- But not only that: The show is going to be cancelled due very bad audience ratings your show is getting: The show indeed jumped the shark long time ago, and was a Franchise Zombie. The Covid disease is just a CHEAP way to end the show: Masks allowed producers did reduce the number of extras (Different shirt, different hairstyle and a mask, and an extra can play 5 or 6 different roles)
- This makes a lot of sense! An alien invasion or a Kaiju Apocalipse would need a lot of SFX. Natural disasters are expensive and hard to film (You have to break a lot of things in order to film the visit of a hurricane, and you can film those just ONCE). Zombie apocalipse costs a lot in zombie make-up. But a disease? People just go to hospitals.
- The amount of famous people dying? Those actors found another job.
- This makes a lot of sense! An alien invasion or a Kaiju Apocalipse would need a lot of SFX. Natural disasters are expensive and hard to film (You have to break a lot of things in order to film the visit of a hurricane, and you can film those just ONCE). Zombie apocalipse costs a lot in zombie make-up. But a disease? People just go to hospitals.
- And then what? Sailing off was the point of no return to him. Even if Christof managed to convince him to return, the show would never be the same with him clued in that he's living in a fake world.
- Christof asked him to stay. He's clearly willing to have Truman return after finding out the truth. Of course, the real question is if the viewers would be okay with it.
- Similar to Real Life cases of PTSD - many people just wish they could go back to "the way it all was before"... but they have to deal with the reality and find peace with it (after a lot of grieving).
- Note also that the appeal of the show for audiences was that it was a 'real life' — the fact that Truman didn't know what was going on meant it was unscripted and genuine, which is where a lot of the appeal came from. If Truman comes back knowing full well what the score is, that appeal is completely lost; the new show would probably haemorrhage viewers since it'd be no different to anything else that was on.
On the bright side maybe they'll fund some of that adventuring and exploring Truman has always wanted to do as it's sure to be a ratings winner seeing Truman having Bear Grylls style adventures.
- One would have to wonder how they'd avoid letting Truman buy it, then, if he suddenly decided to try it out—because everyone else was reading it!
- It would be a specially-made edition, of course, provided by the publishers as part of the product placement. It would look pretty much like the real-world version, but censored as required by Christof.
- I daresay the cashier would be able to pick Truman out of a crowd and give him a copy of Dog Fancy with puppies in it.
- Plus, the show's staff could warn him in some way that Truman is getting close to his shop.
- And they made it clear that Truman had a fear of dogs, in addition to the sea. His aversion to dogs would make the dog magazine the best place to conceal real news, since it's the magazine that he's most likely to avoid buying.
- It would be a specially-made edition, of course, provided by the publishers as part of the product placement. It would look pretty much like the real-world version, but censored as required by Christof.
- Because Marlon and Truman seem to have a sizeable amount of Ho Yay.
- If you think about it, even the landscape is similar to the Geofront from Evangelion, even the lake is there!
- The film says that it's the first one of its kind, suggests that it's the biggest and most popular, but that doesn't mean that it's the only one, just like the Big Brother TV series IRL.
- Truman was also the first-born of the five unwanted pregancies. It's possible that the other babies were adopted, too, as they didn't know at the time which baby was going be born on cue and wind up as the subject of the documentary. After it became apparant that they were going to use Truman, the other babies were given up for adoption.
- No, of course not. Don't be ridiculous. It just means that he's the first child so far to be adopted by a corporation. Just like Barack Obama is the "first black President".
- Don't be ridiculous? We're on a WMG page, being ridiculous is our thing.
- While it's true that Truman has never known anything but this fake reality, it still doesn't change the fact that because everyone around him are actors, he might have subconsciously noticed that they are fake, but as he has no reference to compare it to, he wasn't able to put his finger on what it is until the accidential mixup with the car radio.
- Given the scope of the project, it's also probable that instead of the radio mixup suddenly blowing their cover in year 30, little errors like that have been occurring here and there throughout Truman's entire life. The producers were usually able to smooth them over (as we see with the broadcast about the airplane shedding parts after the Sirius light falls, and Truman's subsequent putting it out of mind), but eventually, a few of these events happen to occur in such a short time. The mixed-up broadcast alone may not have set him off, but the broadcast, plus the falling light, the targeted rain, etc, and all during a point when Truman is already in an antsy state of mind. Finally, something clicked.
- This wrongness about his town might very well have only fueled his desire to leave the island town in the form of wanting to explore the world even before he fell for Sylvia.
- In a way, Truman is like Neo in that they both have always felt something off about the world that they live in, except that he doesn't have a red pill to help him see the truth, he had to discover it for himself.
- It is important to note that many North Korean refugees grow up thinking there is something...off about their lives. The reason why they don't do anything is because they have no other source of knowledge that could challenge the narrative. Once they do gain some tidbits about the outside world, they quickly turn against their own government.
- .... or at least one more severe than "darn" or "heck". The Truman Show is clearly meant to be all-ages programming with a specifically clean, wholesome environment. Discouraging swearing amongst the cast wouldn't be enough, as there'd be nothing to stop Truman himself from letting some fly if he were really angry or frustrated, and since it airs live, they couldn't bleep them. The only way around this would be to explicitly forbid the use of any swear words on the set, perhaps by having the actors trained to reflexively say cleaner ones like "darn" or "heck" in moments where you almost have to swear. Ultimately, Truman can't say the f-word on air because he literally doesn't know it.
- He asks Meryl "What the hell are you talking about?", so he at least knows that one. But still.
- Marlon also tells Truman earlier "You look like s***" when he visits him at the store. And I believe there's a few "Oh my God"s sprinkled around there.
- And Christof talks about his dream of filming "the first televised conception of a human being" or somesuch. So it's not exactly "all-ages programming".
- They cut sex scenes out, as said by one of the viewers, so I'm not sure what Christof meant by this.
- You probably don't need the sex scene itself. Conception is an internal process; get the right kind of cameras in place inside of Meryl, if you know what I mean (and remember that Christof made his name filming Truman before birth, so he presumably has some experience with filming internal biological processes, such as you might see on a medical documentary), you can show the baby being conceived without having to show the sex act in graphic detail itself. While the sex scenes themselves are cut out (no doubt to appease the censors), they're still presumably filmed, both externally and internally. It looks like Meryl's about to conceive, cut from the wafting curtains or whatever to a live shot of a spermatozoa penetrating an ovum — bingo, conception has been televised, and the Moral Guardians don't even have anything to complain about.
- Not workable, actually, as the odds of any particular sexual encounter resulting in conception are low, and the actual egg/sperm interaction happens some time after a couple have finished having sex. Unless Christof planned to film the actual fertilization in a petri dish, and have the resulting embryo implanted in Meryl off-camera, the best he could do would be a sex scene spliced with stock footage of gametes merging.
- Just on the point of the show being aired live - even on ostensibly "live" radio or television broadcasts there's typically a three-second delay, just in case such eventualities arise.
- Keeping dozens of individual children from spilling a secret that big to one of their friends/classmates would be extremely tricky. An easier way would be to offer parents the opportunity to give their children first-class education in Seahaven for a few years, on the condition that they don't tell the kid about the show aspect until they've graduated, finished that year, etc, at which point they'd have moved out of town or changed classes. Close friends like Marlon would be special projects, requiring intense attention and conditioning not to spill the beans.
- This fits in with a subtle line of dialogue that implies that Marlon has travelled the world. He may have been Put on a Bus after elementary school, shown the true nature of the show, and then sent back to reclaim his position as Truman's best friend. However, a teenager (since he was shown in high school) would be highly unlikely to willingly go into a show where his friend was imprisoned. On the one hand, they may have used the only actor from Truman's childhood days willing to return to the show to become his lifelong friend, or they may have simply recast the character when his Bus Came Back.
- But they're not really teachers; they're actors. Christof probably fed the teachers lines and gave them a script to follow, and any educators in the real world would realize that they're not really teaching meaningfully. I mean, if you see a teacher on a tv show, you don't evaluate their teaching ability (unless it's a plot point or something) because you know they're acting, so it's the same for this.
- Yes they do! People DO evaluate the teaching ability of TV show teachers.......just like how people evaluate any other careers that shown on any TV shows. Sometimes , people are so good at their own career , they lost the ability to NOT nitpicking other people's performance on the same career , even though they KNOW it's not real.
- Or to make him wonder. If someone up there didn't have a spare light, there would be no Dog Star... even though there was one last night.
- And the spotlight that falls is Sirius - the Dog Star - when Truman is afraid of dogs! Funny, eh?
- The part about Truman not being paid may not be entirely correct, as he most likely receives some kind of salary for his in-show job. It could be that the filming corporation was able to make that legally be his salary as a actor.
- Which doesn't change the fact that as a child Truman was 'working' far more hours in a week than is legal for a child actor.
- The in-universe main counterargument would probably be that Truman isn't acting (which they can make a decent argument for — Truman's reactions are genuine, he's just manipulated into following a script he doesn't know exists), and therefore he is not an actor. Couple that to the impracticality of doing this kind of thing for most productions (it really only would work for a show like The Truman Show, and that's a massive investment that only pays off because (to all indications) it doesn't have any real competitors in the genre), and the Actor's Union might have accepted it as a special case that doesn't really set a precedent or weaken their negotiation position that much (after all, you can't just slot in a Truman on the fly, you have to prepare him for the 'role' he's to play from birth).
- Personally, I doubt that Unionists accepted anything as acceptable. Most likely a lot of people were paid off to accept a lot of legal loopholes. It's okay when he's a baby, because he's not an actor. Then later in life, he's being paid to act as a (what was his desk job?) because he's not genuinely qualified. Like I said, pay-offs.
- The part about Truman not being paid may not be entirely correct, as he most likely receives some kind of salary for his in-show job. It could be that the filming corporation was able to make that legally be his salary as a actor.
- He obviously wouldn't have to live with Christof given the scores of people who'd devoted their lives to trying to free him from the show who would glady take him in, including, obviously, the love of his life, as well as the fact that he could immediately make millions of dollars just by doing an official interview or writing a book.
- And the dome wouldn't have to be torn down. Considering how popular the show was, it could easily be opened up as a massive tourist attraction, and continue employing the same actors to play their characters for the hordes of Truman-fans who never thought they'd get the chance to see Truman's home town in person. Truman look-alikes could be hired to appear there as well, if the real Truman isn't interested in making an occasional visit "home".
- Hey, just because one show ends doesn't mean the economy crashes. It's a big show, sure... but I doubt the entire economy crashed - or even the entire film industry. There was a Truman channel. The channel folds. People start watching another channel. You see it at the end; people say "What else is on?"
- Probably likely the stock market will still take a noticable dip.
- Hey, just because one show ends doesn't mean the economy crashes. It's a big show, sure... but I doubt the entire economy crashed - or even the entire film industry. There was a Truman channel. The channel folds. People start watching another channel. You see it at the end; people say "What else is on?"
- Think though that there is still loads of money to be made simply from the talk show circuit, the documentaries, the books that will be published about Truman (possibly even an autobiography)...
- Something something Nietzsche.
- This kind of hinges on Christof being in this largely-if-not-purely to screw Truman over, though; while it's clearly established that Christof is definitely a Jerkass Control Freak, he appears to genuinely believe he's doing what's best for Truman. For all that Christof's definitely a dick, he's not interested in fucking with Truman's mind or driving him to the depths of paranoid insanity out of spite for the sake of it, as this would seem to suggest — he ultimately just wants Truman to be happy, he just has a pretty fucked up way of going about it. Plus, it also kind of depends on people being willing to spend what would probably be a considerable amount of resources to build and staff an even bigger dome on top of what is already a pretty damn big dome purely as a back-up measure on the whim of one guy, and while people might be okay building the first dome, a second one would probably get people putting their foot down.
- Truman has been signing similar contracts since he reached the age of legal consent.
- Which, legally speaking, means he hasn't consented to anything, because consent based on a lie isn't valid.
In other words, Truman-ception.
- The studio gaffer who should have tightened the bolts holding Sirius's light in place, whoever left the back of the elevator gaping open, the "cop" who called Truman by his name without being told it, and anyone else they can conceivably lay blame on: Christof's backers will file lawsuits against all of them for their role in giving the game away to Truman and thus destroying their perennial cash cow.
- Think about it: Truman supposedly went on a trip to Mount Rushmore as a child. Either it was a fake set, and they are using Truman's hazy childhood to pretend he went on one, with a clearly photoshopped photo album, or for Truman's sake, they built whole sets the size of Seahaven to take the place of towns, in case Truman wanted to go someplace.
- Or... Years in advance, Christof planned a special "Truman goes to Mount Rushmore" plotline. He arranged a trip to Mount Rushmore, chartered a small plane with a vetted crew of attendants and pilot, and talked the National Parks Service into leaving the park clear for a day, or even a weekend (during the off-season; the Parks service could have considered the publicity boost worth the inconvenience of weekend's lost revenue). It's a small trip, but a rewarding one, with Truman sedated for the transitions into and out of Seahaven, and Truman never encounters anyone who doesn't already have clearance.
- You forget that the "Mount Rushmore" in the photo was obviously fake, almost like a cardboard cutout a few feet behind them.
- Or... Years in advance, Christof planned a special "Truman goes to Mount Rushmore" plotline. He arranged a trip to Mount Rushmore, chartered a small plane with a vetted crew of attendants and pilot, and talked the National Parks Service into leaving the park clear for a day, or even a weekend (during the off-season; the Parks service could have considered the publicity boost worth the inconvenience of weekend's lost revenue). It's a small trip, but a rewarding one, with Truman sedated for the transitions into and out of Seahaven, and Truman never encounters anyone who doesn't already have clearance.
- Designing an entire community, with artificially controlled climate that can be regulated with a touchscreen, bodies of water, soil, and housing has applications beyond simply making a reality show about one clueless guy. You could build self-sustaining communities anywhere, even Antarctica, or colonize space. Hell, rich countries with water shortages like Israel and Saudi Arabia would pay through the nose for something like that. Maybe they exist everywhere, and that is why the Truman Show execs have been able to imprison Truman. Because by the time Truman has come of age, there are people who have all grown up in these enclosed environments, knowingly or otherwise. Anyone who has grown up in a dome won't really care if someone else has done so without prior knowledge.
- Alternatively, Christmas with the Kranks is a transmission from an actual Truman Show-style television program that airs in Truman's world. Likely it's a less successful show from a rival studio that tried to up the ante by having two real people — a husband and wife — amidst the actors instead of just one. The movie shows how the studio is forced to railroad the couple into following their script when they unexpectedly decide not to celebrate Christmas. Obviously this would be terrible news for the television channel and their donors, who want to advertise Christmas products used by the Krank family. That's why the whole neighborhood conspires to guilt the couple into celebrating a traditional Christmas, culminating in the return of their daughter — more likely an actress paid to pretend she's their daughter — returning from abroad with a husband; obviously a contrived last-second rewrite intended to guilt the couple into going along with the Christmas celebrations.
- Honestly, this is the most heartwarming addition to this page.
I doubt Truman would actually resort to that. Truman has a shit ton of options available to him:
1. Royalties.
Having been an unwitting actor on a show for 30 years, I think Truman could potentially be entitled to some kind of payoff from the network that ran the show. Having been nearly guilty of murder, I think it would really shitty press for a TV network to then let the man who was their central asset, and who they nearly killed, live in dire conditions.
2. Insurance.
Truman might actually have been trained in the insurance business. The Truman Show sold itself on being a real show for people. If they were going for realism, they would've showed Truman actually doing his job in a way that real life insurance people would've appreciated. Truman could easily get a real insurance job once he got out, since there would be no shortage of people who would want the most famous man in the world working for them.
3. Sylvia.
Since Sylvia has been waiting for Truman to get out of Seahaven, it's likely she's made some arrangements for him. She might not be wealthy, but she and her friends in the Free Truman movement might have a massive support network prepared for the guy.
4. Crowdfunding.
Crowdfunding can be surprisingly lucrative, and since Truman is the most famous person in the world, there would be no shortage of people wanting to help him out.
- This actually fits really well with the common fan belief that there are Free Truman activists who have gone double agent and work on the show—in particular, a lot of people think Paul Giamatti's character is secretly a Free Truman activist, or at the very least, beginning to have second thoughts about his role in the deception. Maybe it's not just one rogue crewmember, but several, all working in tandem in the hopes that, if enough weird shit happens in a few days, Truman will start to question things.
- This could also explain why Sylvia is watching the show when we see her—she's part of Free Truman, so she'd be privy to any concentrated attempts to rescue him. It'd make sense for her to watch sometimes to get to see Truman and make sure he's okay, but she'd definitely tune in when she knew something big was about to happen. She'd also be the most likely of anyone to be able to tell whether Truman was starting to figure things out or not. That's why she's dead certain that Truman will prove Christof is wrong about him.
Or maybe if Truman believes that he lives in the USA, producers made him believe that Fiji is in the Indian Ocean.
I mean, if filming a man all the time is acceptable, then filming him without his consent is the next logical step.
- "Criminals" (read: political dissidents) can be sent into brutal death games where they have to fight for survival. The worst part is the winners are still often executed, but the public isn't told this.
- The government funds these games for Bread and Circuses: it distracts the population from their tyranny, kills the undesirables, and sets an example for would-be dissidents.
- The public and the executives are so twisted they consider death games and blood to be acceptable forms of tyranny.
- Everyone in the system is a Consummate Liar: Ben Richards was not only framed for a massacre he tried to stop, the government falsely accused him of killing people when he escaped from the airport as well as lied about letting the other dissidents live.
The Truman Show features..
- A television network that is allowed to commit all kinds of immoral acts: keep someone in a glass jar their entire life, impede them from escaping, and straight-up murder him on camera with no one trying to stop them.
- A television show that also has the goal of indoctrinating people with traditional American values, complete with vapid messages about "staying true to your town" and "have a baby becomes your mom told you to". A totalitarian American government would love this kind of show.
- A society that somehow has no real morality beyond enjoying entertainment, even if the entertainment is achieve through profoundly awful acts.
- Everyone, even the select few who show the tiniest hint of remorse, on the show being compulsive liars to Truman.
The only way the Truman Show exists is if American society has become a horribly disgusting nightmare, which The Running Man very much is. Maybe Ben Richards next goal will be to spring Truman from his captivity.
Granted, this doesn't excuse her actions but it can show how the entertainment industry can damage a lot of people.