Paper Man

(A Different City, 1971)

By Barry Meyer

It’s interesting when a flick from the past, which was designed to capitalize on the fears of the day, ends up being just as relevant today as it was back then. “Identity theft” wouldn’t become a part of the daily vernacular for another twenty-five years, but the 1971 made-for-TV movie Paper Man demonstrates that the fear of losing our personal value to a series of numbers punched into a machine was already weighing heavy on the minds of the people.  MasterCard had only been made widely accessible to the public in 1966, just five years before Paper Man was released, but Americans were already questioning the personal cost of these handy pieces of plastic.  With the Cold War still brewing, there was no telling who could steal your life with the simple click of a button.

Paper Man centers around a group of savvy college students who use their tech lab computer to create a fictitious person and then apply for a credit card under his phony name. After some frivolous spending sprees, the gang decides that maybe they better get rid of the card and the fake identity they’ve created (that has been given an eerie physical presence thanks to a jury-rigged med class dummy) before they get caught.  It’s not as easy as they thought, though, when they discover that the “paper man” they’ve created has generated his own ID in the school’s computer, as well as other computers at the local banks and public records offices.  And when the kids themselves start to meet mysterious deaths, the local Sheriff must try and catch a killer that doesn’t quite seem to exist.

Director Walter Grauman (who also delivered the thrills in Lady in a Cage) doesn’t try to doctor up the suspense with loud bangs or sudden movements, but instead plays on the audiences insecurities and fears of technology to deliver the thrills. Like in 2001: A Space Odyssey the computer that seems to have taken charge is a humming massive wall of blinking lights and unpredictable noises.  There’s also the mannequin-like medical dummy that appears to be watching, silently.