According to Banksy, his first film, made with footage shot by its subject, Thierry Guetta, is about “how one man set out to film the un-filmable. And failed.”
Exit Through the Gift Shop is all about publicity stunts, the ones that cost money and the ones that don’t. The documentary, directed by the elusive British street artist Banksy, had a secret premiere at Sundance. Banksy was allegedly present, but nobody knows for sure. What people do know for certain is that Park City was decorated with Banksy’s signature stencils, spray-painted images that are beautiful, political, and ironic — just like the movie he has made. One stencil painted on Main St. showed a man with a video camera tearing a flower from the ground. Is Banksy saying that the filmmaker destroys what he sees?
That seems to be the point he is making about the camera-happy Thierry Guetta, who began as a secondhand clothing dealer in Los Angeles (where he became very wealthy by rebranding cheap old clothes as “vintage” and selling them to fashionistas) and has taken to following his cousin around, camera in hand. His cousin is the street artist known as Invader after the works that made him famous, mosaics of Space Invaders characters glued to lampposts and buildings. Guetta moved onto documenting other artists, notably Shepard Fairey and other guerillas of the urban jungle, and followed them boldly onto ledges, rooftops, and billboards, capturing unparalleled intimate footage of the artists in the act. He developed a monomaniacal and unrelenting obsession with the most mysterious of them all, Banksy himself, to whom he was eventually led. And Guetta would become the first person Banksy would allow to film him — but only from behind.
Guetta never wanted to make a film. He kept his piles of tapes barely labeled and unsorted in plastic bins, never intending to watch them again. Ultimately, however, to appease the artists and continue to have access to their process, he made a film. That movie, according to Banksy, was very bad, and so Banksy decided to use Guetta’s footage and turn the camera on Guetta. Banksy himself has said, “it’s the story of how one man set out to film the un-filmable. And failed.” Everything Banksy says seems to have more than one meaning.
Yes, the postmodern, self-referential plot structure sounds pretentious and annoying, but I can assure you it’s executed in a playful and approachable way, aided by a charming soundtrack and a fairy-tale narrator, Banksy himself, with his voice distorted and face obscured by shadow. The film is in fact a fairy tale, Banksy’s own rendering, and whether or not it’s actually directed by him or entirely true (both valid questions) seems beyond the point.
The film plays with the relationship between illegal street art and successful commercial enterprise, as the title suggests, with its reference to the museum store and a hint of Disneyland. Banksy has staged art stunts in both Disneyland and first-rate art museums, and his own art often sells for half a million pounds. Though his work makes a lot of people very angry, others are willing to shell out big bucks for it.
At Banksy’s recommendation, Guetta became a street artist himself, the questionable Mr. Brainwash, and skipped the part where you develop street cred and plummeted straight into a giant gallery show, aided by a team of assistants who made the art for him and publicists who got the word out. Before that, he wheat-pasted a giant image of his face with a camera to a wall, a rather blatant act of self-promotion. Would that later become inspiration for Banksy’s Sundance stencil?
Do connections, publicity, and money hold sway over talent? You don’t have to be all that cynical to say yes. How do you get attention? Do you post a wall-sized image of your face to the world, or do you hide your identity in the shadows? Does the camera destroy what it sees, or is destruction beautiful too? If you see any advertising for this film, it wasn’t paid for. Taking an unconventional route, the film will be self-distributed by the sales agency. Everything else is word-of-mouth or Banksy himself on the streets, with spray paint and stencils — if it is him at all.
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Read “The Contradiction of Contradiction: A Conversation with Banksy.”
Click here to see Banksy’s latest work, in the city of San Francisco.
