Before there was reality TV, there was EdTV. Sure, there’d been the Loud family and the Gong Show, but they were just CIA fronts, according to Chuck Barris. The nineties flirted with reality shows, like Real World on MTV, but EdTV, at the time, seemed unlikely. A television crew following someone around all the time and beaming it into people’s houses? It was funny. In the nineties. So let that be a lesson to you. Beware of satire. Especially if Rob Reiner has anything to do with it. Satire has a way of coming true in this laugh a minute world. Reiner’s only acting in this, but he brings the power of Spinal Tap to Ron Howard’s precognitive expose. Matthew McConaughey plays Edward Pekurny, you know, Ed. He’s about to become the most interesting man on the planet and all he’s got to do is act naturally. Well, a little bigger than natural, because that’s what puts asses on couches. Ed is not only telegenic, he’s got charisma. He’s got dignity, at least for a little while. When they strap cameras to his ass he loses some of that, but haven’t we all? Woody Harrelson is Ed’s brother Ray. He’s pretty interesting himself. But not quite as much as his brother. Oh, sure, back at the networks there might have been talk that he could be a Fonzie type breakout star, but with Opie Cunningham directing the movie, that would hit too close to home. Ron Howard knew what he was doing, ushering an era of too much information and the cashing in on that information especially when it becomes too much. He cast Ellen, well, Ellen DeGeneres, a face everyone knew from TV because she seemed to be always on TV. DeGeneres started warping the simple realities of standup audiences and made herself at home in every home, whether you were at home or not. She’d later suffer a public breakup when it happened to her. Ron Howard also cast Jenna Elfman, Dharma Freedom Finkelstein Montgomery of Dharma and Greg, who some people probably also watched because they saw her on TV and weren’t sure why. A TV staple since he ran the Impossible Missions Force and Space 1999, Martin Landau is not a big character in EdTV, but an anchor as the wheelchair-bound uncle with a sexy secret. He doesn’t have to say “British Cocksucker” once to get his point across. Ever funny, ever effective. Totally irresistible. Liz Hurley is sexy and shallow. Dennis Hopper is subdued and Sally Kirkland is not. Matthew McConaughey gives Ed his dignity in the end. It’s proven to be a wasted gesture. Nobody gives a shit about dignity in the way Ed did. His ending seems quaint and soft now. Something Ricky Gervais would do. Walk off a reality TV show? Risk the chance of losing all those eyes and ears on you? Walk out the back door or threaten to expose the admen masquerading as television executives as hack quacks? That’s far too optimistic now. That show would bomb on today’s reality TV. Now, if he grew a beard, showed his ass and could only be understood through closed captioning AND subtitles, we’d have a show. EdTV works as a comedy and as social commentary. It seems very naïve now because of how far reality TV has gone what with the honeys and the booboos and the Kardashian monstrosity. They’ve rendered the satire of EdTV flat. Really, it’s not EdTV’s fault.
