HOLLYWOOD, Jan. 16, 2001 — Six real people, one live television crew and a reality gameshow in which winning means just staying alive … literally.
Welcome to the ultimate in reality gameshows, “Series 7” — only don’t expect to find this on television.
What sounds like reality TV gone to hell is actually a big-screen project conceived by indie writer-director Daniel Minahan where the genre of reality-TV show is sent up and turned inside out.
The film follows six contestants chosen at random who compete for their lives in a gameshow called “The Contender.” The players are nine-months-pregnant Dawn (Brooke Smith); benign nurse Connie (Marylouise Burke); terminally ill pacifist Jeff (Glenn Fitzgerald); unemployed family man Tony (Michael Kaycheck); avowed 18-year-old virgin Lindsay (Merritt Wever); and trailer park wacko Franklin (Richard Venture). Their mission is to hunt down their competitors before they themselves be killed, with the last person standing as the winner.
From the use of handheld digital video to the candid interviews with the so-called “contestants” sprinkled throughout, the film is a conscious mimicry of shows in the tradition of “Cops” and “Survivor” — right down to its own official Web site (www.series7movie.com/) where you (if you do so desire) can find out about anything you want to know about the fictional show.
While the film might turn off some with its casual bloodshed, Minahan maintained at the film’s press tour that the film’s violence is a comment on the culture’s desensitization and the media’s power to invade anyone’s privacy — y’know, that sort of thing.
In many ways, given the current sign-of-the-times reality-TV madness, “Series 7” is indeed timely if not downright prescriptive. Minahan had actually thought up the concept for the project back in 1995 (read: way before “Survivor”) after having worked for several years producing segments for what he called “tabloid newsmagazine shows.”
His top choice for the lead has always been Smith, whom he saw in action in an (“Off Off Off Off Broadway,” Brooks quipped at the junket) production of “Little Monster” in 1995. Minahan began putting his ideas down on paper in 1996 while working on the film “I Shot Andy Warhol” (which he also co-wrote). A year after that, he sent Smith the script, and the two worked on fine tuning the story — he on the writing end and she on the acting — through the Sundance Writers Lab in 1997 and subsequently at the institute’s Director Lab.
And as it happens, Minahan and Smith will be taking the film back to Sundance for a third trip — and this time, it is to premiere their labor of love at the annual Park City, Utah, bash.
Utah and the world beware.
“Series 7” will world premiere on Jan. 19 at the Sundance Film Festival. The film opens in Los Angeles and New York on March 2.
