Exit through the gift shop; opinions - General

[img]http://www.streetrockaz.nl/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/banksy-exit-through-the-gift-shop1.jpg[/img] Exit Through The Gift Shop is a streetart film made by Banksy and follows the story of Thierry Guetta. Someone who films everything no matter what it is. He gets in touch with the streetart 'community' because of his nephew Space Invader. Through Space Invader he meets pioneers such as Shepard Fairy (OBEY) and Banksy. Actually, fuck this, I'm copy-pasting a synopsis from Wikipedia: [quote]Thierry Guetta is a French immigrant living in Los Angeles, making a living for his family by running a vintage clothing shop. He also has a strange obsession of carrying a camera anywhere he goes, constantly filming his surroundings. On a holiday in France, he discovers his cousin is Invader, an internationally known street artist. Thierry finds this fascinating, and accompanies Invader and his friends, including the artists Monsieur André and Zevs on their nocturnal adventures, documenting their activities. A few months later, Invader visits Thierry in LA, and arranges a meeting with Shepard Fairey. Thierry continues filming Fairey's activities even after Invader has left home for France. While Fairey is confused by Thierry's enthusiasm, Thierry states that he wishes to make a complete documentary about street art, and the two traverse the entire United States, shooting one-of-a-kind footage of other famous artists at work, including Seizer, Neck Face, Sweet Toof, Cyclops, Ron English, Dotmasters, Swoon, Borf and Buffmonster. What Guetta fails to tell Fairey is that he has no concrete plans to compile his footage into an actual film, and he admits that his constant archiving of his surroundings is a method of preserving memories, after he lost his mother at the age of 11. During his filming, he continues to hear more about Banksy - a prominent and secretive artist who he hasn't caught on tape yet. His attempts to contact Banksy meet with failure, until one day Banksy visits LA without his usual accomplice who is refused entry to the US. Stuck in LA without a guide, Banksy contacts Fairey, who calls Thierry. Thierry becomes Banksy's guide in LA, later following him back to England, winning the privilege to film Banksy on his home turf - a feat that confuses Banksy's crew. Banksy, however, sees the opportunity of having street art, which he recognises as having a "short life span" documented, and after Thierry aids him in recording both production, deployment and crowd reactions of his "Murdered Phone-box" piece, Banksy asks Thierry to film the preparations of his "Barely Legal" show. The two become friends, as Thierry provides Banksy with some relief from his anonymity. Returning to LA, Thierry becomes bored, and eventually ends up producing his own stickers and decals and putting them up in the city. Banksy's show is being prepared in Skid Row, Los Angeles, and while in LA, Banksy has the idea of deploying a Guantanamo Bay detainee doll in Disneyland. He visits the location and places the doll while Thierry continues filming. A few minutes later, however, the rides stop, and the park's security system catches on to Thierry, and he's taken to an interrogation room, while Banksy switches clothes and blends into the crowd. During interrogation, Thierry refuses to admit any wrongdoing, and when allowed a phonecall, covertly tips Banksy off his situation, who immediately leaves the park. When forced by the security, he quickly destroys the evidence in his camera, but stashes the videotape in his sock and is eventually let go, much to the amazement of Banksy. A few days later, "Barely Legal" opens, and the show becomes an overnight mainstream success. Street art prices begin to rocket in auction houses. Banksy is both surprised and disillusioned by the sudden hype surrounding street art, and urges Thierry to finish his supposed documentary. Banksy discovers that Thierry has been dumping his tapes, often unlabeled into plastic boxes without any inclination to ever watch them again. Prompted by Banksy's pressure, Thierry begins to edit together the several thousand hours of footage, and produces a film called "Life Remote Control". It is basically 90 minutes of distorted fast cutting about seemingly random themes. Banksy realises Thierry has no ability as a filmmaker whatsoever and deems his product "unwatchable", but realizes that the street art footage itself is valuable, and decides to have a shot at producing a film himself. To make sure that Thierry remains occupied, Banksy suggests he make his own artshow. Thierry happily accepts the assignment, adopting the moniker "Mr. Brainwash", putting up street art in the city and 6 months later, re-mortgaging his business to be able to afford renting copious amount of equipment and a complete production team to create pieces of art under his supervision. He rents out a former CBS studio to prepare his first show, "Life Is Beautiful", and scales up his production to a much larger proportion than Banksy initially suggested, but with little focus. When Thierry breaks his foot after falling off a ladder, Banksy catches news of the possible trainwreck the show might end up in, and sends a few professionals to help Thierry out. While the producers take care of the practical side of the show, Thierry spends his time hyping up the show, asking support from both Fairey and Banksy, eventually taping up huge billboards with their quotes, and ultimately ending up on the cover of L. A. Weekly. While the show starts to shape up, it's still far from being complete, yet Thierry spends his time hyping up and marketing his work for tens of thousands of dollars. Eight hours before the show opening, paintings are still missing from the walls, and everyone is working around the clock, but since Thierry is busy giving interviews, the eventual layout of the show is decided by the crew itself. "I think the joke is on... I don’t know who the joke is on, really. I don’t even know if there is a joke." Banksy's former spokesman Steve Lazarides Despite all this, however, the show becomes a raging success with the crowd, and after the first week of the show, Thierry sells almost a million dollars worth of art, with his pieces showing in galleries all around the world, to the utter confusion of both Fairey and Banksy. In an ending montage, Thierry insists that time will tell whether he's a real artist or not.[/quote] Absolutely loved the film but I'm still really confused about what to think about Mister Brainwash Yes, he put all of his money into the exhibit, but he also completely butchered the art and didn't do shit himself. He also seems like a giant retard who's just very lucky of running into Shepard Fairy, Space Invader and Banksy

I think you should post some more info, some people are going to go into this thread without any idea what Exit Though the Gift shop is about. And I liked Mister Brainwash, he has a good sence of humor.

I see that the artists involved find his way of commercializing his graffiti art as totally wrong. - The ending actually came a bit as a surprise for me when they began raining down on Mister Brainwash. The depiction of him made him seem like a lucky retard which was entertaining enough in its own right. I find it sort of hard that he'd allow such a movie to come out though. I don't know, something itches me about that the point-and-laugh portrait of Mister Brainwash. He must've agreed somehow to be shown off like this. Also, god bless his wife for being so understanding.

I thought this film was really good. It gave good insight into what the artists do and the story that lead to Mister Brainwash.

I've been wanting to watch this because it's on Netflix and it looks interesting, but I don't know much about Banksy other than he's a street artist. Might watch it anyways.

Sounds quite interesting.

I bought this the other day. I really enjoyed it and seeing what the street art scene is really like, but by the end I hated Mr. Brainwash as he was basically just Andy Warhol. I've also heard rumours that it was just one big joke that Banksy played on everyone but it seems like a lot of work to go to for a joke.

[QUOTE=Boomslang;27194301]I've also heard rumours that it was just one big joke that Banksy played on everyone but it seems like a lot of work to go to for a joke.[/QUOTE] I heard that too, and it seems to make sense in a way. Possible spoilers. [sp]It was a long time ago that I saw it so I can't really remember too much, but it seemed plausible that the plot with Mr Brainwash was Banksy's way of showing how an artist can be terrible, and copy from many other artists, but the fact that they are promoted and advertised so much causes them to be hugely successful. It seems that this was half a documentary about streetart and Banksy and the other half was a bit of a joke pulled off by Banksy.[/sp] I enjoyed the film though, it was quiet interesting and funny.

[QUOTE=Khaos-23;27212407]I heard that too, and it seems to make sense in a way. Possible spoilers. [sp]It was a long time ago that I saw it so I can't really remember too much, but it seemed plausible that the plot with Mr Brainwash was Banksy's way of showing how an artist can be terrible, and copy from many other artists, but the fact that they are promoted and advertised so much causes them to be hugely successful. It seems that this was half a documentary about streetart and Banksy and the other half was a bit of a joke pulled off by Banksy.[/sp][/QUOTE] That's exactly it. Mr Brainwash's stuff is terrible and derivative and is basically just a pastiche of better art from better artists like Andy Warhol, but because it is visually striking and aggressively promoted, people buy into it.

I throughly enjoyed this movie. Banksy is a genius. I liked how the documentary was originally going to be about Banksy, but it ended up being about the guy who was going to make the documentary. If you need more Banksy, pick up Wall and Piece. What little text in this book is worth reading.