Ah – nothing says “I’m running a meth lab” like a big ‘laboratory’ sign made from white gaffer tape.
Seeing this had me musing on the audacity of hiding in plain sight – and on the Banksy documentary movie Exit Through the Gift Shop.
For those who haven’t seen it and don’t mind a spoiler, it’s about a daft Frenchman from LA – below, on the left – who makes a documentary about the secretive star of graffiti, Banksy, and then goes on to become a graffiti artist in his own right by staging a huge, HUGE over-hyped show of deliberately bad art, which sells for millions.
Banksy himself is filmed in the movie, appearing in silhouette (because no one knows what he looks like) and with his voice altered.
With that established, here are the obvious things that aren’t as they seem in the film.
1. The Frenchman is an actor. Obviously. The accent weaves all around the place. The plot around him is hokey.
2. Banksy and pals genuinely held the giant bad art show. The Frenchman was a comic character they created in order to mock the sudden cache that street art has in the hoity toity art dealing world. It was a very effective joke. The art was very bad and the buyers were very excited (ironically these people all now own a piece of real Banksy concept art. By accident. Though in a way they are the art. Lucky them).
3. The person depicted as Banksy in the film was clearly an actor. It was just too… spot on. Shadowed out and with his voice digitally altered you could still clearly make out the Bristol accent – and that he comes from Bristol is one of the few things known for sure about the man. Another too-pat aspect was his oh-so-very-street body language – elbows cocked out at F-you angles, hands dangling with insouciance – it was all exactly as you’d expect from a hard core graffiti expert – though when you think about it, isn’t the man himself more likely to be a pudgy, thoughtful, artistic and possibly quite middle-class-to posh (he did go to art school after all) kind of character? You know – the kind of person who might be able to speak a bit of French, indulge in some silly Edwardian facial hair as all the East End hip kids do these days – the kind of person who might be… oh, right….
Mofo is hiding in plain sight
That’s what I think anyway. I think the so-called documentary maker who spends all that time in front of the camera – the guy above left – is Bansky himself. What more audacious stunt could you expect from the guy?
Personally, I reckon the Frenchman is a character Banksy invented years ago in order to go back to the scene of the crime and record his own work – and reactions to it – which would explain all the great historical footage.
It’s real stage magician slight-of-hand stuff – like the scene in The Breakfast Club where Judd Nelson tells the principle that the marijuana is in Anthony Hall’s underpants when it is. Or like running a P-lab from a garage labelled ‘laboratory’…
Of course I don’t know – I’m just guessing. But plain sight… it’s a pretty good place to hide.
Yes! Love this idea. It would make him a really good actor though, which seems doubtful… Will email this to the friends i saw the film with and, as they’re French, ask what they thought of his accent.
Do it! – and French friends – let us know what you think, svp