The Conversation In The Car Park Afterwards

If you don't know who Banksy is, I'm not going to be the one to tell you. There are plenty of people out there who know way more than I do.

What I am going to tell you is to check out the documentary he made, "Exit Through The Gift Shop."

"EXIT tells the story of Thierry Guetta, a French immigrant in Los Angeles, and his obsession with street art. The film charts Guetta's constant documenting of his every waking moment on film, from a chance encounter with his cousin, the artist Invader, to his introduction to a host of street artists with a focus on Shepard Fairey and Banksy..."

If that's not enough to get you interested, read this All These Wonderful Things interview, which was what inspired me to post about EXIT. One of my favorite bits:

All These Wonderful Things: What do you think that you discovered about the form of documentary while making this movie and is there any correlation to your other artistic work? Were you a fan of documentary prior to making the film and, if so, what were some of your favorite films? Did any of them influence what you did on EXIT?

B: I’m from a generation for whom documentary isn’t a dirty word. It doesn’t have to mean endless shots of penguins set to classical music. Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock seemed completely punk to me. And the most punk thing of all was they brought their story undiluted to the multiplex.

Documentaries have an important role in recording culture that’s unlikely to make it into the history books. DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS was the Bill of Rights for skate culture. Having said that, my film was never going to be an authoritative history of street art. Or even an authoritative history of the selling-out of street art. We realized halfway through the edit that the ending needed to be as unresolved as possible. I’ve learnt from experience that a painting isn’t finished when you put down your brush – that’s when it starts. The public reaction is what supplies meaning and value. Art comes alive in the arguments you have about it. If we’ve done our job properly with EXIT, then the best part of the entire movie is the conversation in the car park afterwards.

The bold is my addition, included because in this writer's humble opinion, that final sentence highlights what should be the aim of every film, regardless of genre, maybe even of art in general.

Oh, and because we're a visual culture, here's EXIT's trailer:



And if you don't check out Banksy's official site, you're a fool.