Rated R for sexual content and nudity
Cast: Joyce McKinney, Jackson Shaw, Peter Tory, Troy Williams, Kent Gavin, Jin Han Hong
Director: Errol Morris
The woman is a wind-up machine of histrionics. A self-promoting Chatty Cathy doll with an equator-length pull cord, if you will.
Errol Morris' "Tabloid" is a giddy, inventively-accentuated documentary that observes the mutually advantageous relationships between sensationalist rags, those who peruse them, and those who find themselves, either wittingly or unwittingly, the target of their salacious gossip. It focuses on a story that dominated the British headlines during the late 70s, and involves a woman who has to be seen and heard to be... well, not really believed, but... to be seen and heard, I guess. Such is the essence of the tabloid.
In 1977, Joyce McKinney earned laurels of notoriety for being a key participant in a tabloid story dubbed "The Case of the Manacled Mormon." She was arrested on accusations that she followed a Mormon missionary named Kirk Anderson to England, kidnapped him, transported him to a remote location, handcuffed him to a bed and forced him to be her sex slave. Of course, her version of events were quite different. In the movie, she presents herself as a doe-eyed hopeless romantic who fell in love with Anderson (and he with her, proposing on the second date) whose own happiness was sadistically interrupted by the Mormon church. According to her, it was their "cult" (as she described them) that whisked him away to a foreign land to prevent their union. Her own abduction plot was an attempt to rescue him from Mormonism. The story was fodder incarnate for the British papers and their readership. The press couldn't get enough.
Following her release on bail in advance of the trial, Joyce mingled with actors and pop stars. Her niche was discovered in the tabloid crosshairs; the woman was well ahead of her time. Joyce's newfound vacuous stardom took an even more bizarre turn when unearthed photographs revealed she once made a living as a nude model. Many of the pictures featured her in bondage poses. Her explanation now? The tabloids cruelly pasted her face over images of other women. This is the ultimate love-hate relationship.
Kirk Anderson himself refused to be interviewed for the film, though has insisted since the ordeal that he flew to the U.K. to evade Joyce's obsession. So, with whose account does accuracy lie? As far as the film is concerned, it honestly doesn't matter. This isn't an attempt at excavating the truth. Indeed, Morris' approach is its own cinematic tabloid of sorts, fawning over a spacey subject all too eager to tell her side of the tale. The film would be seen as pure exploitation had the key player not been so keen to position herself before Morris' lens.
That McKinney is engaging comes as no surprise. Oh, she's a flake and we wouldn't trust her any further than an asthmatic weakling could chuck her, but if we found ourselves at a party and wished to be entertained, we'd know where to park ourselves, sit back and take in the unbridled hilarity. Morris also interviews a British tabloid journalist with an apparent adoration toward depravity. (As he describes Joyce's method of forced intercourse, Morris interrupts him to ask "you mean she wanted him to inseminate her?" The man gives Morris a puzzled expression. "Well, that's a polite way of putting it," he responds, as though politeness were the most alien of concepts in tabloid-utopia.) Also interviewed is an accomplice of Joyce's, and even a scientist who managed to clone the woman's dog as a means to combat her loneliness later in life. Why is HE in there? Why not? The movie is a cheeky exploration into sensationalism. What, is he going to wreck the grading curve?
Tabloid journalism is one of those entities that feeds itself while constantly blaming others for feeding itself. Celebrities lambaste them for printing falsehoods even as some stars need those taradiddles to maintain their level of fame. Journalists continue shady practices while blaming readers for buying and reading something they claim to detest. And on it goes.
Morris has a lot of fun with the presentation, employing tabloid-style imagery to add nuance to the unmufflered scandalous details on display. This isn't quite up there with Morris' more substantial work ("Gates of Heaven," "The Thin Blue Line," "The Fog of War"), but the goal isn't the same either. Here, he's merely setting the stage for the most peculiar of yarns, one that will be told again and again so long as the woman telling it has a working breath.
* * * 1/2 out of * * * * stars
Errol Morris' "Tabloid" is a giddy, inventively-accentuated documentary that observes the mutually advantageous relationships between sensationalist rags, those who peruse them, and those who find themselves, either wittingly or unwittingly, the target of their salacious gossip. It focuses on a story that dominated the British headlines during the late 70s, and involves a woman who has to be seen and heard to be... well, not really believed, but... to be seen and heard, I guess. Such is the essence of the tabloid.
In 1977, Joyce McKinney earned laurels of notoriety for being a key participant in a tabloid story dubbed "The Case of the Manacled Mormon." She was arrested on accusations that she followed a Mormon missionary named Kirk Anderson to England, kidnapped him, transported him to a remote location, handcuffed him to a bed and forced him to be her sex slave. Of course, her version of events were quite different. In the movie, she presents herself as a doe-eyed hopeless romantic who fell in love with Anderson (and he with her, proposing on the second date) whose own happiness was sadistically interrupted by the Mormon church. According to her, it was their "cult" (as she described them) that whisked him away to a foreign land to prevent their union. Her own abduction plot was an attempt to rescue him from Mormonism. The story was fodder incarnate for the British papers and their readership. The press couldn't get enough.
Following her release on bail in advance of the trial, Joyce mingled with actors and pop stars. Her niche was discovered in the tabloid crosshairs; the woman was well ahead of her time. Joyce's newfound vacuous stardom took an even more bizarre turn when unearthed photographs revealed she once made a living as a nude model. Many of the pictures featured her in bondage poses. Her explanation now? The tabloids cruelly pasted her face over images of other women. This is the ultimate love-hate relationship.
Kirk Anderson himself refused to be interviewed for the film, though has insisted since the ordeal that he flew to the U.K. to evade Joyce's obsession. So, with whose account does accuracy lie? As far as the film is concerned, it honestly doesn't matter. This isn't an attempt at excavating the truth. Indeed, Morris' approach is its own cinematic tabloid of sorts, fawning over a spacey subject all too eager to tell her side of the tale. The film would be seen as pure exploitation had the key player not been so keen to position herself before Morris' lens.
That McKinney is engaging comes as no surprise. Oh, she's a flake and we wouldn't trust her any further than an asthmatic weakling could chuck her, but if we found ourselves at a party and wished to be entertained, we'd know where to park ourselves, sit back and take in the unbridled hilarity. Morris also interviews a British tabloid journalist with an apparent adoration toward depravity. (As he describes Joyce's method of forced intercourse, Morris interrupts him to ask "you mean she wanted him to inseminate her?" The man gives Morris a puzzled expression. "Well, that's a polite way of putting it," he responds, as though politeness were the most alien of concepts in tabloid-utopia.) Also interviewed is an accomplice of Joyce's, and even a scientist who managed to clone the woman's dog as a means to combat her loneliness later in life. Why is HE in there? Why not? The movie is a cheeky exploration into sensationalism. What, is he going to wreck the grading curve?
Tabloid journalism is one of those entities that feeds itself while constantly blaming others for feeding itself. Celebrities lambaste them for printing falsehoods even as some stars need those taradiddles to maintain their level of fame. Journalists continue shady practices while blaming readers for buying and reading something they claim to detest. And on it goes.
Morris has a lot of fun with the presentation, employing tabloid-style imagery to add nuance to the unmufflered scandalous details on display. This isn't quite up there with Morris' more substantial work ("Gates of Heaven," "The Thin Blue Line," "The Fog of War"), but the goal isn't the same either. Here, he's merely setting the stage for the most peculiar of yarns, one that will be told again and again so long as the woman telling it has a working breath.
* * * 1/2 out of * * * * stars
