by Brett Warner
It’s 9:33 PM at the Detroiter Truck Stop in Woodhaven, Michigan and I’m inadvertently playing Duran Duran for the black metal band Goatwhore. Standing bored behind the gift shop checkout counter half an hour before closing time, I had plugged my iPod into the small external laptop speaker display model sitting quietly to my right, humming along to the first couple tunes on 1993’s The Wedding Album. Halfway through Warren Cuccurullo’s guitar solo on “Ordinary World”, I look up to see four very big, very pierced and very tattooed gentlemen standing directly across from me, waiting to purchase a few pairs of winter gloves. Recognizing their spooky font logo, I proclaim in the manliest voice I can muster how my old roommate was a big time fan. It’s too late, though – my metal cred is gone forever. I’ve been outed.
“It’s an absolutely fucking crazy story.”
– Jaimie D’Cruz
Exit Through the Gift Shop is a film that defies explanation, and one’s ability to suspend disbelief. Indeed the plot would be utterly ridiculous, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s true.
It started out life as a simple documentary about street art as seen through the lens of Thierry Guetta, a French national living in Los Angeles. Thanks to a family connection, and his infectious and perpetuity ebullient personality, Guetta gained unparalleled access to the major players in the scene, who are a notoriously secretive and hard to track down bunch by necessity due to the predominantly illicit nature of their work. Guetta’s extreme enthusiasm for the form, and his zealous pursuit of its practitioners, ultimately led him to the scene’s holy grail, Banksy, an elusive British street art superstar.
Wit Suicide in Pure Imagination
Get to know Wit better over at SuicideGirls.com!