Two young men, Declan McGrath and Felim MacDermott, travelled the world to gather secrets about the craft of storytelling with film.
Their interviews with 13 of the world's top screenwriters are now published in a book called Screenwriting.
As part of a series called Screencraft, and published by RotoVision, it was launched by director and screen-writer Jim Sheridan, at a reception in the Irish Film Centre this week.
The interviewees were all story-tellers whose stories "were rooted in their own personal experiences", said McGrath, film-editor and co-author of Screenwriting.
"It was an amazing journey," said MacDermott, education officer with the Galway Film Centre and co-director of Aisling Productions. He recalled in particular sitting in Los Angeles with Robert Towne, who wrote the screenplay for classic films such as Chinatown. "He was a very charismatic man," he said.
Members of the film world gathered in the IFC foyer. Tanned and glowing, just back from the Cannes Film Festival were Marina Hughes, of Venus Productions, and Siobhán O'Donoghue, chief executive of Media Desk Ireland, with her colleague, Cáit Barden, of Mooncoin, Co Kilkenny. Who was the glitziest person they had met? "We were the glitziest wherever we went," the three of them chorused together in delight.
Stephen Kane, film-writer and director, says he's casting for his next feature film, which he hopes to shoot in and around Dublin this summer. The film, which is to be called Starfish, tells the story of three young people who are all at a crossroads and decide to go on a journey together. His last film was The Crooked Mile.
Film director Jim Sheridan, who is one of the book's featured screenwriters, said he'd met the US actor Martin Sheen and director Oliver Stone in Dublin the day before. He brought them for a pint to The Long Hall after giving them a private screening of his latest film, In America. The film will be released later this year. Stone was in Dublin to cast actors who sound like Colin Farrell in the film of Alexander the Great, said Sheridan.
Then it was on to a well-known Temple Bar hostelry to discuss film craft and the great film classics.