Word: trumaning
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This is the world made for Truman--so serene it's spooky. And eventually, like the hero of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (that potent fable of '50s restlessness that was, in its way, the anti-Father Knows Best), Truman begins to suspect that perfection isn't all it's supposed...
...Truman's trek will take him on a rough sailing to the edge of his universe--so close he can literally touch it--and to the shattering answers to the questions consuming him. This makes The Truman Show a quest movie. Our hero's need to know himself and his place in the universe gives the viewer a passionate rooting interest. But like any supple parable, the film allows for several plausible interpretations. It is also about control--the control we try to exercise over ourselves and others, using stratagems of love, hope and fear. Most people think they have...
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...
...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...
...always Carrey's take on the main character. "Truman isn't the man next door," says Weir. "He's someone who was brought up by wolves and lived in a nest of liars. The people around him were ambitious actors, and all his life they were leaning in very close to him. There was a lot of grinning by overfriendly people trying to gain his influence. Thus he has a very public persona, an exaggerated external self." The director could be describing the Jim Carrey who in 1994 had emerged from supporting status into the heat of celebrity and sycophancy...