[imagesource: BBC]

Despite his best efforts, Joe Exotic, or Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage if we’re going all in, remains behind bars.

According to the star of Tiger King, that’s because he was ‘too gay’ to earn a pardon from former President Donald Trump, having spent months lobbying for a release.

Joe is serving a 22-year sentence for participating in a murder-for-hire plot and violating federal wildlife laws.

Life behind bars makes starring in a documentary rather tricky, but thankfully for Joe, he actually met with Louis Theroux, the British filmmaker, back in 2011.

That was during Theroux’s filming of America’s Most Dangerous Pets, when he spent time with unusual animal owners, an umbrella Joe Exotic most certainly falls under.

With Tiger King blowing up, Theroux decided it was time to revisit that experience, reports The Independent:

In the 90-minute one-off Louis Theroux: Shooting Joe Exotic, Theroux revisits his subject nine years on and tries to work out what has happened, examining his own experience with Exotic and wondering whether he could have done more.

The catalyst is a letter Joe sent from the depths of prison lockdown, asking a British journalist to get in touch with Theroux and tell him “I need to tell the real story, but they keep me silenced”.

At this stage, you’d be forgiven for thinking the new doccie is just a chance to cash in on some old footage, but there’s plenty of new material to keep fans of the circus that is this saga entertained.

There’s even an interview with Carole Baskin and her husband, Howard, filmed at Joe’s repossessed park.

The Independent gave it five stars out of five, and The Irish Times called it “gripping”, although The Telegraph review was far less effusive with its praise.

Thankfully, the full doccie has been uploaded to YouTube, so you can make your own mind up:

[source:independent]