Hands on a Hard Body

no, it's not porn.

I recently watched this very fascinating documentary about a contest where 24 people compete to win a truck. Of course, this isn't as simple as you think. The rules are: they have to have at least one hand on the truck, never lean on it, never sleep, wear gloves at all times, and have regular breaks and mandatory drug tests.

As the film goes on, the film then becomes a slice of the American Dream. For every Texan, one person says, the truck is kinda rooted in their blood or something. It's like a horse to the figurative cowboy. We then see the motivations behind some of the contestants and why they want that ultimate prize.

As the hours tick on and sleep deprivation sets in, a lot of people are disoriented, behave strangely, or convulse in uncontrollable laughter. But each one of the contestants wants that truck. Whether it's fueled by materialism or something else, we are left to decide for ourselves.

The film looks like an old home video (it was shot in Hi-8 and converted to 16mm) but it's the people and the story that matters. By the last third, you don't really care about the video quality anymore. The story itself pulls you in deep.

Robert Altman was reportedly making a movie version of this, and a broadway version (!) has already been shown. One can only wonder how that turned out.