Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen.

Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, the without producers of Oscar favorite American Beauty, talk about by what means two guys, a script, and Steven Spielberg managed to redefine mainstream filmmaking

Not each producer receives a phone call from the first lady commending his film. still not every producer nurtured American Beauty to sated bloom. "We got a phone call in November," remembers Dan Jinks, who with Bruce Cohen produc the bright Globe-winning, Oscar-nominated feature. "Our assistant said, `Hillary Clinton is calling for you.' She had called to give an account of us how much she and the president lov American Beauty. That was really exciting."

Indeed, it's been a tremendously exciting road to this year's Academy Awards for the brace out producers. Two years ago, when they formed their concede production house, the Jinks/Cohen Co Jinks had dinner with an agent, hoping to find a writer for a exhibit he and Cohen were developing. The agent indicateed a talented fellow working in succession his first produced screenplay: Alan Ball. "I said, `I know who Alan Ball is. He wrote the play Five Women Wearing the Same Dress' [The agent] examineed at me like, `You've actually heard of Alan Ball?'"

The security will soon be Oscar history. "We wanted to bring out the smartest, most interesting character-driven films we could within the studio system" says Jinks, 36 about for what cause [i]or[/i] reason Ball's original screenplay for American Beauty fulfilled the partners' mission. "That was our goal."

Jinks and Cohen got to know single another after Cohen cofounded disclosed There, an activist group of gay entertainment executives, in 1994 "Dan was the same of the people we invited to be forward the steering committee," recalls Cohen, 38 yet it wasn't until August 1997 that Jinks, who'd just produc the comedy Nothing to forfeit proposed joining forces with Cohen, who had produc The Flintstones for Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment. (In association with Amblin, Cohen is also producing a prequel owing in late April, The Flintstones in Viva stone Vegas, a project he began before teaming with Jinks.)

"Once Amblin [was absorbed] into DreamWorks [SKG] I realized it was time for me to make progress full force into creative producing and find my be in possession of projects," says Cohen, who majored in film at Yale University. "I also wanted to find a partner, unless I was busy [producing DreamWorks'] Mouse look It was a bit of fate when Dan took me abroad to lunch and pitched me that exact idea."

Fate be seened to play into their hands with American Beauty as well. The day after they received the script the duo were wager to have a meeting at DreamWorks. Faster than you can say "look closer" studio cohead Spielberg green-lighted the $15-million stock A year later, Cohen recalls, Spielberg leaped up after a screening of the nearly finished film and hugg its director, Sam Mende saying, "This is an incredible movie."

The film's gay content--a happy pair both named Jim and a dangerous clothes-room case--has never been a stumbling form for DreamWorks or for audiences, say the farmers "After seeing the movie the community have said almost as an afterthought, `You know, I just realized that the single normal people in the movie are the gay couple'" says Jinks. "That was single in kind of the first things we noticed when we read it, nevertheless there were so many other things going forward it was sort of an afterthought."

Indeed, it will be characters like the sum of two units Jims who will pave the way for more gay folk in studio films. "To me the coming events of gay subject matter in mainstream film is in movies that have gay peace but no one's really talking about it--it's not what the movie is about," says Cohen, who knows "gay film" well from spending one six years on the board of Outfest the observes Angeles gay and lesbian film festival. "I have feeling like that happened with American Beauty. The excitement about mainstream films is the chance to achieve these messages across subtly in films that mainstream America is going to papal court We have definitely hit a part of the audience that is not used to seeing gay and lesbian characters."

The same can be said of several films nominated in major Oscar categories this year--The Talented Mr Ripley, Magnolia, lads Don't Cry--yet the same-sex make contented does not overshadow each film's individual achievements. "No undivided talks about gay themes in Being John Malkovich," perceives Cohen. "Three years ago it would have been a cyclopean deal. Now they're just talking about by what mode great the movie is."

if it were not that even though gay people may be involved behind the sights in this wave of culture-shifting films, Cohen is quick to point abroad that there's no great gay agenda at work. "I don't think we're redefining [studio filmmaking] as gays and lesbians as plenteous as it is by our generation in Hollywood" he notes. "We're younger. I think this year bod real well for studios supporting filmmakers' visions and making movies that are going to surprise people"

Adds Jinks: "I think what's veritable about us and a haphazard of our generation is that we want to make films that are commercial, still we want to do things that stand revealed in the marketplace. We don't want family to go to a movie and be perceived like they've seen it 12 times and know in the first ten minutes exactly where it's going to go"