The Truman Show W/ Introduction from Matt Zoller Seitz
Peter Weir’s brainy but warm-hearted 1998 parable The Truman Show—about a man named Truman (Jim Carrey) who has unknowingly been the main character of a voyeuristic unscripted TV series since birth—became a zeitgeist hit, commenting on the surveillance-obsessed global village that was founded by commercial TV in the 1950s and enhanced by the Internet at the end of the millennium.
New Yorker staff writer Emily Nussbaum’s new book Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV traces the development of unscripted television from the stunt- and prank-driven comedy programs of the 1950s through The Real World, Survivor, Real Housewives and beyond. The title comes from the phrase that The Truman Show‘s director (Ed Harris) says whenever it’s time for the clueless Truman to begin his daily routine. Nussbaum and Matt Zoller Seitz—the TV critic of New York Magazine from 2012-2022—will have a post-screening conversation about The Truman Show and the genre that inspired it, then Nussbaum will sign copies of Cue the Sun!
There will be Free tickets to this screening courtesy of Pluto TV for walk up customers.