Tanned cyclists recently pedaled along East County Highway in Seaside, Florida, passing pastel cottages, white picket fences and lush flower beds on brick streets faded by years of sunshine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some rode down to the town square, where the line between everyday life and vacation seems to blur. Window shoppers peeked at mannequins dressed in linen and polos. Goldendoodles tugged at leashes as people huddled beneath palm trees for lunch and coffee before returning to the beach for another few hours.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If the sun-bleached hair and swimsuits didn\u2019t already make it clear this is a beach town, the pun-filled signs hanging outside homes and driveways did: \u201cParking Is All That Smathers,\u201d \u201cSandity\u201d and \u201cHere Comes the Sun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Every place has its own ethos. For New Orleans, it\u2019s resilience; for Philadelphia, grit; for New York City, ambition. For Seaside, it\u2019s escapism \u2014 an escape from life\u2019s hardships into a pastel bubble of Gulf waters, bike rides and manicured homes, where summer never seems to end.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what its founder, Robert Davis, intended after an era of futurism deduced the American dream could be found in speed, technology and progress. Davis countered that philosophy, instead embracing new urbanism when he transformed 80 acres of land inherited from his grandfather into Seaside in 1981.<\/p>\n
Inspired by his childhood vacations along Florida\u2019s Gulf Coast, he painted a portrait of small-town America, where neighbors knew one another, where residents strolled through the town square instead of navigating winding cul-de-sacs and rarely reached for their car keys.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was a vision of personal mobility, isolated in comfort,\u201d Davis said, \u201cAnd escape from the city to a bucolic suburb where everyone would have a garden and live in a kind of splendid isolation.\u201d<\/p>\n
His vision is the reason why Seaside was chosen as the setting for the 1998 film \u201cThe Truman Show,\u201d directed by Peter Weir and starring Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank, who discovers his seemingly ordinary life is a reality television show that\u2019s chronicled his every move from the time he was a fetus to, presumably, his demise.<\/p>\n
The ones he loves most \u2014 his mother, wife, friend and neighbors \u2014 are paid actors, while the town he resides in, Seahaven, is a colossal soundstage. Beneath its idyllic facade and saccharine faces lies a world of control, surveillance and illusion, where every relationship and conversation is carefully engineered for the audience\u2019s amusement.<\/p>\n
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The house in Seaside, Florida, where Truman Burbank lives in the 1998 film \u201cThe Truman Show.\u201d<\/p>\n
Poet Wolfe<\/p>\n
The script, Davis said, originally envisioned a neighborhood in New York City, until Weir\u2019s wife read a magazine article about Seaside while scouting locations for the film. Davis obliged, he said, adding that the community \u201cwas so un-busy at the time that we were happy to have some activity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
But he did have some concerns. Aside from the army of production crews that would descend on Seaside, he worried about \u201cthe reaction of the greater world.\u201d<\/p>\n
The community had already been dismissed as a \u201clab-like place\u201d by some architectural critics. Davis was concerned the film would reinforce that image \u2014 an oasis engineered to unreachable perfection \u2014 and he wasn\u2019t wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But when \u201cThe Truman Show\u201d was released in theaters, he didn\u2019t take offense to how his town was portrayed. He knew that like anywhere else, Seaside had flaws of its own.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnybody who was inspired by the movie to visit Seaside would realize that it wasn’t just a stage set,\u201d he said, \u201cIt wasn’t nearly as polished or perfect as it was shown to be in the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet on a recent weekday afternoon, its flaws faded into the background, with only the sun-bleached streets revealing the passage of time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Signs of imperfection remained undetectable turning onto a palm-shaded Natchez Street and approaching \u201cThe Truman House\u201d \u2014 the words painted in navy blue on the white picket fence. With a butter-yellow facade, coral trim and a lime green door, the home where Truman lives in the film was far more vibrant in real life than how it appeared onscreen.<\/p>\n
The rows of pastel cottages dwindled approaching the town square, where cream-colored commercial buildings and Airstream trailers converted into food stands circle around a grass field.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In one corner sits Modica Market, a family-owned store operating in Seaside since 1989. Inside, Charlie Modica stood at the cash register, ringing up groceries as the lunch rush steadily grew closer to noon. At least three times a day, a shopper approaches him about his brief appearance in \u201cThe Truman Show.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Modica stepped away from the register and stood beside the wooden ladder where he was perched during his scene in the film. Across from him was a framed movie poster of a grinning Truman Burbank, hanging above black and white photos of his family\u2019s gourmet grocery store from decades ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Charlie Modica and his sister run Modica Market, a gourmet grocery store in Seaside, Florida. Modica, 64, arrived in Seaside as a young adult and has seen the region transform as more newcomers and tourists arrive.<\/p>\n
Staff photo by Hannah Levitan<\/p>\n