Life Wasn't Always Pleasant in Pleasantville

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David (Tobey Maguire): They're happy like this.

Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon): No, David. Nobody's happy in a poodle skirt and a sweater set.

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When "Pleasantville" premiered on this day in 1998, film critic Roger Ebert wrote that it was "one of the year's best and most original films," but he acknowledged that it "sneaks up on us."

"It begins by kidding those old black–and–white sitcoms like 'Father Knows Best,' " Ebert wrote, "it continues by pretending to be a sitcom itself, and it ends as a social commentary of surprising power."

As Ebert observes, the director, Gary Ross, wrote "Big," in which Tom Hanks played a boy who was trapped in an adult's body.

"Here the characters are trapped in a whole world," Ebert wrote.

I thought it was a clever premise, and it was carried off flawlessly.

At the beginning of the movie, the world was (presumably) the modern one (albeit 15 years ago). A brother and sister (played by Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon) broke the remote control while fighting over what to watch on TV, and a mysterious repairman (Don Knotts) showed up with a strange substitute remote control that he gave to Maguire.

After the repairman left, the fight resumed, but the remote transported the two of them to the world of the 1950s, in which everything was black and white.

In their new world, Maguire and Witherspoon had different names and different parents (Joan Allen and William H. Macy). They were in the world of the Parkers, the subjects of a TV series in a marathon Maguire's character originally planned to watch. Now, they had to assume the identities of the children in the series.

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In the idyllic 1950s world, everything was wholesome — excessively so. For example, in Pleasantville an entire brigade of firemen retrieved a single kitten from a tree. Life was always pleasant in Pleasantville. The temperature was even a constant 72°, and there was never any rain.

Maguire and Witherspoon agreed that it was best not to rock the boat, and that was fine with Maguire's more introverted character, but Witherspoon was too hip for the Leave It To Beaver scene. She had sex (a previously unknown notion in Pleasantville's world, where spouses slept in twin beds) with her boyfriend, and gradually color began to seep into the black–and–white world, sparking all kinds of changes.

Some of those changes were good, like the interest in painting that the change encouraged in malt shop attendant Jeff Daniels. And some weren't so good, like the rift that was created between Allen and Macy.

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Then the movie morphed into the social commentary that Ebert mentioned.

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"People, people ... I think we all know what's going on here. Up until now everything around here has been, well, pleasant. Recently certain things have become unpleasant. It seems to me that the first thing we have to do is to separate out the things that are pleasant from the things that are unpleasant."

Big Bob (J.T. Walsh)

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The town was divided between the traditional black–and–white folks and the radical "colored" folks, which led to a surprising and uplifting conclusion. In his final role, J.T. Walsh, as the town's mayor, and other civic leaders imposed rules that were intended to squelch this spread of color.

For example ... "The only permissible paint colors shall be BLACK, WHITE or GRAY, despite the recent availability of certain alternatives."

It failed, as most attempts to muzzle creativity do, leading to a trial in which Walsh's character, angered by the changes in his town, burst into color himself.

I can think of no better summary for "Pleasantville" than the one offered by Ebert 15 years ago.

" 'Pleasantville' is the kind of parable that encourages us to re–evaluate the good old days and take a fresh look at the new world we so easily dismiss as decadent," he wrote. "Yes, we have more problems. But also more solutions, more opportunities and more freedom."

Mass(achusetts) Hysteria

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On this day in 1996, Arthur Miller's play "The Crucible" made its second big–screen appearance since it premiered on the stage in 1953.

"The Crucible" was inspired by — but not necessarily a literal history of — the infamous Salem witch trials of the late 17th century.

I'm not a full–fledged historian — really more of an amateur one who minored in history in college and has always had an interest in the subject — but I think that is an important distinction to make.

Miller wrote it as an allegory of McCarthyism. If one recognizes that fact, it is easier to understand what is said and done in the play.

And, while those events do have something of a basis in fact, it is not, as I said before, a literal history. It is a dramatization.

Miller, who had already won a Pulitzer Prize for "Death of a Salesman," was fascinated by the witch trials and did extensive research in Salem, Mass. As nearly as I can tell, many of the characters in the play (and movie) were real — and I know there were witch trials in Salem in 1692, resulting in 29 convictions, 19 hangings, one case of a man being crushed under heavy stones when authorities tried to coerce him into entering a plea and at least five other deaths of people while they were in prison.

It's just that some of the details were inaccurate.

That is understandable, though, considering that few of the written records that have survived from the time offer much in the way of clues about the personalities of the people who were involved.

But that wouldn't have meant much to Miller, anyway. His play used the witch trials to inspire, not inform. He made no pretense that he was being historically accurate in his portrayals.

Characteristics of several real people were merged into one — a judge, a witness, a defendant — to be representative of the people and the attitudes of late 17th century America.

Even if the people were real, facts were altered to fit the needs of the story. The antagonist of the story, Abigail Williams (played by Winona Ryder in the movie), was a real person, one of the accusers — but in reality she was 11 years old. Miller made her 17 in the play so she could be the lover of the story's portagonist, a real farmer named John Proctor (played by Miller's son–in–law, Daniel Day–Lewis) — thus providing her with the motivation to accuse Proctor's wife (played by Joan Allen) of witchery, a crime that was punishable by execution.

There is no reason to believe that such a clandestine relationship ever existed. It was created to fit Miller's needs, and that made it necessary to play around with the characters' ages.

Williams, as I said, was 11 years old at the time, but her age was elevated to 17 to make the relationship seem more plausible, and Proctor was 60, but his character in the play and movie was about half that — again, to make the affair more palatable for mainstream audiences.

Other changes were modest, even understandable. In reality, the number of girls involved was far greater than it was in the play, but Miller wisely cut many of those minor characters. I suppose, if one wanted to pick nits, one could quibble over the exclusion of some and/or the inclusion of others.

In fairness to Miller, though, I must say that many of the other characters and circumstances appear to be legitimately represented. The dialogue is what one would expect from people of that time — i.e., the use of Goody as an abbreviated form of Goodwife, the customary colloquialism for a female spouse.

Miller wrote the adapted screenplay for the 1996 movie and was rewarded with an Academy Award nomination, the only one he ever received.

I could not help wondering, as I watched the 1996 version again recently, if Miller (who died in 2005) might have seen "The Crucible" as an allegory for the War on Terrorism and the use of waterboarding to coerce information from witnesses — and if he might have made adjustments to the story to make it appropriate for 21st century audiences.

For example, early in the 1996 movie, several girls — including Aibgail — gathered in the woods at night to perform a ritual with a slave named Tituba. The ritual involved a dead chicken, the drinking of its blood and dancing around a fire — and it was witnessed from a distance by the town's Puritan minister, Samuel Parris (played by Bruce Davison).

That event was only mentioned in conversations in the original play. Moviegoers in 1996 saw it acted out.

The minister was alarmed when two of the girls who participated in the ritual fell into unconsciousness and would not awaken. and he sought to find a cause. Fearful of being punished, Abigail pointed the finger at the slave, claiming that she had been working with the devil. Tituba denied the charge but eventually confessed to being a witch after a savage beating.

And that was the catalyst for everything else.

A slave woman named Tituba did live in Salem in those days, She was one of the first to be accused of practicing witchcraft in Salem and denied it initially — but she was coerced into confessing that she had had conversations with the devil.

In 17th–century Salem, that was like throwing a lit match on gasoline.

The extensive waterboarding by CIA operatives of Al–Qaeda suspects occurred in 2002 and 2003, which was before Miller's death, but it wasn't publicly revealed until after his death at the age of 89.

He was probably too old to have written an adaptation by then, anyway. But he might have collaborated with someone.

Who knows what that might have yielded?