The Truman Show and the American Dream

Would you turn your back on something everyone wants?

Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon/Paramount Pictures

Written by Brandon Sparks

Jim Carrey wasn’t just the biggest comedy star of the 1990s, he was also one of the most bankable stars of the decade. In 1994 alone, Carrey released Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Dumb and Dumber, and The Mask with a combined worldwide box office gross of $706 million (today that would be $1.2 billion). Even though he had been working for over a decade, Carrey was seen as an overnight success. He would spend the majority of the 1990s playing comedic characters in a similar vein, with the occasional darker turn like The Cable Guy. But, in 1998, Jim Carrey wanted to make a shift in his career. He sought to shed the image he had built upon for so long and step into a new world.

Throughout the 1990s, young New Zealand screenwriter Andrew Niccol tried to sell his original script, The Malcolm Show, to any Hollywood producer willing to make it. It was about an alcoholic addict trapped in a rainy New York set on a Hollywood soundstage, unaware that his life was being broadcasted to the world. He is disengaged from his wife, and he sees a prostitute as a way to relive the memories of his lost love. Through the film, he slowly begins to doubt his reality until finally, it is revealed that it is all a show. Producer Scott Rudin finally bought the script in 1993, and several directors would circle the now-titled The Truman Show for years. According to Niccol, famed thriller director Brian De Palma was in line to direct the film, but once Carrey showed interest in the project, De Palma dropped out because he didn’t think Carrey was right for the role of Truman Burbank.