Call it a godsend that Errol Morris found Joyce McKinney. The former Ms. Wyoming, now in her sixties, is a prime addition to the great documentarian's gallery of rogues, which includes former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and execution expert (and published Holocaust denier) Fred A. Leuchter. Like many of her colleagues in Morris's clown car, a great deal of hash has been made in the public forum about McKinney's exploits. Indeed, while watching Morris's wonderfully entertaining new documentary, Tabloid, you can't help but wonder how this woman, who made a splash in England for supposedly kidnapping her ex-fiancé from the Mormon church, where he was a missionary, chaining him to a bed and raping him for three days in a small cabin in Devonshire, hasn't become the source material for an American narrative, or a tempting slab of perversion for Stephen Frears or Peter Greenaway to toy with. Perhaps the lack of interest or ability stemmed from McKinney herself, who spins a myriad of fantastical scenarios and conspiracies to explain away her erstwhile fugitive status and the popular belief that she is an eccentric loon, which she (not surprisingly) sees as a misconception, if not an assault. Morris's interview with McKinney makes up more than half of Tabloid, and it is no small feat that we are partially seduced by McKinney and her take on the entire fiasco. As this old-fashioned American gal has it, when she met Mormon hot-rodder Kirk Anderson, it was love at first sight, with an engagement decided upon only days later. McKinney was prepped for a life of white picket fences when Anderson was presumably kidnapped by Mormon overlords, whose practices are given extravagant, preposterous assaying by McKinney and some far more believable hashing by Mormon ex-pat Troy Williams, who many now refer to as the "gay mayor of Salt Lake City." With hired cronies in tow, not to mention creepy hanger-on KJ, McKinney jets of to London to rescue her betrothed, her own devout mission that concludes with the aforementioned three-day love-in and her eventual arrest by authorities.
On trial, McKinney is steadfast in her belief of love, famously offering to ski down Mount Everest nude with a carnation in her nose for Anderson, who has since gone back to the church. This obsessive devotion bleeds over into a book (A Very Special Love Story) which remains unfinished to this day but was anticipated enough to garner a promotional video featuring McKinney wandering through the English countryside, evoking Brother Sun, Sister Moon as much as The Wicker Man. Indeed, as much as she may deride the tabloid rag that outed her as a one-time sex model and escort who brought her beloved sheepdog Millie along with her on the job, McKinney is selling a number of versions of herself; the all-American girl, the fairy-tale princess, the 168-IQ ballbuster, the renegade, the romantic, and the misunderstood celeb. Morris takes it in with glee and offers yet another lens for his muse, periodically using a still-shot of a television running a story on McKinney or an interview with the soon-to-be-published author.
Settled comfortably into post-on-the-lam life as an agoraphobic North Carolina nobody, McKinney appears in the papers once more when she becomes the recipient of a litter of dogs, cloned from her pit bull, Booger, in North Korea. McKinney recants how Booger, a stray, saved her from being mauled to death by her previous dog, eventually crumbling into tears in a way we never see when she speaks of Anderson, or anyone else. Unconditional love provides McKinney with the certainties and assurances that many find in Providence, and Morris is not lost on this concept. In its tale of accumulating, conflicting versions of one story (not to mention one person), Tabloid is certainly in line with the director's other probing studies of depiction, whether through photographs (Standard Operating Procedure), laws (The Thin Blue Line), or history (The Fog of War), but it is perhaps his most intimate since Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control. In McKinney, Morris sees not only a specimen for his particular style but also a kindred soul, buried beneath the dense snow of madness, fame, and misfortune.
