“Even without him, it’s still about him.”
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Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi calls his series The Show About the Show (2015 – 2025) radically honest. Arguably, he pays the price for that honesty. Every episode, Zahedi narrates how he made the previous episode, and includes reenactments. However, it spirals into a documentation of his disintegrating marriage. As a testament to the quagmire the production sank into, the fourth season came out before the third (now called season 2.5 on his website). But does the series accurately depict the lives of its people, or are they being used for a mischievous performance? Is the series sincere or exploitative? Or does practicing radical honesty entail both?
In many respects, The Show does come across as sincere. Not in the sense of an ever-present camera, but in how Zahedi ties each episode together. His narration in front of a black screen prevents distractions, even though he loves to go on digressions. His twinkling eyes and beguiling smile betray the knack of a raconteur. He hammers home the point that he retells events the way he experienced them. One can question how reliably he relates the facts, but his frank demeanor does instill trust in the accuracy of his personal experience.
Zahedi says the harshest or friendliest things about others. This frankness underlines his desire to document his life without filters. He says what he means without sugarcoating things. As a guest on the internet talk show Subway Takes, he argued how not hurting people’s feelings should not be the basis for morality. For him, it’s always better to tell people the truth, no matter how harsh. The Show seems to put this ethical theory into practice.
The events become palpable thanks to the reenactments staged with the people who experienced them. Zahedi hires actors in case someone doesn’t want to go along – the casting of whom turns into material for a future episode. Still, that the people in his life are involved to such a large extent opens up everyone to scrutiny. Even Zahedi himself is not exempt, despite his framing narration. To what extent is he in the right or not? By presenting himself as is, everyone can have their own opinion about his life.
This openness to self-examination has always been present in Zahedi’s work. The Show forms the culmination. In I Am a Sex Addict (2005), he also uses actors to recreate moments that sit firmly in his past. But because The Show takes place in real time, the stakes feel more real. As an ongoing project, it fixes the happy ending of Sex Addict. This goes beyond Zahedi marrying his ex-wife Mandy in that film to divorcing her in this series. As a random audience member from a Q&A in The Show puts it, Sex Addict ends as neat as a Hollywood film.
Zahedi’s methods more resemble social media videos where users share their thoughts and relate anecdotes. The rawness of both Zahedi and social media users moves beyond the slick produce of the culture industry. Could this have been why director Radu Jude wanted to vote for the entire content of TikTok and Instagram in his 2022 Sight and Sound ballot? As philosopher Theodor Adorno puts it: “Works which have not completely mastered [the culture industry’s] technique, conveying as a result something consolingly uncontrolled and accidental, have a liberating quality.” Yet to what extent does The Show liberate?
An air of amateurishness permeates the series. One of the cinematographers lacks experience (and gets a heartfelt obituary after his death). Zahedi edits with any random person who drops by. Most of them tend to be young women he then develops a crush on – another recurring thread throughout the series. Most people in The Show are non-actors. Recasting takes place all the time. However, these choices appear to be made as much out of necessity as for artistic reasons. The show’s canceling by TV channel BRIC and Zahedi’s subsequent Kickstarter campaign illustrate how he wings most of the production.
But do all these elements prove a sincerity on Zahedi’s part? Influencers on TikTok and Instagram curate their image. Doesn’t Zahedi also curate his image as the narrator and director of his own life? So, does The Show accurately depict the lives it is about? Or is the series a performance instead of a personal document?
The Show parallels Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason (1967). In that film, the titular character tells his life story, while the crew gets him drunk and harasses him for dramatic effect. Is Jason able to tell his own story, or is he being manipulated into telling the story that the makers want him to tell? The crew’s treatment of him raises ethical concerns about picturing real life. Moreover, it raises concerns about the story’s authenticity. Wouldn’t such exploitative filmmaking methods compromise the sincerity of the film’s subject?
At times, Zahedi comes across like Clarke’s crew. His actions inevitably generate controversy, and do not seem to come from an honest place. There is a reason people continue to drop out as the series progresses. Many are irked when they discover something airs that they’d rather not have shared in public. Zahedi does betray their trust, and such a betrayal implies an insincerity on the betrayer’s part. Everything that Zahedi films or narrates will have real-life consequences. This shouldn’t be a surprise. His actions help in spiraling his life out of control, and as such add to a performance.
A profound disregard for other people’s lives runs as a current throughout The Show. Zahedi exhibits little care about how they are represented in the series, nor does he reflect on what they consented to when they agreed to be in it. He crashes into their lives like an evil sprite and leaves behind a wreckage. As Zahedi puts it, he was fine to “sacrifice [his marriage] on the altar of art.”
Indeed, the most notorious recast is that of Mandy. The divorce turns nasty, including legal battles over the release of new episodes – battles that proved to be the series’ death knell. Mandy is clear about wanting out of The Show. Zahedi still shows up at her door with his crew, only leaving after the police drop by. He also keeps filming the children against her wishes, claiming that it’s fun for them. There is no further reflection on the possible effects on their development, nor on his frequent provocations.
Such provocation isn’t new to Zahedi’s work. I Don’t Hate Las Vegas Anymore (1994) revolves around the single conceit of guilt-tripping his father and half-brother into taking ecstasy together. The film seems to hinge on getting them to do it. His attempts turn out to be in vain. The performance collapses, and he does a poor job of examining their relationships instead. His most irresponsible work might be The Sheik and I (2012). Zahedi is commissioned to make a movie by an authoritarian emirate. In a predictable turn of events, he proceeds to film a satire of the emirate’s sheikh with the inhabitants. He can flee from arrest, while the inhabitants run much higher risks such as prison or death.
Still, the third season of The Show tops the devil-may-care attitude of The Sheik and I. In one of the most uncomfortable scenes, Zahedi admits to having feelings for his sound recorder (yet another young woman). Two male Vice reporters are with them, and their awkward laughter fills the hotel room. Zahedi hesitates before his admission, as if really wanting her to like him. The camera swoops from one embarrassed face to another before landing on her nervous smile and quiet no. It plays like a scene from Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000 – 2024) if Larry David were a predator. The series never addresses why the sound recorder doesn’t feature in later episodes. This scene revolves around Zahedi’s like, not her dislike.
Yet Zahedi doesn’t let himself off scot-free. Although often tied to the divorce, creating The Show comes with consequences. For instance, there are financial repercussions, or a bad housing situation. Of course, both give Zahedi new material to work with – the fights with his landlord are turned into skits.
But do the dire consequences of turning his life into a show turn equally on Zahedi as on the others? In one instance, he plays an audio recording of himself having sex with one of his editor-women (now removed after legal threats). There is an imbalance to the humiliation of this privacy-breaking move, if only because Zahedi releases it just because he can and wants to. He holds up the phone with the recording with a straight face. It renders the scene both disturbing and comic.
The way Zahedi uses humor disarms many situations. His droll demeanor and frequent self-degradation turn matters otherwise dangerous into provocative jokes. For instance, in I Am a Sex Addict, his exaggerated moaning during reenactments deflects attention from the addiction itself to his persona. In The Show, whenever Zahedi recalls a person, an insert briefly pops up. Such a dry way of contextualizing his anecdotes gives a comic distance to the proceedings. He includes criticism of viewers in some episodes, but by turning them into a chance for self-mockery, they lose their bite. When matters get rough with one girlfriend, he mentions how her therapist told her that Zahedi is manipulating her. He drops it casually, so the confession doesn’t land as a bombshell. Zahedi continually rolls with his provocative side.
The disarming humor aestheticizes the events, which threatens to bury the real-life consequences. Ethical filmmaking entails a respect for a film’s subject. This respect is lacking in The Show, where everyone’s story is used to advance Zahedi’s own, bigger story. People are a means to his own ends, to put it like a cinematic categorical imperative. Consequences be damned. He doesn’t ground his morality in the feelings of others, as he said in Subway Takes. Yet The Show seemingly doesn’t exemplify that take through radical honesty. Instead, Zahedi appears to have transformed his own life into a show.
However, Zahedi does give his former girlfriend Ashley a voice. She takes the spot in front of the black screen for an entire episode to give her side of the story about their painful relationship. Her tears flow as she tells the camera her inner feelings in detail. Yet it comes across as if her pain stems in large part from being with Zahedi. One instance pointing to such a conclusion is the agonizing moment she quits the show in an earlier episode. Instead of consoling an upset Ashley, Zahedi upsets her even more. He asks her in a soft voice for some clothes to borrow for her replacement actress, who is sitting nearby. Throughout Ashley’s own episode, the occasional shot of Zahedi behind the camera directing suggests that he is still in control. As such, even the episode without Zahedi’s voice feels as much a deep dive into his as into her psyche. Even without him, it’s still about him.
So, there is an exploitative side to The Show due to Zahedi’s manipulative behavior. He radiates a charm that sucks one into the quicksand with him. For this, it helps that he loves to talk about his own insecurities and vulnerabilities, and that The Show does mess with his own life. Yet he rarely reflects on whether others wanted to be a part of that mess or had something different in mind when they consented to be in the series. At best, Zahedi walks a fine line between provocative performance and taking advantage of other people’s goodwill.
Does that mean The Show is an exercise in narcissistic exposure rather than radical honesty? Zahedi’s dedication to its making suggests both. No matter who or what stands in the way, he will lay bare his soul. His personality paints the entire picture. His provocations succeed in showing himself as he is, whereas those of Portrait of Jason fail to give Jason a fair chance to tell his story. So, not in spite of but thanks to his manipulations, Zahedi is right when he describes The Show About the Show as radically honest.
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All images are screenshots from the film.
