Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah, and I also think that the film was powerful because you had three very honest and genuine portrayal of young people, and then you had Lester behaving like a young person doing things that were unexpected. And I think that the honesty with which it dealt with those issues that those teenagers were going through, and the honesty with which it dealt with what Lester was going through, I think are some of the reasons why the film had the response that it did from so many people. I mean, I used to get stopped and someone would say to me, “When I first saw American Beauty, I was married, and the second time I saw it, I wasn’t.” I was like, “Well, we weren’t trying to increase the divorce rate. It wasn’t our intention.” But it is interesting how so many people have those kinds of crazy fantasies. And what I admired so much about who Lester was as a person, why I wanted to play him is because in the end, he makes the right decision. I think a lot of people live lives of quiet desperation in a job they don’t like in a marriage they’re unhappy in. And to see somebody living that life and then saying, “Fuck it,” in every way possible, and not just in a cynical way, but in a way that opens Lester up to see the beauty in the world. That’s the beauty in American Beauty. Well, and you may have to blackmail your boss to get there.…

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