Base station cooperation can theoretically improve the throughput of multicell systems by coordinating interference and serving cell edge terminals through multiple base stations. In practice, the extent of cooperation is limited by the increase in backhaul signaling and computational demands. To address these concerns, we propose a novel distributed cooperation structure where each base station has responsibility for the interference towards a set of terminals, while only serving a subset of them with data. Weighted sum rate maximization is considered, and conditions for beamforming optimality and the optimal transmission structure are derived using Lagrange duality theory. This leads to distributed low-complexity transmission strategies, which are evaluated on measured multiantenna channels in a typical urban multicell environment.