Photos courtesy of Eric Goode and Josh Safdie.
Before Josh Safdie was an Oscar-nominated filmmaker, he was living in Eric Goode’s hotels with exotic reptiles crawling around in the bathroom. The two met through Glenn O’Brien in the early 2000s, when Goode—a nightlife kingpin, hotelier, conservationist, and eventual Tiger King director—hired the young filmmaker to make PSAs for his Turtle Conservancy. Soon enough, Safdie would be chasing down Christopher Walken and Parker Posey to pose with turtles, filming venomous snakes at dangerously close range, and generally doing whatever Goode needed done. Somewhere down the line, the two also started filming what would eventually become Monsters of God, Goode’s new five-part HBO docuseries about the cutthroat world of reptile smuggling in Philadelphia and South Florida. The project officially got started with Josh and Benny Safdie in 2014, before Goode made his late-career transition into television’s foremost chronicler of animal obsessives. With Monsters of God finally out in the world, we brought Goode and Safdie back together to reminisce about smugglers, obese monkeys, and Christopher Walken’s gym shorts.
MONDAY 12 PM AUGUST 17, 2026 NEW YORK CITY
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JOSH SAFDIE: I’ll start with the fake Francis Bacon behind you.
ERIC GOODE: No, that’s the original. The fake is in the Museum of Modern Art.
SAFDIE: What do you mean? Hold on.
GOODE: Since this is Interview magazine, I’ll start the conversation by saying that I’ll never forget when Andy Warhol interviewed me for Andy Warhol’s TV in 1983. He asked me, “Gee, what are you going to do with all your money now?” He thought I was making a lot of money at Area [Eric’s nightclub], and I said to him, “I’m going to buy tortoises I could never afford.”
SAFDIE: Didn’t Glenn O’Brien also work at Interview?
GOODE: Glenn was a writer. Richard Bernstein did the covers.
SAFDIE: Glenn is how we know each other.
GOODE: And also through Andy Spade. Let’s start from the beginning.
SAFDIE: Connect Four. I remember when Glenn O’Brien—rest in peace—said, “Hey, I want to introduce you to Eric Goode.” I was like, “Maybe it’s for that Maritime Hotel video?” We met with you and you were like, “I actually need somebody to help me shoot stuff for my Turtle Conservancy.” Basically, you were my employer for, like, two years. I lived off the jobs you provided me, and you let me live at your hotel with all these crazy exotic turtles in the bathroom. I would call it “The 911.” That was the hotline whenever you had any remote celebrity who you were like, “Okay, they’re willing to be filmed on camera with a turtle.” We had all this equipment in your office, and we would constantly just be at the beck and call and be like, “All right, we got to be at The Bowery Hotel tomorrow at 7:00 AM because Naomi Watts is—”
GOODE: Yeah. I guess I’m a shameless starfucker. I never thought of this until more recently, but my nightclub and hotel years kind of gave me a good rolodex of people to prey on later in life. I never really put those two things together. But I would just call, like you said, Philippe Petit, Sandra Bernhard, Parker Posey, Naomi Watts, Liv Schreiber, whoever. Christopher Walken.
SAFDIE: You were so cheap. I tried to convince you to buy a couple of cameras so we didn’t have to rent every time, and then eventually you realized it was so run and gun, we needed to have this stuff. But you know what? It was so educational. I was afraid of snakes when we first started working together.
GOODE: But you learned fast, Josh. You read everything.
SAFDIE: The first time we met, you gave me The Lizard King and said, “I think you’d really like this.” I’m thinking, “This guy’s giving me a book about lizards. What the fuck is he talking about?” I went home and I read it, and I couldn’t put it down. I just fell in love with the characters, from the fish and wildlife, to Tommy, to Mario, and to Hank, and then to Susan Orlean. Not Susan Orlean, the Stolen—
GOODE: Stolen World. But Susan Orlean’s amazing too, with The Orchid Thief. She was an inspiration, ’cause Adaptation was one of my favorite films, and the end of Adaptation was basically Orchid Thief.
SAFDIE: 100%. So I read [The Lizard King], and I came in, and you were saying, “Wouldn’t it make such a cool movie?” But you didn’t trust me in holding the keys to that type of a project quite yet. Then, you came to see Lenny Cooke, the documentary, and you cried. You had this capability of A. being very present, but B. being lost in something that you admire, and I saw it in your eyes that day at the movie theater in Chelsea. I would stay at The Bowery in these huge palatial suites, which was awesome in its own right, but the far-out part was the bathroom, which had to be humid for all these turtles. I remember I was filming with this heat-seeking pit viper, you looked at me like, “Josh, be careful.” And I was like, “What’s going on?” He goes, “You’re being preyed upon right now,” but the snake was facing the other direction. You said, “Josh, just be still. Hold the camera steady, but pull your body back so the camera stays at the same distance from the snake.” Then you told me there was no antivenom for this snake and I would die within 40 minutes. In that moment, I was like, “All right, I need to listen a little bit more.” [Laughs]
GOODE: Let me explain: you and I met in the early 2000s, and then we started making these PSAs with famous people holding turtles, and that’s why the turtles are all in the bathrooms, everybody. We learned filming together based on what people were willing to do and not do ’cause, of course, none of these people were getting paid to do this. They were just doing it ’cause I buttered them up and asked them to do it.
SAFDIE: And because you offered free hotel rooms. It was a PSA. You’re helping endangered species.
GOODE: I don’t think I got a free hotel room for Slash, or for Christopher Walken, or Parker [Posey].
SAFDIE: Do you remember what happened with Christopher Walken? I remember we showed up at his house and he was wearing a blazer and weird gym shorts underneath. We were like, “Do you think you want to finish getting dressed?” He’s like, “This is what I’m wearing.” We’re like, “Okay, well, it’s going to be kind of weird.” He’s like, “No, I was told waist up. That’s it. Where are the cue cards?” Then we had to go into his kitchen and make these temporary cue cards. He does them, and he looks at us and he goes, “All right, you want me to do one without the cue cards?” He just held it and he went zip, zip.
GOODE: [Laughs] He also really liked turtles. He was sincere about his love of turtles. But I also love how, fast-forward, somehow Sandra Bernhard and Philippe Petit make it into Marty Supreme, so there was maybe connective tissue somewhere.
SAFDIE: Meeting Philippe through you was one of the highlights of my life. I consider him one of the greatest artists of all time. Would you agree with that?
GOODE: He’s pretty high up there. I would agree with that.
SAFDIE: [Laughs] It really does what art should do. It defies expectation. It inspires you. It tells you that there’s another feeling in life. It unlocks a part of your brain that you did not know existed, and it is dangerous.
GOODE: Yeah, and, most importantly, why do things legally when you can do it illegally?
SAFDIE: I did sit next to Philippe when you got honored by the UN.
GOODE: Oh, right.
SAFDIE: It was such a cool table. It was me, Philippe Petit, and Nan Goldin, these two heroes of mine. I’m sitting there wearing a tuxedo. My wife had just given birth to our first daughter, and we’re sitting there at this table at Cipriani’s, and he refused to eat his steak. He’s like, “Do you want it?” and I eat it. I think that was when I was like, “I really want to work with him,” and then you gave me his contact and I put him in Marty Supreme.
GOODE: There was a lot of cross-pollination between the two of us. We knew Abel Ferrara in different ways. I did drugs with Abel Ferrara; you saw him as a real genius, which he was, and you put him in your most recent film, which was incredible. But when you think about our history, a lot of things weirdly made sense even though we were from different generations. Maybe you could talk a little bit about how we came up with the idea of doing that Trophy Hunter film.
SAFDIE: There was a part of Lizard King that talked about Anson Wong. They talked about not only owning these animals, but starting to want rare stuff in general. We were working out of this building in Chinatown at the time, and we had this doorman named Eric [Cheung] who we always thought had such an ornery disposition. We were like, “He’d be such a great character.” So we got him a manicure, a facial, a haircut, put a Rolex on him, got him a tailored suit, and I remember me and Benny [Safdie] sitting him down and having to teach him everything. We would quiz him like, “What’s that?” and he would have to rattle off the top of his brain.
GOODE: It was such genius casting, hands down. I always thought he was an elevator operator in Chinatown.
SAFDIE: He was like an elevator operator doorman, kind of. He was a strange guy.
GOODE: He should’ve gone on to act in other movies. But the reason I bring up the film The Trophy Hunter that we made over a decade ago now, is that it had your fingerprints on it. The way the camera moved through the apartment—it was really a hotel room—and that scene where the camera goes to the girl on the bed with the obese monkey, and he says, “Oh, no, no, no, no, don’t photograph this.” And then you keep going through. It was so gonzo and such a Safdie-esque thing done with very little planning, and the fact that it turned out as good as it did was amazing.
SAFDIE: The idea was going to be, “Let’s create the setting and we’ll just shoot it as much like a documentary as possible.” We had worked with that macaque three or four times, and the sad part about that monkey was that he was depressed.
GOODE: He needed Ozempic. [Laughs] He needed a few shots ’cause he was definitely obese. But, you know, I showed The Trophy Hunter to Jacques Cousteau’s grandson. He couldn’t believe it—and I never told him that it wasn’t real. He really thought it was a real documentary.
SAFDIE: Speaking of forbidden footage, the first time we were working together, you were starting to amass all this footage about the Turtle Conservancy, and you didn’t quite know why. I got turtle-and-tortoise-pilled because I started to really love the carapaces. I started looking at people’s sunglasses in a different way.
GOODE: Tortoiseshell glasses.
SAFDIE: Yeah, that little thing underneath their neck is so gorgeous.
GOODE: The gular scute.
SAFDIE: I remember when we started filming for what ended up being Tiger King, and later became Monsters of God. We had no camera, but you bought me these spy glasses, and you were like, “You’re going to put these on.” I was like, “Eric, you want me to put these glasses on? This guy’s known for some pretty bad shit.”
GOODE: I said, “Wear these glasses, but he better not see that there’s a video camera inside those glasses.”
SAFDIE: Well, they were the most ridiculous things. It looked like something you buy at a costume shop.
GOODE: It looked like something you would buy at Disneyland.
SAFDIE: They’re not like the Meta glasses you could buy today. I felt so scared. So I put them on, and we pulled up. I’m literally walking around moving my head like a tripod, turning around, making sure I can see everything with these stupid glasses. Then, he trusted us and invited us the next day with cameras, and I went to put the glasses on again. You’re like, “Josh, no, no, no. He’s cool with these cameras,” and I said, “No, Eric—”
GOODE: You said continuity, continuity.
SAFDIE: “… I have to wear these now. Otherwise he’s going to think, ‘Where the hell are those ridiculous things you were wearing?’” Of course, they didn’t work. We got no footage out of them.
SAFDIE: I remember the chapter in Lizard King that talks about Jurassic Park. As a kid, when that dinosaur throws up its gills or whatever you call—
GOODE: The whatever-raptor.
SAFDIE: Yeah, it spits the venom on Newman from Seinfeld. I thought it was the most interesting dinosaur in the whole movie. This thing became a movie star, everybody became fascinated, and it became the cover of National Geographic. I realized all of a sudden that having an animal on the cover of Nat Geographic was like having your actor on the cover of a magazine. All of a sudden, people want to go see that movie. So popular culture did actually influence my appreciation for these reptiles.
GOODE: But, listen, you and I have had this crazy beginning, we would never have thought we’d be here today talking about Monsters of God. What was mind-boggling is how when you set your mind to something, you just do it. Your whole merging of real people with real actors, and your style of filmmaking, was so cool to watch. It almost blurs the lines between fiction and reality, and I think you’ve almost created a new genre. There are probably others that have touched on what you did. But it’s really amazing to see how prolific you’ve become and the fact that we finally reached the finish line with Monsters of God after starting it over 12 years ago, Josh.
SAFDIE: It’s crazy.
GOODE: A long road.
SAFDIE: Thank you for the nice words. What a rarity to hear you say some nice things about me.
GOODE: [Laughs]
SAFDIE: Also, remember we played basketball a bunch. Do you still play?
GOODE: Oh my god. I’m back playing, but the last time we played at Flamingo Park in Miami when we were shooting, we were playing with all these kids, and they said, “Oh, guard Gramps. Gramps can shoot.” If I was Gramps at 12 years younger than I am now, I don’t know what I am now. “Oh, the corpse can shoot,” they’re going to say.
SAFDIE: [Laughs] You know why you’re so attracted to reptiles? There’s the myth that reptile blood can keep you young.
GOODE: Oh, god, let’s hope so.
SAFDIE: I remember coming into your loft once, and there were these terrariums all over the place. You had all these animals, so it smelled like a zoo in there.
GOODE: My girlfriends always struggled with my menagerie when they came over.
SAFDIE: You had this bedroom in the back with no windows, and I remember coming in while you were sick or something at the time, and I heard…[imitates a deep voice] and I was like, “What? Eric, where are you?” You were like, “In the back.” There were all these grow lights for the reptiles and warm lights. And I came to the back and there was a warm light on you, and I remember leaving thinking, “I think maybe he is a reptile.”
GOODE: Yeah, you better be careful. Cold-blooded people are dangerous. But, anyway, Josh, that’s sort of our history up to now, but there’s more happening. Your enthusiasm and drive is infectious. I may have given you a hard time, but I fucking believed in you. People say filmmaking’s a collaborative art, and it is, but you need a leader that has a point of view. You look at Woody Allen, you look at Cassavetes, you look at Safdie. You have a good team, but it has to be one person’s vision that trickles down to all of the rest. I saw that in you very early on, that you had that attribute.
