Exit Through The Gift Shop: A Documentary About…
For those who don’t know, Exit Through The Gift Shop is that “Banksy Movie” that everyone has been talking about…but it actually isn’t really about Banksy at all. It is about this French guy Thierry Guetta. Thierry is a weird dude who films EVERYTHING. Through sheer luck he turns out to be the cousin of the street artist Space Invader, and basically falls right smack in the middle of the new “Street Art Movement”. So he begins actually having a purpose with the camera by going around filming Space Invader put up his pieces. From there he meets other street artists and films them as well.
So Thierry is a little off. Lots of people have commented that maybe he is mentally challenged, or crazy or something. I think he is just kind of silly/dumb. I equate him with the uncool member of your posse, the guy who basically brings nothing to the table but let him hang out because he is nice and friendly. In that sense I kind of felt the film was endearing, this weird dude gets to go around and be a part of something.
Anyway, so Thierry at one point meets Shepard Fairey and goes around with him for years…filming him put OBEY stuff up everywhere. And finally, because he has an “in” with all these other Street Art luminaries he gets to meet Banksy and help him around LA. He is there for a lot of big Banksy moments…like his big LA show and that Guantanamo Disneyland thing. If the film was just footage of people making art it would be worth the price of admission but it is way more than that.
When artists asked Thierry why he was filming all the time he said because he was putting together a documentary. In reality no such documentary ever existed. When pressed by Banksy, Thierry tries to actually make the movie which you get to see some of. It is probably one of the worst attempts at movie making ever but one of the funniest parts of Exit. Because of how bad it is, Banksy says he will take over and that Thierry should go back to LA and make some art of his own.
I really want to stop there and not go into the last half hour of the movie but this is where the real meat of the film kicks in. It gets into the idea of money and art, how money might ruin art, the worth of art, hype, etc etc. In fact I haven’t seen a movie this good about these topics since F is for Fake. I also want to emphasis that this isn’t for Street Art “Heads”. I had a rudimentary knowledge of the scene and I got by just fine. So yeah I highly recommend Exit Through The Gift Shop. Best movie of the year so far, it is just really enjoyable. If you saw it let me know what you think and we can chat about it in the comments.
- Dr. Dinosaur
May 1st, 2010 at 12:13 pm
So do you guys think Thierry really did that art? Or was Banksy pulling the stings with Thierry as the puppet?
May 1st, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Yeah so I read about the Hoax stuff….I mean there is always the chance that everything was FAKE but after seeing the movie I gotta say that it makes more sense to me that everything is true. That the art is real and bad, and that Thierry and his TEAM made it all.
May 1st, 2010 at 7:10 pm
Long Live Elmyr!!!
May 1st, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Also, I was living in LA “doing Stweet awut” at the time Brainwarsh came about, he’s real. Everyone hated him & then he name dropped Bansky on the Outside of his art show & the Brangelinas lapped it up. He had a Heath Ledger tribute poster up for a while. What a cancer on the prostate of art.
May 1st, 2010 at 7:30 pm
I never even thought it might be Banksy making Thierry’s art! That would be a great gag though! I love how it made art buyers seem so stupid for just buying into whatever hype was fed to them. They should be pissed the most at this film!
May 2nd, 2010 at 5:05 am
Good review mishka! What is opposed to artists making money?
May 2nd, 2010 at 2:32 pm
I saw this yesterday and it was fantastic. If it’s hoax or if it’s entirely earnest, doesn’t really matter. The point of it all was still the same.
One thing just struck out to me and I’m going to quote Doc Dino post:
“Thierry tries to actually make the movie which you get to see some of. It is probably one of the worst attempts at movie making ever but one of the funniest parts of Exit”
I actually don’t understand why you’d write what he showed as awful? I have no clue if it was actually made by Thierry or not, but those excerpts were far from awful. They were pretty trippy and compelling to me. It’s the sort of shit i love to just zone out to for 90 minutes while stoned and then just go do some work. It’s really not all that different then what TV Carnage, Everything Is Terrible and even what our own beloved Vidiot does.
Now whether or not Banksy truly felt what he saw was awful is unrelated. But it struck me as really suspect that Banksy of all people acted like he had never seen anything like that before. Come on? I’m supposed to honestly believe that Banksy has never in the past decade seen video work like that? A dude so calculating, controlling and knowledgeable of the ins and outs of art world is somehow totally oblivious to the growing video art style that looked suspiciously like Thierry’s film? Look sure, maybe a large percentage of the audiences going to the film may have not seen anything like that, but not Banksy.
May 2nd, 2010 at 10:51 pm
Alright let me clarify. I, personally, did not think that was the worst attempt at moviemaking of all time, but that IS how it is conveyed in the film. Banksy hated it or…so he says. It is is definitely what got the most laughs at my screening, which is at least saying that my audience thought it fucking ridiculous.
Now let’s back up. Was that footage that awful? No, BUT was it anything close to being a reasonable documentary about The Street Art Movement…fuck no. So, in THAT context, of it being a documentary that makes good use of the footage…it was really really bad.
I also want to draw a big line between work by Vidiot/TV Carnage(which I love) etc etc and the footage I saw of that movie. When I watch clips by the vidiot or tv carnage they are funny and they are also just a few minutes long. That movie that Thierry made was going to be full length, as Banksy stated, “it just went on and on”. Also, it had no humor about it, and instead just seemed rather Cheesy. Like “in your face intense”…without that air of humor about it I don’t know how much I could watch honestly.
But I did find Thierry’s film to be interesting to say the least. I remember turning to the person I was with and saying that I hope they put his whole movie on the DVD, I would be sure to check it out. But yeah, that’s how I feel about that.
May 3rd, 2010 at 11:32 am
This is Banksy’s best work of art yet. It’s the ultimate questioning of the art world, and of art itself. If you take a shit, and market it with the right amount of hype & backing, people will buy that shit. Side note: please go on ebay and search “Mr Brainwash” for further enjoyment
May 3rd, 2010 at 11:35 am
For the record about the above back and forth on Thierry’s film, I think it may have been an interesting visual assembly of images, but hands down the WORST DOCUMENTARY EVER. A documentary is made in a way that tells a definite story. Thierry’s work was more of a stream of… I have no idea.
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Definitely a really entertaining film. I don’t know what to really think – but I’m leaning towards Mr. Brainwash being a creation of Banksy’s from the start, a huge con to see if you could just build an artist out of nothing and sell unoriginal, derivative work at a huge premium to desperate people if it’s hyped the right way.
May 3rd, 2010 at 6:58 pm
When people mention that this movie really isn’t about Banksy, I get what they mean, but I think the movie is completely about Banksy… it’s one huge Banksy posted up on a movie screen. It’s his MO wrapped up in a 90 minute doc. It makes you question the art world and it’s only viewable in certain locations.
The first thing I thought when I left the theater was how my Art History teachers would react to this. It reminded me of semesters of asking why we’re studying this “bullshit” when we could be studying the stuff I’m really into. But now I not only question how legit the contents of art history books are, but how legit the real stories are behind the actual stories.
The line that I kept thinking of throughout the movie was when Fairey was talking about his Andre stickers and how they’re more or less a joke. The inherent importance of the art relies on what the audience puts in it. It makes me wonder how all the hardcore collectors reacted when they saw this. The people who dropped so much money for some MBW action.