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ivyficI've been doing enough of these reviews, maybe it's time for headers.
Film: Tabloid (2010)
Genre: Documentary
In 1977, Joyce McKinney followed the man she loved to England, where he was a Mormon missionary... And I can't even finish a sentence without qualifiers for this one. According to Joyce, he ran away with her, then they had wild, kinky, consensual sex in a cabin in Devon for three days, and were going to get married. According to Kirk Anderson, she abducted him, chained him to a bed, and raped him. According to the tabloids...well, we'll get to that.
As the documentary starts, you hear Joyce's side of the story. And she is an incredibly charming woman, with a sweet Southern accent. So you start out believing that her fiance was brainwashed by a cult, that he had sex consensually but later claimed it was rape to save himself from ex-communication and disgrace. It seems all too plausible.
But as the documentary goes on, you realize this woman is crazy. Just nuts. It becomes pretty clear that she would not have a really clear idea as to what anyone else was feeling--and she states flat out she doesn't think a man can be raped ("It would be like putting a marshmallow in a parking meter"). As the story unfolds, you also start to realize that her sweet, innocent, hometown beauty queen portrait of herself doesn't mesh with her actions at all, or with anybody else's recollections.
The tabloids were all over this story. I mean, how can you lose with headlines like "Manacled Mormon"? You hear from several tabloid reporters who worked on the story, and realize that the News Corp phone-tapping scandal was not a new development in this business. The Mirror bribed Joyce's dogwalker to steal hundreds of photographs from a locked trunk in her apartment. They would not leave her alone.
But as the documentary goes on, as despiccably as the tabloids acted, you start getting this sense that...Joyce kind of goaded them. I mean, when she was arrested, she wrote a letter to the press, stuffed it up her hooha, and when they were driving her in the paddy wagon, pressed it up against the glass. What paper wouldn't put a photo of that on the front page? She was running around the airports in fake wigs and costumes, pretending to be deaf. She was calling her male companion slave and ordering him around. It just goes on and on.
The film kind of takes a left turn into irrelevancy around the two-thirds mark, but it is a bizarre and fascinating story, and one that we'll never know the real truth of, since all the evidence has mysteriously disappeared (as have some of the key players). I'm not sure if the movie makes any sort of thematic moral out of the jumble, but you won't be bored.
Film: Tabloid (2010)
Genre: Documentary
In 1977, Joyce McKinney followed the man she loved to England, where he was a Mormon missionary... And I can't even finish a sentence without qualifiers for this one. According to Joyce, he ran away with her, then they had wild, kinky, consensual sex in a cabin in Devon for three days, and were going to get married. According to Kirk Anderson, she abducted him, chained him to a bed, and raped him. According to the tabloids...well, we'll get to that.
As the documentary starts, you hear Joyce's side of the story. And she is an incredibly charming woman, with a sweet Southern accent. So you start out believing that her fiance was brainwashed by a cult, that he had sex consensually but later claimed it was rape to save himself from ex-communication and disgrace. It seems all too plausible.
But as the documentary goes on, you realize this woman is crazy. Just nuts. It becomes pretty clear that she would not have a really clear idea as to what anyone else was feeling--and she states flat out she doesn't think a man can be raped ("It would be like putting a marshmallow in a parking meter"). As the story unfolds, you also start to realize that her sweet, innocent, hometown beauty queen portrait of herself doesn't mesh with her actions at all, or with anybody else's recollections.
The tabloids were all over this story. I mean, how can you lose with headlines like "Manacled Mormon"? You hear from several tabloid reporters who worked on the story, and realize that the News Corp phone-tapping scandal was not a new development in this business. The Mirror bribed Joyce's dogwalker to steal hundreds of photographs from a locked trunk in her apartment. They would not leave her alone.
But as the documentary goes on, as despiccably as the tabloids acted, you start getting this sense that...Joyce kind of goaded them. I mean, when she was arrested, she wrote a letter to the press, stuffed it up her hooha, and when they were driving her in the paddy wagon, pressed it up against the glass. What paper wouldn't put a photo of that on the front page? She was running around the airports in fake wigs and costumes, pretending to be deaf. She was calling her male companion slave and ordering him around. It just goes on and on.
The film kind of takes a left turn into irrelevancy around the two-thirds mark, but it is a bizarre and fascinating story, and one that we'll never know the real truth of, since all the evidence has mysteriously disappeared (as have some of the key players). I'm not sure if the movie makes any sort of thematic moral out of the jumble, but you won't be bored.