PETER WEIR EEPS HIS WEBCAM covered with tape. He doesn’t want anybody watching him.
Can you blame him? Weir, after all, directed The Truman Show, an incisive satire-drama from 1998 that seems startlingly prescient today. Back then, the movie drew acclaim for its imaginative storyline and barbed commentary. Two decades later, it resembles a veiled warning, both as an astute predictor of reality television’s enormous rise and as a cultural forerunner to the age of digital surveillance.
The film stars Jim Carrey as the happy-go-lucky insurance salesman Truman Burbank, a man whose every moment, unbeknownst to him, has been broadcast on TV, turning his life into a 24-hour reality show. Millions have watched him grow up, go to school, fall in love, get married, eat, sleep, brush his teeth. Things…
