This collection of interviews brings together major Hollywood directors and actors, independent filmmakers, screenwriters, and others to discuss the art, craft, and business of making movies. Whether it be Clint Eastwood or Francis Ford Coppola, Vittorio Storaro or Dede Allen, these filmmakers detail how they strive for quality, the price they pay to do so, and how new technologies and the business aspects of filmmaking impact all aspects of their creativity. Taken together, the interviews reveal much about filmmaking practices in and out of Hollywood.

The interviewees include Dede Allen, Robert Altman, Jamie Babbit, Don Bluth, Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Downey Sr., Clint Eastwood, Atom Egoyan, Horton Foote, Stephen Frears, Barbara Hammer, Louis Malle, Sydney Pollack, Oliver Stone, Vittorio Storaro, Paul Verhoeven, and James Woods.

Contributors include Leo Braudy, Wheeler Winston Dixon, Gerald Duchovnay, Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Lester D. Friedman, Ric Gentry, Peter Harcourt, Wade Jennings, Robert P. Kolker, Richard A. Macksey, Mark Crispin Miller, Chris Shea, Scott Stewart, and Gerald C. Wood.