When The Truman Show opened in theaters on this date, June 5, 1998, it was long anticipated for its novel premise. Jim Carrey plays Truman Burbank, a 30-year-old insurance salesman who lives in the picturesque town of Seahaven. But he’s unaware that everything around him is a fake. Or “manufactured” would be the appropriate term. He’s the center of a TV show broadcast 24/7 in which everyone, including his wife, Meryl (Laura Linney), and best friend, Marlon (Noah Emmerich), are actually actors. ‘
Reality TV was just taking off during the 1990s. It helped that the O.J. Simpson murder trial had become a staple of daytime TV during the mid-1990s that people saw it more as a TV show. The Real World had just premiered in the early 1990s on MTV. And while the show was featuring a group of 20-somethings mostly living in a big house in some city, the fact they weren’t actors drew people in. Looking back, there wasn’t really anything good about the TV show as most of the situations were being decided by producers, which would become a staple of almost all reality TV in the 2000s.
This concept wasn’t new. In the 1970s, there was An American Family in which a film crew followed the Loud family exposing the patriarch’s adultery and featuring one of the first openly gay characters on TV. Albert Brooks would later parody this in Real Life and Robert Altman and Garry Trudeau collaborated on the brilliant Tanner ’88, a show on HBO detailing the fictional story of a former Michigan Democratic Congressman running for President. It was actually filmed during the 1988 Presidential campaign. By casting character actors, Altman shooting on video was able to catch Bob Dole and Pat Robinson, and others, off-guard. I don’t doubt that one person mispronouncing Michael Dukakis’ last name wasn’t scripted.
Unsolved Mysteries was also casting the real people in the re-enactments the best they could. People lined up outside The Today Show in hopes of getting on camera. Several people from my high school did it when they went to New York City, even though they had to get up very early for their place. Everyone wants the 15 minutes of fame Andy Warhol said we’d have, even if they claim they don’t.
But Truman is a person who’s popular for being popular. While it take some suspension of disbelief that a person could live 30 years without realizing certain things, to run so smoothly, the production would rival the Avatar sequel. With every extra having an earpiece and being on set at any given time, it would cost a lot regardless of product placement. Set in an alternative world quite possibly in the near future, it’s an examination of our own culture.
Truman seems to live the perfect life. But unfortunately, he’s faced trauma and feelings of depression. To keep Truman from wanting to venture past Seahaven, the network killed his father, Kirk (Brian Delate), in a boating accident. But there’s problems in Seahaven as Walter Moore, the actor playing Kirk, has snuck back on set making Truman suspicious that his father is still alive. However, Alanis Montclair (Holland Taylor), the actress playing his mother, assures Truman that his father died at sea and he probably saw someone who looked like him.
Truman also still pines for Sylvia (Natascha McElhone), playing Lauren, a young woman Truman met in college who he was more smitten over. Sylvia/Lauren was escorted off the show when the producers didn’t want her to have more to do with Truman with someone pretending to be her father saying they were moving to Fiji. The production wanted Truman to be with Meryl, being played by actress Hannah Gill. Sylvia also still harbors feelings for Truman as well and runs or works with an organization hoping to cancel the show and free Truman.
Ironically, even though Truman was adopted by a corporation as a child, once he turned 18, he would be legally an adult and could do or go anywhere he pleases. It’s quite possible the network and producers have a legal team working overtime day and night to agree that since Truman isn’t in any immediate danger or severe risk, he’s not being held against his will. His TV show has many avid viewers (in a restaurant, a parking garage and even someone who likes to take long baths) who we see several times watching the show and discussing it.
The movie poster implies a crowd of thousands has turned out to watch the show in a metropolitan area. This movie poster was produced prior to the airing of the final Seinfeld episode in which people crowded Time Square in NYC to watch. Shortly after the movie came out, Survivor and Big Brother became popular. Then in the 2000s, YouTube started and now we have social media where anyone can be a celebrity.
Yet the irony is that Truman’s fame does raise some questions about whether it’s right or not. With people having a camera on their smart phone and at least one social media account, they can take a pic or video of something and post it. Or a social media post can be shared and cause fame or infamy. I don’t think Sylvia signed up for the role of Lauren hoping to expose Truman to the truth, but over time, she saw what was happening and how wrong it was, especially with how they were trying to push Meryl on her.
While Sylvia loves Truman and cares for him, I doubt Hannah does. Linney said that she created a back story for her character as Hannah is a former child actress who wasn’t as successful. One of the opening scenes involves Hannah telling an interview crew that the show is her job. Truman is being forced to impregnate Hannah/Meryl but this also raises the question of whether it’s sex or rape. Viewers debate on whether the network will actually air any sex but say they use the same tropes TV shows and PG and PG-13 movies use to take the camera away from the action. If they portray Truman having sex without his consent, isn’t it illegal?
It’s possible the network and producers have encouraged a more family friendly atmosphere on the show. Hardly anyone ever swears or curses. I feel that the show led by the creator Christof (Ed Harris) is using this old-timey feel to entice more viewers. The Truman Show itself is rated PG with only mild language. Writer Andrew Nicol and director Peter Weir know what they’re doing by giving an audience this Leave it to Beaver/Andy Griffith Show world. Nicol is from New Zealand and Weir is from Australia. Both know middle Americans have this false memory of the 1950s era which Seahaven is stuck in this false world.
However, at the same time, it gives the movie a Twilight Zone style vibe. The travel agency has billboards and posters showing the dangers of traveling to foreign lands or even flying on an airplane. It’s almost like the radio is talking back to Truman and even the host introducing a fictional movie is encouraging Truman not to venture past Seahaven. The newspaper prints headlines it’s the best town to live. But soon, Truman begins to notice cracks in the system. A studio light fails nearby. The rain machine malfunctions. And he begins to notice the towns people who are supposed to be extras all follow a pattern.
In many ways, the movie is an allegory about the dangers of excessive parenting. Even though Truman thinks Kirk is his father, his true father is Christof. During several scenes along with Harris’ acting, we see that Christof has this kinship with Truman who he’s never met or maybe did when he was a baby. And like too many parents, they think they know the best for their children but cause more damage than help. There’s no telling the psychological damage.
But like a lot of parents, Christof thinks he knows best who Truman should be in a relationship with. And most parents demand their kids go to the same colleges and universities they went to. I’m sure every high schooler in America who lives within a 15-minute radius of a college has heard their parents suggest going there. There was a community college in nearby Dalton, Ga. where my parents suggest I go just to get my core curriculum out of the way, but there was no way.
Harris was hired late in production as Dennis Hopper had reportedly been let go after Weir realized he wasn’t the right actor. Harris said he never met Carrey during production which is a good thing. Christof like the viewers has an admiration for Truman but doesn’t even talk to him until the end. The hardest job goes to Linney, who is a good actress playing a bad actress. She must’ve known going into the job that she would get bad reviews for her role, but it’s very ingenious. She’s awful in every scene she’s in and says the wrong thing or says it at the wrong time, famously plugging a coffee at the most inappropriate time through some forced smile.
Carrey himself shows he’s got the chops to take on more serious roles. There was some controversy over Carrey not getting an Oscar nomination even though he won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama. Carrey holds back some of his usual schtick. The scenes between him and Sylvia are the most sincere. When he finds out that he’s on a set, when his ship crashes into the scenery, there’s a slight hesitation as he reaches out to touch the set to see if it’s real or not. It’s more telling than any speech or monologue could do.
But the story also has special meaning about overcoming your views. Truman overcomes his fear of the ocean and he discovers there’s a better life for him as he wants to track down Sylvia. Too often, people get stuck in jobs or relationships out of fear they can’t do better. At the end, Hannah/Meryl has left the show and while Christof wants to introduce a new love interest, it doesn’t work. As Truman leaves the show walking out a stage door while delivering his trademark line, people are in support of it whereas they were the same reason for its success.
Years after its release, the show was used for the Truman Show Delusion, a psychological syndrome found in people diagnosed with schizophrenia that they are in a TV show and everything is staged. The late 1990s saw the release of three other sci-fi movies (The Matrix, The Thirteeth Floor and eXistenZ) with characters in false realities. There was also the sci-fi horror movie Dark City in which aliens experiment on humans giving them false memories when they sleep.
Now we have movies like Don’t Worry Darling and Free Guy which are set in false realties that the “It’s all a simulation” has become the 21st Century equivalent of the “It was all a dream” trope. Even worse, in the real world, people have accused victims of mass shootings at Sandy Hook and the Boston Marathon bombing of being “crisis actors.” And for years, people have questions what really happened on 9/11 and currently saying that Jan. 6, 2021 was a peaceful protest with government agents as the main aggressors.
But now we live in a world where people record themselves doing simple things like eating food or shopping because it can “influence” products or items online. I laughed years ago when Pepsi ran a commercial of Sean Combs getting a ride in a delivery truck to a red carpet event only to have other celebrities getting their own delivery trucks to drive. No one really started driving Humvees and Hummers until Arnold Schwarzenegger did. Clark Gable baring his chest in It Happened One Night caused T-shirts to become popular. Burt Reynolds drove a Trans-Am as the Bandit and people had to have them.
As we entered into the world of deep fakes, revenge porn with celebrity faces and artificial intelligence software creating realistic pics and videos, it makes us wonder if Truman Show just a satire or a warning?
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 