Available on DVD: “Tabloid”

Joyce McKinney in the 1970s as she appears in Tabloid

Errol Morris turns away from his usual preoccupation with life-and-death subjects to take up the case of an eccentric beauty who became a tabloid sensation a generation ago. Now in her 60s, Joyce McKinney tells her story to the camera — talking directly to the audience, in a technique Morris pioneered. Along the way, journalists, acquaintances and friends fill in details that McKinney either forgot or chose not to remember.

In the late 1970s, McKinney became famous for kidnapping her ex-boyfriend, a Mormon missionary, tying him to a bed and forcing him to have sex with her. McKinney insists, and has insisted for more than 30 years, that the sex was consensual. But the young man eventually filed charges. To this day, no one but the participants know for sure what happened, though McKinney makes a persuasive case for her version of events.

Morris is a storyteller of the highest order, and within seconds, he draws us into his subject, doling out details, making us wonder what will happen next and dropping bombs for maximum impact. At one point, a British journalist describes McKinney as a nice, engaging woman, despite being "barking mad." That's as accurate a description as any.

The movie deals with truth and memory, with the lasting effect of media stardom, with what happens when the cameras go away, and with the outsize attention an unusual person can command in an era of mass communication. There may even be a moral lesson here: Two journalists appear onscreen, one responsible, the other a photographer for a go-for-the-throat tabloid. The one from the tabloid is still chortling over the damage he did so long ago, but the laugh is uneasy, with a touch of embarrassment. As the News of the World scandal reminds us, there is no way to look back with pride on a thing like this — to have spent one's life searching for ways to expose and humiliate people.

Better to have integrity, better even to be an authentic nut, than to be an inauthentic parasite.