James Charisma
Vulture.com
Vulture.com
It may have been Descartes who first asked how we can trust that the world actually exists and that we’re not just being deceived by some evil genius. But it was writer Andrew Niccol who answered that question, in 1998’s The Truman Show: We don’t. And worse yet, that evil genius could work in television.
“We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented,” explains Christof (Ed Harris), the director of the show-within-the-movie of The Truman Show. Two decades since Jim Carrey’s dramatic turn playing the oblivious main character in a reality show fabricated around his life, The Truman Show continues to act as a digital-age Nostradamus. Critics described the film like a big-budget episode of The Twilight Zone when it premiered 20 years ago this week, but Truman garnered acclaim for the thoughtful way it broached unsexy topics like metaphysics, Christianity, utopia, artificial reality, and the power of mass media. The film even gave rise to an informal medical syndrome: the Truman Show delusion, the sufferers of which believe their lives are staged shows or that they’re being watched on camera.
Tim Burton, Brian De Palma, Terry Gilliam, Barry Sonnenfeld, and Steven Spielberg were all originally considered as directors (Niccol was viewed as too green at the time), but it was Peter Weir who won the job, due in no small part to having found success nearly ten years prior with Dead Poets Society, another movie that cast a comedic actor (Robin Williams) in a serious role.
Niccol would ultimately create close to 30 drafts and rewrites of the script, while Weir scouted locations, oversaw the design of Truman’s world (Norman Rockwell and mid-century Sears, Roebuck catalogues played a big inspiration), and waited a year for Jim Carrey to finish work on The Cable Guy and Liar Liar. Instead of shooting on sound stages at Universal, Weir’s wife suggested the master-planned resort community of Seaside, Florida, with a pastel and picturesque look that lent itself to sitcoms of the 1950s.
In 2018, The Truman Show still feels as authentic as ever — probably even more so now than when it debuted, considering the subsequent rise of reality TV, social media, artificial reality, and “fake news.” How accurately has this movie predicted the future? Let us count the ways.
Read more
“We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented,” explains Christof (Ed Harris), the director of the show-within-the-movie of The Truman Show. Two decades since Jim Carrey’s dramatic turn playing the oblivious main character in a reality show fabricated around his life, The Truman Show continues to act as a digital-age Nostradamus. Critics described the film like a big-budget episode of The Twilight Zone when it premiered 20 years ago this week, but Truman garnered acclaim for the thoughtful way it broached unsexy topics like metaphysics, Christianity, utopia, artificial reality, and the power of mass media. The film even gave rise to an informal medical syndrome: the Truman Show delusion, the sufferers of which believe their lives are staged shows or that they’re being watched on camera.
Tim Burton, Brian De Palma, Terry Gilliam, Barry Sonnenfeld, and Steven Spielberg were all originally considered as directors (Niccol was viewed as too green at the time), but it was Peter Weir who won the job, due in no small part to having found success nearly ten years prior with Dead Poets Society, another movie that cast a comedic actor (Robin Williams) in a serious role.
Niccol would ultimately create close to 30 drafts and rewrites of the script, while Weir scouted locations, oversaw the design of Truman’s world (Norman Rockwell and mid-century Sears, Roebuck catalogues played a big inspiration), and waited a year for Jim Carrey to finish work on The Cable Guy and Liar Liar. Instead of shooting on sound stages at Universal, Weir’s wife suggested the master-planned resort community of Seaside, Florida, with a pastel and picturesque look that lent itself to sitcoms of the 1950s.
In 2018, The Truman Show still feels as authentic as ever — probably even more so now than when it debuted, considering the subsequent rise of reality TV, social media, artificial reality, and “fake news.” How accurately has this movie predicted the future? Let us count the ways.
Read more
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