Life Remote Control Banksy Will Never Again Help
The Carpetbagger
New Doubts for a Film That Has Truth Issues
When "Go out Through the Souvenir Shop," the artistic conundrum of a documentary wrapped around the street creative person Banksy, opened last yr, it spawned more than a few critical essays' worth of thorny, postmodern questions. Was it a hoax staged by an internationally known cultural prankster or a wry commentary on an overblown art globe? Was its putative star, an extravagantly mutton-chopped Frenchman named Thierry Guetta, as crazy every bit he seemed, or just crazy similar a mutton-chopped play a trick on? Or — await a infinitesimal, was he Banksy? Fifty-fifty as the film has avant-garde to the documentary shortlist for the Academy Awards, audiences and critics continue to argue whether information technology'southward authentic, or a commentary on authenticity, or both. Or neither.
Joachim Levy had another question: Where's my credit?
Mr. Levy, a Swiss filmmaker and editor at present living in Zurich, worked with Mr. Guetta every bit an editor and producer on "Life Remote Command," a film about the globe of street art and other bits of scenesterism. Information technology had appearances by indie luminaries like the artist Shepard Fairey and Dov Charney, the chief executive of American Dress. Screened in 2006 and featuring a proudly frenetic editing style, it received attention from street culture magazines and, according to Mr. Levy, executives at MTV. "No 1 can pull the wool over your optics if they're going in two unlike directions at once" was a tag line.
Just when Banksy, some other of the film'southward subjects, got agree of "Life Remote Control," he pronounced it unwatchable and took over the camera himself. A few minutes of "Life Remote Control" and some footage from Mr. Guetta and Mr. Levy appear in "Go out Through the Gift Shop," which subsequently became the story of how Mr. Guetta was transformed, with Banksy's prodding, from a chronicler of street art into an artist himself, with his cut-and-paste works that at present command tens of thousands of dollars. "Life Remote Command" also appears equally an actress feature on the recently released DVD of "Exit Through the Gift Shop," but Mr. Levy'due south name does non plow upward in the credits.
Now he has emerged to claim what he feels is rightly his. "I would like very much to be credited for the moving picture, for my piece of work," Mr. Levy, 34, said in a telephone interview this week. He praised Banksy as an artist but said he felt taken advantage of.
"I experience information technology was — how do you say? — if y'all write a 200-page book, and someone takes 50 pages of your book and just puts information technology somewhere else, and they don't even credit you, they don't even inquire your permission," he said. Not merely did Banksy ignore his existence, he said, he took his footage out of context.
"Street art is free, it'southward for everyone, and y'all tin become and put a graffiti on someone else's graffiti," Mr. Levy said. "It'due south kind of street law. Simply you tin can't apply street fine art police to films, and just say, hey, permit's do what always we want."
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Unfortunately for him Mr. Levy said he had no contract with Mr. Guetta, who owned the "Life Remote Control" footage and licensed it to Banksy. Mr. Levy'due south recourse might then exist with Mr. Guetta, non with Banksy — whose work, incidentally, sells for millions of dollars, not tens of thousands.
Mr. Guetta, who lives in Los Angeles, where his nom de rue is Mr. Brainwash, turns out to be fifty-fifty more of a slippery graphic symbol than Banksy. People shut to the product of "Exit Through the Souvenir Shop," who did not want to exist named for fear of offending Banksy, said that Mr. Guetta never mentioned Mr. Levy'due south efforts (even though Mr. Levy said Banksy worked with them).
Of form people popping out of the woodwork claiming ownership is practically de rigueur when a work of art becomes successful. Endless lawsuits take been filed — and dismissed or settled — over intellectual holding, script ideas and the like. For all the jokes near the name "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire," at to the lowest degree the title forestalled whatsoever copyright claims.
For a movie that, doubters or non, purports to be a documentary, fifty-fifty the proposition of subterfuge can exist damning. "The film's power comes from the fact it'due south all 100 per centum true," Banksy said in a contempo interview — conducted, as all of his are, by e-postal service — with the blog All These Wonderful Things. "This is from the front line, this is watching an art class self-combust in front of you. Told by the people involved. In real time. This is a very real film well-nigh what it means to 'go on it existent.' "
To that cease, and perhaps to win over Academy voters, Banksy's usually under-the-radar production squad has been decorated describing their work in lengthy interviews. And they are responding to Mr. Levy's claims without their usual dose of levity.
"We have recently been approached by Joachim Levy over credit rights to his contribution on Thierry Guetta's film 'Life Remote Command,' " the producers of "Exit" said in a statement released through Banksy's publicist. "As this has only been brought to our attention, we are currently gathering the facts about Mr. Levy's role past talking to all those involved in the making of 'Life Remote Control,' and we promise that this state of affairs will exist resolved soon."
Whether or non Mr. Levy gets credit, his assertions may assist convince people that Banksy'due south pic is legitimate. "I know what he did with Thierry," Mr. Levy said. "He turned him into a living art piece. It's non a hoax, definitely not."
Many of the questions raised could be resolved with a simple phone call to Banksy's most malleable cosmos. But as usual, Mr. Brainwash did non respond to requests for comment.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/movies/awardsseason/06bagger.html
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