The Hook interviews Alan Ball

When Alan Ball wrote the satirical screenplay American Beauty, he didn't specifically mean it as a scathing commentary on suburban life.

"I happen to live in suburbia," Ball, 52, told the Hook recently. "And I like it."

His script dealt more with the zeitgeist of suburbia, and he intended his account of middle-class dad Lester Burnham's dissolution "to be an indictment of the shallowness of American values that [Americans] are basically conditioned from birth to accept as gospel," he explains.

"In that regard," he says, "I don't know if there is any more scathing indictment of American culture than American culture itself."

Ball's targets seem peculiarly ironic— but not illogical-- considering that his prior writing background was mainly in pure Americana: sitcoms. But his days of unrewarding toil on shows like Grace Under Fire soon ended: American Beauty won him the 1999 Academy Award for best original screenplay, among numerous other laurels.

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http://www.readthehook.com/stories/2009/11/05/FILM-alan-ball-A.aspx