“By calling attention to Sullivan’s voyeuristic perspective, the film’s images of the poor and the desperate reach the viewer with greater effect. Sullivan himself is haunted by the failure of his efforts to become poor. After the second “rescue” by his handlers, he complains, “It’s funny the way everything keeps shoving me back to Hollywood … as if some force were saying ‘Get back where you belong…. You don’t belong to real life, you phony you.”