Live! (2008)
Shameless TV executive Eva Mendes has a show to die for in this blackly comic reality TV satire by Oscar-winning writer-director Bill Guttentag
It's taken reality TV less than a decade to establish itself as part of the cultural furniture, during which time audiences have learned to stop wringing their hands over boring old ethical issues and instead ask the same question as producers: that girl doing that thing with that bottle - is she giving good TV?
Filmmakers started wrestling with the issue almost as soon as the phenomena went live, but the problem in parodying reality TV is that the real thing already exists in such a heightened state of (un)reality that satire is always playing catch-up. Bill Guttentag's film goes some way to acknowledging this by positing a programme so outrageous it could never happen. Live!'s bid for credibility is based on a purposefully incredible premise - a convoluted strategy which renders the film - you guessed it - kind of incredible.
Before all that though, we have Katy (Mendes), a monstrously slick corporate machine-woman working for the fictional ABN TV network. In her religiously fanatical pursuit of ratings, Katy alights on an hour of real-life Russian roulette. The deal: six contestants, one revolver and a single live round. Five survivors walk away with five million dollars each. The loser blows their brains out on national TV. Huge audience share, massive advertising revenue, vast political leverage and an entry for Katy in the history books.
Writer-director Bill Guttentag won an Oscar for his documentary Twin Towers, so it makes clear logistical sense that his own media satire should take the form of a reflexive mockumentary. Rex (Krumholtz) is the filmmaker tracking Katy's attempts to get her show made and though he begins as the film's conscience he's swiftly seduced by Katy, who is herself canonised as the profit-making prophet of America's morally bankrupt media.
Guttentag's film consists of two distinct parts, but each undercuts the other. The first half follows Katy's attempt to get the programme green lit and it suggests Guttentag is familiar with 'Brass Eye'. The network's desperate brainstorming sessions throw up shows based on live breast enhancement, paedophile entrapment and a competition to crash airplanes into the desert. "People say they can't believe how bad what's on TV is," says one producer. "They should see what's not on TV."
Despite her failure to get the network on board, Katy goes ahead anyway. Six worthy contestants - including a performance artist, a surf dude, a farmer and a gay Mexican - are located, at which point Live! asks us to abandon real reality and follow the film into its own fictional universe. Katy sells the idea to advertisers as an empowering realisation of the American dream and reluctant lawyer Don (Braugher) is persuaded to defend the show against the Federal Communications Commission on the grounds that, since the majority of Americans favour execution, live Russian roulette "cannot be classified obscene by the standards of the community."
That's the 'Moving Wallpaper'-style backstory. The second half of Live! has the TV show playing out in real time and it's a crude but tense experience which effectively exploits what we can literally describe as the money-shot.
Whereas Network and Broadcast News satirised the internal operations of cynical TV companies, Live! is directed as much at the viewing public as it is the programme-makers. This ought to extend the film's cultural currency but Guttentag's nods to his own audience's sense of moral superiority - cheerfully outrageous though these are in the film's first half - eventually blunt the satirical edge. It is, after all, no great revelation that reality TV is nuts, that prospective senators are reliant on television advertising or that suicide probably shouldn't be turned into a cash lottery and then broadcast live on TV.
Mendes, carrying a film on her own for the first time, clearly relishes the role of a strong, attractive, independent woman who is, unusually, entirely without virtue. But by the time we get to the shock finale, which is in fact followed by a second shock finale, the film's various versions of reality have collided in a tangled pile-up where the credibility of one precludes the plausibility of the other. That may be inevitable for any film which exploits the very thing it's spoofing, but for a reality TV satire, Live! feels oddly unreal and contrived.
This review originally appeared at Film4.com
Filmmakers started wrestling with the issue almost as soon as the phenomena went live, but the problem in parodying reality TV is that the real thing already exists in such a heightened state of (un)reality that satire is always playing catch-up. Bill Guttentag's film goes some way to acknowledging this by positing a programme so outrageous it could never happen. Live!'s bid for credibility is based on a purposefully incredible premise - a convoluted strategy which renders the film - you guessed it - kind of incredible.
Before all that though, we have Katy (Mendes), a monstrously slick corporate machine-woman working for the fictional ABN TV network. In her religiously fanatical pursuit of ratings, Katy alights on an hour of real-life Russian roulette. The deal: six contestants, one revolver and a single live round. Five survivors walk away with five million dollars each. The loser blows their brains out on national TV. Huge audience share, massive advertising revenue, vast political leverage and an entry for Katy in the history books.
Writer-director Bill Guttentag won an Oscar for his documentary Twin Towers, so it makes clear logistical sense that his own media satire should take the form of a reflexive mockumentary. Rex (Krumholtz) is the filmmaker tracking Katy's attempts to get her show made and though he begins as the film's conscience he's swiftly seduced by Katy, who is herself canonised as the profit-making prophet of America's morally bankrupt media.
Guttentag's film consists of two distinct parts, but each undercuts the other. The first half follows Katy's attempt to get the programme green lit and it suggests Guttentag is familiar with 'Brass Eye'. The network's desperate brainstorming sessions throw up shows based on live breast enhancement, paedophile entrapment and a competition to crash airplanes into the desert. "People say they can't believe how bad what's on TV is," says one producer. "They should see what's not on TV."
Despite her failure to get the network on board, Katy goes ahead anyway. Six worthy contestants - including a performance artist, a surf dude, a farmer and a gay Mexican - are located, at which point Live! asks us to abandon real reality and follow the film into its own fictional universe. Katy sells the idea to advertisers as an empowering realisation of the American dream and reluctant lawyer Don (Braugher) is persuaded to defend the show against the Federal Communications Commission on the grounds that, since the majority of Americans favour execution, live Russian roulette "cannot be classified obscene by the standards of the community."
That's the 'Moving Wallpaper'-style backstory. The second half of Live! has the TV show playing out in real time and it's a crude but tense experience which effectively exploits what we can literally describe as the money-shot.
Whereas Network and Broadcast News satirised the internal operations of cynical TV companies, Live! is directed as much at the viewing public as it is the programme-makers. This ought to extend the film's cultural currency but Guttentag's nods to his own audience's sense of moral superiority - cheerfully outrageous though these are in the film's first half - eventually blunt the satirical edge. It is, after all, no great revelation that reality TV is nuts, that prospective senators are reliant on television advertising or that suicide probably shouldn't be turned into a cash lottery and then broadcast live on TV.
Mendes, carrying a film on her own for the first time, clearly relishes the role of a strong, attractive, independent woman who is, unusually, entirely without virtue. But by the time we get to the shock finale, which is in fact followed by a second shock finale, the film's various versions of reality have collided in a tangled pile-up where the credibility of one precludes the plausibility of the other. That may be inevitable for any film which exploits the very thing it's spoofing, but for a reality TV satire, Live! feels oddly unreal and contrived.
This review originally appeared at Film4.com
