MovieChat Forums > Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) Discussion > I CANT BELIEVE YOU GUYS DON'T GET IT

I CANT BELIEVE YOU GUYS DON'T GET IT


The movie is a satire. It is a critique of the contemporary art world. The over-commercializtion and exploitation of street art. why do you think its called exit through the gift shop? that should tell it all right there.

It is not a documentary.

They set everyone up with the stupid Mr. Brainwash Show in LA and convinced a bunch of sheep that the BS 'art' they made was brilliant. all those people, thousands of them were there because they bought into the hype machine and turned a joke into a success.

I am not quite sure if the art really sold for as much as he said. It could have, or maybe its an exaggeration, but it doesnt really matter.

what matters is that all those people didnt look at the crap on the walls and say 'this is not art, this sucks', they bought into the hype and loved it. Why? cuz they go with the flow, they dont develop their own opinions, but rather follow popular opinion.

The experiment proves that if you take a bunch of garbage, throw it on the wall in a huge 'gallery' and have big artists say its the real deal, people will show up and love it cuz they are idiots.

the movie just chronicles this. who knows if guetta is a real character or not. it doesnt matter. he was in on it weather thats his real name or not. The whole thing is a farce. I can't believe no one gets it. I mean by the end of the movie its almost as if they are not even trying to keep up the guise of the documentary going. it gets so out of whack that it should be obvious that its all a joke.

Guetta supposedly started filming in like 2007. he wasnt documenting the birth of street art. he was documenting the death of street art. this has been going on for years. and no i dont mean grafitti. i mean street art, stencils, print outs wheat pasted up. all of that filming happened over the last few years after all of those artists were well established. that footage wasnt home movie footage. it was shot for the purpose of the mockumentary, to make it seem like this guy was a filmmaker documenting street art (i didnt see any old school footage of old school grafitti. how can you tell the story of the birth of street art without telling the story of grafitti. just shows that wasnt the point of the movie). all of the footage was shot to etablish the creation of a fictitious character. this is what creates the whole story. this is the foundation for this supposed documentary. if guetta is the filmaker then why is the camera on him the whole time, even before banksy flipped it on him. who is the guy really behind the camera? ever think of that? the whole storyline about guetta's youth and how he filmed everything in life etc- its all made up.

you think if you show a bunch of video cassettes scattered around a room in boxes that that means its all full of actual footage, years of footage? of course it isnt. it helps to create this ridiculous character and this ridiculous fake movie that he was making (or not making as he shot and shot and didnt edit)so that Banksy could takeover the project. It was all a plan from the beginning.

sorry, maybe life remote control was weird and insane, but it was supposed to seem like that. again, to create a reason for banksy to take over. a guy who has never edited video in his life can not make that movie. it was strange but the editing was no amateur *beep* that was professionally made to look kinda crappy. why? to give a reason for banksy to take over. Why? so he could 'turn the cameras on guetta', who was supposedly a far more interesting story.

he wasnt an interesting figure that needed to be filmed. it became an interesting story after they started filming him , once he became a star. So why did they start filming him in the first place? why would banksy take so much interest in this guy? cuz he didnt give him up to the uber dangerous Disney Land security??? No it was because the clever, unpredictable ending was planned form the beginning. he was a cartoon character. the whole point from the beginning was the build up to the big art show where everyone gets duped. guetta is a symbol of all thats wrong with art. the way he acts on the day of the show, not giving a damn where any paintings go, just telling people build me this build me that. and thats's his art? this is a criticism of an art world in which many artists dont even create their own work. they conceive the piece and have assistants actually make it. yeah, artists dont even paint their own paintings these days (obviously not in all cases but this is prevalent in art culture).

i thought it was obvious, but now the moviegoing crowd is getting duped too. all of these people think its a breathtaking view of the birth of a genius street art form and the birth of a great artist which no one could have predicted. yeah, because hes not an artist. (unless he really is banksy, which i doubt. the french accent is too good. unless banksy really is a french englishman. ha. yeah right)

this is banksy's prank on the world. this is his original piece of art. everyone kept copying his style and it became all commercialized and all the money got involved, so banksy flipped the script on the whole thing. its a joke on fake artists, unoriginal copycats, bogus art critics, the hype machine, fickle 'art' fans who cant make their own opinion, and now the movie-going public that doesnt get it. i thought he made it pretty dam obvious, but not obvious enough.

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sounds like you take yourself pretty seriously there too, buddy

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I rarely directly address other forum posters, but wow. Your vitriolic reaction to the spectrum of creativity is astounding. The message I took from your post is that if you personally don't like it, it doesn't qualify. You're entitled to your opinion, but that's all it is. No one, not one single solitary person, is qualified to designate absolutes.

Hip Hop can be GREAT. Listen to older Ozomatli, Jurassic 5, Common, Mos Def, Tribe Called Quest, the list goes on and on. It IS music, and some of it is amazing. And whether or not you like Pop music, the Beatles were great lyricists. A dripping faucet can be music to someone. It's all about perception. Every form of creativity falls within a range from trash to brilliance, but that is solely in the mind of the beholder.

At one time, Picasso was declared a hack, as were Jackson Pollock and Basquiat. Rock and Roll was NOT considered music at its advent. Elvis Presley, The Who and Rolling Stones were notoriously vilified. Thank goodness times have changed.

Open your ears, eyes and heart. You may be surprised to find yourself liking new things.

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i'm with you.. the whole time this guy struck me as the Ed Hardy of the art world

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I'd say that Banksy understands how easy it is to fool people. Look at our media and politics. All it takes to turn a fiction into a "fact" is attention.

Obviously, this whole project was staged. Street Art goes back decades. The video footage is all new. If he had been documenting as heavily as he claims, he'd have footage in many formats.

Further, didn't anyone notice that the "filmmaker" was being filmed as he was filming? Hello?

Those who disagree will surely love the "Faces of Death" series and will buy tickets to the Jonathan Edward show in Las Vegas. Some people will fall for anything. SOrry....make that....most people will fall for anything....and they will go into fits on the internet digging in their heals because they can't face the fact that they've been fooled.

Nice companion piece: "I'm Still Here" An exceptionally well-acted piece of "reality" programming that shows just exactly how *beep* "reality" programming is and exactly how low our standards really are.

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to the Original Poster : I thought it was obvious too, sigh. Too much fluoride in the water these days, I guess. THIS MOVIE DOESN'T EVEN *MEAN ANYTHING* IF IT'S NOT A HOAX - what would be the point of such a boring (and annoying Frenchman) piece of *beep* if you take it at face value without reading between the lines??? come on people!

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OP states:

"The movie is a satire. It is a critique of the contemporary art world. The over-commercializtion and exploitation of street art. why do you think its called exit through the gift shop? that should tell it all right there.
It is not a documentary.
They set everyone up with the stupid Mr. Brainwash Show in LA and convinced a bunch of sheep that the BS 'art' they made was brilliant. all those people, thousands of them were there because they bought into the hype machine and turned a joke into a success."


OP's ENTIRE argument is based on the assumption that the LA show was an elaborate hoax to make a powerful point and make a powerful movie portraying that point subtly. That is, the LA show is a hoax to make a cool prankumentary film.



Wellllll, considering how many shows Mister Brainwash has had since the film's release, and has scheduled in the future, that quite literally means the OP's argument is 100% invalid.

No, really. OP's argument is completely void as soon as mister brainwash had his follow up show "Icons" in NY, not to mention the many others.

"I can't believe you guys don't get it" indeed.

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you never heard of an ongoing joke? that's what mister brainwash is. why would mr brainwash's success and popularity contraindicate what the OP said? if anything, it affirms it

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Thanks IMDB!! :)

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and nasdaq311 has ut right. with out the hoax the movie has no value. if it was real it would be a ridiculous story with no value. it would be a story about a conceited dick head poser with no talent deciding to be an artist and getting famous and rich.

thats not a great story. thats just crap. banksy wouldnt be interested in telling that story.

in fact you see that banksy thinks Thierry's art sucks... if thats the case, then why would he put his stamp of approval on his work and vouch for him. hes never done that before. made public statements as an art critic.

if he knew thierry had no talent he and shepard fairy wouldnt have gone out and backed his work.

You need to realize that if they didnt hype up the show, it never would have garnered an audience. essentially ti wouldnt have existed.

i think people should realize that only they had the power to create the monster, the hype. they directly created the hype, the phenomenon by putting their name's on it, by backing before the show happened.


thats all you need to come to the correct conclusion. they created this. the question is why. and its pretty obvious why when looking at all the details. they created this monster to play a hoax on the art world.

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well said csenoner. a friend of mine watched this film, and after it was over, his only comment was "that frenchman was so annoying" -- then I had to explain to him that the movie is a prank, etc. But that is all the movie means to people who take it at face value, without thinking about what they are watching, its simply just a documentary about an annoying french person. That's all there is to it. What's so great about that -- why would anyone want to watch that???


And why would Banksy -- who is about as cool and subversive as human beings come -- want to attach his name to something that bland and meaningless???????

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You are totally wrong and that logical leap you just took was invalid.

to say my theory is 100% wrong because he has done other art shows since is incorrect.

I'll explain why. you must not have been thinking critically if you can drop "100%" without thinking of any other possibilities.

The idea of the movie was create a ridiculou character that symbolizes everything that is wrong with the art world. Then to take this character and make him famous. make his paintings valuable. to play a prank on the world.

Film was his medium of choice. it would allow him to document this rise. without the film, it is much harder to tell this story. it would exist nonetheless, but it would only exist is various newspaper and magazine articles and in people's stories and in the stupid paintings on rich people with bad taste's walls.

he used the medium of film to document his prank and distribute it to the world. to get his prank on the big stage. so he could show the whole story. draw even more people to the endearing (yeah right) thierry.

the fact is the entire project, including the film (which is only part of the prank) was such a success that they were able to keep the prank going. its is still living organically.

the pranks existed and was successful before the film was released and continues to be today.

the pranks was not made for the purpose of the movie, the movie was made for the purpose of executing the prank on the world. it was a means to document what they were to pull off.

even after the film is done they continue to let the hoax live. they are pushing it to see how far they can go with it.

do you really expect banksy to put on a press conference and say "guys it was all a prank. thierry is not real" . Hes perfectly happy letting people believe it to this day. and the best way to accomplish that is to keep the charde going.

dr. brainwash is, in essence, a walking piece of theater. it is cinema played out in the real world. he is an actor and everyone around him interacting with him, goin to his shows and buying his work etc is a witness, a member of the audience.

in essence it one drawn out version of tony and tinas wedding played out in the open.

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"dr. brainwash"!!! He's now a comic book villain - I love it.

Anyway csenoner - I agree with pretty much everything in your post. I'm still very curious about the recruiting of Thierry for the project - it does seem that he couldn't have been an actor from the get-go, but his acting is SO GOOD as far as selling the MBW character goes.

HAIL TO THE CHIMP! http://i35.tinypic.com/1zoxa4m.gif

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On-going shows only makes the argument that these art people are "sheep" stronger. He literally made crap, or at least some of it, and people bought into it, and are continuing to buy into it.

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This thread is more entertaining than the movie!

- And just like the movie, shows the incredible gullibility of most humans.


Of course csenoner is right. Anyone who watched this movie and had a different opinion needs a brain transplant.

Hey, now let's talk about "Catfish."

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high five, cableaddict!!

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