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Ed TV
Threat advisory: High - High risk of entertaining activities
Movie propaganda
The Northwest Broadcasting Company's flagship cable channel, True TV, has suffered a catastrophic slide in their ratings in the two years they have been on the air. Renowned for their documentary programming, they have now lost ground, as program director Cynthia Topping (Ellen Degeneres) bluntly states, to something called the Gardening Channel.
So, in a desperate attempt to boost the station's ratings and save her career with the network, Topping cultivates a novel idea, a new concept in the history of broadcasting - putting one ordinary person's life on cable TV 24 hours a day! Unlike the historic PBS documentary on the Loud family two decades ago, and totally dissimilar to MTV's popular Real World show, Topping's program will contain no script... no actors... no editing. Each and every second will be true. Unscripted. Unedited. Unrehearsed. Uninterrupted. And, unpredictable. According to Topping, America is supposed to sit in front of their TVs and watch this person live... live!
Once network executives reluctantly okay the idea, Topping and her staff set out to find the ideal candidate for this unprecedented format, which could, if it fails, become a new low point in network programming. After numerous auditions, they pluck a boyish, goofy, thirty-something guy from San Francisco, Ed Pekurny (Matthew McConaughey). Within a week, this unambitious video store clerk has become the blockbuster hit of the TV season. And, as true TV's ratings soar, the eyes of America are on one thing... Ed TV.
But for Ed Pekurny, fifteen minutes of fame is fourteen minutes too long.
Also starring Woody Harrelson, Jenna Elfman, Dennis Hopper, Sally Kirkland and Martin Landau.
Intelligence analyst
Special Agent Matti
Theatrical report
Not The Truman show.
Certainly, they are based on similar themes (omniscient TV and mass entertainment), but the difference lies in the nature of the subject. Truman was the unwitting star of his own show, Ed signed a contract. Ed TV is also more about the nature of the media in USA society rather than the struggle of innocence.
But what you really want to know is was it funny? The answer to that question is: yes, it was hilarious. Matthew is a brilliant cute white trashie who jumps into the limelight for the promise of money (think Rikki Lake). He is understated yet arrogant, sexy yet innocent. What a guy!
All Ed's friends and family are as trashy as he is: low paid, under-educated and under-achieving. Martin stands out for his portrayal of Al, Ed's sickly stepfather. I didn't recognise him despite all those years of Space 1999. Jenna is very brave in performing a victim like Ed's girlfriend Shari: loved, hated, stripped naked, vilified and a postal worker. Poor girl. Ellen, in an astounding jibe at TV, plays a dyke. (I hope you realise that she's the woman who caught a lot of flack when both she and her character came out on USA TV. You know, in the series that the Seven Network bought but wouldn't play.)
Ed TV is as gritty and dirty as Truman was fake and plastic. It is about invading an individual's life, making him famous, then taking his life away from him. It is also made in the USA, so it's also about an individual pursuing money, love, fame and power, and getting his life back from the greedy corporations that are trying to take it away. While some of it is predictable (it is TV), this film is still a bona fide bonanza of laffs, intrigues, poignancy and triumph. See it.
Security censorship classification
PG (Sexual references, medium level coarse language)
Surveillance time
123 minutes (2:03 hours)
Not for public release in Australia before date
Film: 20 May 1999
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