Seaside, Florida (‘The Truman Show’)

If you’re a fan of Peter Weir’s masterpiece from 1998, The Truman Show, you owe yourself a visit to the little town of Seaside, Florida. Located in the Panhandle, between Panama City Beach and Pensacola, this unincorporated community was the filming location for the movie. Interestingly, Seaside is much smaller and sleepier than it seems in the film, which used digital enhancement to enlarge some of the buildings in the community center. (Click each photo for a larger, higher-resolution version. All images are copyright Cameron Meier and may not be used without written permission and copyright credit.)

And if you’d like a crash course in the cinema and television that influenced The Truman Show‘s theme of someone being trapped inside a filmed story, I’d suggest the following: Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. (1924), A World of Difference (a 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone), Paul Bartel’s Secret Cinema (a short film from 1966, which he remade as a 1986 episode of Amazing Stories), Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) and Special Service (a 1989 episode of the reboot of The Twilight Zone.)