American Beauty (1999)

Darius: He was mad because he felt like he had to give a ****.

Jordan: He's like, I'm so hurt.

Darius: Oh my God, how could you do this to me?

Jordan: Hey everybody, welcome to Out of the Trunk Pile with Jordan and Darius. My name is Jordan. You can find me on all socials at Jordy B Writing.

Darius: And I'm Darius. That's these all up in your area on all socials.

Jordan: And today we're going to be reviewing American Beauty. This movie came out in 1999, starring Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Dora Burch, Wes Bentley, Amanda Suvari, Chris Cooper, Allison Janney, and Peter Gallagher. This movie is about a guy named Lester Burnham, who's a suburban father suffering through a midlife crisis and a loveless marriage. After becoming infatuated with his daughter's teenage friend, he rebels against his mundane existence, seeking personal liberation. However, his radical transformation triggers a chain reaction of obsessions and secrets within his neighborhood. Someone tells us to you to set up act one.

Darius: Act one, the wake up call. Lester lives a numb, numb, repetitive life until a high school basketball game changes his perspective and begins to reject his corporate job and his wife's perfectionism, seeking a new identity. Add this to the list of 90s movies that are about bored suburban nights way too comfortable. Yes. So that one's up there also. Very 90s in the sense that the cast looks like regular people. now every movie has, every movie has a bunch of extras that everyone in the movie looks like models. So it was a nice little touch. I was like, this feels very 90s and that the people look normal.

Jordan: Yeah, I was watching it and I thought too, I was like, I feel like half of the cast would be considered ugly by today's standards. Not that any of them are actually ugly, but just like, it feels like Hollywood's very anti-normal looking people.

Darius: Yeah, I mean, it just looked. Like a normal suburban area. And if it was casted today, like the everyday woman would be like Margot Roby. It was like, okay. Right.

Jordan: Correct.

Darius: I'm supposed to believe this woman is just normal. Everyone looking at her and no one's like crashing their cars as she walks by. Right. What do you have for act one, man?

Jordan: I was going to say, just ask you whether is this your first time seeing it?

Darius: Yes. Okay, which I know is weird because it was on my hard drive, but I just be downloading stuff. Like I just, it's the first, I don't even remember what prompted me to download it. I think Alice and Janie, I was watching West Wing.

Jordan: Yeah, I love her.

Darius: And I think I looked up like some movie she was in and they just got you.

Jordan: Okay. Yeah. I think she didn't resume her for a minute. I didn't Google it because I was like, she looked because, you know, they aged her up. And I was like, wait, is that her?

Darius: Yeah, this is before the West Wing and Yeah. man, I just, I got like 500 movies on a hard drive. I ain't watched them all, but this is my very first time seeing it. And it's a little weird, not gonna lie.

Jordan: It is weird. It didn't quite age great.

Darius: No, it did not.

Jordan: Like it did not age great. Cause I mean, I didn't see it when it first came out cause I was 7. But I remember seeing this for the first time. I was like 18 or 19. We have, we have had it on DVD or whatever. And I watched it and I thought it was like incredible. And looking back, I was, you know, a teenager looking back now watching as a girl, I'm like, this is some sick ****.

Darius: Yeah. Honestly, there's some things I had to just fast forward through because I felt weird.

Jordan: No, I feel. Yeah, I feel.

Darius: There's one at the end where I'm like, yeah, I'm not watching this. No. Oh, God, no. And then they. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in this movie where I'm just like. How did it get made? Well, it got made even for the 90s. This is creepy, man. Like, I don't know how this would. This one's best picture. I don't think Oscars.

Jordan: Yeah, and this got Kevin Spacey, his Oscar too.

Darius: You know, I have later in my notes how did this win best picture, but.

Jordan: Yeah, even so the window scene with his daughter. The girl who played his daughter was 17. She was not a, she was a minor when they shot this movie. They had to have her parents like on set. That's ******* crazy.

Darius: This won an Oscar in 1999, right? Yeah. Best picture nominees. Let's see what it was up against. Cause I need to know.

Jordan: Oh yeah, we need to know.

Darius: This can't, well, it had to have been 2000 because it came out in 99.

Jordan: Yeah.

Darius: This beat the green mile. ****. That's crazy.

Jordan: What else would it be?

Darius: The Cider House Rules. Never seen that. The Insider.

Jordan: Oh, that's really good. The Cider House Rules has Tobey Maguire, Delray Lindo, and Charlize Theron.

Darius: I've never seen it.

Jordan: It's really good. And Erykah Badu.

Darius: Look at that. But no, I mean, this was worse than the Insider, the Green Mile, and the Sixth Sense to me. when you know the twist, it's kind of over.

Jordan: that's nuts. Yeah, also, I think this is one of the movies you do have to watch multiple times because of the twist at the end. It makes everything make sense once you go back and watch it for sure. Did you kind of catch on? Not going to lie.

Darius: This is the one and done for me.

Jordan: I feel you. I get you. I get you. Because this whole movie, so you haven't seen the show Euphoria, but watching this as an adult, I feel like this movie walked so Euphoria could run from a standpoint of 1, pretty much every character in this movie is horrible. And the ones who aren't horrible are just really weird. And then of course, there's the underlying theme of predatory behavior and grooming and so on and so forth as well.

Darius: I know I'm just becoming a middle-aged man because I would, I mean, Kevin Spacey's character in his movies, what, in his early 40s? Something like that, yeah. I'm 37 and I just, it's all gross. Like I, you know. Yeah, it's really gross. It's just, I'm just, he's too close to making

Jordan: sure I have a daughter be like in college or something. I don't know. Yeah.

Darius: You know, let's just move on. You got anything else for act one?

Jordan: so I did like I did really like the scene of the wife who's a real estate agent she's like does all the work to clean the house up and get it ready for the sale open house or whatever and she's you know trying her best to sell it and like nobody buys it and she's just like completely devastated and like just has to crash out in silence in private you know as someone who has done like creative endeavors and just you know you put you put your all into it and you don't get the result And then that reality of it hitting, I can definitely relate to that. So I did like that they showed that aspect of the American dream in a sense, this movie is a lot about that. And I like that they showed that, she put her best foot forward. She, again, this whole movie is about like everything looking perfect on the surface and on the inside, it's a mess. And I felt like that scene really did a great job of illustrating that.

Darius: It's the, what is it? The, I forget the word, but Yeah, man, when you pour yourself all into something, especially a creative endeavor, I'm reminded of the lady who wrote a book and it was like, it was like a PhD thesis and it was a, I wish I knew more specifics about it, but she was on tour for the book and a host asked her a very straightforward question and it like undermined the thesis of her entire book. Oh man. And she, let me see if I can find that. And host asked question that undermines thesis of entire book.

Jordan: It was.

Darius: It was. Yeah, it was Naomi Wolf. Hold on.

Jordan: Okay.

Darius: Naomi Wolf, American author journalist. It's really good.

Jordan: Disproved. Apparently she sought to delay the release of her thesis.

Darius: Yeah, so it was like she was on, she wrote a book about 150,000 women dying every year from anorexia. But the data she was pulling was from like a different, like I want to say it was like an English journal. And there was like, you know, there's like a language barrier there, even though it's in the same language. And like the word meant something totally different. And it just undermined her whole thesis. And it was like,

Jordan: Yikes.

Darius: It was just, I forget what it was, but he was like, you do realize that word means something different here. And she was like, what? He's like, what? It's like her whole book just fell apart. And it was like, caught live on camera. This is bad radio. So I'll stop like looking it up. But it's, it's, it's one of the funniest ones of all time where he's just like, oh man. You know, it's like there was like, It was a Supreme Court case. This is an example. It doesn't work, but it works in a sense that like, yeah. The dude in, this just speaks to like vernacular differences. And he was being interrogated by the cops. And he said, I want a lawyer, dog. And she had ruled that you asked for a lawyer dog. And it was something like that, but for like a PhD thesis that she had spent. And she just didn't know that word meant something else somewhere else.

Jordan: And that's unfortunate.

Darius: Yeah. So way off topic.

Jordan: That's so precious, dude. You saw her die on TV.

Darius: But he's like, yeah. It was rough.

Jordan: Oh, man. So I will say this movie is really did a great job of like dark humor. in the spots that were supposed to be funny. one of my favorite scenes in the movies when the gay neighbors come up to the military guy and they're like, Hey, we want to work in the neighborhood. He's like, What are you selling? He's like, Oh no, we're not selling anything. We just want to look into the neighborhood. He's like, But you said you have a partner, so what are y'all in business together for? He said, Well, I'm a tax attorney, and he does, was it like engineering or some ****?

Darius: Anesthesiologist.

Jordan: Anesthesiologist. And he's like, What the ****?

Darius: Oh, now that was very nineties, because you can't keep in mind or back or Bergefell was a Supreme Court ruling in 2011 making gay marriage legal. So they even 20 years. So in 1999, they would be like husbands was just. Yeah, he thought they were business partners. Yeah, I think so. That was actually a funny way to I mean, the movie wasn't trying to, but kind of reveals the era of the movie.

Jordan: Yeah, it does. It does.

Darius: We get it to act two, breaking the mold. Lester starts working out and smoking with his neighbor, Ricky, while Caroline pursues her own professional validation in the by way of an affair. Tensions about as their daughter goes further away from her parents chaos. I do love that they shoot a scene where the two teenagers are in the car listening to Bill Weathers.

Jordan: Oh, yeah, that's right. I forgot about that. Yeah. Even by the- That's some super 90s ****.

Darius: You know, back then we did have to listen to our parents' music.

Jordan: Yeah.

Darius: But I don't know, man. Like when I was a teenager, I wasn't rolling around bumping Al Green. No, I like Al Green, but nah. Me too, me too.

Jordan: Correct.

Darius: Like no Eminem, no NSYNC, no Brittany Spears.

Jordan: Yeah, no Nirvana.

Darius: I'm like, these two white teenagers are not listening to no ******* and no sunshine when she's gone.

Jordan: They don't know the Kirkland soundtrack.

Darius: Not only is it an age gap, it's a racial gap. Yeah, racial *******.

Jordan: Yeah, cultural gap, everything socioeconomic.

Darius: But you can't brag too bad.

Jordan: What was I going to say? Yeah, so I. So this movie does. I mean, obviously we see there in like the loveless marriage. I do wish they had kind of shown a little or talked about like how it got to that point. But it's almost, it's crazy because it's like you almost don't know which parent is worse because you have one that's like having a midlife crisis, midlife crisis and is like grooming basically. And then you have the other who's a perfectionist and a cheater and all that. So you almost don't know which one to root against or which one to root for, which is a weird conundrum.

Darius: I think they kind of showed it in the sense that like, I think The marriage fell apart and became loveless because they were bored. Suburban nights, like everything was going too well. He had a good job. She had a good job.

Jordan: She had a good job.

Darius: Kids are being raised, right? Daughters are cheerleader.

Jordan: Come home, eat dinner, you go to bed. And that's kind of that. Do it all again.

Darius: It's a plot of Fight Club, right? He just got bored of. He just too comfortable. And so.

Jordan: Yeah.

Darius: This is a weird.

Jordan: I feel like this movie.

Darius: Go ahead. Sorry.

Jordan: I feel like this movie accomplished everything that American fiction failed to do. I'm sorry, not American fiction. What did we just do? What did we just watch? Stranger than fiction. Stranger than fiction.

Darius: Yes, I agree. But this is random. I didn't even have this written down, but you just mentioned the loveless marriage. Thoughts on sticking into the loveless marriage for the kids.

Jordan: No, do not do it for the kids. Kids don't need it. Kids don't want to see it. Kids don't deserve it. I think kids should be in, kids should be raised by people, two people, even if they're in different homes who are mentally stable and happy and mentally healthy and have a life of wellness. I don't think teaching, I don't think there's any value in teaching children to be miserable and to suffer. I mean, you can't do it in every situation, but it's just like, I don't wanna say too much, but it's just people, they're like, I'm staying for the kids. Like, that's actually who you're hurting.

Darius: I'll grab the baton. Loveless is not toxic. Those are two different things. Okay, fair, fair, fair. So to me, it just depends on how much it bleeds into, you know, outside of your bedroom, for lack of a better word. Right. And I do think once you get married and have children, you can't prioritize your well-being over everything. And like anything, marriages, they ebb and flow. Um, you know, so like I've known people, coworkers actually, who, who have told me, you know, like for two years there, we just passing by each other. But like now it's great. And like, that's kind of, I do think when you, when you take an oath for, for life, you do owe it some effort. Now that's a, that's definitely not unconditional. You know, some things are beyond the pale and some things are just irreparable. But I do think we lose something when we tell people to just bounce when it gets uncomfortable or when it gets a little boring. And so I just think that it's a delicate balance to to do. I myself have never been married, so I'm speaking. I'm not from any sort of experience, but, you know, obviously to death do us part is a little extreme. Oh, and by a little, I mean a lot. But, you know, I can see why people do it, though. If the kids like 16 and they're going to be off of college in two years, that's a lot of disruption to throw on them their last two years of high school, you know, and it is logistically harder to do it with when there's two different houses. I just I mean, I'll never forget little real. He was at a radio show and he just like it was just hard for me. He was like, because he went through a divorce and they stare at custody. He's like, I'm sitting in my living room watching TV and why aren't my kids with me? You know, they've been in my house for 10 years.

Jordan: Every day.

Darius: And now they're not, you know, like you don't realize how much you will miss the noise. The, you know. Yeah, it's a big adjustment for sure. I think people play hard and fast with the rules when in real life it's just a little more complicated than that. So a little went off to a little aside there.

Jordan: Mostly because I don't really have anything else as far as notes for this movie. So. I think, I can't remember which movie it was, but we talked before about cheating and what would you forgive and the different situations and stuff like that. In this situation where like she's having a full on affair with this other guy who she's like literally thrown in your face. Are you, sticking, are you sticking around and making that work?

Darius: No, I'm talking about pre the like. My question was spawned of you saying they were kind of like bored. The marriage is falling apart because they were bored. But nah, man, if I'm at work slinging burgers and I open the drive through window and you,

Jordan: he would just step on his

Darius: And you, what do you call him? Mistress? I don't know what you call him.

Jordan: Mister.

Darius: You're Mister.

Jordan: I don't know.

Darius: The other man in the drive through, you got a handful of ***** and you Nah, we can't look past that. That's doing too much.

Jordan: Yeah.

Darius: The way he found out was crazy, bro, was slanging burgers. That was right to the drive-through. But she didn't even know she worked there, but still.

Jordan: Right.

Darius: That's a rough one, man. That's a rough one.

Jordan: Yeah, it's also a testament to like just how lovely the second marriage was because it never even occurred to him to care or think about whether or not she was ******* some other guy. He truly just didn't give a ****.

Darius: They were just totally checked out on each other. Yeah. He didn't care about this. He was mad because he felt like he had to be. We didn't give a **** about that.

Jordan: He's like, I'm so hurt.

Darius: Oh my God. How could you do this to me?

Jordan: Oh, no, I can divorce you and get half of your ****.

Darius: I got the papers in my pocket. Here. Stay right there.

Jordan: Stay right there. Hold on. Here.

Darius: Hold on. Let me go to my locker. Don't drive off.

Jordan: I've already signed my portion for the document.

Darius: It's signed right there. Put it in the mail. We're good to go. Got a new lease.

Jordan: It's over. It's done. It's over and done. I'll get an apartment by tomorrow.

Darius: What was my pops used to say 1 foot in the grave, the other on a banana peel. Like it was all the way out there. You got anything else for that too?

Jordan: Yeah. And by the way, banana peels actually are slick. I almost busted my *** in the parking lot on one of those one time. Granted, it was raining. It was raining. I didn't see it. But it is real. I thought it was a joke this whole time. But yeah, so one of my favorite scenes is the family dinner where he's like, he just loses his ****. And he's like, I'm sick of y'all treating me like I don't mean **** to y'all. And he just throws the plate at the wall. And he's like, by the way, I'm sick of this ******* music.

Darius: What would you say this movie is about?

Jordan: I'd say it's about One, appreciating the small things. I'd say it's also about the insignificance of classism. Well, okay, I'd say that the consequences of classism, and I'd say it's about people's desire to be young, like just anti-aging, basically. I think he was quote unquote, attracted to his daughter's friend, but he was more such attracted to the fact that someone younger. I know, I couldn't not. I couldn't not. I don't even think it was so much about the girl. It was about what she represented. You know what I mean? It was youth, you know, temptation. It was virality, if you will. It's disgusting, obviously, and predatory. But, you know, it wasn't even like, remember at the end of the movie, fast forward a little bit, he turns back into a father. That moment turned it back into a father, which he shouldn't have taken that, obviously. But I think it's about people not wanting to age. I think it's about people trying to have it all. And I think it's about people trying so much to have it all that they can't recognize, again, the beauty around them.

Darius: Not wanting to age. That's a good one, man. This is totally off topic, but I was when we were watching the, we were watching them together, but we were watching the Oscars at the same time. And I just was like, I remember when all of the Oscar Best Picture nominees were old and stuffy and boring movies that I thought only old people liked. And I was like, I like all these movies. It must not be because I'm old and stuffy now. And why does the grocery store play good music now? What's going on? I heard a Nelly song at the grocery store and I was like, oh no, not my music at the grocery store.

Jordan: That's crazy. Oh my god. Imagine that they play like the college dropout at the grocery store, dog. I probably shoot myself.

Darius: Yeah, man. They play music we like in Target now.

Jordan: That's unfortunate.

Darius: You know, it just, it's little reminders that you're getting old, man. It's just like, man, I liked it. Damn near every movie nominated for Best Picture. Some more than others. Me too.

Jordan: Yeah, some more than others.

Darius: But when they were all just like movies I had never seen, old stuffy.

Jordan: Yeah.

Darius: Like who, which old 90 year old white man voting for these and now?

Jordan: Yeah. I love them. I think, was it, what year was it where it was the Moonlight La La Fiasco? Was that 2016? I think it was. And I remember being like, I've never heard any of these movies.

Darius: Yeah. Now, I saw half of them in the theater. Like, I didn't know they were gonna be nominated. I just saw, this looks good. We go see Begonia.

Jordan: I thought they look cool. Right.

Darius: Man, 20, you would have told 22 year old me that I would go see Begonia like on my own accord. Like with just, It's just like, oh, movie. We're about some crazy lady. No, man. Just three people acting in a basement for an hour and a half. I actually enjoyed it. You know? Yeah. Act three beautiful and multiple character arcs converge on a rainy night as secrets are exposed. Lester finds a moment of true clarity and peace just as the consequences of his environment finally catch up. I have here that this movie is gross. You could tell what scene happened when I wrote that down. I can't even, even for 1999, I can't believe no one on set was like, hey, do we need to?

Jordan: Put this in here.

Darius: Cause 1999 is not 1959. You know, like they should have known.

Jordan: No, I don't understand. Yeah. And again, this is another movie where Kevin's basically played a creep, like a super dupe creep. Yeah, no, it's like we really should have known. This is craziness. It reminds me of like that somebody posted the album cover for that Aaliyah album, AJ and the Cover. And you know who's in the background on the cover. And it's just like, how did y'all let this happen?

Darius: That's like, I listen to a lot of problematic people. I'm not gonna act like I'm holier than thou. For sure. Marvin Gaye's jacket is crazy. James Brown beat every woman he ever dated.

Jordan: Everybody tried to kill Otis Redding.

Darius: Right. But the R. Kelly thing for me is like, the music is literally about his crimes. And I'm just not going to listen to, I just, I can't. I got literally, it's not about, you know, and no one's going to know what's in my headphones at home on my Spotify. It's like I'm doing this to be a performer. I literally can't listen to it.

Jordan: No, yeah, no, yeah, for real. Like it's, you know, right. Like, you know, Chris Brown doesn't make music about, Abuse, right?

Darius: It's particularly pernicious when the song is describing crimes.

Jordan: Yeah, it just gives you an icky feeling.

Darius: Correct. I'll spare the people the details. Y'all got Google, but the crimes aren't. Yeah. I do love how the pivoting. I do love how the weird kid next door was actually the only normal person in the movie.

Jordan: He was the only normal person in this whole movie.

Darius: You got the dad across the street looking out the window. So let's just assume he believed everything. That was what he thought. Right. So when the kid was rolling up a blunt for Kevin Spacey, but the angle looked like.

Jordan: He was giving ********.

Darius: Correct. As a father. You're just watching.

Jordan: Let's and let's don't like the fact that it's not like your child within a grown man. Let's just feel like that's not the issue here. You're watching it.

Darius: One, you're watching it. Two, you believe that this is your child within a grown man.

Jordan: Yeah.

Darius: Whole lot weird. Again, the kid was the only normal person in this ******* movie.

Jordan: Yeah. And then remember when he was watching the videos back and he saw the video of Kevin Spacey working out in the garage and he just sat in like that. This is, yeah.

Darius: And then he, I think he just, I made a pass at Kevin Spacey at the end, right?

Jordan: Yeah, he made a pass. That's why he killed him.

Darius: I was wondering if I read that right.

Jordan: Oh yeah, he, oh yeah, so he, comes to the garage. I think he, I think he was, I think he thought he was going to try to confront him or I think that's what the father planned to do. And then he was shaken by his, I guess, revelation about himself. I don't know. And then if Spacey's like, yo, you good, bro? Like he gives him a hug. Dude starts like caressing his back and then he goes in for a kiss. Spacey goes like, no, oh, sorry, dude, you got the wrong idea. He walks away and then we know what happens at the end. Well, he blows his brains out at the end.

Darius: Yeah, we could put this one in the archives. I'll never watch this movie. So much weird **** man.

Jordan: It is. I just wish they had shown the father getting retribution, though, like him getting arrested or killing himself or something like that. Because just kill a dude because you mad that you gay is crazy.

Darius: Well, I mean, with that. Well, yeah, I was going to say he thought that that's what happened to his child, but he didn't clearly didn't care if he made a pass at him afterwards. Right. Yeah, man. And the fact that Like you said, they didn't even show him like getting arrested or anything, because I guess in 1999, that wasn't a bad thing to do, to just break out a hate crime. Right.

Jordan: Even like the Nazi plate, remember that.

Darius: Yeah. Weird movie. Got anything else for act three?

Jordan: Oh yeah, so I did want to ask you, so the the wife in her affair. Do you think she actually loved him or do you think it was just like the first ounce of excitement and youth she got to feel in however many years?

Darius: 100% the first ounce of excitement in youth and probably first time she's had an orgasm in half a decade. And yeah, I mean, she's not going to run off with that man. She just it's fun, you know?

Jordan: Yeah.

Darius: Forbidden fruit is always sweeter as the old people used to say.

Jordan: True. Did you think when she had the gun, did you think she was going to kill her herself or kill him?

Darius: Herself. I don't really have a logic, but I just had to pick one. So herself. How about you, man?

Jordan: I got the feeling she. I think she probably would have killed him. I think she would have rather killed him than kill herself because she was pretty vain. That's really the only reason I feel like that, though.

Darius: You don't really have anything else. I guess I'll close it with you said this movie is about getting old. You are what, 33?

Jordan: Yeah.

Darius: What is your what is the first I'm getting old moment that comes to mind.

Jordan: It's a good one. I think just when I see like, oh, I know it is. I was driving the other day. I was going to, going somewhere and I saw a little kid, my neighbor, two doors down, his dad was helping with a pitcher and some water and **** whatever. And they were setting up like a lemonade stand on the corner. I thought to myself, well, when it's really early in the year to be selling lemonade, it's not summertime. Also, lik