Best of 2022: The Horrifying Backstory Behind Nope's Most Terrifying Scene
I have not been able to stop thinking about Jordan Peele’s Nope since I saw it a few weeks back. Like Peele’s earlier films Get Out and US, it got under my skin and affected me in a profound, lasting way.
No element of Nope has stuck with me quite like the already legendary set-piece where a child actor survives a brutal simian massacre on the set of the hokey chimp-themed sitcom Gordy’s Home that ensues when its chimp star freaks out upon hearing a balloon pop.
It’s a scene that has stuck with me in part because it’s so terrifying and masterfully shot. It’s like a perfect stand-alone short film nestled inside a uniquely haunting feature.
But it also stuck with me because I have long been fascinated and appalled by the way that child actors and animal actors are ruthlessly exploited by adults who should know and do better, then cavalierly thrown away when they’ve outlived their usefulness.
I will never forget the story of one of the poor orangutans who played Clyde in Any Which Way You Can who was reportedly beaten to death with a wrench for stealing a donut from craft services.
The impossible gulf between how animal actors behave onscreen and their awful real lives is heartbreaking and tragic. So when I see a little person in an ape suit in a film I have complicated feelings because it invariably looks insultingly fake AND exploits little people actors forced to play non-humans by the nature of the business but I’m also grateful that a trained animal is not being abused for the sake of a stupid movie.
Part of what makes the chimp massacre scene in Nope so powerful is that Jupe, the child actor who will meet a very bad, otherworldly end as an adult, probably has more in common with the chimpanzee that went nuts than the cynical adults exploiting child and animal actors alike. They’re both victims who do not understand the adult world into which they’re thrust but must make do all the same.
So I was horrified but not surprised to discover that the chimp attack in Nope could very well have been inspired by a real-life event as horrifying and traumatic as anything in Peele’s film.
The chimp at the center of this tragedy was named Travis after Travis Tritt, the favorite singer of Connie Braun Casey, who owned the animal with her husband Mike.
The Caseys raised the chimpanzee as if he were one of their children. He could dress himself, brush his teeth, watered plants, loved watching baseball on television, drank wine from a goblet and ate at the table with the rest of the family.
The affable chimp with the agreeable personality quickly became a neighborhood celebrity, appearing in ads for his owner’s towing company before going pro and popping up on The Man Show and The Maury Povich Show.
When Mike died and the couple’s only child perished in a car accident, Travis and Connie grew even closer. They were constant companions, even sleeping together in the same bed.
That all ended one awful afternoon when Travis, who had apparently just drunken Xanax-laced tea for his Lyme’s Disease that made him aggressive, spotted a friend of his owner named Charla Nash holding a Tickle Me Elmo doll, one of his favorite toys.
In a rage, Travis unleashed an unspeakably violent attack on the poor woman, essentially reducing her face and body to a messy pulp. It’s hard to overstate the viciousness of the attack. During the 911 call, Casey screamed that Travis, her baby, was eating her friend. According to Wikipedia, she “lost her hands, nose, eyes, lips, and mid-face bone structure and received significant brain tissue injuries.”
Travis’ mortified owner stabbed him in an attempt to end the assault before a police officer shot him four times, killing him in the process.
It was a tragedy for everyone involved, including the officer that took Travis down, and understandably suffered from PTSD as a result.
The incident served as yet another reminder that critters that we anthropomorphize and treat as hairy humans are wild animals who could very well lash out in deadly anger no matter how well-trained they might be.
The woman who watched her chimpanzee son physically destroy a good friend over a Tickle Me Elmo doll before dying in front of her allowed herself the deadly illusion that Travis was her baby and not an animal.
The central presence of a Tickle Me Elmo doll at the center of this tragedy makes it even more horrifying. So much unnecessary bloodshed could have been avoided if only that chimp didn’t like that doll so much.
Thankfully something good came out of all of that darkness. Laws were passed forbidding owning exotic animals as pets. Concrete measures were put in place to ensure that something like that never happens again.
With the rise of CGI, hopefully we’ll see fewer animal actors in the future because, as the harrowing cautionary tale of Travis the Chimp, fur baby turned inhuman monster unfortunately illustrates, all kinds of things can go wrong when we force potentially violent and deadly animals into human roles for our own benefit rather than theirs.
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