American Beauty (1999 film) "American Beauty" to the fledgling DreamWorks studio, which bought the script for $250,000, outbidding several other production bodies. DreamWorks financed the $15 million production and served as its North American distributor. "American Beauty" marked theater director Mendes' film debut; courted after his successful productions of the musicals "Oliver!" and "Cabaret", Mendes was only given the job after 20 others were considered and several A-list directors turned down the opportunity. Spacey was Mendes' first choice for the role of Lester, though DreamWorks urged him to consider better-known actors; similarly, the studio suggested several actors for the role of Carolyn until Mendes
Gabriel Lester he applied and was admitted in 1998. Before starting at the Rijksakademie, Lester traveled to Iceland, where he lived for five months farming and writing a collection of short stories. Upon his return to Amsterdam, Lester self-published a selection of the stories in a book called “Over and Done With”. In January 1999, Gabriel Lester started a two-year residency at the Rijksakademie, with the intention to do further research into cinema and produce some short films. However, in April of that year, shortly after an internal open-studios, Lester decided to avoid making film-art or video-art and rather create cinematic experiences