DOC NYC Fest: Director Errol Morris' 'Tabloid'

By Sarah Sluis

Documentary director Errol Morris' Tabloid will be one of two gala presentations during the DOC NYC Fest, which runs from Nov. 3 through Nov. 9. Preceding its premiere at NYU's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts on Nov. 7 at 7pm, several of Morris' other films will be shown on the big screen, including The Thin Blue Line, A Brief History of Time, and Gates of Heaven are also scheduled for screening. However, maybe the festival should have done it the other way around, because Tabloid is so good it will make you want to revisit all of Morris' previous films.

Tabloid combines a sensational story (the "too good to be true" kind) with the narrative sensibilities of a master. A taste of the plot: In the 1970s, an ex-beauty queen, Joyce McKinney, goes to England to win back her "boyfriend," who she thinks has been brainwashed by a cult (Or is he just a Mormon on his mission?). She kidnaps him and chains him to a bed (leading to London tabloids screaming "Bondage!" and other salacious headlines), and more. Despite plans to marry (according McKinney), the Mormon disappears after their return to London, and she's arrested soon after on a host of tabloid-worthy charges.

Though the "Manacled Mormon" refuses to aopear on camera, McKinney is a star interviewee. A charismatic speaker, she reportedly has a genius-level IQ (she claims it's 160) and convincingly tells stories that Morris casts doubt on in other segments of the film. Indeed, as the publicity around the case reaches its height, all kinds of weird information about McKinney comes out of the woodwork. To top it all off, McKinney's story has a bizarre third act, which picks up some twenty years after the original story.

Under Morris' hand, Tabloid has moments that are laugh-out-loud funny and jaw-dropping incredible. Entire minutes can be spent with a jaw hanging open in disbelief. He sometimes uses incongruous stock footage to illustrate a situation, an excellent technique, and flashes words on the screen for a moment during interviews (Someone says "What word am I looking for?" and he flashes it on the screen instead of supplying it off-camera). He likes to suddenly introduce an entirely different angle of the story, so that watching the documentary becomes a kind of roller-coaster experience.

Tabloid has been making the rounds at film festivals. Though no distributor has picked it up, I predict it will be hitting theatres sometime soon. The story's just so good it's true.