PPH @ LFF 2010
Tabloid, the latest work from famed documentarian Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War) is a wildly entertaining slice of Americana-Britannia, and proof positive that while truth is stranger than fiction, it is often totally inseperable from it, too.
Tabloid tells the story of Joyce McKinney, a former Miss Wyoming who, in 1977 inexplicably found the apple of her eye in the shuffling, overweight Mormon Kirk Anderson. Sadly for McKinney, Anderson, without warning, embarked to the south of England on a mission of God. With the help of a friend, McKinney tracked Anderson down, and allegedly chained him to a bed for three days to have sex with him. The outcome of this bizarre incident became a cause celebre in the British press, and Morris explores the aftermath in all its mystery, tragedy, seediness and intercontinental chicanery.
Morris has an astonishing subject in McKinney; wide-eyed, charmingly articulate in a down-home Southern way, but also highly emotionally charged, manipulative and clearly, well… a bit mad. She is the centre of the film and never less than fascinating. In one particular sequence shot on home video footage, a young McKinney exhibits a canny grasp of narrative when she effectively (and eerily) predicts her own future in a Boogie Nights-esque reading of her unpublished novel.
Like 2007’s Best Documentary Oscar winner Man on Wire, Tabloid snaps along like a thriller, as a scarcely believable set of supporting characters (including horny pilots, lovestruck silent sidekicks, sleazy hacks and Korean cloning scientists!) and a series of unlikely events conspire to create a vastly entertaining and suspenseful whole. For a deadpan treatise on the slipperiness of veracity in a refreshingly pre-Facebook/Twitter/TMZ age, look no further. Hopefully #Tabloid will be trending come Oscar time, and make up for the travesty of The Thin Blue Line‘s non-nomination in 1988. Don’t miss.
Tabloid screens at the The 54th BFI London Film Festival.
Permanent Plastic Helmet 
IF you do not remove the offensive photo (we know her personally and it doesn’t even look like her!) and your article with its libelous comments, we will see to it that it is turned over to Ms. McKinney’s internet lawyers and you will be SUED! Your article is sick, false, defamatory and libelous. Your are commiting criminal libel by accusing a person of a sex crime who WAS NEVER CHARGED WITH IT. She can also have you charged with CRIMINAL LIBEL, as what you have done is illegal. Joyce McKinney was never charged with raping a man, as you and so many of your ilk infer. You also slander Ms. McKinney by saying she is “mad” ? Are you a psychiatrist? Why do you judge her by the filthy film this disgusting man Morris did? She finds his film repulsive and it does not reflect the truth of her TRUE story: It is about a woman who tries to RESCUE HER FIANCE FROM A CULT WHICH HAS BRAINWASHED HIM, you moron! (In your bizarre version, which isn’t factual, you have a 112 pound girl chaining a 300 pound 6’5 Mormon to the bed? Where are your brains?) We think not, so therefore you are only slandering her. She was in fact a very sweet highly intelligent woman who ran for Miss USA and had an IQ of 168. Even today, she probably she has more sense than YOU do. As for the picture, who supplied it to you? Source please? Our bet is that you don’t have a modeling release or that you got it from a man who also used it, who bribed a false friend to burglarize her home in 1978. This man’s tabloid paid the burglar thousands of dollars to steal photos to help to discredit and her and make her look like tramp, and to SUBJUDICE her case, which is illegal–so they smuggled the man to Mexico to avoid prosecution. Now that you have revealed your true colors and your tabloid connections, it appears you are helping them slander her. So get the crap off buddy, or we trace your service provider and send a lawsuit to your door. Get your suit pressed, you’re going to court . (And PS she has sued creeps like you before and always wins damages into thousands of dollars, so we hope you have lots of dough to pay it off. Be sure and bring a “rape” charge sheet to court with you. (Hint Bright Boy: Since Joyce has never been charged with it– one doesn’t exist, HA HA, and you will have egg on your face. Oh and, are you aware that the producer and director of the trashy “Porno Doc” you are promoting, is getting a twenty million dollar lawsuit? They pretended to be from Showtime Network to get footage on her, lying and saying they were doing a series on “people whose lives are destroyed by tabloids”. Then while the deceptive kook Errol Morris was interviewing her on camera for the non existent Showtime TV series, his sleazy producer ransacked her luggage and stole photos from her valuable memorabilia collection which she had turned down two million dollars for! …He also stole some film treatments she had written herself, and family photos and videos which he has NO permission to use and NO modeling release as well as pictures of her family’s home. And yes her parents are sueing for Invasion of Privacy while she is suing for Slander, Defamation, False light, Deliberate Infliction of emotional distress; and the police in America are LOOKING INTO BURGLARY CHARGES AGAINST THE PRODUCER who stole her photos and then tried to fore her to sign a paper to absolve himself of the burglary–He also told her her dog would die if she didn’t sign it, and was directly involved in cruelly paying a man who helped to get her service dog tortured and killed. And she is now partially blind and handicapped and needed that service dog. So DON”T build jerks like this film’s producers up or their perverted film up, and then up and tear HER down. It only shows what kind of man YOU are if you side with people like them in trying to tear her down. So pal you better get your butt in gear, save yourself, and get this sick perverted article OFF your website or you will find yourself with a big lawsuit, a lot of court appearances, and paying out damages to her. Nuf said? (And by the way, this perverted film is being disqualified from the Oscars because of the poor ethics of its producer and director, as well as the fact that it is not based on fact and therefore could not be entered in the Best Documentary category.)
Picture changed, out of courtesy.
Thanks.
truthteller…
are you being forced to write that against your will whilst being tied down?
type 1 for yes, 2 for no… we’ll send help.
Albert – yes, you’re right. Joyce has already raped me 13 times today, as she has so many other men in her time. Send help, or at least lube.
“Get your suit pressed, you’re going to court”
I love truthteller.
Also truthteller should research libel law outside the US. Then maybe go for a walk.
EAWE HAVE RESEARCHED LIBEL LAW IN THE US AND THROUGHOUT THE WORLD WHERE GOSSIP MONGERS SPREAD THIS LIBEOUS KIDNAP RAPE PRESS HOAX —PERPETUATED MY MORRIS AND HIS MORMON-SOURCED TABLOIDS. They –and thier prevaricating “sources”—will all be paying both punitive and compensatory damages. And it is them who wil be “taking a walk” …to thier banks, to pay Miss McKinney millons of dollars out of their fat bank accounts for the emotional pain and trauma they cost her and her parents with tihis sick perverted trashy celluloid catastrophe where they deliberately omited THE TRUTH and brought her up to severe public ridicule! They are being SUED for what they did so cruelly to their subject of Tabloid (Ms. McKinney) just as they were sued by the subject whose story they also tried to steal in Thin Blue Line (Randall Adams)! They lost with Adams and had to pay him, and they will definetely lose with Ms. McKinney, who they will have to pay mega-bucks for damages –just like the dishonest story hungry “writers” who parroted the liblous material in Morris’ sick film Tabloid without searching for Truth about Ms. McKinney’s CULT RESCUE. (It was so EASILY AVAILABLE, THEY WERE JUST TOO LAZY TO LOOK FOR IT.) This time they won’t be laughing, NOR will YOU! SEE YOU IN COURT!
TRUTHTELLER YOU CAN USE MORE CAPITALS LETTER THAT WILL HELP