You should know up front that this isn’t a movie about Banksy. It is, however, a film about street art, and more specifically, about an enigmatic/hipster French clothing store owner in LA named Thierry Guetta. Some folks may know him as the artist Mr. Brain Wash, a very successful commercial street artist. But this predates Mr. Brain Wash, and goes back to the late 1990s, when Thierry was merely a man obsessed with capturing his entire life on video - odd, I know. But, as it turned out, his cousin was an up-and-coming street artist called Space Invader, who worked nights in France and LA, decorating the town with cute little pixel aliens...haha. So, upon spending time with Space Invader, Thierry became obsessed with street artists, eventually meeting up with the likes of Shepard Fairey and others, eventually even Banksy. So thennn, what started as a seemingly pointless endeavor for Thierry soon became something much more important: that for the first time, someone was capturing the masters of street art including in their element, operating in a legal gray area and peppering major cities with often beautiful works of art. After years of filming, Thierry put together a film to show Banksy as one of his biggest fans. In a word, it was atrocious (clearly Thierry wasn't a filmmaker no matter how hard he tried). So instead of letting that be the authoritative work on street art, Banksy decided to take Thierry’s tape and turn it into Exit Through the Gift Shop.
Go check it out!! Here's the UK trailer below:
