‘Series 7’ Offers a Dark Lampoon of Current TV Trends

WASHINGTON — In “Series 7,” filmmaker Daniel Minahan’s devastating satire of “Survivor”-type television, the killing has already begun: “Real people . . . in real danger . . . in a fight for their lives. Tonight on ‘The Contenders’: Series 7 marathon!” In fact, the show has already been on for six seasons as the movie begins.

In the movie, America’s most popular weekly show abides by the conventions of programs from “America’s Most Wanted” to “Survivor,” says Minahan, whose lethal lampoon combines “real” footage with interviews, graphics, voice-overs and dramatic re-creations.

As in futuristic thrillers such as “The Running Man” and “Rollerball,” this game show is played to the death. Six contestants are notified on-air that they have been drafted at random, then given guns and assigned a cameraman to capture their kills as they knock one another off until one is left. If your number comes up, you must participate. The law of the land has become entertainment.

Minahan, a former producer on Fox’s “Cops,” began to question the blur between news and entertainment, reality and fiction while working as a television journalist.

“An oxymoron,” says the writer-director. “I was working on [Fox] TV news, which was taped at Fox in Los Angeles. Every morning I would walk through the back lot, past the New York set, the White House, ‘NYPD Blue,’ and I would be like, ‘Is it just me or is there something very wrong with this?’ ”

Minahan has traveled to Washington with Brooke Smith, his gifted leading lady. This is the first publicity tour for each.

Smith, who was the gutsy girl in the pit in “The Silence of the Lambs,” plays the equally resourceful Dawn Lagarto here. As the “reigning contender,” Dawn has survived Series 5 and 6. And if she can live through this one? “She wins the only prize that counts,” intones the portentous narrator. “Her life.”

Dawn is eight months pregnant and a killing machine.

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The movie opens with the climax of “Series 6.” Dawn, all dark roots and determination, walks into a convenience store and empties her semiautomatic pistol into the last of her competition, an unsuspecting, pudgy, middle-aged man.

“Got any bean dip?” she asks a clerk as we cut to the title sequence of “Series 7.”

“When we shot that scene, I felt sick to my stomach afterwards,” says Smith, turning to Minahan. “And I wrecked my hair for this movie. All that bleach and those roots.”

“Casting these shows is crucial,” says Minahan. “I wanted people with opposing values, all of them kind of outsiders. There’s someone dying of cancer, an elderly hermit, a world-weary teenage girl. It’s the way they cast a really loaded TV show, like ‘The Real World.’ A rapper, a Jewish guy, a lesbian. They’re all exaggerations, so I just kind of mimic that.”

To further the illusion that “Series 7” was a real TV show, he cast actors who were either unknown or unrecognizable. Like many accomplished stage veterans, Smith fits the bill. “I do feel anonymous,” she says. “I think it’s important for an actor to be anonymous. However, I would also like to be able to pay the rent. . . . It’s good news/bad news for me that I don’t look like an actor. No offense, but the cast of ‘Ally McBeal’--do you believe them as lawyers?”

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To some degree, shows such as “Survivor” and even “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” owe their success to the failings of TV’s bland doctor-lawyer-cop dramas and numbingly pat, improbably cast sitcoms. “People are looking for some kind of authenticity, something that looks more truthful and real that they can relate to their own lives,” Minahan suggests. “But in truth, these shows are completely fixed. You can edit anything together to tell any story you want.”

Smith adds: “What I find sad is to see these three-dimensional people being forced into identifying themselves through sound bites. The participants are fighting for their individuality, but the show-runners make them into whatever they want: virgin, bitch, homeboy.”

If the contenders on “Series 7” try to escape, the show’s henchmen track down the runaways. An unemployed asbestos-removal worker (Michael Kaycheck) is paralyzed during such a chase, leaving him vulnerable to a middle-aged nurse (Marylouise Burke), the first contender to register a kill.

Some viewers were so disturbed by the movie that they walked out of its premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. One scene in particular is too brutal for a lampoon, however lethal. On the other hand, there’s the audience that finds cannibalism amusing and hit men endearing. It seems a little late to become so squeamish. That, of course, is Minahan’s point.