Tabloid
It
may be mostly forgotten now but, back in 1977, Britain, and indeed the world,
was gripped by the case of the Manacled Mormon, creating a tabloid feeding
frenzy and catapulting it’s protagonist, former beauty queen Joyce McKinney to
instant stardom.
Tabloid tells a story that had it
all; a kidnapped missionary, a beauty queen, forbidden love, illicit sex, some
bondage, vice, celebrity, a daring escape or two and, bringing events crashing
into the 21st century, some Frankenstein dog-cloning. But how did an all-American girl and
ex-Miss Wyoming end up, briefly, the most talked about woman on the planet?
According
to the now sixty-something McKinney in Tabloid, Errol Morris’ most playful documentary
in decades, she did it all for love.
True love. You know, the
batsh*t crazy, bonkers obsessional love that gets you locked up.
Separated
from the only man she ever truly loved, Kirk Anderson, by a cruel and
unforgiving religious cult, Joyce did what any girl in love would. Believing him to be brainwashed and
with the aid of friend (and possible submissive slave) Keith May, Joyce
followed the young Mormon missionary to Britain where they kidnapped him and
held him in a secluded cottage in Devon for three days. What exactly happened next is the subject
of some debate but all parties agree it involved Anderson being chained to a
bed and lots and lots of sex, consensual according to McKinney, rape according
to Anderson. When McKinney and
Keith are then arrested, Joyce finds herself in the middle of a tabloid
circulation war as her story becomes front page news, hooking a nation who
clamour for ever more outrageous details of her misadventures.
Unfolding
like a salacious Rashomon, Morris takes us back 30+ years to 1977, filtering
McKinney’s tale through the multiple perspectives of those involved (at least
those that would talk, since giving evidence at her trial, Anderson has
remained silent); the police, the judiciary, the lawyers, McKinney herself and,
most importantly, some of the tabloid journalists who milked the story for all
it was worth. Through the
recollections of the suave, charming Daily Express journo Peter Tory and the
almost stereotypically sleazy Daily Mirror hack Kent Gavin, Morris takes us
right to the dark, sleazy heart of Fleet Street and it’s creation of today’s
disposable celebrity, kiss-and-tell tabloid culture as the Mirror and the
Express go toe-to-toe and slug it out over Joyce and her story (Express
pro-Joyce, Mirror anti).
After
years of serious, heady fare like The Thin Blue Line, Standard Operating
Procedure and
The Fog Of War it’s good to see perhaps the world’s most important and
influential living documentarian exploring lighter, quirkier subject matter
reminiscent of his early classics Gates of Heaven and Vernon, Florida. A maker of intense, multi-layered often
very personal films, as ever, Morris remains resolutely impartial, telling his
story from multiple perspectives, allowing all voices to be heard, painting
reality as it is, not how he thinks it oughta be (Michael Moore take
note). We never know what Morris
thinks, he never colours his narrative with his own views; he simply allows us
to hear the story from the mouths of those involved and to make up our own
minds. Was Joyce a sweet, innocent
girl blinded by love? Was she a
dangerous fantasist? A femme
fatale? A sexual predator? A feminist icon? Crazy or crazy like a fox? A madonna or a whore? More sinned against than sinner?
It’s
hard to tell, truth, like reality, is slippery. There’s maybe a little truth in all the stories of Joyce, in
all the ways she’s portrayed.
Her’s is a wild ride from beauty queen to aging recluse but you can’t
help but feel she was the first, the prototype manufactured celebrity, created,
built and broken by our tabloid culture and Morris paints her warmly,
fondly.
Despite
her cooperation in Tabloid, she is of course now suing Morris and his producers but
that is another story. Maybe we
haven’t heard the last of Joyce McKinney.
David Watson
Director
Errol Morris
Cast
Joyce McKinney, Peter Tory, Kent Gavin, Jackson Shaw, Dr Jin
Han Hong
Country
USA
Running time
87 minutes
Year
2010
Certificate
15
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