Louis Theroux: Shooting Joe Exotic

I am biased because I think everything Louie does is an instant classic and this doesn't disappoint! Wonderful reflection on his earlier documentary and what's happened in this case.

Over half of this documentary is a review of both Theroux's first interview with Joe Exotic and the series that catapulted him to international fame, Tiger King. It's revealed why this time filler is necessary during the programme however it still feels as if they could better have filled an hour slot instead of the 90 minutes.

Nevertheless, the new content reveals interesting legal issues ongoing and the fate of Exotic's infamous zoo. Overall, an apt review of the first COVID-19 lockdown phenomenon of 2020 but feels a little tiresome at times.

I watched this because Theroux's documentaries are usually pretty classy and interesting, and I've watched a lot and enjoyed almost all of them.

But it's very disappointing by Louis Theroux's standards. I was looking forward to this because he'd covered this subject before, and the 90-minute runtime as opposed to his usual 60 minutes made me hopeful he'd have even more to say about his subject than usual.

He kind of just recounts lots of information half heartedly without being as insightful or critical as he usually is. The interview segments fare a little better at least, but there's not much of that in the first half- lots of reused/unused footage that was shot back in 2011.

Some slack may be able to be cut because of the difficult nature of making this follow up (the obstacles are even explicitly outlined), but this might've been a bit of a cash-grab?

Theroux's heart didn't really seem in it as much as usual, so maybe the BBC insisted and/or paid him a lot of money do it, owing to how popular the Netflix series was.

'Tiger King', a trashy documentary about decidedly trashy people, was one of the hit television series of last year. It's star, who ended up convicted of attempted murder by the time shooting was finished, called himself Joe Exotic, and had in fact been chasing fame through outrageousness for many years. Louis Theroux, who often makes films about apparent weirdos, had featured him in one of his own efforts way back in 2011 - this was not someone who was ever camera shy. In this film, Theroux revisits his old material, when Joe was crazy but not that crazy, and reflects on the subsequent story. Theroux's style is the opposite of the makers of the later series; he tries to allow people to show themselves in their best light, even though that was never really Joe's brand. Whereas 'Tiger King' never felt fair, this film feels much less exploitative. Ultimately, Exotic was a wild guy, and the rest of the world is probably a better place for his incarceration. But he was a very human sort of monster, and one who can still command the small screen.

Netflix shut him down from talking to pretty much everyone except Carole, so it just a culmination of unaired footage. But it's unaired for a reason.