‘My Kid Could Paint That’ (2007)

From Imdb.com: "A look at the work and surprising success of a four-year-old girl whose paintings have been compared to the likes of Picasso and has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Marla Olmstead

Left: Marla Olmstead Right: Zane Olmstead

Left: Marla Olmstead Right: Laura Olmstead

The Painting Beautyface

Marla Olmstead

The Painting Ocean

Marla Olmstead

Marla Olmstead

The Painting Zane Dancing

Marla Olmstead

Left: Marla Olmstead Right: Zane Olmstead

The director says:

When I first approached Mark and Laura Olmstead about making a film about their daughter Marla,
they asked me a simple question: “Why would anyone agree to have a documentary made about
them?” Overnight, their lives had been turned upside down by the media, with news crews from
around the world descending on their hometown and jostling one another for a clear shot of their
four-year-old. One week of this had already exhausted them, so the thought of a total stranger
gaining access to their family life for a year or so was daunting. Their question stumped me. I knew
that I certainly would never let someone make a documentary about me. I remember grasping for a
response, something like, “I don’t know, I guess a documentary may get at a deeper truth that
these news crews might miss – something you might like Marla to have 20 years from now.” After
thinking about it for only a few minutes, Mark and Laura agreed to make the film.
From that moment, the Olmsteads treated me not as a journalist but as a friend. Part of the reason
for this was that I had a fun, playful “friendship” with Marla and her little brother Zane. From the
beginning, I quickly learned it was absurd trying to turn a four-year-old into a documentary subject.

I had initially expected that if I spent enough time with Marla, I would, at some point, be able to
document her genius. The reality was that once I got past Marla’s shyness, she was interested in
playing with me, not talking about art. Since I didn’t envision being a part of the film, this made
gathering even the most basic b-roll challenging. I would run circles around the Olmstead’s back
yard, hiding behind the cameraman, hoping that the kids would forget about me and I could shoot
the kind of idealized, “kids lost in their own reverie” footage I thought the film needed. Countless
shots were ruined by the kids “breaking the fourth wall” to ask me to play with them or intervene in
a dispute.

One theme I tried to get at in the film was the malleable nature of meaning – how one person can
look at a painting and see the work of a genius, and another can look at the same canvas and see
a mess. Similarly, when I first heard 60 Minutes II’s allegation that Marla wasn’t making the
paintings, all I could think of was that I had already filmed Marla painting several months earlier.
However, when I revisited the footage that I had remembered as showing Marla painting, I began
to wonder if my camera had captured something that my own eyes had seen but my brain
somehow hadn’t processed.

I began to weight the possibilities and my bewilderment only deepened. If Marla wasn’t doing the
paintings, why would Mark and Laura have allowed 60 Minutes to do a piece? Why would they
have invited me to make a documentary, especially given my “deeper truth” speech upon our
agreement? Marla had done one sub-par painting – what did that prove? Was it really conceivable
that Marla had been propped up in front of a bunch of paintings that she hadn’t done and hadn’t
ever said anything about it? And was it really possible that Mark could hide this from his wife? It
would mean that, mysteriously, every time a painting was completed, Laura was out of the house. I
had to conclude that the Olmsteads’ version of events was the most likely – or rather, in retrospect,
I chose to conclude that. It was far more comfortable than the other, darker scenarios.

When I first began shooting, there was a steady parade of news crews and cameramen wanting to
come in and shoot Marla painting. Laura laid down a rule: “No strangers in the house.” My
cameraman and I were exempt because Marla felt comfortable with us. But one year later, this
comfort level became a liability. Every time we tried to film Marla painting, she was distracted,
preferring to play with us or goof off. Laura and I agreed that I would replace my cameraman with
someone new who would not be introduced to the kids, and who would not interact with them nor
be warm or playful. I would stay in the car so that the kids wouldn’t know I was in town. In one year,
the situation had turned 180 degrees, from the Olmsteads not wanting anyone around their kids
who wouldn’t be warm, to keeping away anyone who would be warm – all in an attempt to gather
the footage of Marla being a genius that would exonerate them.

Toward the end of the film, Marla’s art dealer Anthony Brunelli says, “Everybody’s trying to shape
the story into something that they want it to be – and not letting the story be what it is.” I hope that
My Kid Could Paint that is, in part, an answer to this admonishment. Ultimately, I disagree with
Tony’s line. There is no story without a storyteller. As a journalist, I could no more “let the story be
what it is” than I could hover around Marla with a camera crew and somehow capture innocence
incarnate on videotape.

MICHAEL KIMMELMAN QUOTES FROM THE FILM
(THE NEW YORK TIMES CHIEF ART CRITIC):

“A case like Marla; because it touches on all sorts of deep rooted issues about whether modern art
is real or not, it has a kind of strange hypnotic appeal to it. So I wrote something that appeared to
me to be really about the complications of abstract art. Why people don’t seem to feel there’s really
some way of judging what’s good, what’s bad. There’s this large idea out there that abstract art and
modern art in general has no standards, no truths. And if a child could do it, it pulls the veil off this
con game, and shows you that somebody who’s four-years-old can do something that is not only
good, but as good as a famous artist who sells his pictures for millions of dollars That idea that art
is not really about some truth, but it’s about some lie being foisted on the public. There’s a
debunking quality to it. This seems genuine and honest. But abstract art and modern art in general
are a kind of racket, a put on.”

“If you take an artist like Pollock; everyone figured that this is the ultimate example of modern art
gone crazy. This guy dripping, splashing paint. Pollock basically invented a whole new way of
painting. And the photos of him dripping, splashing waling around these canvas’ made it look that
much more like he was not an artist. “If you put a paint brush in the hands of any animal that has
the ability to produce something, it will produce something like abstract art. It’s the ultimate joke,
that a chimp could do it, that an elephant could do it. It’s ridiculous.” “People just think you have to
be crazy to pay that amount for what looks to me like something anybody could do.”
“One of the fundamental problems that people have with art, because a lot of it used to be
transparently clear – it used to tell a story, that there’s some assumption that art has an obligation
to explain itself to you. And if it doesn’t then it’s the arts fault. But modernism wanted to tell a
variety of stories. Now it continues to tell stories – there’s all sorts of art. If we’re talking about
abstract paintings, there are still stories being told. They may be about the characters who made
these pictures, and that was the case with Pollock. He became this kind of mythic figure. Or in the
case of Marla, they make cases about some child. And that story captures people’s attention.
“The appeal of figure like Marla ties them to our bizarre obsession of child prodigies. This
fascination we have with the child who somehow exceeds all conceivable human expectations. If
they seem to be performing on an adult level, then it’s like a magic trick. There’s a spiritual level
which appeals to people. This idea of innocent creation. People could read all sorts of things into
her pictures. That there was some force at work, something larger than even Marla. This child’s
speaking almost as a medium. And her innocence also says something about the ultimate cynicism
of the art world. There’s a lot of art that’s been made, especially in the modern era, which is about
alienating its viewership. This idea of actually sticking it to the very people that are patronizing it.

Probably the worst thing you could say about an artist is that everything this artist does is joyous
and wonderful and open-hearted and simple and free. In certain circles this might sound like you’re
not serious. I think probably some of the appeal though to a large public of the Marla world is that it
seems pure innocent joy — no cynicism, no irony, no sarcasm, none of that stuff that goes along
with modern art. You know, no one is saying ‘fuck you’ in this picture. They’re just saying ‘I’m a
happy girl who loves painting.’”

“Cartier-Bresson used to say that photographing people was appalling — that it was some sort of
violation of them, that it was even barbaric. Because you were essentially stealing something from
them, you were imposing something on them. He sensed the inherent unfairness in this
transaction. All writers, all storytellers, are imposing their own narrative on something. All art in
some way is a lie: it looks like a picture of something, but it isn’t that thing, it’s a representation of
that thing. Your documentary on some level is going to be a lie; it’s your version of things. I’ll say
that right now if you’d like. Your documentary will be a lie; it’s how you’ve decided to tell a particular
story.”