Development Alan Ball began writing
American Beauty as a play in the early 1990s, partly inspired by the media circus that accompanied the
Amy Fisher trial in 1992. Despite the story's lack of an easily marketable concept, Cannava selected
American Beauty because he felt it was the one for which Ball had the most passion. While developing the script, Ball created another television sitcom,
Oh, Grow Up. He channeled his anger and frustration at having to accede to network demands on that show—and during his tenures on
Grace Under Fire and
Cybill—into writing
American Beauty. With the help of executives Glenn Williamson and Bob Cooper, 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 more conventional fare—that it would not "iron the [edges] out". In an unusual move, DreamWorks decided not to
option the script; instead, in April 1998, the studio bought it outright for $250,000, DreamWorks planned to make the film for $6–8 million. Jinks and Cohen involved Ball throughout the film's development, including casting and director selection. The producers met with about twenty interested directors, several of whom were considered
A-list at the time. Ball was not keen on the more well-known directors because he believed their involvement would increase the budget and lead DreamWorks to become "nervous about the content". and knew immediately that it was the one he wanted to make; early in his career, he had been inspired by how the film
Paris, Texas (1984) presented contemporary America as a mythic landscape and he saw the same theme in
American Beauty, as well as parallels with his own childhood. Mendes later met with Spielberg; impressed by Mendes's productions of
Oliver! and
Cabaret, Spielberg encouraged him to consider
American Beauty. Ball was also keen; having seen
Cabaret, he was impressed with Mendes's "keen visual sense" and thought he did not make obvious choices. Ball felt that Mendes liked to look under the story's surface, a talent he felt would be a good fit with the themes of
American Beauty. In June 1998, DreamWorks confirmed that it had contracted Mendes to direct the film.
Writing Ball was partly inspired by two encounters he had in the early 1990s. In about 1991–92, Ball saw a plastic bag blowing in the wind outside the
World Trade Center. He watched the bag for ten minutes, saying later that it provoked an "unexpected emotional response". In 1992, Ball became preoccupied with the media circus that accompanied the Amy Fisher trial. 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, Ball based Lester's story on aspects of his own life. Lester's re-examination of his life parallels feelings Ball had in his mid-30s; like Lester, Ball put aside his passions to work in jobs he hated for people he did not respect. Ball said the script's mix of comedy and drama was not intentional, but that it came unconsciously from his own outlook on life. He said the juxtaposition produced a starker contrast, giving each trait more impact than if they appeared alone. The script was written between June 1997 and February 1998. In the script that was sent to prospective actors and directors, Lester and Angela had sex; Ball initially rebuffed counsel from others that he change the script, feeling they were being puritanical; the final impetus to alter the scene came from DreamWorks's then-president Walter Parkes. He convinced Ball by indicating that in
Greek mythology, the hero "has a moment of epiphany before ... tragedy occurs". Ball later said his anger when writing the first draft had blinded him to the idea that Lester needed to refuse sex with Angela to complete his emotional journey—to achieve redemption. Early drafts also included a flashback to Col. Fitts's service in the Marines, a sequence that unequivocally established his homosexual leanings. In love with another Marine, Col. Fitts sees the man die and comes to believe that he is being punished for the "sin" of being gay. Ball removed the sequence because it did not fit the structure of the rest of the film—Col. Fitts was the only character to have a flashback Ball remained involved throughout production; Ball was on-set for rewrites and to help interpret his script for all but two days of filming. His original bookend scenes—in which Ricky and Jane are prosecuted for Lester's murder after being framed by Col. Fitts—were excised in
post-production; The change was a practical decision, as the production was behind schedule and they needed to cut costs. Another scene was rewritten to accommodate the loss of the freeway sequence; set in a schoolyard, it presents a "turning point" for Jane in that she chooses to walk home with Ricky instead of going with Angela.
Casting Mendes had Kevin Spacey and Bening in mind for the leads from the beginning, but DreamWorks executives were unenthusiastic. DreamWorks suggested several alternatives, including
Bruce Willis,
Kevin Costner, and
John Travolta to play Lester (the role was also offered to
Chevy Chase, but he turned it down), while
Helen Hunt or
Holly Hunter were proposed to play Carolyn. Mendes did not want a big star "weighing the film down"; he felt Spacey was the right choice based on his performances in the 1995 films
The Usual Suspects and
Seven, and 1992's
Glengarry Glen Ross. Spacey was surprised; he said, "I usually play characters who are very quick, very manipulative and smart. ... I usually wade in dark, sort of treacherous waters. This is a man living one step at a time, playing by his instincts. This is actually much closer to me, to what I am, than those other parts." Spacey loosely based Lester's early "schlubby" deportment on
Walter Matthau. During the film, Lester's physique improves from flabby to toned; but because Mendes shot the scenes out of chronological order, Spacey varied postures to portray the stages. Before filming, Mendes and Spacey analyzed
Jack Lemmon's performance in
The Apartment (1960), because Mendes wanted Spacey to emulate "the way [Lemmon] moved, the way he looked, the way he was in that office and the way he was an ordinary man and yet a special man". Bening recalled women from her youth to inform her performance: "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". He lent Bening the
Bobby Darin version of the song "
Don't Rain on My Parade", which she enjoyed and persuaded the director to include it for a scene in which Carolyn sings in her car.
Kirsten Dunst was offered the role of Angela Hayes, but she turned it down because of the character and Lester's sexual behaviors. She chose to star in
The Virgin Suicides (1999) instead.
Sarah Michelle Gellar also declined the same role, due to scheduling conflicts with
Buffy The Vampire Slayer. For the roles of Jane, Ricky, and Angela, DreamWorks gave Mendes
carte blanche. By November 1998,
Thora Birch,
Wes Bentley, and
Mena Suvari had been cast in the parts—in Birch's case, despite the fact she was 16 years old and was deemed
underage for a brief nude scene, which her parents had to approve. Child labor representatives accompanied Birch's parents on set during the filming of the nude scene. Bentley overcame competition from top actors under the age of 25 to be cast. The 2009 documentary
My Big Break followed Bentley, and several other young actors, before and after he landed the part. To prepare, Mendes provided Bentley with a video camera, telling the actor to film what Ricky would. Mendes gave Janney a book of paintings by
Edvard Munch. He told her, "Your character is in there somewhere." including conversations between Colonel Frank Fitts and her, as he felt that what needed to be said about the pair—their humanity and vulnerability—was conveyed successfully through their shared moments of silence.
Chris Cooper plays Colonel Frank Fitts,
Scott Bakula plays Jim Olmeyer, and
Sam Robards plays Jim Berkley. Ball's inspiration for the characters came from a thought he had after seeing a "bland, boring, heterosexual couple" who wore matching clothes: "I can't wait for the time when a gay couple can be just as boring." Ball also included aspects of a gay couple he knew who had the same forename.
Filming Principal photography lasted about 50 days, from winter 1998 to February 1999.
American Beauty was filmed on soundstages at the Warner Bros.
backlot in Burbank, California, and at
Hancock Park and
Brentwood in Los Angeles. The aerial shots at the beginning and end of the film were captured in
Sacramento, California, and many of the school scenes were shot at
South High School in
Torrance, California; several extras in the gym crowd were South High students. The film is set in an
upper middle-class neighborhood in an unidentified American town. Production designer Naomi 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 intent was for the setting to reflect the characters, who are also archetypes. Shohan said, "All of them are very strained, and their lives are constructs." The Burnhams' household was designed as the reverse of the Fitts'—the former a pristine ideal, but graceless and lacking in "inner balance", leading to Carolyn's desire to at least give it the appearance of a "perfect all-American household"; the Fitts's home is depicted in "exaggerated darkness [and] symmetry". The garage windows were designed specifically to obtain the crucial shot toward the end of the film in which Col. Fitts—watching from Ricky's bedroom—mistakenly assumes that Lester is paying Ricky for sex. The house interiors were filmed on the backlot, on location, and on soundstages when overhead shots were needed. Mendes took a long time to get the quality of Ricky's footage to the level he wanted. Mendes avoided using
close-ups, believing the technique was overused. He also mentioned Spielberg's advice to imagine an audience silhouetted at the bottom of the camera monitor, to keep in mind that it was being shot for display on a screen. Spielberg—who visited the set a few times—also advised Mendes not to worry about costs if he had a "great idea" toward the end of a long working day. Mendes said, "That happened three or four times, and they are all in the movie." Despite Spielberg's support, DreamWorks and Mendes fought constantly over the schedule and budget, although the studio interfered little with the film's content. Mendes was so dissatisfied with his first three days' filming that he obtained permission from DreamWorks to reshoot the scenes. He said, "I started with a wrong scene, actually, a comedy scene. And the actors played it way too big: ... it was badly shot, my fault, badly composed, my fault, bad costumes, my fault ...; and everybody was doing what I was asking. It was all my fault." Aware that he was a novice, Mendes drew on the experience of Hall: "I made a very conscious decision early on, if I didn't understand something technically, to say, without embarrassment, 'I don't understand what you're talking about, please explain it. Mendes encouraged some improvisation; for example, when Lester masturbates in bed beside Carolyn, the director asked Spacey to improvise several euphemisms for the act in each take. Mendes said, "I wanted that not just because it was funny ... but because I didn't want it to seem rehearsed. I wanted it to seem like he was blurting it out of his mouth without thinking. [Spacey] is so in control—I wanted him to break through." Spacey obliged, eventually coming up with 35 phrases, but Bening could not always keep a straight face, which meant the scene had to be shot ten times. although some were real and had the wires holding them digitally removed. When Lester fantasizes about Angela in a rose-petal bath, the steam was real, save for in the overhead shot. To position the camera, a hole had to be cut in the ceiling, through which the steam escaped; it was instead added digitally.
Editing American Beauty was edited by
Christopher Greenbury and
Tariq Anwar; Greenbury began in the position, but had to leave halfway through post-production because of a scheduling conflict with
Me, Myself & Irene (2000). Mendes and an assistant edited the film for ten days between the appointments. Mendes realized during editing that the film was different from the one he had envisioned. He believed he had been making a "much more whimsical, ... kaleidoscopic" film than what came together in the edit suite. Instead, Mendes was drawn to the emotion and darkness; he began to use the score and shots he had intended to discard to craft the film along these lines. In total, he cut about 30 minutes from his original edit. The subsequent shot—an aerial view of the neighborhood—was originally intended as the plate shot for the bluescreen effects in the dream sequence. but Mendes excised these in the last week of editing and because they did not fit with the theme of redemption that had emerged during production. Mendes believed the trial drew focus away from the characters and turned the film "into an episode of
NYPD Blue". Instead, he wanted the ending to be "a poetic mixture of dream and memory and narrative resolution". When Ball first saw a completed edit, it was a version with truncated versions of these scenes. He felt that they were so short that they "didn't really register". Mendes and he argued, Hall was recommended to Mendes by
Tom Cruise, because of Hall's work on
Without Limits (1998), which Cruise had executive produced. Mendes was directing Cruise's then-wife
Nicole Kidman in the play
The Blue Room during preproduction on
American Beauty, Hall was initially concerned that audiences would not like the characters; he only felt able to identify with them during cast rehearsals, which gave him fresh ideas on his approach to the visuals. given his preference for shooting that wide, Hall favored high-speed stocks to allow for more subtle lighting effects. He also used rain boxes to produce rain patterns where he wanted without lighting the entire room.
Music Thomas Newman's score was recorded in
Santa Monica, California. The percussion instruments included
tablas,
bongos, cymbals, piano, xylophones, and
marimbas; also featured were guitars, flute, and
world music instruments. The soundtrack features songs by Newman, Bobby Darin,
the Who ("
The Seeker"),
Free,
Eels,
the Guess Who,
Bill Withers,
Betty Carter,
Peggy Lee,
the Folk Implosion,
Gomez, and
Bob Dylan, as well as two
cover versions—
the Beatles' "
Because", performed by
Elliott Smith, and
Neil Young's "Don't Let It Bring You Down", performed by
Annie Lennox. Produced by the film's music supervisor
Chris Douridas, an abridged soundtrack album was released on October 5, 1999, and was nominated for a
Grammy Award for Best Soundtrack Album. An album featuring 19 tracks from Newman's score was released on January 11, 2000, and won the
Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album.
Filmmaker considered the score one of Newman's best, saying it "[enabled] the film's transcendentalist aspirations". In 2006,
Filmmaker chose the score as one of twenty essential soundtracks it believed spoke to the "complex and innovative relationships between music and screen storytelling". ==Release==