Tabloid premiered at the IFC Center in New York a few nights ago, and everybody is freaking out over it.
And you should freak out, too, because this movie is maybe the Next Big Thing. You have to watch the trailer for Tabloid, below; you just have to. The video might not be safe for your workplace, not because of any single explicit thing, but because it hints at titillating, tantalizing, awesome subject matter. And then there’s its adorable whackjob star, Joyce McKinney.
Tabloid, the new documentary by Errol Morris, tells the incredible “true” story about Joyce McKinney, a wild-eyed beauty pageant queen who, in the 1970s, allegedly abducted a Mormon missionary, shackled him to a bed, and deflowered him for three long, sordid days. (And then again, it isn’t about that at all—it’s about the ensuing media frenzy, and about how we’ll never really know what happened.)
The premiere attracted kind of a weird crowd, including artists, hip young filmmakers, Spike Jonze, some actresses from Gossip Girl, and an unrecognizable Horatio Sanz. And according to Page Six, celebrities—especially the crazy blonde ones—seem to really identify with Joyce McKinney’s scandals.
At the premiere, Courtney Love told other audience members she had also been a recent victim of tabloid shenanigans. And, Page Six adds, Kirsten Dunst was overheard saying she wants to play Joyce McKinney in the inevitable bio-pic.
McKinney is reportedly basking in the audience’s response: “I gauge peoples’ reactions when I go to the screenings. …I still watch people’s faces as they come out, and I look at them and I think, ‘Well, are they being nice to me ’cause I’m a star? Or do they really know that I’m innocent, that I never raped a 300-pound Mormon?’ Am I still battling to clear my name? Yes, I feel I am.”
That is sick. And if the genders of McKinney and her alleged victim were reversed, no one would have any trouble recognizing that fact.
I haven’t seen the movie, so I don’t have any idea whether it takes a stance on her guilt or innocence. She’s definitely pretty kooky.
I one hundred percent agree with Pufinstuf. if it is true, as reported, that he was being held against his will (with shackles no less) and forced to have sex (one of the first things taught in sex ed is guys cannot control their erections) he was raped. “A guy either wants to have sex or he doesn’t. Theres no putting a marshmallow in a parking meter”, psht. What rubbish.
Great article though, Jenn. I have truly been enjoying your posts and extend a be-lated welcome to the site.
All the idiot “commenters” above all have something in common: (1) They have never even MET Joyce McKinney. (2) They judge her by Errol Morris defamatory film TABLOID which is NOT her true story, but a counterfeit Joyce McKinney story! (He is being sued for fitty million dollars plus. (3) They have absolutely NO concept of what her story is about. (4) Their ignorance is not only appalling, but unkind, and they donot have even the slightest inkling of what Joyce’s story is about!
Joyce McKinney’s TRUE copyrighted story is about a beautiful highly intelligent graduate student working on her PhD in Utah while teaching at a Mormon university there. Joyce is an outspoken dissident against the Mormon cult, and she speaks out against their human rights abuses of minority groups (blacks, gays, women) and as a kind, highly moral girl from a devout Christian family. A principled Erin Brokovich type girl, she opposes the Mormons false prophet and their NON Biblical doctrines. For this, she is taken under suveillance by the Mormon hierarchy, and when her fiance suddenly vanishes into thin air, she hires a detective to locate him. The Mormons have him under brainwashing and mind control. The cult controls diet, clothing, and even a person’s sex drives. As Kirk told Joyce “They totally lead my thinking. They spend three days together–and using some seual therapy to cure Kir’s Mrmon induced repression finally make love: the two virgins give themselves to each other and plan to be married, and go into London sightseeing and to call thier parents to tell them they are getting married. They are eating at the crowded Hard Rock Fcafe when they read together the first of what wil be 34 years of false defamatory headlines spread in a BLACK PR campaign designed to smear her (by Mormon cult leaders and PR teams). Kirk reads in the paper that they have got Scotland Yard “after” her and that they are spreading a false story that she kidnapped and raped” him–an obvious sontrived lie as he is 330 pounds and 6’5 and she is a 112 pound former Miss wyoimng. Kirk kisses her good bye at the train station and tells her “Be strong for our love and that “Remember that I will always love you, no matter what happens. Be strong for our love”. He kisses her, mouthing the words “I love you” through the train window. He goes back to Mormon headaurters to show them he is okay, but find the place enveloped in utter chaos with reporters from all over the world running around outside Mormon headquarters “trying to get statements.” Cult leaders refuse to listen to him when he tries to explain that he just loves her and wants to marry her. He phones Joyce and tells her that the cult leaders ahve his pasport and molney locked in a safe [to prevent him from leaving] and that they are “wathcing him 24 hours a day–even making him leave the bathroom door open when he goes to the toilet.” While Joyce and Kirk are talking, the Mormons, some corrupt coppers in league with unsculuous talboid newspaers illegally hack thier phone conversation and illegally tap into the line recording their phone converstion [which will alter become a court document]. Their purpose is to learn where the two young lovers plan to meet and to falsely arrest Joyce to silence her as an outspoken dissident against Mormonism. On the way to meet him with her wedding dress in the back of her rental car and flowers in her hair, Joyce is run off the road by corrupt coppers in league with the Mormons and the tabloid’s payroll. They wrongfully charge her with “carrying him away” [a bit humorous in light of the fact that he weighs in at 300 pounds and she couldnt even lift his leg!] Then corrupt coppers falsely arrest her, not for kidnap or rape but they indict her for “carrying him away”, and throw her into a black medieval like person with only a hole to urinate in, starving her for days in an effort to wring a forced confession out of her. This fails, so they throw her without a TRIAL OR EVEN LEGAL COUNSEL into the general prson population, illegally holding her for three months as the Mormons use their power and influence to keep her from getting bail. But she is allowed to speak in court, and her truthful demeanor, wit, honesty, and charming personality mezmerize the court and she is realeased on bail. She becomes a celebrity! …There are JOcyeMCkiney dolls, JOyce Mckiney mugs, posters, aaajoyce Mckney comic books (like WOnder WOman) and a chotic onslaught of stories about her in the talboids. Six britsh rock groups write songs about her including two who name thmeselves after her and a famous painter does a Picasso style painting to hang in the London National Gallery. Pelple mob her for autographs and she is chauffered about town in a Rolls Royce and pictured with the famous including John Travolta at his Saturday Night Fever Film Premiere and where she is asked ot once by the Bee Gees and smooched on the cheek by rock star Keith Moon of the Who. In the meantime, the Mormons are becoming desparate –she wasn’t supposed to be liked and they realize their first plan has backfired, so they go into plan B. A Christian friend spots the head Mormon from KIrk’s Mormon Mission headquarters meeting clandestinely in a pub with the Daily Mirror, a perverted tabloid which specializes in destroying celebrities and public figures with false and defamatory stories–a real bunch of sleaze balls and the worst of Britain’s Fleet Street tabloids). The sleazy tabloid then plots with the Mormons to illegally subjudice her case (which was supposed to clear her name). Joyce is warned when a journalist friend learns of the plot and warns her, so she plans to escape her tormenters (The Mormons and paparazzi) by disguising themselves as deaf mutes and returning by Canada, safely home to America, where she finds that her dog walker (a drifter and loser) and his drug addict gal pal (wanting money for dope) have been bribed by The Mirror to rob her home of pictures which will be printed with false and libelous stories designed to SUBJUDICE her case and inflame a jury so badly that they will falsely convict her!
And since Subjudice is illegal in England, because the British do not believe in “trials in the press”, the government decides to not pursue the “piffling case” against Joyce and she returns home for good, but sadly forced to leave her beloved Kirk behind as the Mormons have re-programmed him. Staying underground to avoid the press and her Mormon captors, one day she learns the Mormon cult has reprogrammed her beloved Kirk and done an arranged marriage off to an ugly fat wide hipped Mormon woman in the bizarre Blood Oath marriage ceremony. The ugly woman’s
assignment from her Mormon leaders is to get pregant as soon as pposible so Kirk will “Get over Joyce”. Poor Joyce is laughed at by her community who actually are stupid enough (like the “commentors on this website”) to believe the cover story the Mormons spread to the public. Joyce has become very agoraphobic and is physically scarred by the Mormon Press Hoax, which by now they had spread around the world used newspapers and TV station they own, as well as their wire service contacts who continue to spread the LIE through the world. She becomes reclusive and depressed but still a good hearted woman, spends her time training pound rescued dogs to be service animals for handicapped people and educating her community about service animals.
After surviving an amputation of a limb in 1996 then a near drowning in a hurricane and flood in 2004–and being rejected by a cruel neighbor who refuses to help her try and rescue her family and pets from the flood, Joyce makes a covenant with God to “somehow get past the pain and somehow tell the TRUE Joyce McKinney story’, by writing a book revealing the story BEHIND the headlines. At the age of sixty, the still beautiful but very sad lonely Joyce goes to Hollywood to find someone to actually help her tll her story in a book and screenplay, when her dream is crushed by a dishonest film maker named Errol Morris, whose sleazy thieving producer (seeing the value and audience appeal of Joyce McKinney story) pretends to be from Showtme Network doing a TV series on Paparazzi and how it destroys people privacy and lives. The trusting Joyce takes the bait, not realizing that while Morris interviews her for the NON existent “TV series” his henchmen are robbing her–ransacking her luggage and tealiong valuable photos and a memorabilia collection worth a fortune, documenting her famous story,–as well as her diary, her family’s home movies, and even her mother’s treasured baby pictures of her and all the materials she has collected over the yars fro her book. Using the stolen photos, Morris and his sleazy producer make a crummy defamatory film called Tabloid–a pornographic celluloid catastrophe which does not halfway even BEGIN to tell her true story. Libelous and defamatory, it merely REPEATS the libelous talboid garbage by the Mirror scum who had bribed her dog walker and a drug addict to break into her home. Morris re-uses the same tabloid garbage–transferring the newspaper filth into celluloid and tries to pass it off as “Joyce’s story”, when it really is a counterfeit version of her story that only stupid people with the IQ’s of room temperature could fathom! The Media Horror starts again, and the peace and tranquility she has tried to achieve by moving and changing her name—starts up again–as frenzied media people scramble to resurrect the old Mormon Press Hoax. Joyce’s mother becomes so depressed she tries to kill herself and is left in a coma on life support, not expected to live. But angry at Morris for stealing her life story and making a counterfeit version, she vows to go forward with her plans for the book and her OWN screenplay which, unlike the trashy film TABLOID will tell the TRUTH. Greatly slandered and depressed by Morris film, Joyce tries to fight bravely on to clear her name, in spite of hundreds of false and libelous stories media “gossips” spread on her, and idiotic “comenters” on the internet who are still spreading the Mormon Press Hoax that she raped Kirk. In spite of her strong spirit, her old body is frail and her health begins to fade as she develops a heart condition, insomnia, and a tragic sadness which envelops her. Her remaining goal is to see that her TRUE story is told before she dies, like Old Rose in the Titanic looking back on her lost love. Joyce and Kirk’s very special love story is a great love affair which has astounded and captivated the world for 34 years….
Now THAT you jerky commenters, is the TRUE story. Your comments stink, but the person who wrote the review MIGHT be lucky enough to get an actual intervew with Joyce..who liked her article because it didn’t slander her…What do ya think? (PS Don’t try to make a script out of this TRUE story about Joyce. It is copyrighted with The Writer’s Guild by Joyce herself!) If anyone wnats to do a story on her or a actress wants to play her, they must go directly to Joyce or her agents. becuase she has been lied on and deceived so many times, she must be careful. As for the nut cases above and their dumb retarded comments. Joyce’s story is not about the “Equality for male rape victims” bullshit. That’s one the Mormons invented to throw everybody off track. Didn’t work this time!