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Exit Through the Gift Shop

  • 2010
  • R
  • 1h 27m
IMDb RATING
7.9/10
70K
YOUR RATING
Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)
The story of how an eccentric French shop keeper and amateur film maker attempted to locate and befriend Banksy, only to have the artist turn the camera back on its owner.
Play trailer1:17
1 Video
99+ Photos
CaperCrime DocumentarySatireTrue CrimeComedyCrimeDocumentaryHistory

Following the style of some of the world's most prolific street artists, an amateur filmmaker makes a foray into the art world.Following the style of some of the world's most prolific street artists, an amateur filmmaker makes a foray into the art world.Following the style of some of the world's most prolific street artists, an amateur filmmaker makes a foray into the art world.

  • Director
    • Banksy
  • Stars
    • Banksy
    • Mr. Brainwash
    • Space Invader
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.9/10
    70K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Banksy
    • Stars
      • Banksy
      • Mr. Brainwash
      • Space Invader
    • 130User reviews
    • 230Critic reviews
    • 85Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Nominated for 1 Oscar
      • 24 wins & 31 nominations total

    Videos1

    Exit Through the Gift Shop
    Trailer 1:17
    Exit Through the Gift Shop

    Photos252

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    + 246
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    Top cast43

    Edit
    Banksy
    Banksy
    • Self
    Mr. Brainwash
    Mr. Brainwash
    • Self
    • (as Thierry Guetta aka Mister Brainwash)
    Space Invader
    • Self
    Debora Guetta
    • Self
    Monsieur André
    • Self
    Zeus
    • Self
    Shepard Fairey
    Shepard Fairey
    • Self
    Ron English
    Ron English
    • Self
    Caledonia Curry
    Caledonia Curry
    • Self
    • (as Swoon)
    Borf
    • Self
    Buffmonster
    • Self
    Steve Lazarides
    • Self
    Wendy Asher
    • Self
    Roger Gastman
    • Self
    Laurent Nahoum-Vatinet
    • Self
    Amanda Fairey
    • Self
    Romain Lefebure
    • Self
    Clemence Janin
    • Self
    • Director
      • Banksy
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews130

    7.970.1K
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    Featured reviews

    8the_rattlesnake25

    Everybody forges a million pounds, right?

    An experience will ultimately become a diluted memory, unless the experience itself is documented in image or film, in which case it will last forever (or until it is deleted/destroyed...). 'Exit Through The Gift Shop' is a brilliant examination of the underground street art culture, and a poignant look at man's obsession with a culture he is increasingly drawn into throughout his life.

    Thierry Guetta (pronounced Te-ree), is a French immigrant living Los Angeles with his loving wife and children and a good honest job, but there is one object he will never leave the house without; his video camera. Guetta has been enticed into the everyday cinema verité movement of simply recording any, and everything that goes on in his life. From playing with his children, to his ultimate attraction of following other street artists around and documenting their work, Guetta loves to watch, document and admire from behind the lens. Guetta eventually earns the trust and respect of various artists around the globe including the elusive Banksy, his cousin Space Invader and Shepard Fairey, and provides the audience with an up close and personal view of a culture (or industry) which has been projected into the limelight over the past five years.

    Narrated by Rhys Ifans, 'Exit' has been acknowledged as not having a registered director, instead it is a smoothly edited combination of Guetta's extensive and various filmed sequences from over the years (the film shows his EXTENSIVE physical collection of tapes from more than decade of film-making) and interviews with various leading figures in the industry. For example Banksy is interviewed at length over his involvement with Guetta and comes across as a very down-to-earth, humble and at times, incredibly funny person. While everybody, including Guetta, are extremely brazen and don't hold back when speaking about each other, their profession or how the street art culture has developed over time into a somewhat monopolistic environment (which can be viewed by the fact that the rich and famous turned out in droves for Banksy's first exhibition in the United States).

    This isn't a film about 'graffiti' though, as some may simply see it as on the surface, aside from the exploration of a fast growing community it is also a deep, scary and heart-warming look at Thierry Guetta's life over a decade onwards as he constantly leaves behind his family and his job to follow various artists around the globe. Mentally unstable, or one of the greatest French minds of the last twenty years, nobody is quite sure what Thierry Guetta (also known as Mr Brainwash) is, but what everybody does acknowledge is that he is a man with a passion and while he may not follow the same ideology as everybody else, his heart is still in the right place. 'Exit Through The Gift Shop' is a fascinating documentary focusing on a rising culture that many people may not have much knowledge about, except for knowing the name of the elusive, and as I have mentioned, surprisingly hilarious Banksy.
    10Quinoa1984

    asks the tried and true question really: what is art, and who the hell can be an artist?

    Exit Through the Gift Shop is credited as "a film by Banksy", who is a notorious and perhaps the most popular and widely acclaimed (and the premiere provocateur) in the group of street artists from the past several years. Yet his credit as director is something of a lark; he's never directed before, and he claims at the end of the film that this will be the last time he helps someone make a documentary on street artists. The bulk of the footage shot was by another artist (or some would say 'so-called'), Theirry Guetta, a former clothing store owner who used to take super-cheap and mis-made clothes and sell them for rocket-high prices as if they were designer wear, who started taping everything one day, just whatever was around him. Then, when his cousin, nicknamed 'Space Invader', took him around to show him how he put up his stenciled artwork around town, Thierry became enamored and followed anyone who would let him around town with his camera.

    Soon, a documentary was looking like it was taking shape, but was it really? At one point, after years of filming and amassing such a large collection that it would make all OCD-ers cringe, he did try and make a documentary out of it called 'LIFE REMOTE CONTROL - THE MOVIE', which Banksy, upon watching it, didn't really know what to say, since he hated it and couldn't really put it in words. Thierry wasn't a filmmaker, and he wasn't an artist, but he went after doing both anyway, and it's him that Banksy makes the focus of, taking his masses of footage- most of it on street artists who remain anonymous (only a few, like Shepard Fairey who made the red and blue Obama poster so iconic, go unblurred on camera)- and telling this story of this... kind of nutty guy, and how somehow, by his determination and, indeed, some mental imbalance, he became "Mr. Brain-Wash", a self-created art phenomenon that is basically a huge collection of Andy Warhol rip-off screen prints of celebrities (how huge you might ask? Well, there's a reason I kept thinking of Howard Hughes during the film, and a Spruce Goose comparison isn't far off).

    Banksy says at the start he didn't want Thierry doing a documentary on him since he didn't think he was very interesting, and turned the camera on his original documentarian instead. I wonder though how much of this is really true, or perhaps just part of Banksy's own mystique; the guy is like The Shadow of street artists, with a touch of Tyler Durden. He pops up, does his thing, and leaves, trying to get by with his "gray-legal-area" artwork in Britain and elsewhere, and making waves with his real provocative pieces (i.e. the art on the Palestine wall, and especially the stunt at Disneyland, which is one of the most fascinating parts of the film). He remains a shadow unto himself on screen, becoming like one of his stencils in a silhouette form and a voice muffled by distortion. But then again, he knows that he can only be so self-indulgent - how can he keep up, for example, with a guy like Thierry Guetta.

    He is the real star of the film, and he really is one of a kind, a genuinely interesting "character" who sometimes, ala Howard Hughes, repeats things a bit too much, and like Michael Scott on the Office can seem to put himself in some awkward positions. He's also good in a crunch (such as the Disneyland incident), and his very first piece of art- his own self-portrait as a guy with shaggy hair and a hat and a camera- was put all over town by himself and it's a genuinely good piece. And his how he relates to others if interesting too; he takes some really long stretches of time from his family, and those he documents like Shepard Fairey don't know whether he's a genuinely good guy or just wacko, or both in a single bound. Certainly when he is finally let loose, by way of a gentle suggestion by Banksy, to create his own art it becomes like pushing a river-boat over a mountain: something huge that should be impossible, but there it is, and WTF?

    The reaction to his art, and how people see it in the film (frankly I never heard of the guy, unlike Banksy, though I'm assuming he's a big deal in elite art circles), is mixed really. A guy who just pours out hundreds of pieces of art and paintings right away instead of taking years for the craft? What separates him from Banksy, and it's most likely what makes this such a great documentary, is the method of hype. That really is what is the hook here (I can imagine this being a fantastic double feature, by the way, with My Kid Could Paint That), that this guy ended up being such a sensation by pimping himself out there, getting on the cover of a magazine, without building up street cred (forgive the pun) that most of the artists shown here need to get. As Banksy notes, there are no real rules in art, though MBW probably did break them... which he can't really condemn nor condone exactly. He is what he is, and his big bushy sideburns lead up to passionate eyes and a sense of life and art that is... um, influenced?

    This is the only documentary you need to see on street art, if there even are any others. Perhaps Banksy means for this to be *the* statement on it and leave it at that. It kept me contemplating long after it was over, and I'm sure to revisit it many times. That I have only a minimal interest in street art should go without saying; Guetta, Banksy, and everyone else make this a must-see.
    9howard.schumann

    A fast-paced and highly entertaining film

    Exit Through the Gift Shop may be all smoke and mirrors but it is a highly provocative mirror we look into, one that raises many questions about the commercialization of art and even about the authenticity of the documentary form itself. Ostensibly directed by the mysterious British graffiti artist Banksy, the film, shot with a not too steady hand-held camera, describes the attempts by Los Angeles clothing store owner Thierry Guetta to capture on film the world of street artists, previously hidden from public view. Banksy, who has developed quite an underground reputation for outrageousness after posting his own paintings in the Met and other museums, is shown hooded, in shadows, and with his voice distorted.

    He begins the film by explaining that the movie was supposed to be about him but when Guetta's attempt at film-making proved to be unwatchable, he took over the making of the film and it became a documentary about Guetta, and how he was transformed into the street artist known as "Mr. Brainwash". Narrated by Welsh actor Rhys Ifans (slotted to play Edward de Vere in the upcoming Roland Emmerich film Anonymous), Guetta is an garrulous and outgoing Frenchman who carries his video camera with him wherever he goes, filling up tape after tape. After meeting with his cousin known as Space Invader, a graffiti artist famous for mosaics showing characters from the Space Invader video game, he is introduced to Shepard Fairey, the man responsible for the Obama "hope" campaign in 2008 as well as street artists Monsieur André, Swoon, Sweet Toof, Borf, and many others.

    Shepard and Thierry become partners in the clandestine world of graffiti-making and, even though Shepard feels that that there is something not quite right about Guetta, he is happy to have him around as a "security guard" who is willing to climb tall buildings to locate the most lucrative spots. Eventually, Thierry realizes that, in order for his film to be successful, he must find a way to find the reclusive Banksy. He finds Banksy, however, almost impossible to track down. The power of intention works wonders though, for on a trip to Los Angeles, Banksy himself contacts Thierry to ask for his help in finding the best places to post in L.A. The end result is an ongoing relationship and a Banksy art show called "Barely Legal" that does extremely well financially. As far as its artistic merits, I will leave that to others to decode.

    After Banksy tells Guetta to leave his tapes with him and go put on his own show, Thierry does just that, renting an old CBS Studio and transforming it into a factory where he endeavors mightily to put on his own show "Life is Beautiful" under the name "Mr. Brainwash". The 2008 show, aided by an L.A. Weekly cover story, earns Thierry over one million dollars and catapults the Frenchman into the ranks of the world's most popular street artists. Exit Through the Gift Shop may be the real deal or it may be a tongue-in-cheek spoof of the gullibility of the public and the crass commercialism of the art world but only Banksy really knows. It does, however, provide a fast-paced and highly entertaining glimpse into a world that has, heretofore, eluded the camera because of its secretive nature and dubious legality.
    9jamesgill-1

    Banksy's humour is as sharp as ever - but just who is the target?

    It took me a while to get a chance to see this film: anybody who was around Bristol last summer for Banksy's 'Homecoming' exhibition will be aware of the popularity of the city's most celebrated son, and therefore I shouldn't have been surprised that when the first three times I tried to see the film the cinema was sold out. However, I got there in the end.

    In my admittedly naïve opinion, street art is one of the most significant art movement of the 21st century. Its attraction lies in the fact that it is one of the most democratic forms of visual art – there is a conscious rejection of the safety net of critical censorship or gallery authority. Instead, the public are engaged with artists' work throughout the course of their daily lives, and it is up to them to conclude which side of the line this kind of work treads – is it graffiti, a public menace and an eyesore, or is it a work of art that has a right to be displayed wherever the artist chooses? I'm rambling. However, I wanted to establish my feelings towards street art as a whole before engaging with Banksy's satirical and humorous representation of it within Exit Through the Gift Shop.

    To the film…

    Banksy's first foray into film-making drags his unique sweet and sour mix of humour and political satire kicking and screaming onto the silver screen. Anyone hoping for a revelation of his true identity is to be disappointed – the film opens with a blacked-out figure of a man in a hood, and whilst the Bristol accent defies the voice alteration, it's clear that this film is not designed to be a personal unmasking. Rather, Banksy's humour has a very different kind of revelation in mind.

    The true hero (or perhaps anti-hero would be a better description) is the curiously care-free French shop-keeper/amateur filmmaker, whose interest in graffiti artists is borne out of a chance confrontation with the artist known as 'Space Invader'. The film follows Guetta's attempts to capture his encounters with various street artists, including the notorious Banksy, on camera, and in the process Banksy encourages Guetta to create a documentary out of the ridiculous amount of film that he has amassed over several years of his life.

    Unfortunately, Guetta, although a handy cameraman, is quite clearly not a filmmaker. Part of Banksy's skill in creating this film is that it makes us ask just who is the director in this haphazard process. One of the frequently-quoted lines of the film comes from Banksy himself, saying "it's basically the story of how one man set out to film the un-filmable. And failed." The character of Guetta that we see on screen is simply ridiculous, and yet we are attracted by his attitude of naivety. He is a hugely entertaining personality, and even more so because he appears to take himself so seriously. Even Banksy cannot quite know what to make of him. Is he a disguised genius, or a fool who got lucky? Either way, Banksy's portrayal of the way in which Guetta engages with the art world breathes new life into that clichéd question of what actually gives art both aesthetic and financial value. With the help of Rhys Ifans' superbly wry narration, the film conducts us through the emergence of the street art counterculture, and how perceptions of it have changed within the political, artistic and social establishment.

    There are so many things that could be said about this film, but it is dangerous to say more without ruining the sense of the unexpected that the film generates. That is a tribute to the intricacy of the documentary narrative, in which real life personalities generate the same thrill of the unknown as fictional plot lines. Suffice it to say, I left feeling lusciously confused – who was I in the end laughing at or with? In the face of Banksy's teasingly ironic vision, no one is left unscathed. Not even us. Not even Banksy himself.

    James Gill Twitter @jg8608 More reviews at http://web.me.com/gilljames/Single_Admission
    8iller1234

    Fascinating

    Not that I felt the same thrill Thierry must have gotten while roaming the streets with street artists, I however admit to downloading the movie via torrent (yes its illegal), and so watched it in my own living room for anyone interested in the circumstances of the review.

    Viewers should be reminded that Exit Through the Gift Shop is a documentary rather than a movie, but at the same time plays out more like an adventure movie than an educational one about street artists. Albeit being more down to earth, a fitting comparison could be Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

    Thierry Guetta is our main character and camera guy at the same time. While lurking behind the camera he tells us his intriguing story when his life took a sudden and distinct turn. He had became known as "the guy with the camera" - developing some kind of compulsive disorder after his mother passed. His argument that everything should be recorded or else abruptly might get lost at any point in life seems reasonable but his thousands of tapes, that nobody would ever watch, piled up in his basement confirms the maladaptive nature of his behavior.

    His compulsive filming became a useful tool first when he met a street artist that he began to follow - filming every event of the artists creative process. He sank deeper and deeper into the world of street artists and that became sort of an addiction to Thierry. He seemed to almost forget about his wife and kids. Exit Through the Gift Shop tells us as much about street artisting as it does about Thierry himself. Despite being, as he himself points out, "a ghost behind the camera", his character truly steals the show. This is by no means a problem but rather enrich the story with a greater purpose. Thierrys meeting with Banksy and the following episodes poses a lot of interesting questions about what art really is, what it means to humans, what talent is made of and even about complex group behavior.

    Despite being directed by a street artist and evidently put together from thousands of different tapes, Exit Through the Gift Shop is amazingly well directed. It doesn't feel hyped, it doesn't seem to lie or exaggerate the happenings and the fact that an interesting, motivated and special character gets to portrait everything from an outside view is fascinating to watch. My text is hardly enough to summarize it so the only tip i can give you is WATCH IT!

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      The film had its unofficial UK premiere in an abandoned rail tunnel underneath London's Waterloo station, an area devoted to graffiti and street art. Tickets for this sold out in a minute. A red carpet was spraypainted on the ground especially for the occasion, while spectators were all presented with tins of spray paint as they left the screening.
    • Quotes

      Banksy: Warhol repeated iconic images until they became meaningless, but there was still something iconic about them. Thierry really makes them meaningless.

    • Crazy credits
      At the end says "No elephants were harmed during the making of this movie" referring to Banksy's US expo.
    • Connections
      Featured in Siskel & Ebert: The Losers/The Back-Up Plan/You Don't Know Jack/Oceans/Exit Through the Gift Shop/Death at a Funeral (2010)
    • Soundtracks
      Tonight the Streets Are Ours
      Written by Richard Hawley

      Performed by Richard Hawley

      Published by Universal Music Publ. MGB Ltd.

      Licensed courtesy of Mute Records Ltd

      Taken from the album "Lady's Bridge"

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    FAQ16

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • May 14, 2010 (United States)
    • Countries of origin
      • United Kingdom
      • France
    • Official sites
      • Official Facebook (Germany)
      • Official Facebook (France)
    • Languages
      • English
      • French
    • Also known as
      • Nghệ Thuật Đường Phố
    • Filming locations
      • Disneyland Park, Disneyland Resort - 1600 S. Disneyland Drive, Anaheim, California, USA
    • Production companies
      • Paranoid Pictures
      • Publikro London
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $3,291,250
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $170,756
      • Apr 18, 2010
    • Gross worldwide
      • $5,409,178
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 27 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Dolby Digital
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.78 : 1

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