Don't Overlook It:
Exit Through the Gift Shop
By Tom Houseman
April 21, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
That’s why I’m starting this new series of articles. Now that I’ve caught all of you up on the great overlooked films released since 2004, we can start talking about movies that are currently being released in theaters and on DVD. Hopefully you’ve seen a few of the titles I’ve mentioned between repeat viewings of Clash of the Titans and Date Night, and you realize just how amazing these movies are. Well now you can get the inside scoop on the great movies that aren’t getting talked about on Entertainment Tonight or, really, anywhere else… ever. Until now!
The documentary is one of the most frequently overlooked genres in film. Unless a film stars Michael Moore, comes with a ton of controversy, or features adorable animals, it’s difficult for it to make more than a pebble’s splash at the box office. Only 11 documentaries have cracked double digit millions, and only 89 in history even include the word “million” in their domestic box office total. Fortunately, documentaries have been on the rise over the last decade, with 10 of those top 11 and 60 of those top 89 having been released in theaters since 2000.
But documentaries are still criminally overlooked, which is why four of my top ten Best Overlooked of 2009 were documentaries. It’s also why, when I see an excellent documentary, my joy at the experience is always tainted by the knowledge that so few other people will get to experience that same feeling. That’s the main reason I write this column, and right now my mission is to tell everyone I can to GO SEE Exit Through the Gift Shop. Seriously. Go now. Stop reading this article, get in your car, and drive to whichever coast you’re nearest to, then find one of the eight theaters currently showing this film.
I didn’t know what to expect going into this documentary, the directorial debut of Banksy, the world-renowned, enigmatic street artist. I didn’t even know much about street art, which is the film’s topic. Of course, neither did Thierry Guetta, the man who filmed the majority of the footage used to put together Exit Through the Gift Shop. Guetta is a unique and absurd figure, having made a fortune by commercializing hipster culture, he also has the odd quirk of constantly recording everything in his life on a video camera. He doesn’t use or even watch any of the footage he shoots, but he is never without a camera.
That’s why this film came about almost entirely by accident. In a trip to London, the French L.A.-resident Guetta stumbled into the street art movement through the famous artist Invader - if you’ve ever seen a picture of a Space Invader where you didn’t expect to see one, you’ve seen his work - and ended up compiling hundreds of hours of footage of various artists making illegal art on city streets and buildings all over the world. Through another lucky accident, Guetta managed to track down Banksy, the mysterious artist known for the work he created on the separation barrier on the Palestinian West Bank, among many other controversial works of art.
What Banksy did was take over the film, turning the camera on Guetta, and the result is a complex and moving history of the evolution of street art and how Guetta, through equal parts passion and insanity, made it his passion. Exit Through the Gift Shop is a fascinating documentary, completely gripping from start to finish. It’s not at all like the typical didactic documentary from the likes of Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock, and it manages to be entertaining, informative, and moving all at the same time. The fact that Banksy manages, almost accidentally, to slip in a powerful message about the role of art in contemporary culture, is part of what makes this film so wonderful.
While Exit Through the Gift Shop is currently only playing in New York City and select California cities, it will be expanding over the next several weeks, so that anyone living in or near a major city will probably have the opportunity to see it. Don’t miss that opportunity. I think that Exit Through the Gift Shop should win the Best Documentary Oscar next year, not just because it is a truly spectacular film, but because it might get Banksy onstage at the show so that we can see what he looks like; his face is either completely shadowed or blurred out throughout the entire film. Go see Exit Through the Gift Shop either in theaters or on DVD, so that it won’t be the best movie of the year that you don’t see, even if Banksy will still be the best modern artist that nobody has ever seen.