<em>Live!</em>: How Far Should Television Go?

Would you watch a televised execution? 21% of Americans say they wouldn't just watch one, they'd pay to watch one. That's one of the real life poll numbers quoted in Oscar-winning documentarian Bill Guttentag's narrative debut, Live!, which he wrote and directed. The mockumentary trails a ballsy, ratings-obsessed television executive as she seeks to air the ultimate reality TV show, a game of Russian Roulette in which one person will die. The painfully funny satire had the audience at Saturday night's world premiere laughing and gasping until the very end.

Bombshell Eva Mendes plays the exec, Katy, a part Guttentag originally wrote for a man. After falling in love with the script, she stepped in as executive producer in order to get the picture greenlit. The film is her producing debut. At the premiere Guttentag, who lives in the Bay Area and is also a professor at Stanford Business School, credited Mendes with getting his film made.

Guttentag and Mendes at the premiere, from AP

After the screening, the unlikely partners got up to speak. Guttentag, soft-spoken and smiling, confessed he almost left a 50 Cent cameo on the cutting room floor. His teenage daughter had to convince him otherwise. Meanwhile Mendes explained how she wanted Bob Saget for the host of the Russian Roulette show, but couldn't convince Guttentag. Ecstatic all night, she periodically waved to friends in the audience and declared, "When you guys laugh it's like hearing an angel's voice!"

With the premiere of Live!, Guttentag fulfilled his wish. "I really aspired to get it here. This is the media capital of the world and there is no better place for it than Tribeca." And he's only halfway done with his festival. His documentary Nanking premieres Wednesday. "I feel really fortunate. It was a matter of time and it's been a busy year."

For more HuffPost coverage of the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival, go here.

- Katherine Thomson