Pleasantville is director and writer Gary Ross' 1998 film that follows two teenagers from the 1990s as they embark on a supernatural journey into the world of a black-and-white sitcom from the 1950s called Pleasantville. It looks at the conservative and repressive structures of 1950s morals as David and Jennifer each help to liberate the citizens and open their eyes to the more colorful possibilities of life.
In an interview with The AV Club, Gary Ross said that he wanted to write an Alice in Wonderland style film about two modern kids finding themselves in a supernatural world. He then asked himself how to make that concept more dynamic; "What if I took this perfectly balanced world that has this kind of stasis to it, this world of our memory that never existed, and injected real life into it? Then what would happen? That's when the color metaphor occurred to me. As soon as that happened, the whole thing started blowing up."
At the time of its release, Pleasantville did well at the box office and received positive reviews from critics. It was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Set Direction, Best Costume Design, and Best Original Score for Randy Newman. Roger Ebert called it "one of the year's best and most original films."
