MURRY FRYMER/AT LARGE

IN `TRUMAN' ERA, IS THE TRUTH REALLY OUT THERE?

DO you ever get so wound up in the mood of a movie that you retain the
emotion even after leaving the theater?

I do that a lot. But I was feeling particularly paranoid as I stepped out
into the parking lot of the Century 16 theaters in San Jose after seeing the
new Jim Carrey fantasy, ``The Truman Show.'' And now, a few days later, I
still am.

It's not that I think my life is secretly a television show, though the
pieces of my daily adventures (?) that find their way into this column
sometimes have that effect.

It is instead a gnawing feeling, inspired by the film, that life for most of
us is more manipulated by outsiders -- outsiders who do not have our best
interests at heart -- than any of us really appreciate.

We are, of course, a free people with no Big Daddy determining our fate.
But, wait, just how free are we? Just how much opportunity really exists for
all of us in this land of opportunity? And how much do we really know about
how this whole bewildering society works?

I think that last question worries me the most. Having lived a good part of
my life now, I am not as sure as I used to be that I really know what is
going on around me. I wonder about being a bit player in a story in which
the stars were determined, where success and failure was largely written
into a script that I didn't know existed.

That bit of paranoia is not really the main thrust of ``Truman,'' which
comments on the overwhelming role that television plays in our lives and the
invasion of privacy that has developed because of the ubiquitous nature of
the small screen.

No, I'm thinking about something else. Who is it that gets to run all the
major corporations and just how much power do they have in determining the
kinds of lives the rest of us live? Who determines who earns what and why do
some people who appear to contribute so little in the large scheme of things
earn so much, and vice versa?

JUST WHAT role do the managers of hype -- advertising, PR, the news and
entertainment media -- play in the scheme of things? Hype seems so integral
to everything these days, determining what is important and what is not. Is
the whole media enterprise a means of manipulating the society, a society
that is unaware that it is being manipulated?

How do you get men and women willing to give their lives in a war? What is
that small clique from which we pick our presidents and senators and college
deans?

Do they tell you the truth in college, not only about the War of the Roses,
but about how and why we function as we do? For a long time people were told
the world was flat. What fictions -- scientific, religious, cultural -- are
still at the basis of human learning today?

I am not a conspiracy theorist, so I don't believe plots are behind the
killings of the Kennedys or the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., but are there
insidious plots elsewhere, in everything from the front pages of newspapers
to the studios of Walt Disney to the failed efforts at controlling drug
traffic or illegal immigration or the price of Beanie Babies? Huh?

What are the secrets in the medical profession that only insiders know? Or
the legal profession? Or the stock market? How much of sports is like pro
wrestling? In other words, why are things as they are?

I used to know a Hollywood producer whose favorite comment was:
``Everything's bull----.''

And I'd ask, ``You mean, in the movies?'' And he'd say, ``No, everywhere.
Everybody knows the B.S. in their own world, but it's when you put it all
together, you see that that is all there is.''

Well, that is cynicism talking. But there is some paranoia in the argument.
I wonder whether all the chances turn out the way they do simply by
accident. I wonder if we are not all overly docile in our lives, as Truman
was, not knowing that everything around us has been programmed.

Are we all taking predetermined paths to predetermined results? Maybe it's a
genetic plot. Maybe it's economic, or political.

What do you think?

Send your suspicions to Murry Frymer at 750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose,
Calif. 95190; e-mail to mfrymer@sjmercury.com .

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett