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Morning News

Academy Awards Preview: Alan Ball's Hollywood Dreams Come True With Success of 'American Beauty'

Aired March 24, 2000 - 10:35 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: "American Beauty" is one of the front- runners in a number of Academy Award categories and no one else is more surprised about that than the man who actually wrote the script.

This Sunday on "CNN & TIME," you'll meet the man who's a former sitcom writer, and now his Hollywood dreams have come true.

Art Harris has his story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ART HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Alan Ball is riding high.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's probably the best one right there.

HARRIS: His first screenplay turns into a film nominated for eight Academy Awards. Overnight, he's gone from obscurity to the hottest writer in Hollywood.

ALAN BALL, SCREENWRITER: This town's been very good to me. With "American Beauty," I've been able to get these incredible rewards for doing work that I love. So what's not to like?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "AMERICAN BEAUTY")

ANNETTE BENING, ACTRESS: And I marvel that you can be so contemptuous of me on the same day that you lose your job.

KEVIN SPACEY, ACTOR: I didn't lose it. It's not like, whoops, where'd my job go. I quit!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: Some critics say Ball uses "American Beauty," with its dysfunctional cast of characters, to paint America's suburbs as a wasteland.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "AMERICAN BEAUTY")

BENING: Your husband feels he can just quit his job and you don't think I...

SPACEY: Will someone please pass me the asparagus? THORA BIRCH, ACTRESS: I'm not going to be a part of this.

SPACEY: Shut up!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALL: You know, a lot of people think the movie's an attack on suburbia. No, it just takes place in suburbia.

HARRIS: Ball grew up in Marietta, Georgia. While he draws on his own life to write, he says the film is not an indictment of his home town.

BALL: I was misquoted in some magazine article saying that I felt everybody in Marietta was living in denial, and that's not true.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Alan Ball, "American Beauty."

HARRIS: Alan Ball is enjoying the rewards and awards for his writing. There's now the house in the Hollywood hills filled with art work, the pool, the Baby Grand.

BALL: I don't want to smudge them, so, Helen (ph), you'll just take care of that? Thank you.

HARRIS: But he can't forget how some folks back home viewed him as an outcast.

BALL: I would go home for holidays and people would come up to me and they would say: So, are you still doing your little theater thing? And, you know, I'd say, yes, you know. And I could tell that everybody thought I was kind of a big loser, lost cause, black sheep, you know. Well, he's gay and he doesn't have a job.

(LAUGHTER)

Of course, now that, you know, I'm getting awards and making money, oh, immediate acceptance.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS: Ball has already won a Golden Globe and honors from the Screen Writers Guild. The Academy Award would be a pretty impressive hat trick. We'll see what happens -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Art, anybody who's seen the movie knows that there are a number of angry characters in American Beauty. Did Mr. Ball talk about where all that anger comes from?

HARRIS: Well, no one is angrier than the Kevin Spacey character who was a very frustrated ad writer in New York and just fed up with his job, felt very dead. In fact, Ball felt creatively dead when he was writing this because he was writing, turning out sitcom scripts for Cybill Shepherd and would go home at night and just pour all his frustration and anger not only from this writing job, but from his childhood into this screenplay. So he would write at night and then fall asleep. And after eight months, he had this screenplay that has turned into a writer's dream come true.

KAGAN: And what's he working on now?

HARRIS: He is working on an undisclosed pilot for a possible series for HBO.

KAGAN: Looking forward to that, and looking forward to seeing him here on Sunday at the Academy Awards.

Art Harris.

You can see more of Art's story on "CNN & Time." That'll be on 9:00 Eastern on Sunday night and again at 9:00 p.m. Pacific.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com

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