"Pleasantville" premiered Monday, Oct. 19, at 7:30 at Mann National Theatre. Fiona was on the guest list. ``Pleasantville'' opened nationwide on Oct. 23, 1998.
GARY ROSS, the Academy AwardŽ-nominated screenwriter of Big and Dave, makes his directorial debut with his original screenplay, Pleasantville, starring JEFF DANIELS, JOAN ALLEN, WILLIAM H. MACY, TOBEY MAGUIRE, REESE WITHERSPOON, DON KNOTTS and J.T. WALSH.
David Wagner (Maguire) is a Nineties kid with a Fifties addiction. He's hooked on reruns of a classic television show called "Pleasantville," set in a simple place where everyone is swell and perky, "confrontation" is a dirty word and life is pleasingly pleasant.
Addicted to this utopian world, David immerses himself in "Pleasantville" as an innocent escape from the trouble-plagued real world that he must share with his ultra-hip, totally popular twin sister, Jennifer (Witherspoon). But one evening, life takes a bizarre twist when a peculiar repairman (Knotts) gives him a strange remote control, which zaps David and his sister straight into Pleasantville.
Trapped in a radically different dimension of sight and sound, David and Jennifer find themselves cast as members of the TV family, the Parkers. David has become "Bud" and Jennifer has been transformed into "Mary Sue," and they are surrounded by the black and white suburbia that once kept David glued to the tube for hours.
It doesn't take long to discover that there's no news, weather or sports when you're living in a black and white paradise where everything is always...pleasant. Books have no words, the high school basketball team always wins, and nobody ever questions why things are always so perfect. Initially, David revels in the prozac-like haze that has gripped Pleasantville. But when Jennifer brings her Nineties-like attitude into this unsuspecting era of blandness, things start to happen in living color.
All the repressed desires of life in the Fifties begin to boil up through the people of Pleasantville, changing their lives in strange and wonderful ways that none of them had even dared to dream of, until they were visited by two kids from the real world.
Pleasantville is written and directed by Gary Ross and produced by Jon Kilik, Bob Degus and Gary Ross. Steven Soderbergh serves as executive producer.
New Line will present "Pleasantville," the directorial debut of two-time Oscar-nominated screenwriter Gary Ross ("Big" and "Dave") starring Tobey Maguire, Joan Allen, Jeff Daniels, William H. Macy, J.T. Walsh and Reese Witherspoon. In the modern fairy tale "Pleasantville," an entire fictional town is granted a chance to experience the wonders, comedies and dangers of real life. Two modern-day teenagers accidentally bring living color to a black-and-white 50s utopia, setting off a revolution. For the first time, Pleasantville's citizens are about to experience a world of mercurial weather, sensuous delights, diverse desires and frightening unpredictability. They will learn the terror of violence and the wonder of love. They will never view life as black-and-white again. Combining cutting-edge computer technology with comedy and fableistic storytelling, "Pleasantville" is a wildly imaginative and wholly original tale that poses inescapable questions about contemporary life.
