My Kid Could Paint That

My Kid Could Paint That
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Amir Bar-Lev
Produced by	Amir Bar-Lev
Written by	Amir Bar-Lev
Starring	Amir Bar-Lev Anthony Brunelli Marla Olmstead
Music by	Rondo Brothers
Cinematography	Matt Boyd Nelson Hume Bill Turnley
Editing by	Michael Levine John W. Walter
Studio	Passion Pictures A&E IndieFilms
Distributed by	Sony Pictures Classics
Release date(s)	October 5, 2007
Running time	82 min
Country	United States United Kingdom
Language	English

My Kid Could Paint That is a 2007 documentary film by director Amir Bar-Lev (who also directed 2000's Fighter). The movie follows the early artistic career of Marla Olmstead, a young girl from Binghamton, NY who gains fame first as a child prodigy painter of abstract art, and then becomes the subject of controversy concerning whether she truly completed the paintings herself or did so with her parents' assistance and/or direction. The film was bought by Sony Pictures Classics in 2007 after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.

Taglines

• Inspiration or Manipulation? You Decide.
• American dream or art world scheme?

Summary

Marla's father, an amateur painter, describes how Marla watches him paint, wants to help, and is given her own canvas and supplies. A friend asks to hang Marla's pictures in his coffee shop and is surprised when people ask to buy them. A local newspaper reporter, Elizabeth Cohen, writes a piece about Marla, after first asking her parents if they really want her to do so. Cohen's story is picked up by the New York Times, and Marla becomes a media celebrity, with appearances on television and shows at galleries in New York and Los Angeles. Sales of her work earn over $300,000.

The tone of the documentary turns with a scene of Marla's parents watching a February 2005 report by CBS News' 60 Minutes II that questions whether Marla painted the works attributed to her. 60 Minutes enlisted the help of Ellen Winner, a child psychologist who studies cognition in the arts and gifted children. Seeing video images of some of the paintings attributed to Marla, Winner initially reacts positively, stating: "It's absolutely beautiful. You could slip it into the Museum of Modern Art and absolutely get away with it." The 60 Minutes reporter, Charlie Rose, then shows Winner what he describes as "50 minutes of videotape shot by us and by Marla's parents." After seeing this footage, Winner states: "This is eye-opening to me, to see her actually painting." Rose asks her how this is "eye-opening." Winner responds: "Because she's not doing anything that a normal child wouldn't do. She's just kind of slowly pushing the paint around."

Rose then states that after "our interview," the Olmsteads agreed to permit CBS crews to set up a hidden camera in their home to tape their daughter painting a single piece in five hours over the course of a month. When Winner reviewed the tapes, the psychologist said, "I saw no evidence that she was a child prodigy in painting. I saw a normal, charming, adorable child painting the way preschool children paint, except that she had a coach that kept her going." Winner also indicated that the painting created before CBS's hidden camera looked "less polished than some of Marla's previous works." Asked to explain the difference, Winner states: "I can only speculate. I don't see Marla as having made, or at least completed, the more polished looking paintings, because they look like a different painter. Either somebody else painted them start to finish, or somebody else doctored them up. Or, Marla just miraculously paints in a completely different way than we see on her home video."^[1]

Marla's parents film her creating a second work, Ocean, but Bar-Lev is not fully convinced. A couple are shown considering the purchase of Ocean. The woman complains that Ocean does not look like the other works by Marla. They buy it anyway. In a slide show, Bar-Lev compares Ocean with the 60 Minutes piece and then with several other works attributed to Marla. Viewers are left to make their own judgments.

The film also raises questions about the nature of art, especially abstract expressionism, the media's habit of building up the subject of a story and then tearing the subject down in its insatiable need to fill space; and the nature of the documentary process.

Reception

In his October 2007 review of Bar-Lev's film, Roger Ebert stated: "My own verdict as an outsider is, no, Marla didn't paint those works, although she may have applied some of the paint. In the last analysis, I guess it all reduces to taste and instinct. Some paintings are good, says me, or says you, and some are bad. Some paintings could be painted by a child, some couldn't be."^[2]

In his review of Bar-Lev's film, LA Weekly's art critic Doug Harvey reveals a different viewpoint. "The works created by Marla on camera are different from some of her canvasses, similar to others and better than many. Bar-Lev’s big reveal is a bust, and turns what could have been a compelling inquiry into the machinations of the art market and media into a tawdry embarrassment. Apart from the questionable ethics, it’s lousy art. In the final analysis, the filmmaker’s crisis of faith is unconvincing, except as one of a series of blatantly manipulative decisions that, despite the lack of any kind of empirical evidence, bolsters the most commercially viable story that can be milked from the situation — the one where Marla’s parents are supernaturally cunning con artists out to exploit the gullibility of the deluded collectors of essentially fraudulent modern art."^[3]

As of 22 May 2008, the online review compendium Rottentomatoes.com rated the film at 93% (69 of 74 reviews favorable).

Post-release events

As of March 2011, the Olmstead's website no longer shows the videos mentioned below. As of October 2007, the Olmstead's website displays videos of Marla working on three more canvases, "Fairy Map," "Rabbit," and "Colorful Rain." The videos employ the jump-cut technique, meaning that the scene (a shot of the canvas on which Marla paints) is generally continuous, but that the action stops and then starts again with the subject (Marla) having shifted position relative to the video frame. As of August 2008, the website depicts 49 canvases it says have been sold and 16 more available for sale, including two of the three works featured in the videos, "Rabbit," and "Colorful Rain."^[4]

Cultural references

• The song 'Strange Things Happening Every Day' performed by Sister Rosetta Tharpe plays during the opening credits
• The song 'When I Paint My Masterpiece' performed by Bob Dylan plays during the closing credits
• Shortly after the television premier of Marla Olmstead on 60 Minutes II, when Anthony Brunelli compares his own photorealist work to Marla's abstract paintings, he utters the documentary's catchphrase title "my kid could paint that".
• The documentary names abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock early in the film as a key reference point. One of Marla's paintings, featured on the DVD cover and in the documentary, is called "Ode to Pollock"
• The film uses footage of gifted children as examples of mature fascination with child prodigies, including footage of former child actress Shirley Temple in Polly Tix in Washington (1933).

See also

• F for Fake, a 1974 Orson Welles documentary which also raised questions about who gets to decide what is and is not art.

References

1. ^ New Questions About Child Prodigy from 60 Minutes II
2. ^ Roger Ebert's review of the film at rogerebert.suntimes.com
3. ^ Dough Harvey's review of the film at LA Weekly.com
4. ^ MarlaOlmstead.com

External links

• Movie official website
• My Kid Could Paint That at the Internet Movie Database
• My Kid Could Paint That at AllRovi
• My Kid Could Paint That at Rotten Tomatoes
• azine.com/fall2007/my_kid_paint.php interview with My Kid Could Paint That director Amir Bar-Lev at Filmmaker Magazine
• IONCINEMA.com interview with Amir Bar-Lev
• Marla Olmstead's website
• Academic review of My Kid Could Paint That