Once again Joyce McKinney takes the stage

“[Filmmaker Errol Morris] came across a newspaper story…  about a woman named Joyce McKinney who had traveled to South Korea [in 2008] in order to clone her dead dog…..  It didn’t take him long to establish that McKinney…  had enjoyed an even stranger brush with fame as a tabloid sensation [in 1977] after being accused of kidnapping and raping the man she planned to marry. When McKinney told Morris her story in a marathon interview, and it emerged that she saw herself as a lovesick girl who had tried to save her sweetheart from the Mormon church, Morris knew that he had a new movie [“Tabloid”] on his hands.”

— The Boston Globe (June 11)

If Scott Fitzgerald had known Joyce McKinney, a Newland native and UNC Charlotte alumna, he might have thought twice before proclaiming, “There are no second acts in American lives.”

“Tabloid” hasn’t opened yet, but McKinney’s first and second acts are well documented.