Hands on a Hard Body: The Documentary

1997 documentary

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Twenty-four contestants participate in an endurance competition to win a brand new truck.

What I liked about this one is that a marketing gimmick turned reality television episode managed to transform into something a little more profound. The motivations of these various characters was fascinating, and psychologically, it was just interesting to follow the different states of mind of these contestants. There was a giggling fanatic who kept having these mini laughing religious experiences, a woman with no teeth supported by her husband with no teeth who claimed he could stay up without sleep for 101 straight hours and had a 20-ton air conditioning unit that could bring the temperature of his home to 12 below zero, a young woman who just wants to use the victory as a ticket out of town, and a former winner of the competition who had an almost zen-like approach. His description of this as a competition to see "who can maintain their sanity the longest" is accurate and makes for a fascinating contest, and there were some moments of real tension and suspense as the contestants started dropping. It's also one of those glimpses of something that could only happen in small-town America.

A couple bits of trivia from imdb.com: 1) Robert Altman planned to make a film based on this contest. That could have been terrific. 2) During the 2005 contest, one of the contestants stole a shotgun from a nearby K-Mart and killed himself during one of the breaks. Yikes. That person really stunk at the contest!