M: I feel like our chats always begin with “I saw this on VHS when I was…” What was your first impression of it as a kid?
A: I don’t have a strong memory of the first time I watched this movie. I just always knew the premise. Sort of like how you know some bible stories but have no idea when or where you were told them. For whatever reason, I associate the sound of airplanes with this movie… whenever an airplane would fly overhead I would think of The Truman Show and become worried they were watching me up there, spying on me.
M: It left a similar impression on me, but in the opposite way—I thought it would be really cool if I was secretly being watched. That would mean I was actually a very important and special boy. It was sort of a fantasy for me, a kind of wish fulfillment.
A: Where you grew up, were you surrounded by those creepy neighbourhood watch signs? There were a bunch of them around where I was, and the graphic was several houses with huge eyeballs in them.
M: Yeah, we had those too! I distinctly remember one with a crossed-out cartoon crook, as if to say, “No crooks allowed, we’ll catch you!”
A: Truman basically has the ultimate neighbourhood watch program, he just doesn’t know they are there. It’s interesting because it’s implying that if you’re out there, it’s my right and duty to watch you and talk about you with my neighbours. I guess where neighbourhood watch is panopticon theory at work, you can’t say that about Truman because he doesn’t know there’s the potential he’s being watched.
M: The signs definitely gave off the impression that there were regular people whose job it was to watch you from their houses. Which is unsettling now, obviously, but as a kid I felt protected. I’ve never met or heard of anyone who actually did that though, so I guess it was all bluster. We really weren’t as protected as we thought… there wasn’t really anyone watching.
A: Truman’s horror is finding out he is being observed, but your horror is knowing that you aren’t. I guess it’s the difference between being observed to be protected, and being observed to be consumed. It's sort of a fantasy and a nightmare, simultaneously. But it becomes much more upsetting when you reach adulthood and can grasp the extent of what has been done to Truman, and how it reflects what has been done to all of us. Watching it recently, I was like… man, what was my hometown, but someone else's dream that I was forced to grow up in?
"Watching it recently, I was like… man, what was my hometown, but someone else's dream that I was forced to grow up in?"
M: That's what really got me this time too, the idea that Truman exists inside a system that he doesn't understand, has no choice but to participate in, and that treats him like a commodity. I mean, he's explicitly adopted by a corporation, his life is a billion-dollar industry. He's a very important and special boy only because of the money he brings in for TV executives. And that's sort of what it's like living under capitalism; you only exist to make money for the men in the moon. So when he escapes at the end, when he breaks out of that system… boy, is that cathartic as an adult. That's the wish fulfillment for me now.
A: It reminded me of the town I went to grade school in, Verona, Ontario. When you enter it there's a big sign that says, “Home of NHLer Mike Smith”. To me it’s sort of like Christof’s final plea to Truman to stay—like, the town can no longer function without his name attached. It’s almost like an in memoriam.
M: For sure—Seahaven depends on Truman not being able to see its borders. That sign is also like the town trying to cling to that guy for clout and commercial reasons. None of us can escape being monetized, man.
A: Yep. I think about that a lot. I was very, very high once and just about lost it realizing everything in my fridge was branded with a logo. I remember feeling like I was trapped in a dozen advertisements, like my life was an ad. Then I remembered that towns and cities themselves are corporations and I had to go lie down.
M: Oh yeah, our lives are barely removed from the blatant product placement in the movie. I'm talking to you right now on my iPhone™ while wearing a Jurassic Park™ and sipping on a Tim Horton's™ coffee. It's inescapable, there's no door in the matte painting of capitalism that we can step out of.
A: Nope, and I think that's why this works like it does, and why movies like it work. It's beautiful to imagine stepping outside, especially when we know we can't.
M: That was a theme in the late ‘90s, wasn't it? The Matrix came out the year after Truman and covered a lot of the same ground. And Pleasantville was the same year, and is also about being trapped in a '50s TV show. For a moment there, popular culture was very concerned with the realization that the American dream was an illusion.
A: Yeah, cue “Wake Up” by Rage Against the Machine. It's funny, it didn't occur to me until you brought up the Pleasantville comparison that Truman's town of Seahaven is seemingly stuck in the 1950s. Hometowns, and I guess cities in general, have to simultaneously cling to a nostalgic, idealized version of themselves while also fitting into the modern world. Verona was like that when I was growing up—very into its history as a lumber mill outpost, but also very proud of having internet connections and fancy car washes.
M: There's an appeal to Truman’s world that's sealed off from modernity. There are no current events in Seahaven, the newspaper stand has no newspapers. Imagine living somewhere with no knowledge of climate change, of COVID, of war... actually, now that I say it, a lot of people live there mentally anyway, by just not paying attention to those things.
A: Yeah, the show offers its audience a window into a utopia where none of that matters.
M: It's a lot like Disneyland, now that I think of it, even down to the ‘50s styling on Main Street, U.S.A. There's a conscious effort to create a kind of "Disney Bubble" when you are in the parks, with no reminders of the outside world at all. Even in a literal sense, you can't see beyond the attractions and storefronts, it's completely immersive. A total dream.
A: But it's not Truman's dream, is it? The movie makes it clear he always wanted to leave, to explore.
M: You’re right, it's the producer's version of paradise, not his.
A: Cities, towns… they are always their creator's idea of paradise, right? It's not really for the people who live there, they are for the people who own it. That being said, at least in Truman's world the powers that be aren't actively trying to fuck him over. I imagine that's a big part of why the show is such a success within the world of the movie.
"Cities, towns… they are always their creator's idea of paradise, right? It's not really for the people who live there, they are for the people who own it."
M: That's something I've wondered about since I was a kid. Would The Truman Show be that big a success in our real world? Would we have Truman Show bars? I think the only way the movie has dated is in its suggestion that the whole world would be captivated by one show. That kind of monoculture just doesn't exist now.
A: The other element that has aged, I think, is the idea that they pan away from sex.
M: Oh for sure, they would zoom in today. That would be a big part of it.
A: There'd be a whole subreddit, r/TrumanFucks.
[LAUGHS]
M: Something that always sort of pulled me out of the show is Jim Carrey’s performance. To me it always felt just like the Jim Carrey schtick but in a prestige movie. When I was younger it made it really hard for me to connect with the man. Let alone want to watch him fuck.
A: I felt the same! But then I realized he’s been surrounded by performers his entire life. Everyone he interacts with is a theater kid putting on a show. He’s just mirroring the behavior he sees in others.
M: That… actually makes a lot of sense. Seen through that lens, it’s a brilliant use of his hammy energy. He’s been socialized to act like he’s in a ‘50s commercial.
A: It’s amazing that those allusions still track, even though we’re 20 years farther away from both the time the movie was made and the period the movie was satirizing.
M: I think the movie is just fundamentally timeless. It still hits. Even removed from all the political readings we've been talking about, it's just a mythic idea: a story about a child outgrowing his home and striking out on his own. That's never going out of date.
A: Yeah. Well, I’m gonna set you up for this one: I gotta head out, so…
M: In case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!
M: I feel like our chats always begin with “I saw this on VHS when I was…” What was your first impression of it as a kid?
A: I don’t have a strong memory of the first time I watched this movie. I just always knew the premise. Sort of like how you know some bible stories but have no idea when or where you were told them. For whatever reason, I associate the sound of airplanes with this movie… whenever an airplane would fly overhead I would think of The Truman Show and become worried they were watching me up there, spying on me.
M: It left a similar impression on me, but in the opposite way—I thought it would be really cool if I was secretly being watched. That would mean I was actually a very important and special boy. It was sort of a fantasy for me, a kind of wish fulfillment.
A: Where you grew up, were you surrounded by those creepy neighbourhood watch signs? There were a bunch of them around where I was, and the graphic was several houses with huge eyeballs in them.
M: Yeah, we had those too! I distinctly remember one with a crossed-out cartoon crook, as if to say, “No crooks allowed, we’ll catch you!”
A: Truman basically has the ultimate neighbourhood watch program, he just doesn’t know they are there. It’s interesting because it’s implying that if you’re out there, it’s my right and duty to watch you and talk about you with my neighbours. I guess where neighbourhood watch is panopticon theory at work, you can’t say that about Truman because he doesn’t know there’s the potential he’s being watched.
M: The signs definitely gave off the impression that there were regular people whose job it was to watch you from their houses. Which is unsettling now, obviously, but as a kid I felt protected. I’ve never met or heard of anyone who actually did that though, so I guess it was all bluster. We really weren’t as protected as we thought… there wasn’t really anyone watching.
A: Truman’s horror is finding out he is being observed, but your horror is knowing that you aren’t. I guess it’s the difference between being observed to be protected, and being observed to be consumed. It's sort of a fantasy and a nightmare, simultaneously. But it becomes much more upsetting when you reach adulthood and can grasp the extent of what has been done to Truman, and how it reflects what has been done to all of us. Watching it recently, I was like… man, what was my hometown, but someone else's dream that I was forced to grow up in?
"Watching it recently, I was like… man, what was my hometown, but someone else's dream that I was forced to grow up in?"
M: That's what really got me this time too, the idea that Truman exists inside a system that he doesn't understand, has no choice but to participate in, and that treats him like a commodity. I mean, he's explicitly adopted by a corporation, his life is a billion-dollar industry. He's a very important and special boy only because of the money he brings in for TV executives. And that's sort of what it's like living under capitalism; you only exist to make money for the men in the moon. So when he escapes at the end, when he breaks out of that system… boy, is that cathartic as an adult. That's the wish fulfillment for me now.
A: It reminded me of the town I went to grade school in, Verona, Ontario. When you enter it there's a big sign that says, “Home of NHLer Mike Smith”. To me it’s sort of like Christof’s final plea to Truman to stay—like, the town can no longer function without his name attached. It’s almost like an in memoriam.
M: For sure—Seahaven depends on Truman not being able to see its borders. That sign is also like the town trying to cling to that guy for clout and commercial reasons. None of us can escape being monetized, man.
A: Yep. I think about that a lot. I was very, very high once and just about lost it realizing everything in my fridge was branded with a logo. I remember feeling like I was trapped in a dozen advertisements, like my life was an ad. Then I remembered that towns and cities themselves are corporations and I had to go lie down.
M: Oh yeah, our lives are barely removed from the blatant product placement in the movie. I'm talking to you right now on my iPhone™ while wearing a Jurassic Park™ and sipping on a Tim Horton's™ coffee. It's inescapable, there's no door in the matte painting of capitalism that we can step out of.
A: Nope, and I think that's why this works like it does, and why movies like it work. It's beautiful to imagine stepping outside, especially when we know we can't.
M: That was a theme in the late ‘90s, wasn't it? The Matrix came out the year after Truman and covered a lot of the same ground. And Pleasantville was the same year, and is also about being trapped in a '50s TV show. For a moment there, popular culture was very concerned with the realization that the American dream was an illusion.
A: Yeah, cue “Wake Up” by Rage Against the Machine. It's funny, it didn't occur to me until you brought up the Pleasantville comparison that Truman's town of Seahaven is seemingly stuck in the 1950s. Hometowns, and I guess cities in general, have to simultaneously cling to a nostalgic, idealized version of themselves while also fitting into the modern world. Verona was like that when I was growing up—very into its history as a lumber mill outpost, but also very proud of having internet connections and fancy car washes.
M: There's an appeal to Truman’s world that's sealed off from modernity. There are no current events in Seahaven, the newspaper stand has no newspapers. Imagine living somewhere with no knowledge of climate change, of COVID, of war... actually, now that I say it, a lot of people live there mentally anyway, by just not paying attention to those things.
A: Yeah, the show offers its audience a window into a utopia where none of that matters.
M: It's a lot like Disneyland, now that I think of it, even down to the ‘50s styling on Main Street, U.S.A. There's a conscious effort to create a kind of "Disney Bubble" when you are in the parks, with no reminders of the outside world at all. Even in a literal sense, you can't see beyond the attractions and storefronts, it's completely immersive. A total dream.
A: But it's not Truman's dream, is it? The movie makes it clear he always wanted to leave, to explore.
M: You’re right, it's the producer's version of paradise, not his.
A: Cities, towns… they are always their creator's idea of paradise, right? It's not really for the people who live there, they are for the people who own it. That being said, at least in Truman's world the powers that be aren't actively trying to fuck him over. I imagine that's a big part of why the show is such a success within the world of the movie.
"Cities, towns… they are always their creator's idea of paradise, right? It's not really for the people who live there, they are for the people who own it."
M: That's something I've wondered about since I was a kid. Would The Truman Show be that big a success in our real world? Would we have Truman Show bars? I think the only way the movie has dated is in its suggestion that the whole world would be captivated by one show. That kind of monoculture just doesn't exist now.
A: The other element that has aged, I think, is the idea that they pan away from sex.
M: Oh for sure, they would zoom in today. That would be a big part of it.
A: There'd be a whole subreddit, r/TrumanFucks.
[LAUGHS]
M: Something that always sort of pulled me out of the show is Jim Carrey’s performance. To me it always felt just like the Jim Carrey schtick but in a prestige movie. When I was younger it made it really hard for me to connect with the man. Let alone want to watch him fuck.
A: I felt the same! But then I realized he’s been surrounded by performers his entire life. Everyone he interacts with is a theater kid putting on a show. He’s just mirroring the behavior he sees in others.
M: That… actually makes a lot of sense. Seen through that lens, it’s a brilliant use of his hammy energy. He’s been socialized to act like he’s in a ‘50s commercial.
A: It’s amazing that those allusions still track, even though we’re 20 years farther away from both the time the movie was made and the period the movie was satirizing.
M: I think the movie is just fundamentally timeless. It still hits. Even removed from all the political readings we've been talking about, it's just a mythic idea: a story about a child outgrowing his home and striking out on his own. That's never going out of date.
A: Yeah. Well, I’m gonna set you up for this one: I gotta head out, so…
M: In case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!