The Producers

DYNAMIC FILM DUO WEST AND SMITH

Six years ago, Palmer West and Jonah Smith met in New rk while working on the independent film Speed of Life. "I had a theater degree from the University of Montana, but I learned very quickly that I wasn't a good actor, so I moved to New York and started working on this film and met Jonah, and within three weeks we realized the stories we wanted to tell were very similar, and decided we could make a lot more movies if we teamed up," recalls West. Today, the partners, both 31 years old, have a thriving L. A.based production company, Thousand Words, which has delivered Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream, Richard Linklater's Waking Life, and two films due out this month— The United States of Leland (Paramount Classics), a multi-layered examination of juvenile crime starring Kevin Spacey, Ryan Gosling, and Don Cheadle, and The Clearing (Fox Searchlight), the Robert Redford and Helen Mirren thriller, which debuted at Sundance 2004.

The Clearing, from first-time director Pieter Jan Brugge, producer of The Insider, Heat, and Glory, is certain to catapult the producers into a different league. Mirren agreed to do the film immediately, but Redford kept them guessing. "We waited a year before we had him. We pursued him for nine months and we waited," Smith remembers. "In the end, it was the script that finally made him do it." West and Smith hope one day to become "a destination spot" for young artists. "We are true partners and have a lot of confidence in each other's vision," West explains. These guys seem too good to be true—even their wives are best friends.

KRISTA SMITH