Strap a Camera to her Head

Have you ever seen a movie called Dark Passage?  Probably not.  It’s a Humphrey Bogart movie where a good deal of the first part of the film is filmed in the first person.  It was probably revolutionary at the time.  It’s kind of like a first person shooter video game where all you see is the gun you’re carrying and the targets.

In Dark Passage Humphrey’s a convict escaped from prison.  It’s the first few hours of the chase and anything could happen.  At first, you can hear Humphrey’s voice, but you can’t see his face.  All you can see are his hands and his legs when he looks down and anything he sees, you see.  For all you know, you are the one experiencing the action.  You don’t know who to trust.  You get in a car with a man who offers you a ride and he tells you how he made the upholstery for his seats out of an old circus tent.  You listen to the radio and the announcer tells the listener to be on the lookout for… you.  Eventually, you make it to a cosmetic surgeon who lost his medical license.  When you wake up and take the bandages off… and… sadly the story reverts to a third person presentation and you are no longer Humphrey Bogart hiding in shadows or showering in a beautiful woman’s apartment while she buys clothes for you.

I was thinking about reality TV today and how I don’t think I’d be particularly interested in watching a show where an actress is filmed from a third person perspective.  You know what would be more fun?  If you just strapped the camera to her forehead and we got to see what really goes on. 

Can you imagine hanging out from Charlize Theron’s perspective while she taught the male cast of Mad Max to knit and then imagine you were still with her when she went home to read her maid’s complaints.  Just as an aside, those are both rumors about her.  That she refuses to speak to her maid.  If her maid has something to tell her, she has to write it down in a book, which Charlize will read when she is dang good and ready.  Beats me if either of those things are true, but that does sound like a good day to me.  Knitting with steam punk clad boys to return home at the end of the day to no housework.

The idea of the reality show would be to remove the actress’s beauty from the equation.  Half of what’s fun about filming an actress in reality type role is to keep the camera on her and on her prettiness.  This would be taking the whole thing from a different perspective.  It would be to give the audience an idea of what it’s like to be the beautiful actress.  How do people talk to her?  What do they say?  Does she regularly have to deal with a lot of difficult news?  People complaining and wanting more from her?  Is she paid so much that everyone simply expects her to do everything and carry a production?  Are fans always nice?  Do they whine to her that the movie didn’t end the way they hoped?

I was watching an interview with Kevin Bacon where he said he got all dolled up by professional makeup artists in order to experiment with the idea of anonymity.  Meaning, he walked through a mall without being recognized.  He said it was awful… and obviously not what he was used to.  So, if he gets recognized everywhere he goes, try strapping a camera to his head and show the audience what it’s like to be Kevin Bacon for the day.

Okay… the camera needs to be discrete.  Maybe he could have a camera pen over his ear.  I’d watch that.