Documentary R. 1 hour, 27 minutes. At the Esquire.
Errol Morris has created serious, groundbreaking documentaries. “The Fog of War” was a public apologia by former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara for supporting the Vietnam War long after he knew it was a lost cause, and “The Thin Blue Line” deconstructed a flawed Texas murder case.
Morris has a penchant for oddball subjects, too, and few have been odder than “Tabloid’s” Joyce McKinney. The former Miss Wyoming became a British scandal-sheet sensation in 1977 after kidnapping her former boyfriend, a Mormon doing missionary work in England, and manacling him to a bed for sex. In retelling the case, Morris spares no salacious detail (imitation revolver! church-steps abduction! chloroform! Mormon theology! mink-lined handcuffs! arrest! raucous trial! jailbreak!).
McKinney took to the witness stand like a diva to the spotlight, declaring of her runaway paramour, “I loved him so much that I would have skied down Mount Everest in the nude with a carnation up my nose if he asked me to.” The welter of contradictory, self-justifying testimony is half sex farce, half “Rashomon.”
McKinney, a born performer, is in her glory as she spins her version of the affair. To her it was high-spirited high jinks with a dash of Austin Powers sauciness.
Flaming crazy train though she may be, she is deliriously entertaining.
And how McKinney ultimately became the owner of the world’s first commercially cloned puppies is a twist too bizarre to spoil.
