Tabloid

Overview

Two kinds of people make it into tabloids. The first are celebrities, and the second are non-celebrities in extraordinary (particularly: sexy) circumstances. Those in the latter category are sometimes genuinely interesting, and you'll never meet more interesting tabloid fodder than Joyce McKinney, 1978's Mormon-kidnapping, sexually predatory Southern beauty queen.

Documentarian extraordinaire Errol Morris (The Fog of War, The Thin Blue Line) has tracked down the larger-than-life McKinney and others involved in this now mostly forgotten event for a trip down memory lane. They retell the story of how she came to extract young Mormon Kirk Anderson from his church using a gang of men, a fake gun and a bottle of chloroform and hold him in the English countryside for several days. She claims, as ever, that she was rescuing her true love from a dangerous cult. When found, he claimed he was kidnapped and raped. After a brief foray into tabloid headlines and celebrity parties, McKinney fled back to the US and was convicted of the crime in absentia.

Tabloid has in its grasp the two things a great documentary needs: a human point of interest and a way into a deeper argument about the structures that underlie our society — in this case, the structure of tabloid media. Morris could actually stand to pry a little further into the scandal-fuelled news machine. After what went down at News of the World, we're certainly hungry for the insight.

Fortunately, the human interest at the centre of the story is of mammoth proportions. McKinney is charming, intense, and entirely convinced of her view of the facts. She has gone on to live a life of celibacy on a Wyoming country estate with four cloned dogs. Seriously.

Morris keeps things fun and gripping, with hyperactive editing to aid the attention deficient. The effects of his patented 'Interrotron' system are palpable: relaxed and engaged interviewees seem to look down the barrel of the lens and address you while they are, in their reality, looking at and addressing Morris.

Unfortunately and understandably, the Mormon at the centre of it all is not one of these interviewees. Anderson refused to be interviewed for Tabloid, so the task of arguing his case, that he was kidnapped and raped, falls to journalists and other onlookers. It gives McKinney's story perhaps more credence than it deserves, and some may justifiably find this off-colour. Still, if you're open to hearing out someone who is quite possibly a deranged sexual offender, this story is one that will bewilder, challenge, and prompt a conversation on how we think about consent.