The abrupt, abashed shutdown of News of the World doesn’t mark the end of British tabloid journalism, but the golden age of U.K. scandal sheets may be over. For one thing, it’s hard to imagine that Fleet Street rags will ever find a better subject than Joyce McKinney, the former Miss Wyoming who in 1977 did those newspapers a tremendous favor.
People who read the American press at the time may remember the case. McKinney followed her true love, Mormon missionary Kirk Anderson, to England. Then she kidnapped the man she calls “Cult Kirk” and attempted to deprogram him by — allegedly — chaining him to a bed and raping him.
“It’s a love story,” says today’s McKinney, at 61 pudgier yet seemingly just as buoyant as when she stripped off Cult Kirk’s “magic underwear” and burned it.
This all happened a long time ago, but there’s a reason Errol Morris decided to revisit the abduction. It turns out that McKinney has not retired as a newspaper subject. Tabloid delights in the obsession of McKinney (who claims to still love her onetime captive) with Anderson (who declined to be interviewed). But in its final chapter, the movie pivots in a different direction, pursuing a lesser-known but equally nutty episode in McKinney’s life.
Tabloid is something of a palate cleanser after Standard Operating Procedure, Morris’ investigation of the notorious photographs taken by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison. The new film doesn’t address anything more momentous than the power of adolescent infatuation and lifelong self-delusion.