Crazy French Camera Man Documents Grafitti Artists or ?

As a blogger who carries his digital camera/video in his pocket all the time, I couldn't help but relate to Thierry Guetta, the crazy Frenchman who films everything he sees.  He says he doesn't ask, he just films. He runs a clothing shop probably on Melrose in LA when the movie starts.  He buys in bulk - I got the impression from France, but I could be wrong - then hyped them and charged $400 for a cheap T shirt.  This should have been a clue to where this movie was going.  I don't usually go through the story line of the movie, but I don't think it matters in this case because it's how the story is told that makes this movie.  But if you don't want to know, skip the rest.

[Update, 10:50am - I forgot to mention the name of the movie:  Exit Through the Gift Shop.  It's not obvious and I'm not totally sure I'm interpreting it right, but it would seem to emphasize the commercialization of the art.]

On a trip to Paris, he finds out his cousin is making space invader inspired tiles and gluing them to buildings at night.   He follows him around Paris at night as he surreptitiously puts up his tiles.  His cousin introduces him to other graffiti artists (some call these street artists because they use media besides spray paint) and he starts filming them at work telling them he's making a documentary.  Much of the film is from these hand held films climbing up buildings at night posting all sorts of graffiti.  Back in LA he meets Shepherd Fairey whom everyone knows from his ubiquitous Obama Hope poster.  But in the film, he's going to Kinko's and making giant peel off illustrations that he puts up on buildings.

Soon Thierry is searching for Banksy  [The Banksy link is well worth it!], the most famous of graffiti artists, and eventually Banksy falls into his lap (is this a clue?) when he arrives in LA alone and contacts Thierry's cousin and Thierry gets to be his LA guide. 

Banksy in disguise for interview

Banksy lets Thierry film him but always in a black hoodey and his voice altered, or with his face pixeled out. Then asks when the documentary is going to be finished.  Thierry has never made a movie, he just films and sticks them in boxes.  But he tries. The film is bad.  Banksy tells Thierry to go back to LA and put on his own art show.

This is when Thierry's clothing store experience comes into play as he hires people to make hundreds, maybe thousands of 'works' which are basically copies of famous paintings with photoshop changes and in some cases paint dripped or sprayed on them.  It's marketed spectacularly and he sells a million dollars of art.

When we left, my wife said it was all a hoax and I scoffed.  But as I think about it five days later, maybe it is.  Check out the Wikipedia post on Mr. Brainwash, Thierry's artist name.  It seems Mr. Brainwash's show was real.  But is there really this stash of movies somewhere?

It doesn't matter.  If it is a hoax, then it is probably even more amazing than if it's true.  And which parts are hoax and which are true?  I would also say this is a film where the soundtrack plays a huge role in pulling these low res visuals into a coherent movie.    And given this film celebrates artists breaking the law for their art and Thierry shoots and doesn't even ask later,  I felt no compunction at all, taking some video of the movie in the theater, so you could get a sense of it.  Unfortunately, of the three clips I took, the one I'm posting is the best, and it's not that good.  In this clip, Thierry describes Banksy at Disneyland, hanging a blow up hostage/prisoner in an orange jumpsuit, black hood, and handcuffed, onto a fence where the old west train rides past in Frontierland.  When I first went to Denali National Park and rode the bus through the wilderness and people would point out a caribou way off in the distance, or a bear or moose, I dreamed of making plywood cutouts and putting up giraffes and zebras that would be barely visible from the bus.  So I can relate to this prank.  The security guards at Disneyland weren't amused.



This is not a typical Hollywood movie.  Good fun.


[Update Sept. 18, 2010:  NY Times article about another graffiti artist  MOMO's 8 mile paint drip in NYC.]