I just watched this on HBO, and by the time the credits were rolling I was in hysterics. I'm not an easy cryer but this just really got me for some reason. Any one else really get hit during this?
I felt like destroying something beautiful...share
Gosh, I cried like a baby! Especially when Ron started crying at the end, talking about what he was going to do when he turned 80. He just seemed so mournful and abandoned. I hope he's doing well now.
shareAt first Ron Holiday reminded me of one of Michael McDonald's odd characters on 'Mad TV,' but it was soon evident that this gentle eccentric was quite real. The profundity of the guy's very human plight became terribly moving, although the course of events that played out were anything but surprising. This was a strangely compelling and quite effective documentary.
shareThis thing was like a bad car accident. Sometimes you want to wince and cringe but you can't stop watching. And I agree with the reviewer. Ron's bad wigs and plastic surgery were the most commanding characters in this narrative. But honestly, why the phuk did they not put Jupiter down after he mistook Chuck for lunch? And then to roll him out to his wife after that?
shareBut honestly, why the phuk did they not put Jupiter down after he mistook Chuck for lunch?When Chuck came out, the cat attacked before realizing it was him. I agree it was wrong to not assume the worst, but the attack on Chuck was believed to be a different scenario. The crew was putting together a new cage, and it appeared that is what made the cat just sit there and not want to move.
I figured it was going to end as it did, but it was somewhat anti-climatic for me.
The old guy is too much of a delusional drama queen. Now he's going to Thailand to live with tigers in a monastery. Brilliant! And when one eventually takes a chunk out of his neck, MAYBE he'll learn the lessons that have escaped him his whole life.
delusional? he's human! he loved his animals and the only two people that he seemed to really connect with and now all of the beings he loved have been taken from him. i felt so deeply for this man, he literally had his world swept out from beneath him in the small span of 5 weeks. he knew getting into his career that the cats were wild animals and that they all took the risk of being seriously hurt or dying in the process. but he LOVED them and i thought they portrayed his raw love so well. i sobbed watching this documentary and thought that Ron was a beautiful, caring, extremely wounded man. God bless him wherever hs is...
additionally the editing in this film was absolutely brilliant. it raises the bar on documentaries.
But don't those old ladies that horde dozens of stray cats in their homes also do it out of love? And yet it's not healthy for any of them.
If someone TRULY loves tigers, they don't cage them and use them in circus acts. It's a PREVENTABLE accident waiting to happen.
I'm watching this documentary at this moment. I agree with the poster directly above me. If these people truly love animals, then why would not allow them to live in relative peace in their own habitat? But no, these people BUY these "worker animals" as you would slaves and crate them around making them do tricks for people and making a living out of these cats who have no say in the matter. He mentions that the three of them "became lovers" after the old queer got a piece of the young one while the old lady was gone... yeah, ... geez.. Anyway, THEY had no contract. THEY could come and go as THEY pleased. Hey, what about the cats? See, I didn't cry at this movie, I laughed my ass off. Seems to me, this old cat dancer is as nuts as nuts can get and should be put into some kind of home for the passively insane. Two human beings are dead cause a couple of cats, one of them inbred, chewed them to death directly in front of this old geezer and he still doesn't get it. The cats can't walk out and say I'm through with this gig so they say get the fucc out of my way by eating their trainers!
Agreed.
And yet the guy is moving to Thailand to hang out with MORE tigers.
The guy is truly mentally incompetent.
When I first started watching this documentary I thought it was a joke, sorta like Borat. Slowly realizing that this guy was completely serious was a gas! I don't get these posters on here who broke down in tears over these tigers and these three froot loops who allowed these random wild animals to completely rule their lives. I also would like to know why the guy's going to wait till he's 80 years old to go on to Thailand to live with the tigers once more. Why doesn't he just pack up and go now? Didn't he have to have his cats "put to sleep" ? Apparently the parents of the young children in his neighborhood are quite suspicious of this wierd old guy who invites their children into his yard and teaches them little songs. Dig the look on his face when he mentions that He was the first to get at the "young one".. This tragic comedy was about three perverts and a couple of inbred wild cats.. They should really make more documentaries like this one. I thought it was hilarious.. I bet they all at least attempted to have sexual relations with those tigers too.
Plus I never trust any guy that wears a complete wig. After all, being bald is in style.
It just shows how screwed up he is.
It's terrible what actually happened to these three people but dang.. after that cat killed one of them should not these people have disposed of the cat? This is what happens when people put the life of an animal above the life of a human. This documentary is about broken people. I've changed my mind. It wasn't funny at all.. it is sad.
Ditto.
shareThis documentary was a little odd...whether it be about the threesome relationship between them all. I'm an animal lover to the heart, but I feel I can never have full respect for people who do this kind of profession. Yes, they risk their lives everyday to entertain people, but you can never fully trust or have a wild animal trust you. They may think you are their parent from young age, as they raised them from. But any wild animal, specifically wild cats, never forget their natural instinct. They are natural born predators when they grow older. They are beautiful animals, but I don't see the need to try and tame animals for this kind of job, if any wild animal in general. They are domesticated, but I think that is to a certain degree. An animal that size don't know their own strength, which obviously lead to death for these people. They play with each other, but big cats are the same size and can take it. A grab on the neck to a tiger is not gonna feel like a big deal, but we aren't big cats.
Unless you are trying to preserve an endangered species in a preserve or wild habitat....I find shows like this not entertaining.
Yep. Just like how a typical house cat may be all lovey-dovey and sweet, but that doesn't stop it from tracking down and killing the occasional bird. It's all instinct.
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I had no idea how this would end. I had never heard of the 'Cat Dancers' before I saw this program. It was a very sad ending. Why didn't Ron put Jupiter back into his cage so he didn't need to be shot? Or did he feel less
protective of him after Jupitor took the two people he loved most.
You can't really blame the tiger, at the end of the day it's a wild animal and
it's only doing what is natural and following it's instinct. If you show fear
to a tiger, it will attack.
I think you have to walk in Ron's shoes to understand why he wants to go to thailand and live with the monks and tigers. I have a show on tv at this moment about those very monks and tigers and a presenter who is being told not to turn his back on them or to show any fear or they will attack.
Ron's wife showed fear which is understandable after what happened but it's also something that the tiger doesn't understand and it scares them and in turn they attack.
Much like humans, we attack something (usually verbally) if it's something we
don't fully understand.
Ron spent his whole life devoted to tigers so I don't blame him for wanting to
spend time at peace out in Thailand with them. I don't understand why the remaining tigers were put down though and not released to a wild life sanctuary or something where they could roam free??
I wish him the best. I had a lump in my throat at the end of the program, it was a heartfelt story told by a wonderful man.
P.S Ron, I loved your afro haha
If you've seen the Animal Planet TV show Fatal Attraction, you've seen that Ron Holiday's behavior is not uncommon in people involved in big cat ownership--they genuinely believe the cats love them and are really just overgrown house cats. They may be wild animals, yes, but these people believe that the animals can be tamed and that these humans themselves possess something others don't have; they genuinely believe they have learned how to communicate with wild animals and can live with them safely. Ron and Joy Holiday (and Chuck Lizza) may have been great trainers, but in the end they were dealing with wild animals that have instinct and prey drive just like animals raised in the wild do.
The attack on Chuck was a classic ambush predator attack--"larger" animal slips and falls; "smaller" animal's prey drive kicks in and it attacks. Cats instinctively think of humans as larger animals because humans stand taller at the shoulder than even the biggest "big cats" do. Big cats raised around humans, especially beginning from kitten stage, definitely think of humans as larger animals, until they one day realize (usually innocently, such as when the cat stretches to its full length from a vertical position and gains a sense of its true size) that the human they though was so tall is actually small by comparison. By this time, especially in the case of a tiger, the cat is often 6+ ft. long and 500+ lbs. Jupiter was not yet fully grown, IIRC, and thus may still have believed Chuck, his parent, was "bigger" (even though Jupiter was in reality longer and heavier than Chuck), and tiger goes straight for the jugular when animal goes down (see also Roy Horn, who was attacked by his full-grown white tiger Montecore when he fainted during an on-stage stroke and Montecore immediately lunged for his neck).
Watching this documentary, I was reminded of that line by Tommy Lee Jones as the world-weary Sheriff in "No Country For Old Men," when he talks about the drug-dealer murders in the desert - that they "died of natural causes. Natural to their line of work, that is."
"I can't believe you like money too. We should hang out."
The tigers were great, but besides all that. There is something very wrong with the whole three some scenario and their way of lives. Psychologically you dont know what the man made his wife do or that guy they took in.
All too weird, accept for the tigers which im sure everyone enjoyed
We have just had the documentary Cat Dancers in the UK and i thought it was sickening. Ron Holiday says he regarded Chuck as his son, yet he was shagging him (nice guy)! and as an animal lover, especially cats, seeing those poor big cat's made to appear on stage made me sick, it is bad enough they are kept in zoos but keeping them in those wire cages was immoral and wrong, it's a pity the animals didn't have a say in the matter, and as for Joy and Chuck getting killed by the big cats, what sweet irony, now all creepy Ron is left with is a face like a waxwork dummy with a totally unbelievable wig, they were just 3 freaks and I didn't feel sorry for them at all.
shareI watched it last night on More4. The director had access to Ron Holiday because his brother is a friend of his.
What struck me most of all was the one-sided version of this tale. There was no corroboration of the facts. No balance. The dream-like sequences of the old film footage added to the surreal feel of this documentary. To me it came across as Ron's idealised version of events.
Following revelations about his private life I found myself wondering if in fact he had always been gay. He'd met Joy at ballet classes and she'd been torn between dance and becoming a nun. Was their marriage one of professional convenience? Was it Ron who 'chose' Chuck, not Joy? Why did Ron use the words "It wasn't rape..." when he mentioned having sex with Chuck - why make such an inapropriate comment at that point? Joy was going to be hospitalised the next day when she was killed by a cat that Ron was in charge of. Is it possible that Chuck was talking about leaving prior to his death? Ron had the last of the cats put to sleep. For convenience sake?
Because the director seems happy to leave these questions floating in the air I'm happy to come to my own conclusions.
Feeling sorry for these people was not one of them.
I just finished watching this documentary and i found it both chilling and very sad. It's extremely shocking that both deaths were committed by the same tiger, and literally in the arms of Roy. Poor man, to have witnessed the deaths of the two people he cared so deeply about and the only two people he shared his world with.
I love the documentary as a whole, it was put together in a very descriptive way where we had a pretty much first hand account into their careers and personal lives, although i'm fully aware that there is an element of biased, as its being told from the only surviving member of cat dancers. But on a whole, a worth while documentary.
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come on cut them some slack, they weren't bad people at all, but I cant' say the same for some people here and their projections...
shareHaving seen this film for the first time yesterday on More 4 in England, I felt sad for many reasons. As the owner of a dog (German Shepherd) who many people find difficult to control, I hold great admiration for anyone who can tame wild animals. I think the first death was a complete accident which had an element of poor preparation, as the tiger should never have been free given the circumstances regarding the change in environment. The second death was down to naivety and highlights the problems regarding this profession - you cannot let you guard down for one moment. At worst my shepherd may bite or scratch someone (it has to me once ), but I will live. The same cannot be said for tigers.
I was sad for a man who genuinely lost everything. For all the people on this board justifying his loss by arguing the risks he undertook, please take some time to feel sympathy for a group of people who dedicated their whole lives to a different, non-conformist way of life. These tigers were never mistreated. Whilst it is true a natural habitat is healthier for the animal, no one can deny they were provided the best possible living conditions in the ranch.
The fact that the film ( in my eyes not a documentary) didn't go into depth of the deaths or repurcussions was the right move. This is not a news story, it is an artistic adventure into the lives of a fascinating group of people.
thanks for your post, it's always so refreshing to read posts here at imbd from people who are so apparently compassionate.
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