Whenever Errol Morris puts together a documentary, you can be sure that it will be out-of-the-box, imaginative, and thought-provoking. We have reviewed The Fog of War, Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, and Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Mr. Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.. He has an amazing gift for drawing out eccentric people on subjects they are passionate about.
Morris has hit the jackpot with Joyce McKinney, a former Miss Wyoming who has an IQ of 168 and is a consummate storyteller. According to this beauty queen, she fell madly in love with Kirk Anderson, a clean cut and puritanical Mormon in Utah. His strict parents were opposed to their marriage and reported them to the church elders who put into motion a plan to save Kirk from this terrible mistake. One day, he just vanished and Joyce had to get a detective to track him down in England where he was part of a required Mormon mission abroad. In the name of love, she takes him at gunpoint to a countryside B & B where she ushers this virgin into the delights of intercourse.
Joyce's side of the story is disputed by the authorities who arrest her and by the media who are thrilled to have such a juicy story to print and broadcast on television. It is claimed that she kidnapped Kirk, took him to the B & B, tied him to a bed spread-eagled, and raped him. Meanwhile, a major tabloid digs up photographs proving that Joyce was a prostitute prior to meeting Kirk and that she had had large quantities of nude photographs taken of herself.
This talkative woman regales us with stories about her fame in England (outshining Joan Collins and being kissed by Keith Wood). Even more outrageous is her jumping bail and escaping to Canada disguised as a blind person. She took along 13 suitcases filled with press clippings of the trial and all the hubbub.
Errol Morris has said of Tabloid: "It is a return to my favorite genre — sick, sad and funny. It is a meditation on how we are shaped by the media and even more powerfully, by ourselves — by the narratives we construct in our minds that may or may not have anything to do with reality. As a young woman, Joyce made a decision never to settle, to find true love at any cost, and that's what makes her an enduring romantic heroine. She's bound up in a dreamscape that she has created for herself, and very little can penetrate that protective bubble. In a sense, Joyce has always been living in a movie, long before she came to star in my film."
The filmmaker is right; we should not get too attached to the stories we tell ourselves. These stories may not even be true and yet we commit ourselves passionately to them. The result is suffering and heartache, such as the kind demonstrated on the screen by Joyce.
A final segment of this astonishing documentary deals with her love for a pit-bull dog and the lengths she is willing to go to stay connected to him. As a finishing touch, even this minor piece is as wild and as weird as all that has preceded it!
