Alrighty then!

How’s everyone enjoying the “90s, Baby” series? I’ve been looking forward to this summer-long event for years after the VIFF Centre presented the seasonal retrospectives of the American movies from the 70s and 80s. I haven’t had this much fun since the Summer of Brian De Palma a decade ago. Tonight I am incredibly honoured to be presenting “The Truman Show” (1998).

Its director, Peter Weir, is a brilliant filmmaker. Lyrical, bold, soul-searching, and a romantic. Weir is most passionate about adventurers and the mysterious forces that conspire against them. The moving image, his acute sensitivity to its poetry is matched by his love of the soundtrack – he always carries a boombox on set and is all the ready with stories and ideas to inspire the crew. When he received his an Honorary Oscar Award for Lifetime Achievement, Weir said that he considers the actors usually separated as “the cast” to very much a part of “the crew”.

In awe of the original script by Andrew Niccol whose own directorial debut “Gattaca” (1997) is just as wonderful, it was Peter Weir’s cinematic vision to mask the dark and disturbing horrors of “The Truman Show” with the stifling calm and instant smile sunniness of inoffensive “don’t change the channel” programming. The ambition and world-building in this film is astonishing. You can speculate for hours about Truman’s world and what’s happening in the background as well as what’s happening off-screen.

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