A few days ago Errol Morris, the Oscar-winning director behind “Fog of War” tweeted “Joyce McKinney is my favorite protagonist.” For those of you WTF-ing this seemingly random observation by the master documentarian, well, we have a couple of details for you.
According to our sources, it seems Morris has just finished up a brand new documentary, “Tabloid” about Joyce McKinney, a former Miss Wyoming, who, in the late seventies, abducted Kirk Anderson, a Mormon missionary in England, chained him to a bed and forced him to have sex with her. But that’s hardly the weirdest thing about McKinney or the case. She was later accused of stalking her victim — who had since married and had children — during the 1980s and in 2008, she gained more media attention after taking her dog to Korea to be cloned.
From what we hear, the documentary is also supposedly quite funny and odd; a far cry from Morris’ last effort, the sorely underrated but awfully grim “Standard Operating Procedure,” a film about the photos taken by the soldiers at Abu Ghraib. The subject matter here seems right in the wheelhouse with other Morris profiles of the delightfully weird in films like “Gates Of Heaven” and “Fast, Cheap & Out Of Control.” Morris does get McKinney on camera for the film and results are reportedly quite amazing. No word yet if Anderson participates as well (Update: Unfortunately it seems Morris and co. were not able to get him on camera).
We’ve been informed that Morris just submitted it for possible inclusion in this year’s Cannes Film Festival, though which of the aforementioned titles for the film will be the final remains to be seen. John Kusiak, who scored episodes of Morris’ “First Person” series has handled soundtrack duties here.
This sounds just perfectly obscure, odd and fascinating, so color us intrigued.
