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Production

Development

In 1997, Alan Ball signed with the United Talent Agency (UTA) with the intent of making the transition from writing for television to films. After Ball experienced frustration writing for the situation comedies Grace Under Fire and Cybill, his UTA representative, Andrew Cannava, suggested that Ball write a spec script to "reintroduce [himself] to the town as a screenwriter". Ball pitched three ideas to Cannava: two conventional romantic comedies and American Beauty. Ball had been preoccupied with the idea of writing the story behind a "lurid tabloid murder case";^[1] he attempted to turn the idea into a play in the early 90s, but later felt it would work better as a film. Despite the story's lack of an easily-marketable concept, Cannava advised him to write American Beauty because he felt it was the one for which Ball had the most passion.^[2] While the film was in development, Ball continued to work in television, creating another situation comedy, Oh, Grow Up. His anger and frustration at having to accede to network demands on this and during his tenures on Grace Under Fire and Cybill informed his writing of American Beauty. Ball noted, "My experience with the television show is that I bent over backwards to address every single note that everyone gave me, and they seemed to end up not liking it ... My experience with the movie was that I just wrote something ... I wrote it from the heart, I didn't go through development, I didn't have a lot of network executives or studio executives giving me notes, and it became this thing that seemed to really work."^[1]

Although Ball did not expect to sell the script—he believed it would act more as a calling card—American Beauty drew interest from several production entities. DreamWorks became aware of the script through producers Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen. With the assistance of DreamWorks executive Glenn Williamson—with whom Ball had previously worked—and Steven Spielberg in his capacity as studio partner, Ball was convinced to develop the project at DreamWorks; he received assurances from the studio—known at the time for its less edgy fare—that it would not "iron the [edges] out".^[3] In April 1998, DreamWorks acquired the script for a mid-six figure sum,^[4] outbidding Fox Searchlight Pictures, October Films, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Lakeshore Entertainment.^[5] With Jinks and Cohen attached as producers, DreamWorks planned to make the film for $6–8 million.^[6]

In the same year, theater director Sam Mendes revived the musical Cabaret with fellow director Rob Marshall. Beth Swofford of the Creative Artists Agency arranged meetings for Mendes with studio figures in Los Angeles to see if film direction was a possibility. At Swofford's house, he came across American Beauty in a pile of eight scripts.^[7] He met with Spielberg, who had seen Cabaret and encouraged him to read the script.^[6] Mendes, who was inspired early on by how the film Paris, Texas (1984) presented contemporary America as a mythic landscape,^[8] saw the same presentation in American Beauty, as well as parallels with his own childhood experiences:

... all those things I ... described about discovering how contemporary American could be mythic somehow met my own experiences, my own upbringing as an only child. There are two only children in the movie. There are two basically dysfunctional families. They live in suburbia. I lived on the outskirts of Oxford in the oddest house you can imagine. With very odd neighbors, exactly in the same way as the movie. So there were all these things in the movie that chimed with my own experiences.^[9]

Several A-list directors were interested in the project, although Ball was not keen on their involvement as he believed the inevitable budget increase would lead to DreamWorks' becoming "nervous about the content".^[10] During Mendes's visit to Los Angeles, he pitched for the film with DreamWorks executives, and found support from Jinks, Cohen and Ball.^[11] The writer had also seen Cabaret and was impressed with Mendes' "keen visual sense" and they way in which he did not make obvious directorial choices—preferring to look for something deeper in the material, which Ball felt would be a good fit with the themes of American Beauty.^[10] DreamWorks offered the film to Mike Nichols and Robert Zemeckis, but neither accepted.^[6] The studio approached Mendes with a deal to direct for the minimum salary allowed under Directors Guild of America rules—$150,000. Mendes accepted, and later recalled that after taxes and his agent's commission, he only earned $38,000.^[12] In June 1998, DreamWorks confirmed that it had contracted Mendes to direct the film.^[13]

Writing

Although Ball was not motivated by one specific incident,^[3] he cited as inspiration the media circus around the Amy Fisher trial in 1992; he said he "felt like there was a real story underneath [that was] more fascinating and way more tragic" than the story presented to the public. Early drafts drew on aspects of the trial for bookending scenes (later excised) in which Ricky and Jane are prosecuted for Lester's murder.^[2] Ball used his own life as inspiration for Lester's story—working for people for whom he had no respect, in jobs he "detested"^[14]—and was informed by experiences from his own childhood when crafting scenes set in the Fitts' household. He said, "I grew up in a household with a somewhat troubled father figure and a somewhat shut-down mother figure, so Ricky's household certainly resembles mine in ways. My father was never violent, but he was deeply conflicted in certain ways that are similar to the Colonel."^[3]

Ball and Mendes revised the script twice before it was sent to the actors, and twice more before the first read-through. During rehearsals, several improvisations by the actors were incorporated into the shooting script; by the end of principal photography the script had been through ten drafts.^[10] Included from the beginning were the scenes of Ricky and Jane's trial, which were filmed but excised during post-production. Ball later felt the scenes were unnecessary, and said they were a reflection of his "anger and cynicism" at the time of writing. Ball said the script's mixing of genres—comedy and drama—was not intentional, but that it came unconsciously from his own outlook on life, of which humour is a "major part". He said that the juxtaposition produced a starker contrast, giving each more impact than if they appeared alone.^[15]

In the first draft of the script Lester has sex with Angela; by the time of shooting, Ball had rewritten the scene to the final version. Ball said his anger had blinded him to the idea that to complete his emotional journey and achieve redemption, Lester needed to not go through with it. Although the film depicts Lester rediscovering his youthful passions, when he is confronted with a real child—through Angela's admission that she is a virgin—he reverts to becoming a father, in Ball's words, "the father he can't be to his own daughter".^[16] Also present in the first draft, but later removed, was a flashback to Colonel Fitts' time in the Marines that unequivocally established his homosexual leanings. Ball said he removed the scene because it did not fit into the structure of the rest of the film—Fitts was the only character to have a flashback—and because it revealed too much to the audience.^[17]

Casting

By September 1998, DreamWorks announced that it had entered negotiations with Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening to cast them in the film.^[18][19] Mendes had Spacey in mind for the role of Lester Burnham following the actor's performances in The Usual Suspects, Seven and Glengarry Glen Ross. Mendes said that "as far as I was concerned, he was a good actor and he was cool", and that he did not want a big star "weighing the film down". DreamWorks suggested Bruce Willis, Kevin Costner, or John Travolta for the role;^[20] Mendes said he cast Spacey because "he is capable of making the hair stand up on the back of your neck". Over the course of the film, Lester's physique improves from flabby to toned; because Mendes shot the scenes out of chronological order, Spacey alternated between postures to portray the different stages. Mendes said, "What's extraordinary for me is not only that he changed the way he stood and talked—and the way his eyes and skin and hair looked—but that he changed from the inside, too."^[21] Spacey loosely based Lester's early "schlubby" physical deportment on Walter Matthau.^[22] DreamWorks suggested Helen Hunt and Holly Hunter for the role of Carolyn Burnham, but Mendes had already met Bening and offered her the part without the studio's consent. While executives were upset at Mendes, the director was ultimately able to cast Bening.^[20] Bening recalled women from her youth to perform the role of the falling-apart housewife: "I used to babysit constantly. You'd go to church and see how people present themselves on the outside, and then be inside their house and see the difference." Bening and a hair stylist collaborated to create a "PTA president coif" hairstyle, and Mendes and production designer Naomi Shohan researched mail order catalogs to better establish Carolyn's environment of a "spotless suburban manor". Mendes also lent Bening the Bobby Darin version of the song "Don't Rain on My Parade", which she enjoyed and persuaded the director to include for a scene in which Carolyn sings in her car.^[23]

By November 1998, Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, and Mena Suvari had been cast as Jane Burnham, Ricky Fitts and Angela Hayes, respectively. Bentley overcame competition from top actors under the age of 25 to be cast in the role.^[24] Peter Gallagher and Alison Janney were cast (as Buddy Kane and Barbara Fitts) after the start of filming in December 1998.^[25][26] Chris Cooper plays Colonel Frank Fitts. According to Cooper, much of Col. Fitts' backstory was eliminated from the final script, in which Fitts lost his male lover during the Vietnam War.^[27] Scott Bakula plays Jim Olmeyer, and Sam Robards plays Jim Berkley.

Filming

Principal photography took place over 50 days^[22] between December 14, 1998,^[28] and February 1999.^[29] Mendes filmed American Beauty on soundstages at the Warner Bros. backlot in Burbank, California, and at interior and exterior locations in Hancock Park and Brentwood in Los Angeles, California. Aerial shots were captured in North California. The film is set in an upper middle class neighborhood in an unidentified American town. Production designer Naomi Shohan said the initial plan was to set the film in a "New Jersey-ish" neighborhood, before moving on to consider a "high-end" suburb outside Chicago. Shohan likened the locale to Evanston, Illinois, but said, "it's not about a place, it's about an archetype ... The milieu was pretty much Anywhere, USA—upwardly mobile suburbia." The production intended the setting to reflect the characters, who were also archetypes. Shohan said, "All of them are very strained, and their lives are constructs." The Burnhams' household is set up as a direct comparison to the Fitts'. The Burnhams' home is a pristine ideal, but is graceless and lacking in "inner balance", leading to Carolyn's aspiration to make it at least look like the "perfect all-American household"; the Fitts' home is depicted in "exaggerated darkness [and] symmetry".^[30]

The production found it difficult to find buildings that were appropriate for the Burnhams' and Fitts' homes.^[31] They selected two adjacent properties on the backlot's "Blondie Street",^[30] one of which director of photography Conrad Hall had filmed for Divorce American Style (1967). The production rebuilt the houses, and Shohan built several false rooms to accommodate the lines of sight between Ricky and Jane's bedroom windows, and those between Ricky's bedroom and Lester's garage.^[31] The garage windows were designed for the specific purpose of obtaining the crucial shot toward the end of the film in which Frank mistakenly assumes that Lester is paying Ricky for sex after watching the pair from Ricky's bedroom.^[22] The production filmed the homes' interiors on the backlot, on location, and on soundstages when overhead shots were required.^[30] The location interiors for the Burnhams' home were shot at a house close to Interstate 405 and Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles; those for the Fitts' home were shot in the city's Hancock Park neighborhood.^[31] Ricky's bedroom was designed to evoke a cell to suggest his "monkish" personality, while at the same time blending with the high-tech equipment to reflect his voyeuristic side. The production deliberately minimized the use of red, as the use of the color was an important thematic signature elsewhere. The Burnhams' home uses cool blues, while the Fitts' was kept in a "depressed military palette". Lester's epiphany at the end of the film is expressed via rain and the use of red, building to a crescendo that is in deliberate contrast to the release Lester feels.^[30]

Mendes made very little use of steadicams, as he felt that more stable shots better generated tension in scenes. The only hand-held shooting was for the scene in which Frank beats Ricky, which Mendes said provided the film with a "kinetic ... off balance energy", and for the excerpts of Ricky's camcorder footage. Ironically, it took Mendes a long time to get the quality Ricky's footage to the level he wanted. Mendes tried to avoid filming close-ups, as he believed them to be an overused technique; he also cited Steven Spielberg's advice that he should imagine a row of audience figures silhouetted at the bottom of the camera monitor, to remind him that he was shooting for display on a 40-foot screen rather than for television. Mendes included several homages to other films: shots of family photographs in the characters' homes were inserted to give them a sense of history, but also as a nod to the way that Terrence Malick used still photographs in Badlands (1973). The subsequent slow push in to the Burnhams' dinner table is homage to a similar shot in Ordinary People (1980); Mendes held the shot for a long period because his training as a theater director had taught him the importance of putting distance between the characters. He wanted to keep the tension in the scene for as long as possible, and only cut away when Jane left the table. The shot of Lester's jogging was a homage to Marathon Man (1976).^[22]

Many of the school scenes were shot at South High School in Torrance, California, and most of the extras in the gym crowd were South High students. Sam Mendes designed the two girls' appearances to change over the course of the film, with Thora Birch gradually using less makeup and Suvari gradually using more, to emphasize their shifting perceptions of themselves. During the movie's second dinner scene, Spacey was only supposed to throw the plate of asparagus onto the floor. However, while shooting, Spacey improvised and pitched it at the wall, bringing about genuine reactions of shock to Bening and Birch's faces.^{[citation needed]}

Editing

Ball's screenplay was bookended by scenes in which Jane and Ricky are convicted of Lester's murder,^[22] after being framed by Frank.^[32] Mendes filmed the scenes, but trialled several versions of the opening; he said that he spent more time re-cutting the first ten minutes than he did the rest of the film. The first version was true to Ball's screenplay; Mendes excised these scenes in the last week of editing,^[22] as he felt they made the film lose its mystery.^[33] Ball was not happy when he saw that Mendes had eliminated much of Jane and Ricky's trial, but was more accepting after Mendes made further cuts that eliminated the sequences completely; Ball felt that without those scenes the film had a more optimistic tone, as it had evolved into a film that "for all its darkness had a really romantic heart".^[32]

The second part of the opening was a dream sequence in which Lester imagines himself flying above the town before arriving at his own front door. Mendes spent two days filming Spacey against bluescreen, but removed the sequence from the edit as he felt it was too whimsical—"like a Coen brothers movie"—and inappropriate for the tone of the rest of the film. The opening in the final cut reused a scene from the middle of the film in which Jane tells Ricky to kill her father. Originally, this scene was to be the revelation to the audience that the pair were not responsible for Lester's death, as the wider context of the scene—the way it was scored and acted—made it clear that Jane's request was a joke, or a game in which she is playing the part of a "teenage murderess". This is not clear from the portion of the scene that is used in the opening, and in the final cut Mendes included a reaction shot of Ricky that left a lingering ambiguity to his guilt, as he wanted to keep audiences' options open. The subsequent shot—an aerial view of the neighborhood—was originally intended as the plate shot for the bluescreen effects in the dream sequence.^[22]

Mendes extensively re-cut the scene in which Carolyn attempts to sell a house. He found it difficult to get the tone right, as he wanted the Carolyn to be realistic and not appear too ridiculous. Bening improvised many of her lines, and Mendes had to cut most of the potential buyers' comic dialogue because it made the sequence too long. Mendes also cut much of the dialogue between Frank and Barbara, as he felt that everything that needed to be said about the pair—their humanity and vulnerability—was conveyed effectively through their shared moments of silence. In total, Mendes cut about 30 minutes from his original edit.^[22]

Cinematography

Conrad Hall was recommended to Mendes by Tom Cruise, due to the cinematographer's work on Without Limits (1998), which Cruise had executive produced; Mendes was directing Cruise's then-wife Nicole Kidman in the theater production The Blue Room during American Beauty's gestation. Hall was involved for one month during pre-production;^[31] his ideas for lighting the film began early, with his first reading of the script, and further passes allowed him to refine his intended approach before he first met with Mendes. Hall felt that Mendes had a strong sense of the film's visual direction from the start; in that meeting, Mendes showed Hall storyboards of the film's opening shot. The director's visual sense surprised Hall, whose experience was that first-time directors were not strong in this area.^[34] Hall was initially concerned that audiences would not like the characters, to which Mendes replied that to be able to identify with them he had to look at the "dark areas" within himself. Only during cast rehearsals did Hall feel able to properly conceive the film's look,^[31] as he finds it difficult to fully visualize scenes ahead of time;^[34] the drama of the script was given life in these rehearsals,^[31] allowing Hall to express his inner feelings through the visuals.^[34] He said, "That's where drama can occur, and that's where the palette for the visuals can become extraordinary."^[31]

Hall described the film's look as "quiet and simple", with "a certain sense of peace, compositionally", evoking classicism. He believed this approach contrasted with the turbulent events depicted, allowing audiences to better take in the action. Hall said that he and Mendes would first discuss the intended mood of a particular scene, but that he was subsequently able to light the shot in any way he felt necessary.^[34] In most cases, Hall first lit the scene's subject by "painting in" the blacks and whites, before adding the fill light, which he reflected from beadboard or white card on the ceiling. This gave Hall better control over the placement of the shadows, while keeping the fill light unobtrusive and the dark areas free of spill.^[35] Hall shot American Beauty in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio in the Super 35 format, using Kodak Vision 500T 5279 35mm film stock. He shot the whole film at the same T-stop (T1.9);^[36] given his preference for shooting that wide, Hall favors high-speed film stocks to allow more subtlety in the lighting effects.^[35] He used Panavision Platinum cameras with the company's Primo series of prime lenses and zoom lenses. Hall employed Kodak Vision 500T 5274, and EXR 5248 stock for some scenes that required daylight effects. He had difficulty adjusting to the Vision series of stocks, which he said provided too much contrast. Hall eventually contacted Kodak, who sent him a batch of 5279 that was 5% lower on contrasts. Hall used a 1/8" Tiffen Black ProMist filter for almost every scene, which he said in retrospect may not have been the best choice, as the optical steps required to blow Super 35 up for its anamorphic release print led to a slight amount of degradation; therefore, the diffusion provided by the filter was not required. Hall felt upon seeing the film in a theater that the image was slightly unclear, and that had he not used the filter, the diffusion effect provided by the Super 35–anamorphic conversion would have resulted in an on-screen image closer to how he intended it to look.^[36]

Hall said that one of the most difficult scenes to light was the scene at the beginning of the film that depicts Jane and Ricky in the latter's bedroom. The shot begins with a hand-held camera video image that pans around the room; the confined space made it difficult for Hall to place lighting equipment out-of-shot. He used three lights: a Kino Flo was hidden in a shelf and used as the backlight on Ricky, as a sidelight, and a downlight onto the bookshelf; a low power light that was aimed at a piece of beadboard behind the bed; and the fill light. The most difficult aspect was ensuring the television set did not reflect any of the light sources. The later shot that depicts Lester and Ricky behind a building sharing a cannabis joint was a result of a misunderstanding between Hall and Mendes. Mendes had asked Hall to set the shot up in his absence; Hall assumed the characters would look for an area of privacy and set the scene up accordingly, with Lester and Ricky in a narrow passageway between a truck and the building. When Mendes returned, he indicated that the point of the scene was that the characters were smoking the joint in the open, that they did not care if they were seen. The truck was removed and Hall had to rethink his lighting scheme, as he had intended to use the top of the truck. He lit it from the left, with a large light that crossed the actors, and with a softer light from behind the camera. Hall felt the consequent wide shot "worked perfectly for the tone of the scene".^[36]

The scene toward the end of the film where Lester encounters Angela in his living room begins with a shot of Lester in silhouette against the doorway, with the light only on his face. Hall wanted to make the light imperceptible enough that it would not spill into the dark areas around Lester, so he used a low power light in place of a fill light, a diffusion glass across the barn doors, and flags to prevent spill. Hall attempted to keep the bouquet of roses in-frame throughout, but instead of keeping them well lit, he aimed low-power, narrow-focus lights at the back edges of the flowers to keep them dark while suggesting a red tinge.^[34] Hall lit the edges of other objects to provide definition, and a rain effect on the foreground cross light through the windows for consistency—rain, or the suggestion of it, features in every shot in the last part of the film. Lester approaches Angela and the shot switches to a wide silhouette of the pair against the French windows. Lester and Angela are lit from one light above, and from several through the doors. Hall added material to the windows to make the rain run a little slower, intensifying the light; he said the strength of the outside light was unrealistic for a night scene, but that his liking for strong contrasts made it acceptable. Hall added the fill light and lit the roses to finally show them in full. The result was an image of low color saturation—almost bordering on black-and-white—with a hint of red from the roses.^[35] Hall said he did not like to create depth through contrasting colors, but via a color's saturation. He said, "I don't like the separation in an image to be due to the fact that a couch is gray and the walls are orange. Instead, I do it by treating the colors as values of gray and then lighting for depth."^[37] Mendes said all the red items in shots were chosen intentionally. The roses in this scene symbolize Lester's previous life and Carolyn; the camera pushes in as Lester and Angela get closer, finally taking the roses out of the shot.^[22]

Lester and Angela move to the couch. For each close-up, Hall attempted to keep rain in the shot. He lit the scene through the window onto the ceiling behind Lester. Hall said the ceiling light was the most important component of the shot: at 12–32 fc, it allowed Hall to shape the darkness and provide the contrast necessary to keep these areas black. Lester has only a low-power edge light on him to suggest a stray piece of light rather than full illumination, which Hall said would have created a different mood.^[35] Hall kept the subsequent wider shot simple, with a structured framing from the light on Angela's back and the light on the couch. Hall described the looser framing as intending to give "peace and comfort", allowing the viewer room to breathe. He placed the fill light behind Lester and Angela; this prevented spill onto their faces, but was of an intensity that allowed Hall to light the couch without also lighting the back wall, which he preferred to keep dark with the couch's silhouette. Hall used rain boxes throughout the scene, which he could light through to produce a rain pattern where he wanted, without lighting the entire room.^[37]

Music

Thomas Newman composed the score for American Beauty. The score was "an unusual collection of moods and colors created largely by percussion instruments" for which inspiration came from director Sam Mendes. Newman recalled, "Sam wanted things that hammered and thwacked a bit. He was interested in percussion and mallet instruments, so I started working on various ideas that involved xylophones and marimbas." Percussion instruments included tablas, bongos, and cymbals. Other instruments included guitars, piano, flute, and world music instruments. Newman believed the score helped move the film along without disturbing the "moral ambiguity" of Alan Ball's script: "It was a real delicate balancing act in terms of what music worked to preserve that ambiguity."^[38]

The soundtrack features songs by artists such as Bobby Darin, The Who, Free, Eels, The Guess Who, The Folk Implosion, Gomez, and Bob Dylan, as well as a cover version of The Beatles "Because" performed by Elliott Smith. The film also features the Neil Young song "Don't Let It Bring You Down" performed by Annie Lennox, though this was not included on the soundtrack. KCRW DJ Chris Douridas served as the film's music supervisor. The resulting album was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media. The Original Motion Picture Score was later released on January 11, 2000. This contains 19 tracks composed by Thomas Newman for the film.