Scots Taffer on 16/9/2010 at 13:20

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Who's seen this?

It's fucking phenomenal.

I don't know what's the bigger conversation starter, the potential deconstruction of street art (and by extension, pop art and modern art) from the artist to the admirer to the purchaser and the inherent insanity to each subpopulation, or the fact that the whole documentary is quite possibly a massive prank by the most subversive artist around who's seeking to make a statement through the audience's gullibility of the cult of celebrity and prank us with the most ridiculous of conceits.

Really, I don't care too much because the thing is so entertaining to watch and whether they're "real" or not, Banksy's asides are the honest humorous heart of the whole thing. When he sort of shrugs and says: "Maybe it means art is a joke", I can't help but think there's a grain of truth mixed in with the distilled irony.

N'Al on 16/9/2010 at 13:58

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I'd like to quote the exact same thing Queue quoted, but then I think that'd just be silly. But... it's exactly the thing about this movie I like so much.

Even though the whole movie is filmed in a 'realistic' documentary style you're still a bit dubious about whether all of this could be true, but once it hits the Mr. Brainwash sections you know you're just having the piss taken out of you. Or are you? That's what makes the following sections so funny, and I guess the preceding ones as well, in retrospect.

I also particularly liked the bit about Banksy printing wads of 20 pound notes with Princess Di's head on it, people using them for real, and then noticing he's essentially got a large stash of counterfeit money in his loft. :D

Definitely worth watching.

Angel Dust on 16/9/2010 at 22:10

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I think it's obviously a hoax, the Guetta character is far too on-the-nose, being played on the counter-cultural art scene rather than the film audience who are definitely invited, if not explicitly, to get in on the joke. It's worth pointing out that the extent to which 'Mr Brainwash' took the art world by storm is exaggerated in the film as no professional galleries or dealers have had anything to do with his work and it's mainly the bourgeois and hipsters (is there really any difference between the two?) who have been suckered in which really isn't that hard to do now is it? A more damaging and telling hoax on the art world is the story of (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Tate:_An_American_Artist_1928-1960) Nat Tate, perpetuated by William Boyd with help from the likes of David Bowie and Gore Vidal.

None of that means that Exit Through The Gift Shop is not a tremendously entertaining and funny film though. Banksy's dry, self-deprecating asides stops the film from ever assuming the smug, condescending tone that's characteristic of the counter-cultural scene and, hoax or not, the first half serves as an excellent little primer on street art with the later half containing some of the most gut-bustingly funny Spinal Tap-esque buffoonery I've seen in a long time.

Favourite bit: The Disneyland prank/debacle with Banksy's dry recollecting of the rides he went on. "..and then I went on Pirates of the Carribean"

Tocky on 17/9/2010 at 04:23

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Yep. This is how I feel about a lot of modern art. Then RBJ shows me piss christ and I start thinking about the transformative power of iconography and inherant revulsion of a certain liquid medium verses the beauty of light quality gained and realize how many statements were packed into one disruptive piece and thus see that some of it has an actual value and isn't just a check of how much canned crap we will swallow. But of course I reserve the right to make the distinction completely free of anyone elses point of view particularly lost in thier own bullshit art critics.

I want to see this one.

PeeperStorm on 21/9/2010 at 01:47

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I had a high school English teacher who insisted on titles for all creative writing assignments. He thought I was a genius for naming my poems and short stories things like "Pederasty Made Easy" and "Ode to a Grecian Formula". Note that the titles had nothing to do with the actual projects that they were attached to.