Geekscape Movie Reviews: Errol Morris’s Tabloid
“Tabloid,” the latest documentary from Oscar-winner Errol Morris, is perhaps his most self-aware film to date, and also among his most entertaining. It’s the strange story of so-called “sex in chains girl” Joyce McKinney, and also an examination of how others have previously told her story. It stands at the intersection between avant-garde meta-documentary and sleazy sexploitation flick. It’s almost assuredly going to be one of the best films of 2011.
In 1977, Joyce was a former Miss Wyoming World living in Salt Lake City and dating a by-all-accounts dumpy Mormon guy named Kirk Anderson. When Kirk left on his Mormon mission, Joyce, her friend K.J., a private pilot and a bodyguard traveled to England to “rescue” him from the Latter Day Saints and bring him home.
What happened next is a matter of some debate, and became something of an obsession for the British public – and British tabloid journalists – over the next several years. Morris’ film looks at all the possibilities, based on the public record and the involved parties who are alive and willing to speak with him. (Kirk refused to be interviewed, K.J. died in 2004, but Joyce enthusiastically takes part.)
In the end, it’s not so much a film about what really happened in England between Kirk, K.J. and Joyce. We hear everyone lay out their version of events – some involving a kidnapping, others a romantic weekend – but Morris seems more interested in the ways that people constructed the story to suit their own ends.
He’s fascinated by Joyce’s evasions but also her bluntness. He probes the men – Kirk Anderson, K.J. and others – who found themselves pulled into Joyce’s orbit. And he takes special delight in the testimony of a “Daily Mirror” correspondent who, even to this day, can’t discuss the case without tossing in salacious details about bondage photos and frequently returning to the phrase “spread-eagled.”
And one could hardly hope for a better interview subject than Joyce McKinney, a larger-than-life figure who could never really be the subject of a fictional film, because her personality is too impossible to believe.
About 5 minutes into the Q&A with Errol Morris following “Tabloid’s” Saturday night Cinefamily screening at LA’s Silent Movie Theater, McKinney herself invaded the proceedings. (She had her dog Booger in tow, but to reveal more details about the animal would be an unforgivable breach of Spoiler Law.)
To describe the now-60-something woman as “manic” would be a colossal understatement. She spoke at such a fantastic rate as to totally overwhelm everyone else in the theater, most of all her director. Her tendency to shout over and interrupt Errol Morris was so extreme, the entire audience soon began to loudly shush her.
The discussion itself consisted mainly of McKinney complaining about her unfair treatment in the film, followed by members of the audience’s reassurance that, no, she’s really presented quite flatteringly and with great sympathy.
I’m not sure if this is entirely TRUE or if her sudden and, um, exuberant presence was just making everyone uncomfortable. It’s a strange experience, to say the least, to watch a documentary and then see its subject chew out its director right in front of you on stage.
Certainly, Morris doesn’t treat Joyce UNFAIRLY in the film, when I have no doubt he could have. (Let’s just say that finding a few choice segments of the woman’s ramblings that were embarrassing or could be used to make her sound batshit insane wouldn’t be a huge challenge.)
But at the same time, “Tabloid” isn’t really all that sympathetic to anyone, including Errol Morris and his audience. The film seems to argue that we all hear the stories we want to hear, that there’s something immutably and inescapably human about loving tawdry gossip and scandal and that even a sober, serious-minded documentary filmmaker sometimes enjoys splashing about in the muck. And who am I to argue?
