Word: niccol
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...want to sing out, in one of Carrey's trademark siren wails. As dreamed up by screenwriter Andrew Niccol and realized to sunnily subversive perfection by director Peter Weir, The Truman Show is so verdant with metaphor and emotion that it works on any viewer's level. You will laugh. You will cry. You will be provoked to ask yourself why you feel this way. And for once in a blue moon of movies, you will think. Isn't that one of the best buzzes you can get leaving a multiplex...
...quibble with Weir's editing; the movie cops out on greatness with a few truckling reaction shots at the climax. And one can question Niccol's vision of the future of TV: not 500 channels nattering to niche markets but one big show binding the world in the bogus bliss of pink-cheeked Americana. And the idea of a program uninterrupted by commercials (Christof makes his money from product placement and ancillary markets) is nearly as naive as Truman. The show is also pretty tame. Unlike most daytime-drama characters, Truman is a faithful husband who has no evil twin...
...Niccol, a young New Zealander, wrote the script in 1993, and wrote and directed last year's swank science fable Gattaca, which has much the same story (in the near future, one human man is surrounded by handsome humanoids). Niccol says the only source material he needed for The Truman Show was his own paranoia. "I often felt people were lying to me," he declares. But as the '90s devolved into media spectacles of Bronco chases, freeway suicides and Jerry Springer grudge matches, the conceit of TV as worldwide psychodrama seemed prescient. "I used to think the idea was ludicrously...
...Niccol sold his spec script to the world's savviest producer, Scott Rudin (In & Out, Clueless, The First Wives Club), who took it straight to Carrey. "Jim had the kind of madness the project needed to ultimately get made," he says. "And his warmth was a hedge against a movie that could have been on the cold side and needed someone with audience sympathy...
...original script was set in New York City. When Niccol teamed with Weir, they changed the scene to Seahaven (much of the film was shot in Seaside, a Florida resort community), where everyone loves Truman because, well, they're paid to. Says Niccol: "We decided to make him a prisoner in paradise." He toyed with various endings--Truman stumbles into a Truman Burbank memorabilia shop, Truman is reunited with his lost love, Truman decides he loves life on TV--and finally devised the current ending, nicely abrupt and ambiguous. "We felt the viewer could write a better ending...