Tabloid

Bringing some much-needed kinky sex and religious cults into your Friday, here’s the trailer for Errol Morris’ Tabloid, the documentarian’s move away from the political stories that have dominated his output of late toward something far kookier. It’s the story of Joyce McKinney, best known as the center of the 1977 British tabloid sensation “The Manacled Mormon” for her alleged kidnapping of her boyfriend, and the weekend she spent deprogramming all the piety out of him with lots and lots of sex that may or may not have involved leg-shackles. Our own Scott Tobias and Noel Murray both saw Tabloid at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival and deemed it a “crazily entertaining” and unpredictable look at the way the media can distort the truth and even influence its subjects. But judging by the preview, even those who aren’t really interested in a treatise on tabloid culture should find something to like about this: As one of Morris’ talking heads summarizes, “Kinky sex, religion, a beauty queen, Mormon missionaries, kidnapped at gunpoint. There was something in that story for everyone.”