While I doubt a show where people compete for their lives against gladiators will ever happen, I think a reality show based around Paintball matches would work. At the very least in syndication.
If you could get simulated storylines going. Maybe create a quasi-war, and we’d have a hit on our hands.
???
I could have sworn it was about a man who desperately needed money, and you earn money on the running man show by eluding capture for a certain amount of time…and that people would call in and nark on where you were, or some people would help you run…
IIRC, his wive or daughter was very sick and needed medication.
<wanders off to see if she can dig out a copy or if it went to the used book store already>
Yup. And the kicker in the book is:
While he’s running, his family is killed by mobs trying to find him for the reward. He retaliates by hijacking a jet and crashing it into the TV network’s skyscraper. I wonder if bin Laden ever read the book. :o
THE POINT IS: they are there on their own free will.
I read it ten friggin years ago.
Weirddave, I said all along that Osama is doing a real-life ‘Running Man’.
Brief summary of The Running Man, by Richard Bachman (wink, wink):
Ben Richards is an underemployed member of the lower classes in the year 2025 (some fifty years after the novel was written). The social structure in America has been divided into the gainfully employed and the barely-subsisting poor, with a future version of television (aka the Free-Vee) provided constant, mostly violent, entertainment. There are several throwaway references indicating the Free-Vee is in every household, and a congressional initiative disabling the “off” switch has just recently been barely defeated.
Faced with few prospects for income and with an ailing daughter, Richards “crosses the river” into the wealther parts of the city of Harding (Michigan?). This is risky, since roving street gangs routinely beat up pedestrains, and the police routinely roust and arrest the poor to keep them in line, using electrified nightsticks called “move-alongs”. Richards’ goal is the Games Building, a local branch of the Free-Vee network. He and hundreds of unemployed others voluntarily undergo a battery of medical and psychological tests. If they are deemed acceptable (and the vast majority are rejected), they’ll be assigned to one of the Free-Vee games programs and a chance to earn some money, although at severe risk of injury. Richards, being an intelligent iconoclast, works his way through the system and finds himself, along with two others, cast for one of the “big money” games; The Running Man. Unlike other games, which typically result only in injury, these games almost invariably end in death.
Richards has to evade law enforcement for 30 days. During that time, any civilian who spots him and reports in is rewarded. Every hour he survives, he (or his heirs, upon his death) gets $100. Further, he will receive a bonus for any law enforcement officer he manages to kill during his run. The first 48 hours are paid in advance, giving him some working capital. If he survives the entire month, his prize is one billion “New Dollars” (“New” and “Old” dollars are frequently referenced in the text, without explanation, though implying some sort of computerized currency control is in place). Thus far, no contestant has survived more than twelve days. A requirement is that Richards must film himself with a supplied mini-videocamera and drop two ten-minute tapes in the mail to the Games Network, who will edit them and work them into the nightly broadcast. Richards suspects the claim that these mailings will not be used to trace his movements is false.
During the first few hours of his run, Richards gets false I.D. and travels to New York City, yadda yadda… he manages to hook up with an underground of sorts, who have been gathering data on air pollution (Richards’ daughter’s illness is respiratory in nature, and Richards realizes such diseases are extremely common). Seeing a chance to use Richards for their own ends, they help him, building a plan to stash him in a series of safehouses while using remailings to hide the source of his tapes.
A series of chases, blah-blah-blah, and Richards manages to hijack a private jet, with Evan McCone (head of the “hunters”, the semi-private agency whose sole purpose is chasing the running man) as one of his hostages. While Richards flies cross-country and debates what to do, the Games Network executive that initially offered the Running Man gig to Richards offers him McCone’s job, via radio. The executive also reveals that Richard’s wife and daughter are dead (it’s unclear if the killers were looking for Richards or if, as Richards suspects, they were some of his wife’s customers, his wife having been forced by poverty into occasional prostitution). At this point Richards goes a little nuts, kills the flight crew and McCone, and kamikazes the plane into the same Games Building that hosted his earlier audition, killing the executive.
It’s overall an interesting but ultimately pointless book. There’s no indication that Richard’s actions have any overall positive effect, and the death of his family is an overly convenient deus ex twist.
Pedant: Before Richards, the standing record was eight days and five hours.
Which it almost certainly is - that, or postal workers are reporting where the tapes are sent from for the reward money.
[spoiler] Actually, it is clear. Killian tells Richards his wife and daughter were killed more than ten days earlier, but Richards had only been on the run for eight days and nine hours at that point. If that’s true then it wasn’t the Hunters, and after eliminating them it was unlikely that anyone was looking for Richards to kill him - he was a nobody.
It is possible that Killian was lying about when they died, having had them killed so Richards would be able and willing to take McCone’s job. This would tie in with Killian refusing Richards the right to call his wife, but I don’t think it’s particularly likely. As Killian says, as Chief Hunter Richards would be able to find whoever was responsible, and there would be a great risk that Killian could be implicated.
All in all, I think it’s just as presented - someone, maybe a john, noticed Richards’ wife was alone in the house and came back to kill and rob her. [/spoiler]
Don’t forget the additional image of Richards in the cockpit, his entrails strewn behind him (from a previous gut shot), grinning like a maniac and giving Killian the finger as the plane crashes into the building.
The movie really didn’t have much in common with the book, although Richard Dawson’s casting was inspired, he had the perfect mix of distinguished smarminess that epitomizes gameshow hosts.
As for the actual OP, “Fear Factor” has shown that people will do quite a bit for fame/money, “Survivor” gets ratings, and reality shows don’t need as much writer interaction. Although having a contestant’s death being a possible outcome (willing or not) may be a bit far off.
I thought A&E’s “Family Plots” was a joke when I saw the commercial.
Sadly, I was wrong.