The documentary film Wrinkles the Clown is perhaps the most explicitly revealing piece of media to come out of the recent wave of widespread cultural coulrophobia. It started with the ominously strange spate of global clown sightings in 2016, which very well may have helped It become one of the most financially successful horror franchises in history. Wrinkles, however, attempts to both elaborate on this sociological phenomenon and seize an opportunity to create more of a mystery. The film ultimately leaves the identity and purpose of its titular focus ambiguous, but there is more information to expose further details about the enigma.
Wrinkles the Clown follows the career of a man who chooses to dress in an unsettlingly decrepit clown costume in order to scare unsuspecting people, as well as make the occasional odd birthday party appearance. The performer attracted attention in 2015 after a viral YouTube video showed him creepily climbing out from underneath a child’s bed. As stickers bearing the face and phone number of Wrinkles started to appear across Florida, the clown became a bit of a cultural icon and urban legend within the state, especially within Naples.
The documentary claims to shed light on the strange happenings but ends up making the story even more mysterious and confusing. The crew follows a 65-year old man who lives in a van and frequents strip clubs and fishing holes, claiming to use the alter ego as a way to raise money and spark excitement in hits retirement years. However, it is revealed that the man in question is, in fact, not the real Wrinkles, but merely an actor hired by a performance artist whose real identity is still unknown.
Wrinkles the Clown Has More Backstory
The Wrinkles the Clown documentary has come under scrutiny for perpetuating the idea that there is definitely a masked clown for hire in the Naples, Florida area. The truth is murkier than that, with conflicting reports obscuring the reality of the Wrinkles saga. What is clear that, as national news outlets reported on the phenomenon, the local Naples Daily News uncovered evidence that pointed to the identity of Wrinkles the Clown as filmmaker Cary Longchamps, who gained the daily paper’s attention when he attempted to fund his documentary project through a Kickstarter campaign.
The Daily News pointed out that one of the early videos featuring a Wrinkles scare was filmed in front of Longchamps’ apartment. The report also uncovered a photograph of Longchamps attending a local community event in a clown costume that looks suspiciously like the one Wrinkles wears. The Kickstarter campaign was ultimately a failure, but Wrinkles nevertheless still got to be the star of his own documentary when director Michael Beach Nichols reached out to Longchamps.
So has the mystery of the unidentified performance artist in Wrinkles the Clown been solved? It’s still tough to say. Nichols himself has stated that the film is more of an exploration of the legacy and cultural impact of Wrinkles than it is about the clown himself, implying that it doesn’t even matter who the man behind the mask is. Through Longchamps, Nichols did have access to over a million voicemails and texts from people trying to get into contact with Wrinkles, evidence that the legend is alive and well regardless of Wrinkles’ true identity. People seem to believe in the idea Wrinkles, regardless of whether his antics were staged or not. In the end, perhaps that is the genuine mark of a horror icon.