Picture used with the courtesy of http://www.impawards.com/2006/posters/who_the_bleep_is_jackson_pollock.jpg
A brief synopsis of the film Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock? (released in November 2006, directed by Harry Moses):
While scanning a local thrift shop, former truck driver Teri Horton came upon a rather large, abstract painting and decided to buy it for her sick friend. The original price was seven dollars but she haggled it down to five and put it in her truck. When she presented it to her friend, they both agreed that it was ugly and joked about throwing darts at it. A local art professor came upon the work and said that it may have been painted by famous artist Jackson Pollock. Teri's response was, "Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock?"
After she consulted a few people, she became convinced that the work is actually an authentic Jackson Pollock. However, the art world thinks otherwise. Experts like Thomas Hoving, an executive at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, are convinced that the work is of no significance and was not made by Pollock. The film documents Teri's struggle to prove the legitimacy of the work against the consensus of the experts.
This film is a Marxist crossbreed in which the art world, the bourgeoisie, and former truck driver Terri Horton and her friends, the proletariat, collide. This reading is encapsulated by the "opposing" ways of celebration: The experts and the in crowd of the art world fashionably attend gallery openings where they drink fine wine, eat various cheeses, listen to classical music, wear expensive jewelry, and mingle with supermodels (Moses unfairly limits his shots almost entirely to this type) while Teri Horton's sweatshirt and jeans group hovers around a bar at a familiar dive laughing, drinking beer, listening to the local Mellencamp, and saying F-U to the absent snobs.
Beyond the upperclass/lowerclass distinction, this film is an inquisitive documentary (is there any other good kind?) that is relatively objective. Moses seems to be honestly after answers and truly conflicted when science and the art world disagree. I won't give too much more away but the film is worth the watch even though it is sometimes tedious (in the second half, the twists are mild), rambling (one can only listen to Horton for so long) or absurd (Horton comes up with a maddening story for how the painting was made).
B-
1 comment:
I saw this film, and Terri Horton is a hoot! The opening line, "A fairy tale begins with 'Once upon a time..,' but a trucker's tale begins with, 'You're never gonna believe this shit...," sent me to the floor hauling with laughter!
I'm not sure where this film took me and if there were even ever any final agreements, but it was an okay watch. Still, I'd watch it again for the pure humor of Horton.
I'd compare this film to be as decent as My Kid Could Paint That, which is another "okay" film.
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