American Beauty is a 1999 American black comedy-drama film written by Alan Ball and directed by Sam Mendes. Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham, an advertising executive who has a midlife crisis when he becomes infatuated with his teenage daughter’s best friend, played by Mena Suvari. Annette Bening plays Lester’s materialistic wife, Carolyn, and Thora Birch plays their insecure daughter, Jane. Wes Bentley, Chris Cooper, and Allison Janney also feature. It won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Cinematography at the 2000 Academy Awards.
About American Beauty (1999 film) in brief
American Beauty is a 1999 American black comedy-drama film written by Alan Ball and directed by Sam Mendes. Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham, an advertising executive who has a midlife crisis when he becomes infatuated with his teenage daughter’s best friend, played by Mena Suvari. Annette Bening plays Lester’s materialistic wife, Carolyn, and Thora Birch plays their insecure daughter, Jane. Wes Bentley, Chris Cooper, and Allison Janney also feature. American Beauty won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Cinematography at the 2000 Academy Awards. It was the best-reviewed American film of the year and grossed over USD 350 million worldwide. Academics have described the film as a satire of American middle-class notions of beauty and personal satisfaction. The film’s explorations of romantic and paternal love, sexuality, materialism, self-liberation, and redemption have also been described as a commentary on American middle class culture and society. It is one of the most successful films of the 1990s, with a worldwide gross of over USD 15 million and a box-office gross of more than $100 million in the U.S. and over $200 million elsewhere in the world. It has been called the “most successful film in American history” by The New York Review of Books. The movie was nominated for and won many other awards and honors, mainly for directing, writing and acting. It also won the Best Picture award at the 1999 Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Actor in a Leading Actor category for Spacey.
The screenplay was written by Ball, who was inspired by the media circus that accompanied the Amy Fisher trial in 1992. DreamWorks bought the script for USD 250,000, outbidding several other production bodies to finance the production. The studio suggested several actresses for the role of Carolyn until Mendes offered the part to Bening without the studio’s knowledge. Principal photography took place between December 1998 and February 1999 on sound stages at the Warner Bros. backlot in Burbank, California and on location in Los Angeles. During editing, Mendes made several changes that softened the cynical tone of Ball’s script. In the film, the Burnhams’ new neighbors are retired US Marine colonel Frank Fitts, his near-catatonic wife, Barbara, and their teenage son, Ricky, who obsessively films his surroundings with a camcorder, while using his part-time job as a waiter to serve as a front for dealing cannabis. Ricky is a strict disciplinarian who has previously forced Ricky into a military academy and a psychiatric hospital. Frank later reveals his homophobia when discussing the encounter with Jim Olmeyer and Jim Berkley, a gay couple who live nearby. The girls’ friendship wanes after he overhears that she tells him that she would find him sexually attractive if he improved his physique. When Carolyn begins an affair with a married business rival, Buddy Kane, Lester is told he is to be blackmails him and quits his job.
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