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Film Review: Exit Through the Gift Shop
I just got out of Exit Through the Gift Shop, a movie about graffiti street-art, and a well done mockumentary.
Supposedly, it started as an amateur videographer's quest to film the biggest street artists, and as the project spiraled, then turned into a documentary about Thierry Guetta, the videographer, now known as "Mr. Brainwash" and his rise to commercial success making pop/street art with an army of illustrators hired through Craigslist. How he copied all of the strategies of the people he filmed, and finding great commercial success despite having no talent of his own. How the "real" artists are left wondering whether the joke was entirely on them. The punchline interviews at the end when they bitterly distanced themselves from their supposed friend, seeming a bit petty, and trying to make sense of how he made millions with his ripoffs (and a lot of their hard work).
My only complaint was that it got slow at the 1-hour mark, though they picked it up a bit when the supposed videographer filmed Banksy installing a protest against Guantanamo Bay prison inside Disneyland. Which did happen.
Indeed, lots of the events in the movie did happen- only many of them were engineered for the movie. Financed somehow, and with some actor to play Thierry Guetta.
Supposedly, it started as an amateur videographer's quest to film the biggest street artists, and as the project spiraled, then turned into a documentary about Thierry Guetta, the videographer, now known as "Mr. Brainwash" and his rise to commercial success making pop/street art with an army of illustrators hired through Craigslist. How he copied all of the strategies of the people he filmed, and finding great commercial success despite having no talent of his own. How the "real" artists are left wondering whether the joke was entirely on them. The punchline interviews at the end when they bitterly distanced themselves from their supposed friend, seeming a bit petty, and trying to make sense of how he made millions with his ripoffs (and a lot of their hard work).
My only complaint was that it got slow at the 1-hour mark, though they picked it up a bit when the supposed videographer filmed Banksy installing a protest against Guantanamo Bay prison inside Disneyland. Which did happen.
Indeed, lots of the events in the movie did happen- only many of them were engineered for the movie. Financed somehow, and with some actor to play Thierry Guetta.