Exit through the Gift Shop (2010)

Bansky – Director

Banksy, Thierry Guetta, Space Invader, Shepard Fairey

If you are like me, then pretty much everything you watch makes you want to utterly throw down your current preoccupations and become… a doctor! An FBI criminal investigator! A down on his luck sandwich shop owner! Ultimately though, the moment of hysterical enthusiasm passes, you realize that embarking on a multi-year, costly expedition to become a real life Secret Agent might not be in the cards, and you return to the daily march of your job, your relationship, your life, content to watch well paid actors live those lives for you. However, if you are like Thierry Guetta, your moment of hysterical enthusiasm does not pass. In fact it never passes, rather snowballing into a perpetual fantasy world of stardom and the endless pursuit of passion and art.

Exit through the Gift Shop is a purported narrative of the world of Street Art, a growing counterculture movement of guerilla artists who make the streets both their canvas and their subject. Drawing from pop culture, political and international events, and a generally stark look at reality, these artists entrance the public by bombarding them with bizarre, sometimes unintelligible images. What it is in reality, is the tale of a, eccentric would be Street Art documentarian who just can’t seem to keep his attention centered. Flitting from an obsession to filming his life running an LA clothing store, to an obsession with meeting and filming street artists in their habitat to an obsession with becoming one himself, Thierry records it all in boxes and boxes of raw tape.

Though filmed almost in its entirety by Guetta, it took internationally renowned (and also ironically completely unknown) street artist, Bansky, to turn it into the finished product you see today. Interspersed with interviews with Bansky, Shepard Fairey (the paintbrush behind the iconic Obama “Hope” posters), and Guetta himself, the film leads you through the secretive world of this urban art form, all behind the lens of perhaps the least secretive street artist in the world. Whether intentionally or not, Guetta manages to utterly commercialize and, in doing so, perhaps bastardize an art form meant initially to be a completely uncommercial, subversive satire. 

Exit is a thoroughly hilarious, wild romp, exposing the very insides of the movement: both its serious, activism side, as well as the often hilarious characters and situations behind it. That a complete nobody French shopkeeper should manage to film some of the most famous faces in the business, is a true testament to Guetta’s sheer passion and, yea let’s admit it, lunacy. Absolutely not one to miss, Exit through the Gift Shop will give you a look at the most hipster art out there and how no one can really take themselves that seriously…even if they want to.