That's Live! with a long "i" - as in "'Live' from New York, it's Saturday Night,"
not as in "I 'live' with my parents."
This is the blackest of black comedies about an ambitious TV executive and
her search for the ultimate reality show. After discarding several ideas, she
zeroes in on an offhanded comment by one of her staffers, and comes up with a
plan to have six people play Russian roulette on camera, on live TV. Five of
them will go home with $5 million each. The sixth will not go home at all. The
film's assumptions are: (1) a greedy network would actually air such a show if
they knew there would be no legal repercussions; (2) ambitious executives
would push the idea to further their careers without ever considering the
ethical implications; (3) there would be no shortage of contestants; (4)
Americans would flock to their TVs to watch the show, especially the grand
finale.
I don't know whether those suppositions are valid or not, but this film stays
true to them, and it works because of that. It is a strangely powerful film
because of its internal dynamic. At first we watch it as we would watch any
cynical black comedy, placing ourselves above the characters and snarking away
at the human greed and exploitation before us. Then something miraculous
happens in the center of the film. As the fictional audition process unfolds,
the film's loyalty to its premise makes us aware of the various kinds of
desperate and/or crazy people who would agree to play Russian roulette for
money. The auditions at first seem to attract only suicidal loonies, but
the losers who want to die are eventually weeded out in the audition process and the
producers find people who want to live, but are willing to risk death for a
chance to escape or improve their existing lives. When genuine, attractive
and/or sympathetic contestants emerge, the laughter turns inward toward the
sadness which is the ultimate source of black humor. By the time the
apocryphal reality show airs its final episode, in which one person must
actually die, our jaded guffaws have turned to outright horror because we
realize that there will be no cop-out ending, no last minute reprieve. One of
the six contestants is actually going to blow out his or her brains before our
eyes. We realize that the premise is not so far-fetched because we, like the
fictional audience in the film, are completely wound up in the game and are
wondering which contestant will die. As each of them pulls the trigger, we are
holding our breath. By the end of the film, the script completely knocks down
the fourth wall because it not only posits that people are theoretically jaded
enough to watch such an offensive and morbid reality show, but it proves it to
us - by getting us to watch it, and to get involved in it. The show's
real audience is not the people sitting in the chairs up there on the screen.
It is us.
Don't expect this film to be a comedy. It has some humor, to be sure, and
you'll probably laugh out loud a couple of times in the early going, but you
won't walk out of the theater feeling the way you normally feel after a
comedy. The humor just keeps moving closer and closer to the gallows variety
until we are standing right there with the executioner. Worst of all, the
hangman is not only joking cavalierly at our expense, he's also selling
shampoo.
Does the film have a significant audience? I doubt it. Few people will
watch it voluntarily if they read the plot description. When I read about this
film, I had no interest in it, and thought it would be repulsive. But I had to
watch it to catalogue the nudity. By the time it was near the the end, I was
deeply involved, and disgusted at myself for that involvement. I wanted to
shout at the writer/director, "You did this. You tricked me." Maybe his
manipulative techniques represent a course in psychological dirty pool, and
they are certainly no way to win a popularity contest, but there is no doubt
that those machinations are powerful.
