Tabloid

Documentarian Errol Morris turns his camera to a peculiar would-be love story in "Tabloid", an enormously entertaining film due in large part to its subject and star: Joyce McKinney. McKinney was a former Miss Wyoming and dominatrix-for-hire with an especially romantic, and obsessive, view of love. When she was 19, she went looking for that "special guy" with whom to spend the rest of her earthly days. She found him in Kirk Anderson, a devout Mormon whose lifestyle she did not embrace. But she says Kirk loved her and proposed marriage. Then he took off to England on a religious mission. Joyce followed and, with the help of friend Keith May, kidnapped Kirk at gunpoint, whisked him to a cottage in Devon, tied him to the bed and had sex with him for several days.

McKinney believed she was liberating Kirk from Mormon brainwashing. She says that Kirk did not leave when he easily could have, and they made plans to marry...until Kirk saw his kidnapping in a newspaper and had to come up with a story to save himself from excommunication. Kirk said he was genuinely kidnapped and raped by McKinney. The British tabloids had a field day. Kirk became the "Manacled Mormon", and Joyce was presented as a hopeless romantic or, alternatively, as a manipulative vixen, depending upon which paper you read. The authors of the competing tabloid visions, Peter Tory of The Daily Express, who publicized Joyce's point of view, and Kent Gavin of The Daily Mirror, who dug into her past, are interviewed for the film.

Joyce McKinney tells her own story. She may not possess the mischievous charm that so many men found irresistible 34 years ago, but she is still nutty in a sort of endearing, occasionally frightful way. She never wanted for ingenuity, and she tells a good tale. The part of the story that's missing, unfortunately, is Kirk Anderson's. He would not be interviewed for this film. Too bad. Though I suspect that Joyce is lying or delusional about some aspects of her account, it does seem that Kirk may have been complicit. Joyce's eccentricity has not dulled with the years, though she seems to have abandoned social interaction in favor of dogs. And she seems still to regard love for one individual as permanent and irreplaceable, whether for human or canine.

The DVD (MPI 2011): The only bonus feature is a theatrical trailer (2 min). Subtitles are available in English SDH and Spanish.

When is an Errol Morris documentary ever uninteresting? The acclaimed filmmaker has been crafting award-winning docs for decades now, and Tabloid, proves he still has what it takes. Of course, it certainly helps if your subject is Joyce Bernann McKinney, the former Miss World contestant with a colorful past who turned up in the news again when a woman going by the name of "Bernann McKinney" traveled to South Korea in 2008 to have her pet dog cloned. As chronicled in Tabloid, McKinney was previously tied to a 1977 investigation in which a Mormon missionary living in Surrey, England alleged that McKinney kidnapped him, chained him to a bed, and raped him. Tabloid isn't Morris's most thought-provoking work, but it's nevertheless a smart, spirited, and engaging look at tabloid culture and one very fascinating woman, and that makes for a solidly entertaining film.

The tale of the Mormon missionary abducted at gunpoint in Surrey and press ganged into sexual enslavement by a former Miss Wyoming that had followed him here.The dominant Miss,who was Joyce McKinney,found herself at the centre of a tabloid storm. Kirk Anderson was the victim supposedly brainwashed by his Mormonism to recant the 3 days of love and sex he had in a Devon cottage,to stay within his church.Morris shows us the feeding frenzy of 3 tabloids, The Daily Express,The Mirror and The Sun,depicting the `war of pictures' that ensued.Miss McKinney,she remains unmarried to this day,tells her side of this extraordinary yarn.Morris utilizes tabloid-style or tongue-in-cheek photographic and cinematic inserts and McKinney's in-studio interview to dominate the film's running time. Morris makes the effects of the frenzy plain.:"you learn when you're famous who your friends are",she says,what few friends she had betrayed her.She comes across as an eccentric,incurable romantic,with undying love for Anderson.She is rendered at the end with some dignity,crying over the death of her dog Boogie,and the elation of having it genetically cloned by a Korean geneticist,a victim of our own crazy notions of love,loyalty and idealism.She has since filed a suit against the film's creator,claiming to have been once again,misrepresented. Anderson,wisely, refused to be interviewed.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 12 reviews  4.4 out of 5 stars