 |
Rick Kirkham | |
|---|---|
| Born | Richard Allen Kirkham May 16, 1958 Oklahoma, U.S. |
| Occupation | Film producer |
| Known for | TV Junkie and Tiger King |
| Spouse | Tammie (m. 1990;div. 2001)Kristin Rosøy Kirkham (m. 2018) |
| Children | 2 |
Richard Allen Kirkham (born May 16, 1958) is an American film producer, writer, cinematographer and journalist who is best known for his documentary TV Junkie and appearance in the Netflix documentary Tiger King.
Kirkham was born in Oklahoma in 1958. He became interested in making films at a young age, and began recording home videos of himself. From the age of 14, Kirkham filmed more than 3,000 hours of a video diary. [1] After graduating college, Kirkham got his first job; a crime reporter at a Las Vegas NBC affiliate.
Kirkham was hired by Inside Edition as an anchor, where he interviewed celebrities like James Brown and Chuck Norris. At one point during this stint, while he was high, Kirkham interviewed then-president George H. W. Bush about drug abuse. He also did a series of stunts during his tenure including being shot out of a cannon, set on fire, and wrestling a nine-foot alligator.
After marrying his first wife and right before the birth of his first child, Kirkham checked into rehab at the encouragement of Inside Edition producers. However, Kirkham's cocaine use eventually caused him to be fired from Inside Edition and subsequent jobs, and divorced from his first wife. [2]
Footage from Kirkham's 3,000 hour-long video diary was used in TV Junkie, a film about Kirkham's life and drug use. The film received mainly positive reviews; Film Threat found it "an unbelievably candid glimpse into the contradictions of cocaine addiction", and praised Kirkham's articulate and authentic self-portrait. [3]
He appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2007 to talk about his addiction, and clips of his video diary were shown. On Oprah, Kirkham said he was a functional addict, and that he would smoke crack at night instead of sleeping, remaining high for about six hours, and report for work at Inside Edition two hours later. Kirkham went days without sleep during this time. Kirkham began to speak publicly about his drug use to young adults.
In 2014, Kirkham received numerous requests to become the producer for a reality show featuring Joe Exotic, the operator of the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park. After taking the job, Kirkham moved into the G.W. Zoo and lived there until his departure in 2015. During his tenure at the zoo, Kirkham witnessed Exotic's erratic behaviour towards his animals, and recalled a time he witnessed him promising a woman he'd take care of her horse, only to immediately kill it. [4] [5] In March 2015, a suspected arson fire destroyed the studio at the G.W. Zoo, killing the zoo's alligators in the Steve Irwin Memorial complex, and destroying all of Kirkham's footage. Upon hearing about the fire, Kirkham dropped to his knees and cried, and left the zoo not long afterwards. Following the fire and witnessing Exotic's behaviour towards his animals, Kirkham spent six months in therapy, including a week-long stay in a psychiatric facility. [6]
Kirkham was later interviewed by Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin for their Netflix documentary Tiger King. As an interviewee, Kirkham did not receive royalties from the show, but allowed Goode and Chaiklin to use footage of Exotic he owned for a few thousand dollars. Kirkham is featured prominently throughout the documentary, recounting the rise and fall of "Joe Exotic TV", a podcast-like production that Kirkham hoped to develop into a TV series, before his footage was mysteriously destroyed. Kirkham claimed to have "never experienced anything like Joe Exotic" and denied involvement in the 2015 G.W. Zoo fire. He also claimed that Travis Maldonado wasn't gay.
After the success of Tiger King, Kirkham was interviewed about his time at the G.W. Zoo by various media personalities. During an interview with David Spade, Kirkham remarked, "There was footage in there of Exotic actually killing animals for fun. In the course of my year, he walked up to a tiger he didn't like and just shot it in the head." [7] He gave an example of Exotic being cruel to his animals by telling the story of a woman who brought an old horse in a trailer to the G.W. Zoo; "She told Joe that she could no longer care for the animal and asked him if he'd take it and give it a good home. He hugged her and told her everything would be fine. He told her to leave the horse and the trailer and they'd put it out to pasture and give it a good place to live. As soon as the lady left the park, Exotic said, 'Rick, grab your camera. Start rollin'.' He walks up to the horse trailer, pulls his revolver out, shoots the horse in the head dead and laughs. Just laughs. That was Joe Exotic. And of course, he fed that horse to the lions." [8] Kirkham also claimed that things were "a hell of a lot worse" than what's depicted in Tiger King; ""[Watching Tiger King], you kinda had a little bit of a heart for the guy, but you really didn't realize or get to see how evil he really could be, not only to animals, but to people."
On June 2, 2020, Discovery ID channel released a one-hour show called "The Truth Behind Joe Exotic: The Rick Kirkham Story", where he discussed his life, two marriages and move to Norway. [9] Kirkham also appeared in the June 2020 documentary Surviving Joe Exotic. [10]
In the 1990s, Kirkham married Tammie, with whom he has two children. She divorced Kirkham in 2001 following his drug abuse, and later filed a lawsuit against the producers of TV Junkie . [11] [12]
In 2018, Kirkham married Kristin Rosøy. The couple live in Bodø, a municipality in Norway. [13] Kirkham works as a freelance reporter for BODØ NU, and continues his job as a producer, director, and cinematographer, working at RealReels Productions and Consulting.
| Subjects | |
|---|---|
| Locations | |
| Related articles | |
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was a Colombian drug lord, narcoterrorist, and politician, who was the founder and sole leader of the Medellín Cartel. Dubbed "the king of cocaine", Escobar was one of the wealthiest criminals in history, having amassed an estimated net worth of US$30 billion by the time of his death—equivalent to $70 billion as of 2022—while his drug cartel monopolized the cocaine trade into the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s.
The Enumclaw horse sex case was a series of incidents in 2005 involving Kenneth D. Pinyan, an engineer who worked for Boeing and resided in Gig Harbor, Washington; James Michael Tait, a truck driver; Douglas Spink; and other unidentified men. Pinyan and Tait filmed and distributed zoophilic pornography of Pinyan receiving anal sex from a stallion under the alias "Mr. Hands". After engaging in this activity on multiple occasions over an unknown span of time, Pinyan received fatal internal injuries in one such incident.
Jon Alpert is an American journalist and documentary filmmaker, known for his use of a cinéma vérité approach in his films.
TV Junkie is a 2006 documentary that chronicles Rick Kirkham's drug addiction.
Colin Ford is an American actor. He is known for his roles as Josh Wheeler in Daybreak, Joe McAlister in Under the Dome, the voice of Jake on Jake and the Never Land Pirates, Mikey on Can You Teach My Alligator Manners?, which earned him a Young Artist Award, young Sam Winchester in Supernatural and Dylan Mee in the family film We Bought a Zoo.
The Tiger Next Door is a feature-length 2009 documentary film directed and produced by Camilla Calamandrei.
The Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park, alternatively known as the G.W. Zoo, Tiger King Park and formerly the Garold Wayne Exotic Animal Memorial Park, was an animal park displaying predominantly tigers and other big cats in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, United States. The park garnered substantial public attention due to the 2020 Netflix documentary series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, which focused on park founder and owner Joe Exotic.
Fatal Attractions is a recurring documentary program that was broadcast on Animal Planet. First aired in 2010, the show focused on humans who have kept animals as unconventional pets that have turned out to be dangerous and sometimes fatal. The program's last new episode aired in February 2013.
Big Cat Rescue Corp., also known as BCR and previously known as Wildlife on Easy Street, Inc., operates an animal sanctuary in Hillsborough County, Florida, United States, which rescues and houses exotic cats, and rehabilitates injured or orphaned native wild cats. It was founded by Don Lewis and Carole Baskin in 1995.
The 2011 Zanesville, Ohio animal escape occurred on October 18, 2011, when the owner of Muskingum County Animal Farm released multiple exotic animals before committing suicide. 48 animals were subsequently killed by law enforcement.
Louis Theroux: America's Most Dangerous Pets is a British television documentary film presented by and featuring Louis Theroux. It was first broadcast on 30 October 2011. It was released on Netflix as Beware of the Tiger. It is notable for being the first documentary to feature Joe Exotic, who would later gain worldwide fame as a result of the 2020 Netflix documentary Tiger King.
Joseph Allen Maldonado, known professionally as Joe Exotic and nicknamed "The Tiger King", is an American media personality, businessman, and convicted felon who operated the Greater Wynnewood Exotic Animal Park in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, from 1999 to 2018.
Tiger King is an American true crime documentary streaming television series about the life of former zookeeper and convicted felon Joe Exotic. The first season was released on Netflix on March 20, 2020. A second season, Tiger King 2, was announced in September 2021 and was released on November 17, 2021, while a third season, Tiger King: The Doc Antle Story, was announced on December 3, 2021, and released one week later on December 12. The series focuses on the small but deeply interconnected society of big cat conservationists such as Carole Baskin, owner of Big Cat Rescue, and collectors such as Exotic, whom Baskin accuses of abusing and exploiting wild animals.
Carole Ann Baskin is an American animal rights activist and CEO of Big Cat Rescue, a non-profit animal sanctuary based near Tampa, Florida. She has attracted the attention of local, national and international media outlets to the plight of captive big cats.
Bhagavan Mahamayavi Antle, also known as Doc Antle, is an American animal trainer, private zoo operator, and convicted felon.
Jack Donald Lewis is an American missing person who disappeared on the morning of August 18, 1997, after leaving his home in Tampa, Florida. The investigation into his disappearance has stretched from Lewis's Wildlife on Easy Street sanctuary in Tampa, co-owned with his second wife Carole Baskin, to land owned by Lewis in Costa Rica. No evidence of Lewis being murdered has surfaced, but investigators believe it is unlikely that he disappeared on his own. Lewis left behind over US$5 million in assets. He was declared legally dead in 2002 on the fifth anniversary of his disappearance.
Joe vs. Carole is an American drama limited series created by Etan Frankel. It stars John Cameron Mitchell, Kate McKinnon, Kyle MacLachlan, Dean Winters, Brian Van Holt, William Fichtner, Nat Wolff, Sam Keeley, Lex Mayson, Joel Marsh Garland, Marlo Kelly, Kenneth Radley and Aliandra Calabrese. The series began streaming on Peacock on March 3, 2022.
Louis Theroux: Shooting Joe Exotic is a British documentary film presented by Louis Theroux. It was released on 5 April 2021 on BBC Two. The documentary, centred on former zoo owner and convicted felon Joe Exotic, looks back at unseen footage from Theroux's previous documentary that featured Exotic, America's Most Dangerous Pets (2011), and also features Theroux interviewing other people associated with Exotic, including his legal team, former colleagues, his estranged brother and niece, and Howard and Carole Baskin.
Reece Oliver is a British animal conservationist, zookeeper, and former show jumper. He is the founder and operator of the Strelley Wildlife Conservation Facility, based in Nottingham, which provides a home for rescued animals, including lions, squirrel monkeys, wallabies, puma and various other wildlife species.
