For the last couple weeks, amongst other life obligations which are keeping us busy, we’ve been working on an essay entitled “A Street Photographer Appreciates a Street Artist” which focuses on Banksy.
As you very well may know, writing takes a long time. So, until that’s done, if you have not ever seen the 2010 film “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” we strongly recommend that you do so at your earliest opportunity! Why? It’s a documentary about the notorious graffiti artist which he actually ended up directing.
It started out being made in the early 2000’s by a Los Angeles-based french shopkeeper Thierry Guetta, whose obsession with street art leads him to attempt to make a documentary about the subject. Notice how I said attempt because the halls of the akashic records are full of struggling filmmakers who want to or try to make a documentary and never finish one. This is because Guetta is what I call a shooter. Which is just a dude with a camera who shoots stuff, without really any editing skill and even less narrative writing skill. He actually connected up with Banksy and gets exclusive access to film him, but turns out to be such a crap filmmaker that Banksy actually ends up taking over the project and steering the creative with the many thousands of hours and years of footage Guetta had shot. The film, after being assembled into something with a story by Banksy, shows how Thierry Guetta has become Mr. Brainwash, now one of the most provocative and famous figures in the contemporary world of street art, and also contains exclusive interviews and footage of Banksy, Invader, Shepard Fairey, and many other graffiti artists.