![]() ![]() ![]() The train doors close just as the two thugs prepare to rape the woman, but when Truman’s train pulls out of the station, losing sight of the trio, the woman and the two attackers all break character, fixing up their clothes and remarking their surprise that Truman didn’t react.Īll of this is especially jarring because so much of Niccol’s script was kept intact when it came to the finished product. In another scene, Truman witnesses a woman being attacked on a subway platform but resists sounding the train alarm, so sure that it’s a stunt. The idea of Jim Carrey doing this and not, say, Sean Penn or some other veiny rager of a leading man is, obviously, ludicrous. ![]() At one point, Truman threatens to kill a newborn baby if a random mother he encounters on the street doesn’t tell him that his world isn’t real (“Say my name or I’ll smash its head open!” he screams). Other suggested scenes further perpetuate thriller tropes. “Hey Truman!” Veronica yelps from a street corner on the red light district. “In this version, Truman’s world is a fake, rain-drenched New York built on a Hollywood soundstage, Truman himself addicted to alcohol and emotionally disengaged from society”īut while the specifics of the plot remain the same, there’s a gruff, exhausting machismo to the script, never more notable than in a scene in which Truman seeks out a sex worker named Veronica to re-enact his last encounter with his lost true love Sylvia. The truth of Truman’s life is treated like a mystery, his existence in a reality show rendered a third-act plot twist, with the character of Christof, the all-seeing God figure behind the show, here perpetually lurking around set corners like Dick Dastardly in a wireless headset. In this version, Truman’s world is a fake, rain-drenched New York built on a Hollywood soundstage, Truman himself addicted to alcohol and emotionally disengaged from society and his wife Meryl (really an actress named Hannah). One specific draft, found today tossed around in the nerdier corners of the internet, is especially weird, with far more in common with grim 90s thrillers like Dark City and The Game than the film it would eventually become. Angle it a little differently, as it did in a draft of the script written just a few years before it actually got made, and it’s basically a David Fincher film.Īndrew Niccol’s script existed in at least 16 different forms before Weir came on board, originally titled The Malcolm Show, and sometimes being prefaced by a quote by Lily Tomlin (“We’re all in this alone”), or an image of Edward Hopper’s painting “A Room by the Sea”. This all sounds like a horror movie – the inevitable conclusion to a culture of instant fame, 24/7 surveillance and corporate exploitation. But in the hands of director Peter Weir and star Jim Carrey, The Truman Show is a genre-bending comedy drama that is as tender and romantic as it is gently surreal. ![]()
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