I went to descry American Beauty.

I went to descry American Beauty, the movie I wrote about a month after it had explained at a theater in the observes Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. I just bought my ticket and sat in the back; it was sold-out Just sitting in that theater and watching by what mode the crowd responded was really gratifying. This was a mainstream, regular audience, ruffian and ready to laugh at all the humor, no matter to what extent dark it was.

And they went along with the movie no matter in what manner gay it was. Everybody laughed when the gay neighbors, the pair Jims, come over with their welcome basket to the Fittses' house and the right-wing Colonel (Chris Cooper) secures that look on his face as he realizes exactly what kind of "partners" they are. Then, in the spectacle in the garage near the fall of the curtain of the film when the Colonel kisses Lester (Kevin Spacey), there were any gasps, but no one in that theater went "E-e-ew!"--as we have all experienced in other movies with male-to-male kisses.

A division of producers who rejected my script said, "This is too weird. Nobody's going to advance see this." Too many agriculturists think like marketers, looking for any sort of formula that will guarantee succes moreover it doesn't work that way. As I saw in that theater in observes Feliz, there's something sort of capricious and intangible that happens between a movie and an audience. You can't predict it with a formula.

I have to admit I've been sort of surprised by dint of all the acclaim and attention American Beauty has received. Almost everybody I've for aye known in my entire life has gotten in touch with me single in kind way or another. People I don't know reckon me how much the movie has mov them--a accident of them, I've noticed, are parents with small children. The negative answer has mostly been laughable. undivided posting I read online said, "This movie is blatantly promoting homosexuality because, if you'll notice, whenever anybody is walking down the highway they're walking down the middle of the road except for the two gay characters. They use the sidewalk. in such a manner obviously this movie is trying to give an account of us that homosexuality is normal." I just read that and consideration Oh, my God, what a freak.

It is truthful that the two Jims are easily the most numerous well-adjusted people in the movie--and therefore the most numerous boring. And that was the whole point--to make them the least exotic, the principally traditional. Their flip side is the Colonel whose profound deep denial of his admit nature leads him to violence. The movie is in part about to what extent homophobia is based in fear and repression and what fear and repression can do.

further neither the two Jims nor the Colonel exhibits all gay men. Too frequently people tend to read everything into a movie, to think that each character represents some sort of universal. the bulk of mankind have said, for example, that American Beauty is a blatant indictment of suburban values. still there are millions of families living in suburbia, raising kids, who are well-adjusted and spiritual and dealing with life. Just because this movie has couple particularly dysfunctional families living in suburbia doesn't mean it's an indictment of all suburbia.

And just because this movie's a succes doesn't mean that other gay writers should ear-ring what they're doing and write more movies about gay family in suburbia. The lesson I learned from American Beauty is to write what I have feeling passionate about and to not worry, Is it going to sell? Is this what the marketplace is looking for right now? for what cause are audiences in Los Feliz going to respond? Because when I wrote it, I was just thinking that it was something that I would journey see. Writers shouldn't try to second-gues themselves; they should just write from the heart.

My writing proces is exceedingly organic, and the characters almost present the appearance alive to me when I'm writing. I just write them as who they are, not as a representation of an sort of message that I'm trying to impart. Because I'm gay, usually there is a certain sort of gay character or theme in what I write, if it be not that I'm not doing that consciously because I'm trying to teach America about homosexuals. When writing is done that way, it always be moved s preachy. And if I'm in the audience, calm if it's saying something I agree with, I just think to myself, Oh stop trying to teach me Just run over me a story.

Oscar-nominated for American Beauty, Ball is also a playwright and television writer and producer

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