AMERICAN SUCCESS STORY.

Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, the out producers of Oscar favorite American Beauty, talk about how two guys, a script, and Steven Spielberg managed to redefine mainstream filmmaking

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

Indeed, it's been a tremendously exciting road to this year's Academy Awards for the two out producers. Two years ago, when they formed their own production house, the Jinks/Cohen Co., Jinks had dinner with an agent, hoping to find a writer for a project he and Cohen were developing. The agent suggested a talented fellow working on 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] looked at me like, `You've actually heard of Alan Ball?'"

The rest will soon be Oscar history. "We wanted to produce the smartest, most interesting character-driven films we could within the studio system," says Jinks, 36, about why Ball's original screenplay for American Beauty fulfilled the partners' mission. "That was our goal."

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

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

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

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

Indeed, it will be characters like the two Jims who will pave the way for more gay folk in studio films. "To me, the future of gay subject matter in mainstream film is in movies that have gay content 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 some six years on the board of Outfest, the Los Angeles gay and lesbian film festival. "I feel like that happened with American Beauty. The excitement about mainstream films is the chance to get these messages across subtly in films that mainstream America is going to see. We have definitely hit a segment 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, Boys Don't Cry--yet the same-sex content does not overshadow each film's individual achievements. "No one talks about gay themes in Being John Malkovich," observes Cohen. "Three years ago it would have been a huge deal. Now they're just talking about how great the movie is."

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

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

Just as those words could easily apply to Malkovich or Boys Don't Cry, so could Jinks's nickname for American Beauty: "the little movie that could." Beauty will likely gross over $100 million domestically; it has already won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture (Drama); and it's heading into the Academy Awards with a field-leading eight nominations. The thrill of it all, Jinks says, never wears off: "Not even a tiny little bit."

Epstein also contributes to Cosmopolitan and E! Online.