Tabloid

Tabloid is a fascinating insight into what happens to reality celebrity gossip fodder after the newspapers become chip paper.  Today's society is fuelled by celebrity gossip and tabloids in the 70's were no different.

Tabloid focusses on a former Miss Wyoming winner who is charged with abducting and imprisoning a young Mormon Missionary.  Joyce McKinney was little miss perfect in many people's eyes, Miss Girl Next Door, she fell in love at a young age and wanted to marry her high school sweet heart Kirk Anderson.  All sweetness and light you think.  Kirk, a practising Mormon through out their relationship, had received the 'calling' from the mormonhood one day and 'disappeared'.  He had in fact moved to London to preach the word in the Church of the Latter day Saints.  Joyce 'believed' that Kirk had in fact been kidnapped and held against his will because his mother had disliked her and thought this was the best way to keep him away from her.

Joyce, heartbroken and upset with the loss of Kirk, hatches a crazy plan to get Kirk back.  What ensues is the most bizarre story ever to grace a red top.  Joyce went to jail for kidnapping and raping Kirk for a week.    The film delves deeply into Joyce's past, into her relationships with her bodyguards, with the journalists, with her 'fans' and most of all with her psyche.

She is charming with her southern drawl and can probably charm the pants off of anyone to get what she wants.  I found the film fascinating in the way the press handled her as well as turned her into a superstar.  An incredibly volatile and disturbed woman who had the world at her every whim because she quickly realised that they red tops needed her more that she needed them.

The problem with Joyce and so many fame hungry whores after her is that as soon as the papers find another fixation, you are dumped like a hot potato and are left to scrabble for whatever attention you can get.

Tabloid is as much a fantastic insight into the way the press worked in the 70's to get their story as it is about Joyce's deep and dark insanity.