Forum of Independents 2001 / Series 7 / USA 2000
“The Contender” is an enormously successful reality show on television which makes “Big Brother” look like an innocent kindergarten game. The show’s candidates are selected via a lottery. These completely average contestants are given a revolver and are then sent out to track down the last show’s survivor, accompanied by a cameraman. The rule: only one of them can survive. The show’s current winner is Dawn, who is in her eighth month of pregnancy. The five new contestants are informed about being selected live on the show: Tony, a labourer whose marriage is on the brink of collapse, Connie, a religious nurse, eighteen-year-old Linda, the perfect incarnation of the all-American girl, Franklin, who suspects everyone of some kind of conspiracy, and finally Jeff, an artist and pacifist who has cancer and happens to be Dawn’s childhood sweetheart.
85 min / Black & white, 35 mm
Director Daniel Minahan
/ Screenplay Daniel Minaham
/ Dir. of Photography Randy Drummond
/ Music Girls Against Boys
/ Editor Malcolm Jamieson
/ Producer Jason Kliot, Joana Vicente, Christine Vachon, Katie Roumel
/ Production Blow-Up Pictures
/ Cast Brooke Smith, Glenn Fitzgerald, Michael Kaycheck, Marylouise Burke, Merrit Wever
Daniel Minahan (b.1963, Danbury, Connecticut) lives in New York. He has made several TV productions and collaborated on the screenplay for Mary Harron’s I Shot Andy Warhol. Series 7 is his feature debut.
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