American Beauty
In Sam mendes’ eight-film career, the rose-petal fantasy sequence in American Beauty holds a special spot in his affections. “That was one of the most bizarre day’s shooting I’ve had to this day and I’ve made lots of movies,” recalls mendes. “Then I hadn’t made any.” The iconic moment in mendes’ debut involves the fantasy of sad sack Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey): lying in bed, he imagines schoolgirl angela Hayes (mena Suvari), best friend of his daughter Jane (Thora Birch), lying naked on his ceiling on a bed of roses, the petals falling slowly towards him.
“I remember reading that in the script and thinking, ‘That’s amazing, I didn’t see that coming,’” says mendes. Lester Burnham’s ceiling was created on a soundstage on the Warner Bros. backlot in Burbank. “I went on set and there were buckets full of long-stemmed roses with the crew removing the petals,” recalled Suvari. “I had to lie on the ground with my G-string strategically placed and everything covered up and taped.” mendes himself dropped the petals from an a frame ladder, with cinematographer Conrad Hall filming from another ladder. The scene was shot in slow motion at 120 fps (“The camera makes a noise like a dentist’s drill at that speed,” says the filmmaker) and then mendes ran the film backwards so it appeared the petals were falling onto Burnham from the ceiling. Weeks later mendes shot the reverse with Kevin Spacey.
“We dropped so many petals on his face that he got the giggles,” says mendes. “The shot in the movie is him beginning to laugh because the petals are hitting him full in the face. But because it was slow motion it had a slightly dreamy quality to it so I used the shot where he corpsed. The two of them were the most profoundly unromantic, unsexy shots I’ve ever done.”
The moment has been referenced in the diverse likes of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Madagascar and the opening scene of porn spoof All American Beauties. In 2015, San Francisco photographer Carey Fruth attempted to subvert the image’s male gaze by having a diverse group of women recreate Suvari’s pose but lying on lilacs and, in Fruth’s words, being “authentic in their sensuality, vulnerability and complexity”. Yet for mendes, the image conveys more than just the sexualised imaginings of an old man.
“I always thought there was a part of American Beauty that was, on one level, a pretty grubby story,” he says. “It’s a middle-aged man obsessing about his daughter’s friend and it is kind of pathetic. But in his own mind it has a beauty, a grace and a tranquility that was not just about a horny middle-aged man. It was about someone who was aching to be in a different world.” Back in the real world, just think of the poor studio dude who had to sweep up those petals.
American Beauty Is out now on DVD, blu-ray and Download