Jeremy’s Tophunder №93: The Truman Show
Of all the movies on my list, The Truman Show might be the one that I liked the least upon first viewing. The reason for that? The movie came out in 1998 (I was nine), and it starred Jim Carrey (my favorite actor at the time). My ten favorite movies at the time were entirely populated by the Star Wars trilogy and movies starring Jim Carrey. So when I picked up The Truman Show from Video Plus or Video Smith or whatever other VHS-Rental outfit existed in Belmont, MA at the time, I was naturally expecting a gut-busting comedy to be the highlight of my weekend (along with getting to go over to a friend’s house to eat plain cheese pizza and play Mario Kart).
Whatever I was expecting, The Truman Show wasn’t it.
Like, it’s funny, but not ha-ha funny. I probably sat around thinking to myself, “when does this get good?” By my nine-year-old standards, it never got good. I was interested in a grand total of two things at the time: life-altering hysterical comedies, on par with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Dumb & Dumber, and high-energy action-adventure movies with as straightforward a plot as possible. You expect me to sit through an hour and forty minute exploration of meta-philosophical existentialism? Fuck that noise.
I just didn’t get it. But it wasn’t totally my fault. Again, I was nine.
Eventually, I got it.
It seems like with every passing year, The Truman Show becomes a more important movie. It seems like every few months, there’s a new person who pops up, deemed by society to be famous and/or noteworthy, for no clearly discernible reason. There’s a startling number of human beings that become incredibly wealthy and successful simply by being on television. Why are they on television? I’m not sure. Why is anyone watching? I’m not sure either. There’s the episode of Seinfeld where George is pitching the show to executives at NBC, describing it as “a show about nothing.” One of the executive asks, “well, why am I watching it?” to which George replies, “because it’s on TV.”
(Apologies in advance, this is kind of going to turn into a TED Talk.)
That’s what a shocking amount of TV is these days. People are watching TV because it’s on TV. “Reality” television is -substantially- further from reality than most scripted television is, and, while we’re here, we might as well also mention that most “reality” TV is just as scripted (or at the very least, staged and massaged) as fictional programming is. It’s embarrassing.
There was a point in my life that I watched Reality TV. I watched (and openly aspired to become a cast member on) The Real World and The Challenge. Why? Because I was an idiot. It was hours of my life wasted that I wish I could have back.
I’m not trying to say that reality TV is bad. (It is, but that’s not what I’m trying to say.) I’m trying to say that Reality TV is bad for humanity and shouldn’t exist. It provides nothing of value to society other than schadenfreude and (checks notes) oh wait that’s everything. If COVID-19 eventually leads to the total and irreparable collapse of human society, the one solace I’ll take throughout the duration is that Reality TV is gone, hopefully forever.
So what does this have to do with The Truman Show?
The Truman Show (had it ever really existed or should it ever actually exist) is light-years closer to being true Reality TV than whatever we call Reality TV is, and it’s still not even remotely close. It’s probably the closest we could get, and it’s still not close enough to matter. Our options are:
A) The subjects of the show know they’re on television. (Which defeats the purpose because everyone — literally everyone ever — will act differently if they know they’re being observed.)
B) The subjects of the show don’t know they’re on television. (Which creates an even wider range of moral and philosophical concerns.)
C) Some of the subjects know they’re on television, but some of them don’t. (Which creates a fake reality that borders on prison for everyone involved.)
None of these options seem satisfying.
And none of this is surprising, either. The idea of “Reality” TV was inevitable. As scripted TV made more and more of an effort to depict how life really was, obviously someone would come around and try to capture how life actually is. And once that apparatus existed, it was inevitable that producers would start to inject more non-real elements (to ensure that it would always be entertaining).
But every time I watch The Truman Show, I start to think about reality in general. What is reality? We can’t see it on TV or in the movies, we can only experience it for ourselves. And “reality” is different for everyone. People perceive social interactions differently. Flavors and smells and sounds hit people differently. No two people experience life in the same way. So why do we spend so much time trying to depict “real” reality?
In a weird way, The Truman Show feels authentic. Sure, Ed Harris as God/Producer of Truman’s life feels over the top at times (“He was born on live TV, why can’t he die on live TV?”), but there are absolutely people like him at the helm of reality TV shows, who feel like nothing is off-limits and they should be able to show anything they want to the audience. As Truman starts to act more erratically, the response of the producers seems very realistic — they do anything they can to keep Truman where he is. Anything to protect the brand and protect their revenue streams. Everyone involved, Truman included, acts like I would expect them to act in a real-life scenario where one guy is unwittingly the subject of the most popular TV show in the world.
Overall, it’s an incredibly well-acted movie. Carrey is great, Harris is great, Laura Linney is fantastic, and Natascha McElhone does great work in limited time. It’s a complex, yet simple idea for a movie, and it’s a tough needle to thread to make it seem realistic while also executing a not-very-realistic idea. Do I enjoy watching it? Among all of the movies on my list, it’s probably the one that I get the least enjoyment out of re-watching (or among a handful of those). From a technical standpoint, however, I have to appreciate the artistry. And it obviously provokes a lot of thoughts about life and reality and the world around us, and that’s a rabbit hole that I’m very willing to tumble down every now and then.
I watched it yesterday and had some of the same thoughts I always seem to have whenever I watch it or talk about it. What would it be like to be on a TV show and not realize it? Am I on TV right now without realizing it? What if all the weird, unexplainable stuff that has happened in my life (it’s not much, but a few things here and there) could be suddenly explained by a TV show that I’m not even aware that I’m on? Would it be comforting to know that things going wrong aren’t my fault? Or would it be terrifying to think that nothing I know is “real”?
In any event, The Truman Show remains one of the more thought-provoking movies I’ve ever seen (although somewhat strangely, not the most thought-provoking Jim Carrey movie that will appear in this space over the next 90-plus days — more on that later). I wouldn’t call it a “fun” movie to watch, but it makes me feel a certain way, and it does it rather viscerally. Art is supposed to make you feel something, and The Truman Show elicits a lot. For me, that’s enough for it to just barely sneak into the Top 100 at №93.
(For a refresher on the project, I introduced it in a Facebook Post on Day 1)
Here’s our progress on the list so far:
6. The Fugitive
17. Ocean’s 11
24. Apollo 13
47. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
93. The Truman Show
