Tabloid (2010)

Directed by Errol Morris
Starring Joyce McKinney
Runtime 87min. - Rated R
4 Stars (out of 4)


Tabloid is part of my quirky documentary series. It's available on DVD and VOD and is playing on some premium cable channels.

Errol Morris is an unintrusive documentarian. He tends to let his subjects tell their story without interjecting his own opinions. For me, it's a hit-or-miss style that relies heavily on the entertainment value of his subjects. His film "Gates Of Heaven" is considered an all-time great by at least one well respected film critic. While some people find deep meaning in that film, I find it deeply boring. The vibrant characters of "Tabloid" fit well in Morris' style; allowing it to become a bright, humorous, and occasionally sad film.


The story centers around Joyce McKinney. She's a beautiful woman and former Miss Wyoming. Unfortunately, she's as crazy as she is pretty.

When McKinney met Kirk Anderson it was love at first sight. (I was going to say it was a match made in heaven, but since Anderson is a Mormon it would really be a match made on another planet where Anderson serves as a god.) According to McKinney that love went both ways. Even though his Mormon parents didn't approve of the relationship, McKinney was sure that he would never leave her.

When Anderson turned up missing Joyce smelled foul play. She hired a private detective who was able to track him down in England where he was doing missionary work. McKinney and her friend Keith May decided to cross the Atlantic in pursuit of Anderson. She hired 2 bodyguards and a private pilot for the quest. None of them care where she got the money for this adventure as long as they're paid.

When they finally track down Anderson at a Mormon temple they sneak in with disguises and force him into their car at gunpoint. If that's not love folks, I don't know what is. Depending on who you ask, the following weeks were either a sexcapade and binge-eating paradise or a rape-filled tortuous purgatory. The truth probably lies somewhere in between those two extremes.

All of this happens in the first quarter of the film. I really thought that Morris had exhausted his content and that the rest of the runtime would be uneventful fluff. That is definitely not the case. The tabloids covering the McKinney case end up uncovering things that I really did not expect. While there methods may not have always been ethical, they were actually quite good at investigative journalism. McKinney denies everything they uncover, but after a while the facts add up against that denial. I'm trying hard not to spoil everything. I'll just say that the kinkiness level goes from yellow to orange once the Daily Mirror gets involved.

There's another event that lands McKinney in the news 30 years later. I will simply say that she mentions 8 dogs in the film. Six of them are named Booger. Seriously.

The film never loses the audience mainly because Joyce McKinney comes across as being totally full of sh..erm...baloney. I got the feeling that she never spoke a single sentence that wasn't partly fabricated. Oddly, I do think that she believes every bit of her own nonsense. I almost felt bad for the woman because I don't think she every truly hurt someone. However, she has no one to blame but herself for whatever troubles she's endured. My dominant lingering memory of Joyce McKinney is that she's one of the most unintentionally funny people I've seen in a documentary. Early in the film she claims to have an I.Q. of 168; just another example of an unintentional joke.