Introduction by Peter Weir
Andrew Niccol’s screenplay deals with the last few days of a live television
program which ran for twenty-nine years – twenty-four hours a day, seven days
a week.
As part of my preparation I wrote a background describing
how this extraordinary show came into existence.
I had plenty of time for reflection as Jim Carrey wasn’t available for
twelve months, and believing him perfect casting as Truman I settled down to
wait.
It seems impossible not that I considered doing another
picture in the meantime, as the months filed up with constant rewrites and
fine-tuning of the script.
Andrew and I worked well together and I felt free to try
anything, in the process coming to know the material really well.
The background to the show I wrote for myself, but in
preproduction cast and crew got to hear of it and asked for copies.
With the actors it became a source of amusement during
shooting, particularly with Noah Emmerich, who played “Marlon” and Laura
Linney as Truman’s wife, “Meryl”. We would ad-lib for hours, they in their actor persona (Marlon
was “Louis Coltrane”, Meryl, “Hannah Gill”), and with me playing, rather
naturally, a director on the show. These
ad-libs helped remind us of the schizophrenic nature of their characters, and
kept us in touch with the lie that was at the heart of their relationship with
Truman. Apart from that it was a
lot of fun, and occasionally provoked ideas for new scenes.
I began to see potential for a documentary in these
off-camera conversations and suggested the idea to the marketing department at
Paramount. Andrew flew out to
location and interviewed the cast in their actor personae and wrote a script we
referred to as “Mockumentary.” My
Visual Effects Supervisor and Second Unit Director, Mike McAlister, took on the
job, with Harry Shearer as the interviewer.
The documentary was finally abandoned as a promotional idea
but some scenes found their way into the movie and at least one version of the
trailer.
Here then, with a little editing, is the background
material passed on to cast and crew, which, in a way, serves as an introduction
to Andrew’s brilliant screenplay.
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE TRUMAN SHOW
Christof was twenty-nine years old when he sold his concept for what would
become “The Truman Show” to multi-media giant Omnicam.
His background was as a producer of documentaries, a field
in which he had achieved considerable preeminence, winning an Academy Award for
his deeply-moving record of street people – Show me the Way to Go Home –
when he was only twenty-three years old. For
this program his director, Bob Lipski, lived on and off with a bunch of street
kids for two years in a derelict building in Chicago.
The kids themselves were unaware that the building was owned by
Christof's uncle and had been pre-rigged with concealed cameras.
The startling footage of life on the streets was graphic, hard-hitting,
frankly sexual, and finally heart wrenching.
Christof and Lipski subsequently fell out, with Lipski bitterly charging
Christof with taking all the credits for an idea he claimed he had submitted to
Christof in the first place.
Earlier, while still a teenager, Christof edited his
father’s 8mm footage – a visual “diary” of Christof himself that his
father had kept from an early age – into a film which did the film festival
circuit. It was titled A Life in
The Day, and at seven-and-three-quarter hours was described as either
“brilliant” or “boring” by the critics.
Christof arranged to have a debate with his detractors, which he then
filmed and released as The Artist at Bay, which subsequently found a home on
PBS.
So, only twenty-nine years old, this obsessive young man
talked his way into the office of Moses Opperman, President and CEO of the
world’s largest media conglomerate, The Omnicam Corporation.
Thirty minutes later he had the go-ahead for a program titled “Bringing
Up Baby”. The ideas was to adopt
a child, an unwanted pregnancy, and video, live, every moment of the child’s
life up to the age of one.
His parents were to be an attractive couple, actors, who
would be involved in the extensive product placement that was to generate
revenue for Omnicam. This was necessary as the show was to run twenty-four hours a
day, every day, without commercial breaks.
The child was named “Truman” by Christof – “We will
make of him a ‘True Man’,” Christof stated in a press-release at the time.
As for “Burbank,” that was where Truman’s studio/home was to be
located.
Christof, in a bold move, decided to open the show in the
womb itself. Moses was concerned as
there were, of course, extremely limited possibilities for product placement.
However some companies, producing products for pregnant women, did place
unwritten messages on the show, which traveled across the image of the unborn
child during peak viewing times.
From Truman’s birth day onwards ratings began to steadily
climb; by week 24 the show was a hit, and by week 36 a sensation.
The reason was Truman. He
was adorable and became “the world’s baby.”
People even liked to watch him sleeping; it made them feel calm somehow,
and the show became especially popular with seniors and childless couples, some
even rigging up their television rooms like a nurseries, so they could tip-toe
in to take a look at him on their TV set, making sure he was O.K., maybe closing
the curtains to make it darker for his day sleep, before quietly leaving – the
door left ajar so that they could hear him if he cried. A special “TV Crib” was marketed which enabled the TV set
to be placed horizontal to the floor, so the viewer “parent” could look down
on the sleeping child.
In the first weeks, the press made jokes – comparing the
show to the burning log video, or saying it was like watching paint dry.
But they had to write about it given the ratings, and in the end Truman
won them over. He was a
good-looking baby, with a calm, steady gaze from his big brown eyes, and with a
wonderful chuckle. From an early
age he liked to laugh. The
slightest tickle produced deep rippling chuckles that put a smile on your face,
and when the tears inevitable came, you felt tense until mom quieted him down.
And mom was the ideal mom. The
good old apple-pie mom of yesteryear – yet sexy too, in her own way,
especially when she’d come in to give Truman his bottled in the middle of the
night wearing a sheer, lowcut nightgown that showed off her curvaceous figure.
Costs were low in those early days – at first there was
only the nursery set. Then, when
ratings began to rise and sponsors of baby products clamored for their product
to be used on the show, a kitchen was added.
Then a garage for dad so his car could be featured, as well as all the
tools in his workshop. Kirk was like a dad off the cover of The Saturday Evening
Post, and Truman loved him. He
always seemed closer to his dad for some reason – perhaps because dad was far
and away the better actor.
A word about product placement on the show.
If Truman played happily with, say, a “Snug-a-bug,” that toy’s
sales broke records. But if he
didn’t like the “Wiggly-Twiggly” and threw it across the room in front of
the mothers of the world, that company would inevitably have to withdraw the toy
from the market. It was a risk
placing a product on “The Truman Show,” but the rewards could be staggering.
Christof, being the artist that he was, found the products
an aggravation. But he couldn’t
do without them. He worked with the
actors to show how to use the product with subtlety, so that it would seem a
less obvious sell. And with the
video-switchers in the control room, operating the concealed cameras (there was
even one placed in the teat of Truman’s bottle) Christof made sure they
didn’t dominate the frame with a Nappy Rash Pack or whatever product was being
featured.
He wrote out the storylines for the actors to keep the
drama alive – low-key soap opera situations: tension at work for father, or
mother talking about her period being late and how they couldn’t afford
another child. Just enough drama to
make the viewer care about them and especially when the problem threatened to
include darling Truman.
Truman fan clubs sprang up worldwide, as did the beginning
of what was to be a noisy opposition in later years, the “Free Truman
Organization” and “Truth in Media.” These
two groups (later to combine as TLF, the Truman Liberation Front) got as much
press as possible to decry the exploitation of an innocent, etc.
But there was no law against it, and Truman seemed very happy.
Above all, a great deal of money was being made so nothing was done and
the show became part of our lives.
During that first year the success of the show caused Moses
to suggest to Christof that they extend for at least another year, taking Truman
as far as his first spoken word, which Moses rightly guessed was going to be a
ratings winner. (Already the show, at six months, was drawing a bigger audience
than Omnicam’s shopping channel.)
Moses was puzzled when Christof laughed at his suggestions.
“Why just another year, why not a lifetime?” (This historic sentence
was engraved on a gold-plated bar by Moses and presented to Christof when the
show became a phenomenon.)
What Christof proposed to Moses was unprecedented and
staggering in its scope. He showed
Moses plans for a new studio on a large parcel of land in Burbank, California.
The studio was designed by ex-NASA scientists who had been working on a
sealed environment for humans to live and work on Mars, a project that had been
abandoned by a cash-strapped NASA.
This Bubble or Dome was to cover an entire town.
Christof had the plans adapted for what he called Seahaven.
Here we would watch Truman grow to manhood, facing all of the trials and
tribulations we all face, but in a controlled environment.
Thousands of concealed mini-cameras would be built into the “set” to
cover every angle of the town, both exterior and interior.
This would be nothing less than a record of a human life
from birth to death, every single moment live-to-air, and would create
television history. Moses of course
was thinking of the fantastic cost of the project balanced against the revenues
that would result. Everything seen on the show would have a sponsor, the
products available in a huge mail order catalogue.
Christof hit Moses with figures that showed within ten years costs could
be recovered. In fact, they had
their money back in five.
Moses was given a week to say yes or no, as Christof had a
clause in his contract that enabled him to put young Truman into turnaround.
Moses talked to his board the next morning and by lunchtime was on the
company jet on his way to meet potential investors in Japan, Taiwan, (the show
was very popular in Asia), Europe, and the Middle-East.
He never flew beyond Tokyo. They
wouldn’t let him. The Japanese
wanted to take all of the 49 percent Omnicam had on the table, and “The Truman
Show” was born.
Christof’s vision of Truman’s world had its foundation
in the past. “The future is the past,” he was fond of saying, along with,
“The way we were is the way we ought to be.”
He despaired of the ugliness of the modern urban life and
saw a chance to inspire the world back to the small, close communities of
nineteenth-century America – the town square surrounded by neat clapboard
houses, with front porches close to the street, white picket fences, few cars,
all combining to form a cozy neighborhood where everyone knew everyone else and
life was wholesome and simple. These homes were also for sale in kit form, and later many
communities were constructed along the lines of Seahaven.
Clothing too came under his masterful eye.
He felt that what people wore in the last 1930s and 1940s had approached
an ideal, and his designers studied and produced an elegant line of clothing for
the townsfolk, which proved another winner with the viewers.
Truman’s education was planned carefully by Christof, and
he exposed him to the best in art, literature, and music, but, ironically, very
little television. Truman believe he was living in a remote part of Florida,
where only one local television station was available, and it mostly played
reruns of classic movies and local television series such as “I Love Lucy”.
News was of course heavenly censored and extolled the virtues of small
town life compared with dangerous, overcrowded, and troubled world.
Construction proceeded in stages. Truman was eighteen
months old when he moved with his parents to a home in a quiet suburban street.
For the next four years this was the only world he knew – his house,
the backyard, the street, and the local park.
And that was all the world there was at that time, while construction
continued, beyond the sky cyclorama, on the city center, and Christof’s
boldest plan, the final stage: the
beachfront and ocean. The
technology involved in creating the ocean: wind, clouds, waves, etc., called on
the top brains of the world. Moses
argued in vain for an inland town, a sleepy rural community, but Christof, being
the artist he was, refused to compromise – “It has to be real,” was his
continual cry.
Meanwhile, the world thrilled to Truman’s first tooth,
his first faltering steps, his first words.
Then, his first day at school. Beyond
that, there was facing down the school bully and his first exam and on to the
stirrings of adolescence, teen rebellion, girls, etc.
Not that it was all drama, because apart from being a
good-looking, sweet-natured boy, Truman was funny.
He was a natural entertainer. He
could make anyone laugh with his rubber face and his natural ability as a mimic.
He was a star. People –
even those with their own children – kept family snapshot albums of him and
his family. Photos could be
obtained, as well as custom photo albums, from the mail order catalogue.
Kids of the same age or thereabouts saw him as a brother, experienced the
same challenges as he did, at the same time as he did.
Truman became a real person to them, and he was a part of their lives.
In addition to the products available from the mail order
department, Christof Enterprises produced board games, swap cards, etc.
The biggest seller was Truman Trivia, a board game which posed questions
about the minutiae of Truman’s life.
Articles and books on the subject of the show, came from
all sources. There were scientific
articles about the technology involved in creating the studio (NASA reactivated
their plans for a Space City on Mars, incorporating ideas developed by
Christof’s team.) Then, of course, sociologists, psychiatrists, and assorted
medicos wrote articles and books pro and con the extraordinary experiment.
Actors signed book deals – Living A Part, Live, With Truman, The Method and
The Truman Show, etc.
So much was the show discussed by television viewers of the
world that major English dictionaries accepted a new word that had become part
of the vernacular:
Trumanesque (-esk’),
adj. a characteristic of the life experiences of Truman Burbank ( a
Trumanesque town, conversation, etc.)
Meanwhile, Truman lived on, unaware that his life was unlike any other.
After all, why should he doubt his world?
It was all he’d ever known and as real to him as ours is to us. (It was
regrettable that Christof was forced to make him a fearful boy.
He was too adventurous, and there was a danger of him discovering the
limit of his world.)
For some of the key actors, those required to live on the
set full-time, life on the show did become, in a sense, a reality.
The line between truth and fiction was blurred.
Not that just any actor could take that life. Potential cast members didn’t just audition in the usual
way, they had to pass tests every bit as rigorous as would those eventually sent
to artificial environments on other planets.
Christof’s reputation as a new kind of producer – a
videographer – soared with the ratings of the show and he became an
international celebrity. Not that he was seen about much, except at the Emmys (the
“Show” frequently a nominee or winner) as he lived a hermitic existence at
the studio, where he had an apartment down the corridor from the control room.
To say he was obsessed with the show would be an understatement.
Like Truman, he lived most of these years inside the world he’d
created, until it became for him the only world.
He was something of a hypochondriac and the only reason he
wouldn’t be at the studio was that he was having his blood replaced at a
health farm in Switzerland, or in the hospital with nervous exhaustion, or, of
course, visiting his shrink. This
renowned doctor, with Christof’s permission, later wrote a remarkable book, The
Creator*.
There were highs and lows in the ratings over the years,
the show going through a rather bad slump in the later years prior to Truman’s
departure. Would it have gone with
Truman to the grave? Nobody knows,
nor will they ever know, as it’s unlikely there’ll be another Truman, as
witnessed by countless “reality” shows that attempted to emulate the success
of “The Truman Show” and failed.
Extract from the Guinness Book of Records:
“...while the longest-running, continuous, (24 hours a day, 7 days a
week) live television programming in history was “The Truman Show.”
The program was broadcast from a single studio in Burbank, California
(SEE Largest Inflatable Structure in the world, p. 987) and sent live to the
world via satellite by U.S. broadcast giant, The Omnicam Corporation.
The show, which occupied its own channel, ran for twenty-nine years,
ending when the star, Truman Burbank, an orphan unaware that the town in which
he lived was a stage-set or that his every move had been filmed from birth,
discovered the “secret” and walked away from the show (SEE Most Watched
Television Events, p. 549).
Subsequent legislation in the United States has prevented
any further exploitation of this kind, although similar programs have since been
attempted from countries with lax media laws.
So far no show has proved to have the staying power of “The Truman
Show”.
