Filmed entirely in color, which was then removed for the black-and-white
portions of the film.
Early appearances of color:
The red rose, after the encounter at Lover's Lane;
Pink bubblegum seen in the hallway at school;
One girl's pink tongue;
The red hearts of the cards in the bridge hand;
The subtle green of the car in front of the diner;
The pink cherry blossoms reflected in the side mirror of the car;
The subtle green of the grass at Lover's Lane before it turns completely
colorized.
Jeff Daniels also appeared in Purple Rose of Cairo, The (1985), another film in which black-and-white and color characters intermingle.
Tobey Maguire and Joan Allen also played mother and son in Ice Storm, The (1997).
Some of the cinematography in the scene at the town meeting recall similar scenes at the Nazi rallies in Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will.
Director Gary Ross acknowledges these cinematographic homages:
The scene of J. T. Walsh in front of the bowling alley scorecard recalls
Patton's speech in front of the American flag inPatton (1970);
The courtroom segregated into black-and-white characters downstairs
and "colored" characters upstairs recallsTo Kill a Mockingbird (1962);
The scene in which Toby Maguire spins in the rain recallsShawshank Redemption,
The (1994).
The Native American in the test pattern behind Don Knotts changes to angry and then sad as the movie progresses.
During the publicity campaign surrounding the film's release, there was a contest for a trip to Pleasantville, Iowa (the smallest Pleasantville in the United States).
The bowling alley score sheet shows that all frames have been strikes or spares.
©1998 - New Line Cinema Productions, Inc.