Exit Through the Gift Shop
Thierry Guetta is a French immigrant living in Los Angeles, making a living for his family by running a vintage clothing shop. He also has a strange obsession of carrying a camera anywhere he goes, constantly filming his surroundings. On a holiday in France, he discovers his cousin is none other than Space Invader, an internationally known street artist. Thierry finds this fascinating, and accompanies Invader and his friends (among others, Monsieur André and Zeus) to his nocturnal ventures, perpetually documenting their activities. A few months later, Invader visits Thierry in LA, and arranges a meeting with Shepard Fairey. Thierry makes acquaintance of Fairey, and continues filming him putting up art, even after Invader has left home to France. While Fairey is confused by Thierry's enthusiasm, Thierry states that he wishes to make a complete documentary about street art, and the two traverse the entire United States, shooting one-of-a-kind footage of other famous artists at work, including Seizer, Neck Face, Sweet Toof, Cyclops, Ron English, Dotmasters, Swoon, Borf and Buffmonster. Thierry, however, has no intention in compiling his footage to an actual film - he admits that his constant archiving of his surroundings is a method of preserving memories, after he lost his mother at the age of 12.
During his filming, he continues to hear more about Banksy - a prominent and secretive artist who he hasn't caught on tape yet. His attempts to find contact to Banksy fail, until one day Banksy visits LA, but his accomplice gets turned back at immigration - stuck in LA without a guide, Banksy contacts Fairey, who calls Thierry. Thierry becomes Banksy's guide in LA, later following him back to England, winning the privilege to film Banksy on his home turf - a feat that confuses Banksy's crew. Banksy, however, sees the opportunity of having street art (something he admits to have a "short life span") documented, and after Thierry aids him in recording both production, deployment and crowd reactions of his "Murdered Phone-box" piece, he asks Thierry to film the preparations of his "Barely Legal" show, and admits to becoming friends with Thierry, as Thierry provides him a relief from his anonymity. Returning to LA, Thierry becomes bored, and eventually ends up producing his own stickers and decals and putting them up in the city.
Banksy's show is being prepared in Skid Row, Los Angeles, and while in LA, Banksy has the idea of deploying a Guantanamo Bay detainee doll in Disneyland. He visits the location and places the doll while Thierry continues filming. A few minutes later, however, the rides stop, and the park's security system catches on to Thierry, and he's taken to an interrogation room, while Banksy switches clothes and blends into the crowd. During interrogation, Thierry refuses to admit any wrongdoing, and when allowed a phonecall, covertly tips Banksy off his situation, who immediately leaves the park. When forced by the security, he quickly destroys the evidence in his camera, but stashes the videotape in his sock and is eventually let go, much to the amazement of Banksy.
A few days later, "Barely Legal" opens, and the show becomes an overnight mainstream success - street art prices begin to rocket in auction houses. Banksy is both surprised and disillusioned by the sudden hype surrounding street art, and urges Thierry to finish his supposed documentary, but discovers that while Thierry has been filming, after filming he just dumped his tapes (often unlabeled) into plastic boxes without the intention to ever watch them again. Prompted by Banksy's pressure, Thierry begins to edit together the several thousand hours of footage, and produces a film called "Life Remote Control": 90 minutes of distorted fast cutting about seemingly random themes. Banksy deems it "unwatchable", but realizes that the street art footage itself is valuable, and decides to have a shot at a film himself. To make sure that Thierry remains occupied, Banksy suggests him to make his own artshow.
Thierry happily accepts the assignment, adopting the moniker "Mr. Brainwash" , putting up street art in the city and 6 months later, re-mortgaging his business to be able to afford renting copious amount of equipment and a complete production team to create pieces of art under his supervision. He rents out a former CBS studio to prepare his first show, "Life Is Beautiful", and scales up his production to a much larger proportion than Banksy initially suggested, but with little focus. After Thierry breaks his foot after falling off a ladder, Banksy catches news of the possible trainwreck the show might end up in, and sends a few professionals to help Thierry out. While the producers take care of the practical side of the show, Thierry spends his time hyping up the show, asking support from both Fairey and Banksy, eventually taping up huge billboards with their quotes, and ultimately ending up on the cover of L. A. Weekly. While the show starts to shape up, it's still far from being complete, yet Thierry spends his time hyping up and marketing his work for tens of thousands of dollars. Eight hours before the show opening, paintings are still missing from the walls, and everyone is working around the clock, but since Thierry is busy giving interviews, the eventual layout of the show is decided by the crew itself.
Despite all this, however, the show becomes a raging success with the crowd, and after the first week of the show, Thierry sells almost a million dollars worth of art, with his pieces of art spreading in galleries all around the world, much to the utter confusion of both Fairey and Banksy. In an ending montage, Thierry insists that time will tell whether he's a real artist or not.
