herpetology from San Diego Zoo, I met with [him] multiple times. I could just never get him to sign a release,” said the director. “He’s in his early 90s. He’s doing well living in Southern California, and I spoke to him in length about his involvement with these illegal wildlife dealers, and he knew Anson Wong intimately, visited Anson Wong in Malaysia, knew Tommy Crutchfield, was moving reptiles back and forth out of the San Diego Zoo, getting reptiles from unscrupulous dealers like the people I just mentioned. But again, the San Diego Zoo does a lot of really good work, and in the history of a zoo like that and all the people that work there, not everyone is going to be perfect.” As for what’s next for Goode, “I’m working on a few different things, all different kinds of genres and worlds. I did a documentary about my family that’s sort of getting tweaked that is meant for more of a very special audience. I did a documentary series about my time in downtown Manhattan in New York in the late ’70s and ’80s through the lens of nightlife. I’m working on that,” said the documentarian. “Look, I don’t want to just be redundant and do the same thing over and over again, even though animals seem to be a throughline at the moment in my docs. I’m actually working on other things that don’t involve animals, but I do care about animals and it’s been a big part of my life from childhood.” “Monsters of God” is now streaming in full on HBO Max.