There are three sides to most love stories: his, hers and the truth. But on London’s Fleet Street, the three sides are his, hers and the tabloids’.
Director Errol Morris, a former private investigator, has been circling around the definition of truth since his 1988 documentary “The Thin Blue Line” helped free an innocent man from death row. “Tabloid,” the true-ish story of a beauty queen who was charged with sexually assaulting a Mormon missionary and became a sensation in the British media, is missing the critical “he said” component of the equation — but the ‘she said” is a doozy.
Joyce McKinney was a baton twirler from North Carolina when she met Mormon lad Kirk Anderson in Salt Lake City in the mid ’70s. In an unpublished memoir, old interview footage and the Morris film, she describes Anderson as a dreamboat, even while photos and recollections from reporters suggest he was a portly putz.
When Anderson left for a mission to England, McKinney followed, with a slavish admirer, a bodyguard and a pilot to help free Anderson from what McKinney calls a cult. This much is agreed: She drove Anderson to a remote cottage, plied him with comfort food and seduced him. But then Anderson returned to the Mormon elders and cried rape.
McKinney was arrested. While she was out on bail, her story and image captivated disco-era London. She was the toast of the town, with ardent admirers and dogged reporters following her every move.
Some of those reporters used bribes to uncover McKinney’s prurient past. “Tabloid” keeps feeding us juicy new information, wrapped in yellowed newsprint, even as McKinney continues to describe “a very special love story.”
Anderson did not participate in the documentary, but the feisty McKinney is such a captivating subject we wish this film were longer (especially when Morris adds a third-act footnote about her love for a pit bull named Booger).
“Tabloid” is tantalizing, but like yesterday’s headlines, it’s a fleeting flirtation.
