Ron Howard's new comedy, ''EDtv,'' is a fable about how instant celebrity changes a couch potato (Matthew McConaughey) who wins a contest and suddenly has his every move televised into homes across America. But in this era of Jerry Springer, reality TV, and Tripp-wired testimony, the premise isn't as far-fetched as it may seem. "Television was a tremendous furnace that needed a lot of wood when there were just three networks and some local guy doing a puppet show," says coscreenwriter Lowell Ganz. "Now, with 800 channels, celebrities will have to be constantly created. You know how psychiatrists talk about you being the star of your own movie? Soon that's going to be literally true."
Ganz and his partner Babaloo Mandel say working with their longtime collaborator Howard, with whom they made ''Night Shift,'' ''Gung Ho,'' and ''Parenthood,'' proved particularly salient this time around. "Ron has been famous all his life, so that was an interesting thing to bring to the film," Ganz tells EW Online. "I think he's almost the ideal guy to do this movie. (Celebrity) is a very peculiar way to live -- you're never by yourself." Adds Mandel, "Because he's been in the public eye since he was 3 years old, people think Ron is very approachable. They think they can go for a walk with him."
The writers admit that ''EDtv'' also rang true for McConaughey. "It's very similar to what happened to Matthew," Ganz says of the star who became a flavor of the month with 1996's ''A Time to Kill'' and ''Lone Star.'' "Nobody had heard of him, and then in one month Hollywood decided that he was the next cover boy. So he could relate to it, like, 'I was this guy one day, and the next I'm this whole different guy.'''
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