FilmSkool — a free film school
Pleasantville
Geeky teenager David and his popular twin sister, Jennifer, get sucked into the black-and-white world of a 1950s TV sitcom called "Pleasantville," and find a world where everything is peachy keen all the time. But when Jennifer's modern attitude disrupts Pleasantville's peaceful but boring routine, she literally brings color into its life.
1998 · Directed by Gary Ross · 124 min · Fantasy · Comedy · Drama · Screenplay in the scene database · 18 frames
Tagline
Nothing is as simple as black and white.
Plot
In 1998, while their divorced mother leaves to go out of town, high-school-aged twin siblings David and Jennifer fight over the television, breaking the remote control. A mysterious TV repairman suddenly arrives and, impressed by David's knowledge and love of Pleasantville, a black-and-white 1950s sitcom about the idyllic Parker family, gives him an unusual remote control before departing.
When they use it, David and Jennifer are magically transported into the Parkers' house, in Pleasantville's black-and-white world. Unaware of the replacements, George and Betty Parker believe David and Jennifer to be their children, Bud and Mary Sue. Communicating through the Parkers' television, David tries to reason with the repairman, who is offended that they want to come home, thinking they should be lucky to live in Pleasantville.
There, fire is impossible to start (firefighters merely rescue cats from trees), and everyone is unaware that anything exists outside of Pleasantville, as all roads circle back into it. David tells Jennifer they must play the show's characters and not disrupt Pleasantville, but she rebelliously goes on a date with Mary Sue's boyfriend, Skip Martin, the most popular boy in school. She has sex with Skip, who is shocked by the experience, which leads to the first bursts of color appearing in town.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Gary Ross
- Cinematography: John Lindley
- Edited by: William Goldenberg
- Music: Randy Newman
- Production design: Jeannine Oppewall
- Produced by: Jon Kilik, Steven Soderbergh, Gary Ross
Cast
- Tobey Maguire as David
- Reese Witherspoon as Jennifer
- William H. Macy as George Parker
- Joan Allen as Betty Parker
- Jeff Daniels as Mr. Johnson
- J.T. Walsh as Big Bob
- Paul Walker as Skip
- Don Knotts as TV Repairman
- Marley Shelton as Margaret Henderson
- Jane Kaczmarek as David's Mom
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: New Line Cinema, Larger Than Life Productions, Juno Pix
- Budget: $60,000,000
- Box office: $49,800,000
- Themes: sibling relationship, dystopia, diner, satire, book burning, coming of age, racism, bathtub, tv show in film, masturbation
Own the film
FilmSkool earns a small commission from qualifying Amazon purchases, at no cost to you.
More by Gary Ross
On this film
This is the plain index, shown because JavaScript is off. Every lesson here is a free video published by the channel credited on it and plays through that channel's own embed — FilmSkool hosts nothing.