"I was a closeted reptile guy in New York City for decades." 🐍

An interview with Monsters of God filmmaker Eric Goode.

Goooooood afternoon, everyone.

Today’s newsletter includes: Public Records heads to Manhattan, the loudest U.S. Open ever, Teddy Kim interviews hotelier and filmmaker Eric Goode, New York Magazine is expanding their podcast offerings, and Los Tacos No. 1 is about to expand with fresh cash.

---

---

"I was a closeted reptile guy in New York City for decades." By Teddy Kim.

Stay Tuned is a Feed Me guest column about film and entertainment, written by Teddy Kim. Today, he interviewed Eric Goode.

Long before he created Tiger King, before he opened legendary establishments like the Bowery Hotel, Waverly Inn, and ‘80s nightclub Area, Eric Goode became obsessed with reptiles. He started keeping them as pets as a kid and has devoted at least part of his life since to their safe-keeping. Goode’s new five-part HBO series Monsters of God (the final episode drops tonight) is about the fascinating world of illegal reptile smuggling, its connections with drug trafficking, and the colorful characters and creatures at the center of it all. I watched the doc knowing nothing at all about reptiles, except for a short stint owning two turtles as a kid. But for all its craziness, there’s an irresistible charm to the main characters and a universality to the subculture. If you have a niche obsession these days, you might end up spending an inordinate amount of time on the relevant subreddit. Monsters of God gives us a look into a past where instead of hanging out on internet forums, people are going to reptile conventions in Florida, cold-calling sketchy reptile dealers across the world, and doing copious amounts of drugs, all before the feds bust down your door.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Teddy Kim: You’ve been into reptiles since you were a kid?

Eric Goode: My parents made the mistake of giving me a pet tortoise when I was six, and then I was hooked. I started keeping all kinds of reptiles and collecting them, and that went on for years, into high school. I lived in a room with tortoises and lizards and snakes. I never shook the bug completely. There were times I went off to college, I went to New York and started doing other things, but reptiles were always in the back of my mind. I was a closeted reptile guy in New York City for decades.

TK: When did it cross over into your professional work, on the conservancy side and the filmmaking side both?

EG: I always loved, and always tried to figure out, how to mix science with art, since I was a kid. Just how to be creative. That’s what drew me to New York City, the art world in the late 1970s and into the ‘80s. I always tried to find a combination of how to merge the two, and one way or another I always did, whether it was a nightclub or a hotel or even a restaurant. I’d have a huge aquarium with pig-nosed turtles in it. I always somehow had to include my interest in reptiles or wildlife.

Ultimately I started an organization called the Turtle Conservancy in the early 2000s, and that was when I’d reached a point in my life where I had some resources from some successes in New York in the hospitality business, opening and running restaurants and hotels, and I started really thinking about how to give back. I realized how endangered turtles and tortoises were.

A young Eric Goode with a turtle.

TK: What was the first seed of Monsters of God?

EG: Reading the book The Lizard King, in 2008. That book by Bryan Christy was really inspiring to me. It’s a cat-and-mouse story mainly focused on Strictly Reptiles, the biggest wholesale reptile dealer in the United States, the Van Nostrand family, and I was very familiar with them. I’d been a patron of those dealers. I bought reptiles when I was younger. Not in big numbers, and I wasn’t buying illegal reptiles, or at least not that I knew of. What I wasn’t familiar with was all the ins and outs of law enforcement, the trouble they were getting into, the prison sentences. That was the revelation. I tried to buy the rights after it was published, unsuccessfully. I low-balled it.

Over the years I flirted with the idea of doing a documentary about the reptile world, but I think the inspiration came from that book. Everyone told me I was crazy. “How would you do a documentary about a subject like this without getting killed?” Eventually I started filming with these young filmmakers called the Safdie brothers, and that started in 2014. So it’s been about twelve years, off and on, to make Monsters of God.

TK: How did you start working with the Safdies? Had they made Daddy Longlegs by that point?

EG: A friend of mine helped them fund Daddy Longlegs. They were young guys in New York trying to find their way in the film world. I would hire them to film different people holding turtles for turtle PSAs: Slash, or Christopher Walken, or Parker Posey, Liev Schreiber. Matt Dillon. Richard Branson holding a turtle. Then we made a short together called The Trophy Hunter, which was this crazy film about the wildlife trade that we shot in an apartment in New York with all kinds of taxidermy.

TK: How much work did it take to get your subjects to talk with you on camera?

EG: Access is the thing you need more than anything to make the kind of documentary I make. Are they willing to talk? You just have to realize some people will never talk to you, and you have to be incredibly patient. That’s partly why this took twelve years. Some people didn’t want to talk for two, three years and then finally changed their minds.

TK: How much did the scope of the doc and the story change as you went along? For example, one of your central subjects, Ray, has Alzheimer’s and can’t remember the things you need to ask him about. How did you work around that?

EG: I was acutely aware that the players from the sixties and seventies and eighties were aging out and dying off. Bill Haast, who ran the Serpentarium, that famous snake show near Miami, died a number of years ago. Ray Van Nostrand died during the making of Monsters of God, and he was struggling with dementia and Alzheimer’s. Tom Crutchfield is getting older. Hank Molt is in his eighties today and he’s not in the best of health.

So it was now or never. If I didn’t do this story now, there’d never be a time to do it.

TK: Watching it, I couldn’t help but understand where most of them were coming from. They’re driven by some passion for the animals, and that for all the trouble they get into they can’t help themselves. Tom, or Mike, who sets up this genuinely successful legitimate business and then gets pulled back in.

EG: You mean almost like an addiction. The pathology is similar to art collecting, or antique car collecting. You want the status of having that rare piece, the very rare Ming vase, or whatever it might be in whatever culture you come from. You want the thing everyone’s going to brag about. It gets boring only selling green iguanas. They’re everywhere in Florida. You want the thing that’s going to give you some kind of status.

So people take these crazy risks to get animals that are forbidden, and they do it and do it and think they can get away with it, and eventually they get caught. It’s chronic in the reptile world. People go to prison, they go to prison again, they go again. Tom went a number of times. Mike Van Nostrand went a number of times. His father went.

Listen, I even have that pathology. I find it really exciting to see a reptile I’ve never seen before. Now, will I go and smuggle it? No. But I understand the pathology.

TK: Have there been boom-and-bust cycles in this market?

EG: Absolutely. There are trends and fads, and some are spawned by pop culture. You’ll have a movie like Jurassic Park and everyone wants a bearded dragon. Or Finding Nemo, and everyone wants a clownfish. Or Harry Potter, and everyone wants a baby owl. They call them Harry Potter birds. And then there are fads that happen naturally, where suddenly everyone wants an albino ball python, and then people get tired of that and go on to the next thing.

The sad part is they’re like disposable pets. People buy something, they’re excited for a year or two, they get a rush keeping it, and then they move on to the next dopamine rush of whatever species they haven’t seen before. You don’t see that when someone buys a dog. You actually fall in love with your dog. You don’t go out and exchange it for a new dog. In the reptile world it’s a little bit like whatever the most delicious flavor is at that moment.

TK: What’s the trending flavor right now, legal or illegal?

EG: It’s always whatever you can’t get. The illegal flavor is the most delicious flavor for many people. They want what’s forbidden, they want what nobody else has, the bragging rights. A Fiji Island iguana, which is taboo in this country unless you’re a bona fide zoo. Ploughshare tortoises. There’s a very bizarre reptile called a tuatara from New Zealand. It’s not even really a lizard, it’s in its own class.

In the nineties, everyone in this country wanted a green iguana. Today there are laws forbidding you from having one, because there are too many running amok in Florida. Burmese pythons are banned for good reason, because they’re taking over the Everglades.

TK: Has the problem of illegal reptile smuggling gotten worse as the world’s become more globalized? In the doc, you see young American kids sending faxes to reptile traffickers in Malaysia. Today, would I just send someone a WhatsApp? Could I order it off Alibaba? What does it look like today?

EG: Asia and China took a page out of our playbook about 25 years ago. Historically there was consumption of certain reptiles there, yes, and traditional medicine involving turtle shells, and that’s been going on for thousands of years. What Asia learned from the West is that it’s cool to keep reptiles as pets, that it’s cool to have a rare tortoise as a status symbol. And because Asia and China combined are so much bigger than Europe and the US, the trade going to that part of the world is enormous.

I don’t want to vilify that part of the world, by the way. We’ve done tremendous damage in our own. But the reptile trade is probably bigger than it’s ever been. Fifty years ago the hobby was mostly Europe, the United States, and Japan.

TK: So the direction of the trade has reversed.

EG: Don’t be mistaken, there are still illegal reptiles coming into this country. But what’s new over the last ten years is the animals leaving. That never happened before, and now it’s happening on an enormous scale. Enormous numbers of our native turtles are leaving our shores for Europe and Asia.

I get confiscations [at the Turtle Conservancy] almost on a monthly basis, hundreds and hundreds of native turtles we have to take in. I just got a confiscation two weeks ago of 500 turtles that were sent to Singapore in FedEx boxes. They were confiscated in Singapore, sent back here, and now I have half of them where I am right now.

At LAX, of everything confiscated over the last three years, 50% were marine species: coral, invertebrates, abalone. The other 50% was almost entirely turtles, going out to largely Asian countries — China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Jakarta, Bangkok — and Europe. But I don’t want to suggest one part of the world is worse than another. We’re all complicit.

TK: Even on the legal side, the reptile trade looks like the Wild West in the doc, with all these independent operators and colorful characters at reptile conventions. Is it still like that? Or are there new rules and regulations in place?

EG: When you look at all the different sides of this — law enforcement, the dealers, the consumers — there are a lot of great intentions and a lot of unintended consequences.

You create a law, or you put a species on the Endangered Species Act, and then you go to Jakarta or Hong Kong and they’re using that very law as a selling point. “This is on the Endangered Species Act, it’s on CITES, we want to sell it for more money. This is special.” So the laws sometimes backfire and turn into a marketing tool. You’d think elevating the scarcity of an animal would make people more conscientious: better take care of that one, better not buy it. But it’s the opposite. When something becomes rare, people want it and pay more for it. Being protected accelerates the value and makes the animal more vulnerable. In some cases the laws work. In some cases they really backfire.

TK: The Gila monster comes up in the series, and everyone’s talking about Gila monsters lately because that’s where the GLP-1 drugs came from. Are pharma companies suddenly interested in these animals to find the next Ozempic?

EG: The Gila monster is one of the only venomous lizards in the world, and it happens to live in the United States, in Mexico, a little in Guatemala. That’s the only place they live. And yes, that drug originally came from Gila monsters. Obviously now they make a synthetic version. There are other drugs that come from cobra venom that help with muscle issues in humans, and God knows what else might come from reptiles.

That’s a compelling reason to think we should revere these animals and save them, so that the next amazing drug might come from one of them. Reptiles have been vilified. People are scared of snakes and want to kill snakes, when it may be the very thing that saves you from some kind of cancer and you don’t even know it. There’s a lot of ignorance on display. We are, by the way, the monsters of God in this story, not the reptiles.

***

New releases this weekend: By Any Means opens wide this weekend, featuring a mafia hitman (Mark Wahlberg) and a young black FBI agent (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) assigned to work together to solve the murders of civil rights leaders in Jim Crow-era Mississippi. A sort of Green Book meets The Sopranos. I’m personally excited for this one because I remember when this was floating around almost a decade ago as an unproduced script (when it was titled CI-34) back when I was an agency assistant. We’re also getting Onslaught, the new action-horror from A24, which stars Adria Arjona as an Army sniper who has to protect her daughter from genetically engineered soldiers. It’s a great example of the kind of movie A24 probably wouldn’t have made even five years ago (a commercial action shooter), before it made the decision to go after more commercial projects.

We’re also entering the stretch when the rest of the movie year comes into Focus. The Venice FIlm Festival started yesterday and runs through September 12. Telluride opens tomorrow through Monday. TIFF starts next Thursday and New York Film Festival a few weeks later, on September 25. NYFF just announced that Luca Guadagnino’s OpenAI movie, Artificial — which was controversially dropped by Amazon when it was near completion and subsequently picked up by Neon — will have its world premiere at the festival.

Here are some other screenings I’d encourage you to check out in the coming week:

🐄 Thursday 9/3 and Saturday 9/5 @ MOMA — First Cow (2019) — In contrast to Onslaught, this is the kind of small movie that A24 probably wouldn’t make today ($2 million budget, set in 1820s Oregon, no stars). It’s a shame because it’s a subtle and sweet, fun film with Kelly Reichardt’s careful observations of how real human beings interact with one another. At the same time, it’s a dramatic story about American capitalism that’s all the more effective as social commentary — more so than most “eat the rich”-type content — for focusing on its characters first and foremost. I will always remember this as the last movie I saw in theaters before COVID happened, the calm before the storm.

☘️ Saturday 9/5 @ Roxy — The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006) — Ken Loach’s Palme d’Or winner about two brothers who join the IRA during the Irish War of Independence. A hard watch full of great performances, including one from a young Cillian Murphy. In 35mm.

📽 Saturday 9/5 and Sunday 9/6 @ NCW — The Last Picture Show (1971) — Peter Bogdanovich’s black-and-white portrait of a dying Texas town. Somber but full of beautiful cinematography and interesting editing, in addition to a 21-year-old Jeff Bridges. A coming (and going) of age story. In 35mm.

🎒 Saturday 9/5 and Monday 9/7 @ Metrograph — A Brighter Summer Day (1991) — Edward Yang’s Taiwanese epic about 1960s Taipei. Watching this movie feels like reading a great novel in four hours. (Yes, it’s four hours.) Highly recommend watching this and Yang’s other magnum opus, Yi Yi.

☂️ Sunday 9/6 @ MOMI — The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) — A movie in which every single line is sung, every shot is a different color, with an ending that gets me every time. A direct ancestor of La La Land.

---

It’s free to post and browse on the Feed Me Job Board. This week, it was used by hiring companies at Warby Parker, NBCUniversal, and The Lede Company.

---

New York Magazine appears to be cooking up a new audio and video podcast strategy. This week, they posted a job listing for a Director of Podcasts, who will “identify the most promising opportunities across our editorial brands, develop original franchises, and build a sustainable slate of shows that extend the reach and impact of New York Magazine across audio and video platforms.” New York Magazine’s podcast strategy was always small – I really enjoyed listening to The Cut on Tuesdays that Molly Fischer hosted back in 2018, and Vulture’s Good One has been going strong since 2017. But podcasts always seemed like Vox’s thing post-New York Magazine acquisition. I always thought a New York Magazine New York City version of The Daily would do well, or a ten-part interview series between Jerry Saltz and artists. Excited to see what they work on.

Is the U.S. Open more valuable to New York City than the Knicks? Good headline. The NYT article compares the economic impact and fan attendance of the U.S. Open to New York’s other major sporting events. The U.S. Open brings in $1.2 billion annually (this summer’s World Cup tallied a projected impact of $3.5 billion in the metro area, but comes to New York only once a generation) and now regularly welcomes 1 million+ attendees (43% from outside NYC, including 8% from other countries). Writes the Times: “With its unique combination of high-end clientele and huge attendance — a record 1.14 million fans went last year — the U.S. Open boasts both the aristocratic spending power of a polo match with the populist volume of an N.F.L. franchise.”

Speaking of the U.S. Open, a section usher said Arthur Ashe Stadium is louder this year than he’s heard it in 25 years. Could be the chatty influencers, could be attendees reviewing the COQDOQ chicken nuggets, but it could just be general poor etiquette. From a Friend of Feed Me: “Yesterday afternoon, I saw a chair umpire reprimand some influencers in the stands at a small court for taking selfies with flashes during a crucial tiebreak point, pissing both players off.”

Los Tacos No. 1, which I really thought was the most brilliant place to suggest to 24-year-old bankers I met on Hinge while I was in college in 2015, just took an investment from TSG Consumer. I really liked their sauce counter and unlimited limes. TSG Consumer’s portfolio includes Pura Vida, Crumbl, and Stumptown Coffee.

Gowanus bar/nightclub Public Records is opening an 11,000-square-foot extension in The Seaport. After reading this in Tribeca Citizen, I scrolled down to the comments and learned that Luis Vazquez, who runs a newsletter-type of thing in a Facebook Group called FiDi Fan Page (cool use of FB Groups), reported this back in April. Rumor is the new location will be in 219 Water Street, which has been vacant for decades. A liquor license was filed in July for that address under the name Village of Wolves, which is a trademark owned by Public Records. I think this is exciting for the neighborhood, which has great food, lots of office space, and is easily accessible by train, car, and… ferry! Boat to the club is kind of sick.

---

If you need to get in touch, reply to this email or reach out to emily@readfeedme.com