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EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP TONIGHT THE STREETS ARE OURS, WHAT ABOUT TOMORROW?
ASLI ÇAVUŞOĞLU AU T H O R O F T H E Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger’s rejection of being interviewed for 25 years and his solitary retirement to his farmhouse engendered a cult effect. The more he hid himself, the more tourists got on buses in order to camp around his farmhouse, armed with binoculars so that they might catch a glimpse of him. Most probably taking inspiration from Salinger, Don DeLillo’s protagonist in his book Mao 2 does the same by not allowing his photograph to be taken. After he eventually changed his mind and his first photograph was taken, he says: “I am now a photograph, as flat as the bird crap on a Buick...”
Thierry Guetta’s movie
From Thierry Guetta’s exhibition
Before Exit Through the Gift Shop premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010, the question the film aroused was: Has the most notorious clandestine street artist Banksy, who has successfully hidden behind a cloak of anonymity for years, decided to be the “crap on a Buick?” Well, he bewildered his audience again with a film whose genre slips away from any attempt to be categorized, as it manages to exist in the space between being a documentary and a monumental con. Banksy states in the beginning scenes, his voice carefully distorted, that the film is not about him. It’s about Thierry “Terry” Guetta, a Frenchman living in Los Angeles, an outgoing “dude” who is obsessed with documenting everything in his life. Because of the death of his mother when he was a child, Guetta becomes terrified with the idea that the “present” is slipping through his fingers. Via his cousin, who is a street artist himself, Guetta becomes obsessed with street art and sets out to video every major practitioner he can befriend. Famous street artists such as Shepard Fairey and Space Invader agree to let him follow their crusades. But Guetta’s big planned scoop was Banksy, whom he met in 2006 and attached himself to like a particularly persistent, camcorder-wielding clam. Guetta gathers a massive collection of footage after working continuously for 8 years and Banksy put up with it, hoping that Guetta’s mooted documentary might one day be a valuable record of his and other’s work. After Guetta finally finishes editing, he gives a copy of his documentary Life Remote Control to Banksy. Disappointed with the result, Banksy decides to make a film about him not being capable of making a good film. That’s how Banksy takes over the camera and Thierry becomes the subject of the film. As a subject he appears to be a zealous street artist and eventually starts putting his first enormous exhibition together and without hesitation he is quick to utilize the power of the media and every outlet of advertising he can imagine.
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Banksy doesn’t reveal his face throughout the film, neither to Guetta’s camera, nor the camera of the main film; instead he shows the absence of his face: a complete darkness contained under a hoodie. Contrary to the image-less Bansky, Guetta is over-exposed. Guetta’s undecisive attemps at determining the motive of his filming as well as his unorganized editing make him nothing but a receiver through his camera. He comes across as a keen but naive viewer of mass media and this seems to be why he chooses the title Life Remote Control for his documentary, which is essentially nothing but a one and a half hour long trailer.
Banksy
Exit Through The Gift Shop © 2010 Paranoid Pictures Film Company Limited
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