By Ezra Stead

Tabloid, USA, 2010

Directed by Errol Morris

Anyone reading this, and certainly any student of comedy, is sure to be aware of the well-worn axiom, “It’s funny because it’s true.” Regardless of exactly what parts of its wild, often unbelievable story are actually true, in the most objective and unquestionable sense, legendary documentary filmmaker Errol Morris’s latest, Tabloid, is likely one of the funniest films I’ll see all year. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the assertion of its dubious protagonist that it was nothing less than “Christ-like love” that led her pit bull, Booger, to save her life at one point; equally hilarious is Joyce’s proclamation about the tabloid media, “If you tell a lie long enough, you learn to believe it,” uttered without any apparent awareness of the irony inherent in that statement being delivered by someone of her pedigree.

I’m getting ahead of myself. For those who don’t know, Tabloid tells the story of Joyce McKinney, a former beauty pageant queen and Miss Wyoming who allegedly kidnapped and raped a Mormon missionary named Kirk Anderson in 1977, after following him across the globe from California to England, where she believed the Mormons had brainwashed and enslaved him. The tabloids of the time, particularly the competing British Daily Mirror and Daily Express, had the proverbial field day with the story, dubbing it “The Case of the Manacled Mormon!”  Read More