3/21/22 – After watching her dad paint, 4-year-old Marla Olmstead decides she’d like to be a painter too. Showing remarkable facility, she’s soon got paintings hanging in a local coffee shop and a handful of interested buyers. A local paper picks up the story, followed by the New York Times, and overnight Marla is hailed as a child prodigy. But not everybody is convinced that Marla painted the works alone. In the wake of a “60 Minutes” piece about her, it begins to look more and more like she had help.
Q-tips & visiting adult kids say: Interesting movie but My Kid Could Paint That gets people thinking and talking. Marla’s story is a sobering illustration of the way children can be exploited by adults who should know better journalists, filmmakers and especially their own parents.