Pleasantville marks the directoral debut of Gary Ross, who also wrote the hit film Dave and co-wrote Big, Tom Hanks' breakthrough feature. The ambitious fantasy tells of two '90s teenagers magically zapped into a black and white "Father Knows Best" style '50s TV comedy. The kids' sensibilities have a drastic effect on the town. As they expose the citizens to new ideas, people begin to change from black and white to color. While some Pleasantville citizens embrace the vivid differences and new-found freedoms, others react with suspicion and fear, desperately trying to suppress what they perceive as a threat to their way of life.

During a phone conversation with Ross, I mentioned a recent news story showing a memorial service for Matthew Shepard, the gay college student murdered by homophobic thugs. Watching the symbol for diversity, a giant rainbow flag, flying at half-mast, I thought about the message of Ross' film. "We always think we're far away from that stuff and we're not, you know?" said Ross from his Los Angeles office, "It can happen easily and it keeps happening."

Learning to appreciate the full spectrum of humanity is at the heart of Pleasantville. Ross explained, "It's about pluralism and diversity and toler... you know, I hate the word tolerance, because it implies that you're tolerating somebody, when what you should be doing is embracing what's different about them and including it in your life."

Ross' father, screenwriter Arthur Ross (Creature From The Black Lagoon, Brubaker), was blacklisted during the McCarthy era, and the director understands the mechanics of fear and hatred. "You run into someone who is different than you, you're afraid of your world changing, you're afraid of change within yourself. I mean, gay-bashing is the biggest example. Where does homophobia come from? It comes from people being threatened about that in themselves, and so they try to destroy it. Fascism is the same thing. We repress thought because we're afraid of thinking. Or we're afraid of what thoughts we might have.

"These are natural feelings. It's natural to be afraid. I don't think racism, sexism, fascism or gay bashing are unexplainable or unnatural. They're an outgrowth of our own fears. But my God, you lose a lot by being afraid. You lose so much of what's beautiful about life. Hopefully, the film explores a lot of that beauty and diversity and pluralism."

While the current trend in Hollywood is to present dark stories reflecting jaded sensibilities, Big, Dave and Pleasantville are all fantasies imbued with a strong sense of kindness and decency. Those qualities spring directly from Ross' personal philosophy. He makes life-affirming movies because "I love life and I want to affirm it. It's about ethics, love and compassion and I believe in those things too viscerally and deeply to see them as corny, you know? And I think that people will relate because I ultimately believe that that's down there in people. Pleasantville is an anti-cynical movie. I don't want to just spew back cynicism at people."

Many writers would take the premise for Pleasantville and turn it into yet another glib post-modern exercise in irony, but Ross refuses to settle for the easy route, however trendy it might be. "Irony and cynicism are cousins," he explained. "They're a way of distancing ourselves from feeling. And I'm interested in feeling."

While their styles are wildly different, I noted a pivotal scene in John Waters' new film, Pecker, where an art critic realizes the genuine nature of a young photographer's work and joyously exclaims "An end to irony!" Ross hasn't seen Waters' film, but loved the sentiment. "Wow, that's wonderful. An end to irony. I know, enough already, we're drowning in it. We're so distanced. Irony is such a safe, smug little place to be as an artist. To just be critical instead of having to put yourself on the line and be vulnerable about how you feel about something."

Ross hopes that Pleasantville will prompt audiences to take another look at how they view the world. He is hopeful about the prospects for the film due to its joyful feel and because, instead of simply condemning intolerance, he focuses on the potential for redemption. "Hopefully," the filmmaker said, "if the movie does anything, it shows that things that are different may seem scary at first, but those same things can be beautiful. If we can get past our fear and past the need to suppress, we will ultimately have a richer, fuller, more colorful life."

(C) 1998 Ed Johnson-Ott

* Read Ed Johnson-Ott's interview with Gary Ross!

Pleasantville
		124 minutes, color 35mm, English
		"Straight", Comedy
		Subjects: Comedy