And Carrey will be waiting for them, with a performance of profound charm, innocence, vulnerability and pain. Soon enough, other films will have Truman on their mind. Ron Howard's Ed TV is about a fellow plucked from obscurity who becomes a star when his life airs live on a 24-hour cable series, and Gary Ross's Pleasantville is about a couple of siblings who get stuck in a '50s sitcom. The standard film has no such lofty ambitions. It takes its audience on a familiar ride.
Actors pretend to be heroes or villains doing amazing or funny things.
And we, in an implied compact with the filmmakers, pretend it's real. In The Truman Show the rules are more complicated. And at times we watch Christof and his crew directing the show. Weir, like his alter ego Christof, lays the process of magicmaking and manipulation open before us.