American Beauty follows ​Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), who leads a typically dull suburban life. He's 42, he used to be happy but now lives in some odd and meaningless trance, and oh yes, he'll be dead within a year. He's married to Carolyn (Annette Bening), a struggling real estate agent, and he's father to Jane (Thora Birch), a teen who's saving up her nickels and dimes in hopes of one day buying her way to bigger and better breasts. Enter the Fitts, a family recently moved into the neighborhood, right next door to the Burnham's. Teenager Ricky (Wes Bentley) is seen as a weirdo around school; he videotapes anything and everything, paying for his vast collection of electronic equipment and blank videocassettes from cash he earns on the side as a drug dealer. His father, Frank (Chris Cooper), is a homophobic former Marine who's struggling to keep his son clean and honest. The Burnham's familial structure is already stressed to max, and it threatens to fall completely apart when Lester begins to fantasize about a sexual encounter with Jane's best friend Angela (Mena Suvari), Carolyn's eyes grow wide for the soon-to-be-divorced local real estate "King" (Peter Gallagher), and Jane comes to learn that maybe Ricky isn't quite the oddball for which he's been mistaken.

American Beauty was originally conceived as a stage play Alan Ball began writing in the early 1990’s having been inspired by the media circus around the Amy Fisher trial in 1992. After realizing that the story wouldn’t work well on stage, Ball shelved the play. After having spent several years working in television, Ball revived the idea in 1997 while he was attempting to break into the film industry. The screenplay was bought by DreamWorks for $250,000, outbidding several other production bodies. After about twenty other directors were considered for the job and several A-list filmmakers turned it down, the director’s chair was given to acclaimed British theater director Sam Mendes as his film debut.

After having premiered in Los Angeles a week earlier, the film was released on September 17th, 1999. On March 26th, 2000, it would go on to win 5 Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Sam Mendes), Best Actor (Kevin Spacey), Best Original Screenplay (Alan Ball), and Best Cinematography.

For a while, I was pretty reluctant to do a feature on American Beauty given the #MeToo era we've been living in for almost two years now. Especially given how Kevin Spacey was one of the many men whose career was affected by it after all the sexual misconduct allegations that were made against him. Isn't it ironic how even in real life, Spacey had sexual desires for underage kids? However, I decided to do a feature on American Beauty now for two reasons. Today actually marks the 20th anniversary of the film's release and also because I still think it's one of the great Best Picture winners of the 1990s.