Errol Morris does something remarkable with his latest documentary, Tabloid, in that he takes the notorious Joyce McKinney, a personality that gossip rags smeared left and right, and creates a wholly sympathetic portrait. At least, that’s how it starts, and it’s to his credit that he was able to keep up the charade for as long as he did, because once he takes the blinders off the audience and starts filtering in outside opinions, you start to get a picture far from the original one Joyce paints us. Were it not for Morris’s perfect editing and staging, it’s doubtful that Tabloid would be the entertaining documentary that it is, but he manages to bring a fresh perspective (all be it a kooky one) to a horse beaten to death, and the only true drawback is that he seems to enjoy the flogging a little too much and succumbs to landing a few kicks himself even though the documentary as a whole does it for him.
For those unfamiliar with the worldwide scandal of a former beauty pageant queen who falls madly in love with the man of her dreams only to him vanish suddenly into the arms of the Church of Latter Day Saints, Tabloid, just like the publications that share its name, gives you all you need to know and perhaps more - or perhaps less. The film starts with Joyce McKinney giving us our account of how her love vanished suddenly leaving her to hire a group of people to help her track him across the pond to England where he was undergoing intense training in a Mormon stronghold. Even though Morris gives us fair warning that this woman was considered crazy by the press, her tale of love obstructed by a church, which admittedly most Americans know little about besides a few references to polygamy and whatever they gleaned from Big Love, makes it easy to sympathize with her and cheer for the love story we’re hearing. When she arrives in England and whisks her love away from the hands of his religious “captors” to a cabin for a few days of love making and deprogramming, it seems like she got her happy ending and that she’s the rational party.
But she’s not. That’s not to say there’s no truth to her story and that her lover hadn’t been coerced into rejecting their love, but she’s far from rational. The few other talking heads that begin popping up, like the pilot she hired to take her to England, start to trickle in a sentiment that something isn’t what it seems. By the time editors and journalists from the tabloids that she sold her tragedy to start speaking their piece, her story beings to fall to pieces. How mutual was the love? Was their locked away love session in a cabin as idyllic as she described it? At first you wouldn’t have had much cause to doubt as Morris gives her just enough freedom to tell her story unimpeded, but once he lets her off the leash and weighs it against other perspectives, she sounds anything but sane. Each passing minute she loses the previously earned audience sympathy and once she’s gotten to her days as a recluse and begins talking about her dog as if he was a human being, you begin to doubt it all. When you learn she was the lady who made the news by having a company in Japan clone her dog and the reasons why, all hope is lost.
It’s all at once hilarious and disturbing to listen to this tale of an unraveling psyche, but Morris pulls it off by giving McKinney a genuine shot at pleading her case up front. That it’s so easy to poke holes in with the testimony of a few tabloid employees has the exact desired effect, perfectly imitating the check-out line rags we all know: you know the story can’t be true, but you just can’t look away. Morris mixes the talking heads with an interesting blend of graphics and comical interjections, but at a few points he goes a little too far and almost sabotages his carefully built façade of an impartial view. Was it ever impartial to begin with? Can it be? If tabloid newspapers and documentaries have taught us anything it’s that a good story backed up by facts is the best draw, but if you can’t verify all the facts, and amusing tone is more than enough to keep people interested.
"Tabloid" opens July 15, 2011 and is not rated. Comedy, Documentary. Directed by Errol Morris. Starring Joyce Mckinney.
