Tabloid

2010 documentary

Rating: 15/20

Plot: The incredible true story of a beauty pageant nutcase allegedly kidnapping and repeatedly raping her Mormon ex-boyfriend. And then later, cloned dogs are somehow involved.

Throw this in the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction category. You always kind of get the impression that Errol Morris is the type of documentary film maker who isn't going to let truth get in the way of telling a good story. No, I'm not accusing him of shenanigans or anything, but like his buddy Herzog, Morris is very clever and perhaps liberal with the editing. I think Joyce McKinney nailed it when she said something about how if you tell a lie long enough, you start to believe it. Morris uses time in an interesting way with a lot of this. He allows things to linger a few times, even for fractions of a second it seems, that somehow makes things sink in a little more or make you stop and question what you're seeing. Or maybe I'm just imaging things. I do that sometimes. McKinney is an interesting enough subject for a documentary. She's about as crazy as they get, and I'm not entirely sure I believe her when she says she has an IQ of 168. But of course, if you tell a lie long enough, you start to believe it. Most of this consists of interviews with McKinney where she claims raping a man makes about as much sense as putting marshmallows in a parking meter and talks about a job as a "doo doo dipper" being the most shocking thing that can happen to a person. All you need to do is check out the baby picture of McKinney that is shown in this. That'll tell you everything you need to know. Well, the stories of fleeing England in disguises, all the S&M stuff that comes out, her belief that her dog's collar was bugged, threats to leap to her death from a balcony, and her quote about skiing down Mount Everest naked with a carnation in her nose fills in some details about her general state of mind, too. Other people interviewed: a pilot McKinney and her partner-in-alleged-crime hired to help them retrieve the Mormon and a tabloid reporter who seemed to really enjoy saying the word "spread-eagle" unless that was just more Morris editing trickery. I would listen to arguments that this whole thing is exploitative and a true sign of the voyeuristic, reality-show-obsessed culture we live in, but I was entertained enough by this story that just kept snowballing down the mountain of wackiness. With a carnation in its nose.