Film Reviews
Who The #$&% is Jackson Pollock? (2006)
When 73 year-old Teri Horton retired as a truck driver she supplemented her social security income by digging through dumpsters and scouring thrift shops. One day she bought a painting at Dot's Spot Thrift in San Bernadino to cheer up a friend who was depressed. The painting was too big for her friend's trailer, so they displayed it at a garage sale where a local art teacher suggested that it might be a Jackson Pollock original. This is not a great movie but it sure is a great story, and I will only say that the documentary does a nice job of pitting four factions against each other—the anal and insular world of self-important art snobs, forensic scientists who analyze finger prints and paint samples, the several folks who try to help Horton prove her case, and the recalcitrant Horton, who after paying for the painting rejected a million offer. Horton has appeared on Letterman, Leno, Montel Williams, and Sixty Minutes. She swears she will burn the painting before selling it for less than the million an authentic Pollock would bring. Somehow you get the impression that this trash-talking trucker might not be kidding.
