‘Wild Inside’ and ‘Cookie Queens’: Two documentaries about good-natured obsession

Of owls and Girl Scout Cookies.

Image: Sandbox Films

Social media crazes involving unusual animals often miss me completely. So, just as often, do documentaries about nature.

But if Penny Lane makes a documentary about something, I’m going to be into it. Whether it’s about the Satanic Temple, children’s music, kidney donation, that doctor who did weird testicular injections, or the career of Kenny G.

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.

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’m not only talking about the people who got Flaco tattoos.

Lane tells this story essentially from beginning to end, while offering gorgeous New York City photography, as it’s 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.

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

More than once, when watching one of Lane’s films, I’ve wondered whether this was a topic that could possibly hold my interest. And Lane has allayed my doubts, every single time.

Most documentaries I review here don’t get major theatrical releases, but Wild Inside did, and so did Cookie Queens.

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.

It’s a ritual that most people will be at least somewhat familar with. But the film shows us a version that’s a bit more cutthroat than what we’re probably used to.

You probably know the John Mulaney bit, 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 “little girls in sashes.”

We’re 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’s not the American Pie actress.

Now, is it a good thing to introduce young children to the world of high-pressure sales tactics? Possibly not.

I will say that the film was produced by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, and it’s much more of a success than just about any of the other creative endeavors they’ve mounted so far, although ironically it’s not done through Netflix, their supposed partner.