Being Elmo and Exit Through the Gift Shop
Mar. 12th, 2012 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficThis weekend I watched Being Elmo and Exit Through the Gift Shop. Though on the surface they don't seem to have much in common, they actually work really well as a pair. They're both about obsessed fans.
But in the first, the fan turns his obsession into creativity, and through his innate talent and a staggering amount of luck, manages to work with his idol and create his own iconic character. Being Elmo is a lot of fun to watch just because it's always fun to watch a worthy person achieve their dream. But the number of extremely unlikely and phenomenal breaks this guy had is just mind boggling.
In Exit Through the Gift Shop, the fan, Thierry Guetta, turns all of his energy into getting close to the street artists. Just, doing anything he can to be useful to them so they'll keep him around. Which is how he ends up being Banksy's dogsbody.
Thierry then uses that proximity to mooch some of the celebrity off of Banksy and establish himself as an artist. Only he has no talent or skill, has spent no time developing his craft, and basically hires a bunch of people to do Warhol knock-offs. But he's succesful at it, which is the weirdest thing.
Banksy's commentary on all of this is hilarious. Thierry first was notable to the street artists because he filmed everything. Literally everything. He films every moment of his life. So he has a video record of this underground culture, a completely unique one. So Banksy wants him to make a documentary about street art with all of this irreplacable footage...and then realizes that maybe Thierry is "a guy with mental problems and a camera." (On wikipedia, it says that Banksy and his editors went through over 10,000 hours of the guy's tapes.)
(One of my favorite moments of the film is where, early in their acquaintance, Banksy, who seems to have been yearning for an audience for his work, which is usually so transitory, is showing Thierry boxes and boxes of fake ten pound notes. He'd made up a million quid worth of notes that look identical to the real ones, but with Diana's face instead of the Queen's. He'd thought he'd through them off a rooftop. But he tried with a small sample at a fair, and people didn't even notice they were fake, they just went off and spent them. Then Banksy realized, oh SHIT I just counterfeited a million quid. They put people in jail for that.)
On talking about Thierry's show, Banksy says, "Thierry is one of a kind, even if his art looks like everyone else's." He then talks about how Warhol was trying to make celebrity meaningless through repetition, but was so iconic himself that he gave it new meaning. Thierry, however, has achieved true meaninglessness. "He broke all the rules, but there aren't supposed to be any rules, so I don't know what the moral is."
He ends by saying he used to encourage everyone to make art. He doesn't do that any more.
In conclusion, Being Elmo is a good watch. But Exit Through the Gift Shop is fantastic. It's so twisty and turny and bizarre and hilarious--highly, highly recommended.
But in the first, the fan turns his obsession into creativity, and through his innate talent and a staggering amount of luck, manages to work with his idol and create his own iconic character. Being Elmo is a lot of fun to watch just because it's always fun to watch a worthy person achieve their dream. But the number of extremely unlikely and phenomenal breaks this guy had is just mind boggling.
In Exit Through the Gift Shop, the fan, Thierry Guetta, turns all of his energy into getting close to the street artists. Just, doing anything he can to be useful to them so they'll keep him around. Which is how he ends up being Banksy's dogsbody.
Thierry then uses that proximity to mooch some of the celebrity off of Banksy and establish himself as an artist. Only he has no talent or skill, has spent no time developing his craft, and basically hires a bunch of people to do Warhol knock-offs. But he's succesful at it, which is the weirdest thing.
Banksy's commentary on all of this is hilarious. Thierry first was notable to the street artists because he filmed everything. Literally everything. He films every moment of his life. So he has a video record of this underground culture, a completely unique one. So Banksy wants him to make a documentary about street art with all of this irreplacable footage...and then realizes that maybe Thierry is "a guy with mental problems and a camera." (On wikipedia, it says that Banksy and his editors went through over 10,000 hours of the guy's tapes.)
(One of my favorite moments of the film is where, early in their acquaintance, Banksy, who seems to have been yearning for an audience for his work, which is usually so transitory, is showing Thierry boxes and boxes of fake ten pound notes. He'd made up a million quid worth of notes that look identical to the real ones, but with Diana's face instead of the Queen's. He'd thought he'd through them off a rooftop. But he tried with a small sample at a fair, and people didn't even notice they were fake, they just went off and spent them. Then Banksy realized, oh SHIT I just counterfeited a million quid. They put people in jail for that.)
On talking about Thierry's show, Banksy says, "Thierry is one of a kind, even if his art looks like everyone else's." He then talks about how Warhol was trying to make celebrity meaningless through repetition, but was so iconic himself that he gave it new meaning. Thierry, however, has achieved true meaninglessness. "He broke all the rules, but there aren't supposed to be any rules, so I don't know what the moral is."
He ends by saying he used to encourage everyone to make art. He doesn't do that any more.
In conclusion, Being Elmo is a good watch. But Exit Through the Gift Shop is fantastic. It's so twisty and turny and bizarre and hilarious--highly, highly recommended.