Page "American Beauty (film)" Paragraph 25
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Jinks and Cohen involved Ball throughout the film's development, including casting and director selection.
The producers met with about twenty interested directors, several of whom were considered " A-list " at the time.
Ball was not keen on the more well-known directors because he believed their involvement would increase the budget and lead DreamWorks to become " nervous about the content ".
In the same year, Mendes ( then a theater director ) revived the musical Cabaret in New York with fellow director Rob Marshall.
Beth Swofford of the Creative Artists Agency arranged meetings for Mendes with studio figures in Los Angeles to see if film direction was a possibility.
Mendes came across American Beauty in a pile of eight scripts at Swofford's house, and knew immediately that it was the one he wanted to make ; early in his career, he had been inspired by how the film Paris, Texas ( 1984 ) presented contemporary America as a mythic landscape and he saw the same theme in American Beauty, as well as parallels with his own childhood.
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