Pleasantville Trivias

Pleasantville is supposed to take place in 1958. The fire truck that arrives to put out the fire in the Parkers' tree flies a flag with fifty stars, not forty-eight, as would have been the case for municipal vehicles of 1958.

In the scene when Skip tells Bud that he is going to ask Mary Sue out on a date, Bud is bouncing a basketball. However, in the period of time in which Pleasantville is set, they would have used leather basketballs, not rubber ones.

On their first day of school in Pleasantville, when Mary Sue pulls out her hair barrettes out of anger right before Skip pulls up in his car, they are back in her hair after he drives away.

The modern high school used in the first scenes is actually Valencia High School in Santa Clarita, California. The school bus passing in front of the school is marked Wm. S. Hart Union High School District, the district of which Valencia High School is a part. The patrol car driving through the neighborhood is marked "Copper Eagle Patrol", the name of a private security company in Santa Clarita, California.

The symbol for the Pleasantville Chamber of Commerce is the symbol for Socialist Party USA, except it shows two white hands rather than a black and white, emphasising the idea of 'color' in the film meaning race.

This film briefly held the record for the largest number of visual effects shots until the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

In the final scenes with the '90's mother crying in the kitchen her eye make-up goes from messy to less messy and then back to the previous level of messy.The flag outside the school has 48 stars, the correct number for 1958. The one atop the fire truck has 50 stars. By 1958, it was well known that the 50-star flag would be introduced soon, and 50-star flags were available, but it still seems unlikely that an official vehicle would be flying an unofficial flag (especially since the official flag in 1959 had 48 stars until July 3rd, and 49 stars from July 4th until the end of the year).

When Jennifer and David are fighting over the remote control before the Pleasantville Marathon starts at 6:30, they momentarily go to the Prevue Channel. The time shown on that channel is 1:16, not 6:30.In Pleasantville's high school gymnasium, three-point lines can be seen on the basketball courts. The three-point shot rule was not adopted in the NBA until the early 1980s and in high schools until even later.

When a rock is thrown through the window of the soda shop, it goes through the face of the woman in the painting. A moment later, another item is thrown, also breaking the window in a different place, but the woman's face is intact again.At the end of the film when David/Bud returns to his own world, his hair changes from when he is in the living room to when he is in the kitchen with his mom.

Various inconsistencies and plot holes (stopped clocks, phantom opposing basketball teams) with the real world are consistent with Pleasantville being a TV world, and hence consistent with the movie.The people of Pleasantville know the names of colors, just as a colorblind person would; they see them all in black-and-white, and don't really understand the concept.

When the TV repairman talks to David and Jennifer from the television after they've just been transported to Pleasantville, behind him, the test pattern's position on the screen is slightly different in the close-ups. This was done deliberately "to indicate Knott's changing attitudes towards Bud and Mary Sue".On their way to school on the first day, Jennifer/Mary Sue gets angry and pulls her hair clips out - just before Skip pulls up in his car. After Skip drives away her hair is suddenly clipped back again.

The closing credits end with "Dedicated to: J.T. Walsh 1943-1997". However, J.T. Walsh died in 1998.While Mary Sue is explaining sex to her mother, her hair changes between shots.

The announcer in the beginning states that the Pleasantville marathon was 24 hours long, starting at 6:30 PM. The announcer at the end states that the marathon will end at noon tomorrow.When Bud pulls up in the fire truck to put out the tree fire, he pulls a charged hose from the back of the truck. Hoses in the back of an engine are not connected to the engine's pump, and water would not flow until the pump was engaged.

The bowling pins in the bowling alley are Brunswick Max bowling pins. Brunswick released the Max pins in 1994. The pins in use during that time period would have been Brunswick Dura-King bowling pins.When Bud is about to go to work for the first time, Mary Sue complains to him about having to wear falsies on her date. When she's talking to her date at the restaurant, the falsies are gone. She's wearing them again right after her date is over and she walks into the house.

When David looks through the window down at his mother loading her car there is one shutter half down. Seen from outside all shutters are up.After arriving in Pleasantville, Jennifer looks over at a calendar on a desk. When they are called to breakfast there is a wide shot of the room and the desk does not have the calendar on it.

In the bowling alley sequence, the scene begins with two or three 7-10 splits being picked up. Later in the same scene when the mayor is speaking with the scores behind him there are no 8 pin spares listed, only 9 pin spares.When Bud goes back to the real world at the end of the movie he fades out of the TV screen, the reflection of the room is visible, but his girlfriend and mother are not.

At the very end of the movie, George Parker and Betty Parker are sitting on a bench. The camera pans from George to Betty, then back to where George was sitting, and he "turns into" Mr. Johnson. If you look at Betty before the camera goes back to Mr. Johnson, you can see her bounce. This is from Mr. Johnson sitting down in George's place.When Mary Sue is with her date at the restaurant and she leaves to go to the ladies room, her hair is styled differently than when she is inside the ladies room.

The year is 1958. When Bud and his girlfriend are driving down to lover's lane, she turns on the radio. The song that comes on is Etta James' "At Last". That song wasn't released until 1961.When the soda shop is wrecked and it is discovered that the juke box still works one of the boys unplugs it after Buddy Holly's "Rave On" starts. When Bud says it's okay and plugs the juke box back in the song starts again, which would not have happened with a circa 1958 juke box. It would have started up where the needle was left by the unplugging.

Miles Davis' "So what" and Dave Brubeck's "Take five" weren't released until 1959.The calendar in the movie says 1958.When the soda shop guy shows his Christmas designs to Bud, the 3-ring binder is the slanted variety, hardly an item in the 50s.

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 two books that Bud (David) narrates to the teenagers of Pleasantville, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and "Catcher in the Rye," are the two most widely banned books in the United States.

In the original screenplay, the TV Repairman was to be played by Dick Van Dyke and the name of the repair company was Rob's TV Repair (Rob was Van Dyke's name on his first show) In a subsequent draft, the name in the script was simply TV Repairman, leaving room for Don Knotts.When Jennifer enters Pleasantville, she becomes a character named Mary-Sue. "Mary-Sue" is a term that originated in fan fiction to describe a character who comes into the character's lives and completely solves all of their problems. It is also a fan-fiction term for when the author (usually female) inserts herself (as a character) into the story.

Since every scene from the middle of the movie on had to be in some way digitally changed to have black and white characters interact with characters who are in color, technically this film had the most digital effects shots until Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999).The jukebox in Mr. Johnson's malt shop is a 1952 Seeburg M100C, known in collector circles as the "Happy Days" jukebox due to its appearance in the opening/closing segments of the ABC-TV series.

The scores projected during the bowling alley scene indicate all the bowlers are on pace for final scores of 230 or better. Two bowlers have perfect scores through eight frames.The sign at the end of the movie points the way to Springfield. Springfield was the setting of '50s TV show "Father Knows Best" (1954) which "Pleasantville" (the fictional TV show) was at least partially based on.

For the sequence where Bud is applying the gray makeup to his mother, the color of the makeup was actually green. When they had to "black-and-white" the scene, the shades of green came out the best for the appropriate shades of her "gray" make-up. Conversely, when Betty first visits the soda shop, she is in full gray makeup which meant that Joan Allen was shot wearing full green make-up that is subsequently removed by Bill Johnson (Jeff Daniels).J.T. Walsh's final film role.

Don Knotts was not available to return for looping. The film's narrator, comic and impersonator Craig Shoemaker, was hired (uncredited) by the editor to fill in and do the voice work for Don Knotts.The back lot street set where Bud and Mary Sue's house stands is located at Warner Brothers "Ranch" studio complex in Burbank, California. The main house was a new facade built for the movie but directly across the street, clearly seen in a number of scenes, are houses once occupied by other famous T.V. characters like Gidget, Hazel and Samantha Stevens. Margaret"s house (where Whitey drives up in his car at night) was used as the residence of Mrs. Kravitz in "Bewitched" (1964) and "The Partridge Family" (1970).

In a number of scenes, you can see the house used in Lethal Weapon (1987) just across the street from Bud and Mary-Sue's.Bud brings Mr. Johnson an art book from the library titled "The World Of Art" by an author named Edward Bissell. The book is purely fictional being made just as a prop for this film.