{"id":319495,"date":"2026-08-12T14:18:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T14:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/319495\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T14:18:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T14:18:12","slug":"wild-inside-and-cookie-queens-two-documentaries-about-good-natured-obsession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/319495\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Wild Inside\u2019 and \u2018Cookie Queens\u2019: Two documentaries about good-natured obsession"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Image: Sandbox Films <\/p>\n

Social media crazes involving unusual animals often miss me completely. So, just as often, do documentaries about nature.<\/p>\n

But if Penny Lane makes a documentary about something, I\u2019m going to be into it. Whether it\u2019s about the Satanic Temple, children\u2019s music, kidney donation, that doctor who did weird testicular injections, or the career of Kenny G.<\/p>\n

Her latest excellent film is Wild Inside, which tells the story of Flaco the Owl. He was an eagle owl who had spent his entire life in captivity, before breaking out of his enclosure in the Central Park Zoo in early 2023. He then lived freely in the wild for the next year, despite seemingly having no outside survival skills, and was the only one of his species on the continent, so mating is out of the question too. There were failed attempts to get him back into the Zoo.<\/p>\n

During that year, Flaco emerged as a genuine New York City folk hero and social media star, showing up in unlikely places around Manhattan. And through it all, a lot of people developed strong, and in some cases strange and unhealthy, parasocial attachments to that owl. And I\u2019m not only talking about the people who got Flaco tattoos.<\/p>\n

Lane tells this story essentially from beginning to end, while offering gorgeous New York City photography, as it\u2019s just a naturally striking image to see a big owl, purched in an urban setting. She also talks to a long succession of New York characters who became obsessed with that owl.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s some discussion about the ethics of captivity, and whether it would have been better for Flaco to stay in the cage. And there\u2019s also much examination of how, exactly, this particular owl captured the hearts of so many people.<\/p>\n

More than once, when watching one of Lane\u2019s films, I\u2019ve wondered whether this was a topic that could possibly hold my interest. And Lane has allayed my doubts, every single time. <\/p>\n

Most documentaries I review here don\u2019t get major theatrical releases, but Wild Inside did, and so did Cookie Queens.<\/p>\n

Directed by Alysa Nahmias, best known for Art & Krimes by Krimes, it follows a group of Girl Scouts as they engage in the annual competitive ritual of selling cookies.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a ritual that most people will be at least somewhat familar with. But the film shows us a version that\u2019s a bit more cutthroat than what we\u2019re probably used to.<\/p>\n

You probably know the John Mulaney bit<\/a>, from Saturday Night Live, where he jokes about how while everyone lives Girl Scout Cookies, for some reason no one else has ever copied their business model, of having a high-demand product, not selling it in stores, and instead only selling it through an army of \u201clittle girls in sashes.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019re introduced to some memorable characters, including one girl who has diabetes and seeks to develop a sugar-free cookie (quite a few potential customers, it turns out, have the same condition). One of them is named Shannon Elizabeth, but it\u2019s not the American Pie actress.<\/p>\n

Now, is it a good thing to introduce young children to the world of high-pressure sales tactics? Possibly not.<\/p>\n

I will say that the film was produced by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, and it\u2019s much more of a success than just about any of the other creative endeavors they\u2019ve mounted so far, although ironically it\u2019s not done through Netflix, their supposed partner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Image: Sandbox Films Social media crazes involving unusual animals often miss me completely. So, just as often, do…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-319495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}