ASIDE FROM the unique interviews with Fernando Poe Jr. and Lolita Rodriguez we featured in this section recently, we?ve had similarly memorable interactions with the iconic likes of Dolphy, Susan Roces, Gloria Romero and Eddie Garcia. Many of them will be featured in our forthcoming book on Sampaguita Pictures, which we?ve worked on with Marichu VP Maceda and Lynn Pareja.

It was both an honor and a delight to be invited into the screen icons? treasure trove of memories, which turned out to be one ?exclusive? after another.

Most difficult

On the foreign entertainment front, we?ve similarly had memorable interviews with the genuinely stellar likes of Jane Fonda, Sammy Davis Jr., Brooke Shields and Jeremy Irons. But, the most instructive foreign assignment we?ve ever had was our ?lightning? visit to the DreamWorks studios in LA to do, not just one, three, or five interviews in one day, but nine!

We were told that the huge film studio, put up by Steven Spielberg, Daniel Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, was so focused on making its new animated feature, an ?event? film that it wanted its worldwide promotional coverage done by ?the best in the biz,? hence their decision to invite reviewers who could analyze the film?s creative process and product in depth.

That sounded flattering, but when we got to the DreamWorks studio, we quickly realized that we were in for much more than we had bargained for.

We were swiftly taken on a series of one-on-one interviews with the production?s different department heads, each a master of his craft and art.

Since these were the top talents in the animation biz, our questions had to be similarly informed and incisive, and that took a lot of doing?especially since, every half hour or so, we would be trotted off to another entirely different department, where we were expected to come up with another informed and incisive interview.

We did the best we could, and our handler encouragingly whispered from time to time that we were impressing the socks off our interview subjects, but we were soon completely ?talked-out? and welcomed the one-hour lunch break when it finally came.

After lunch, however, it was back to the ?incisive? grind, and our brain was turning cartwheels as we tried to keep us with the high-tech presentations of the screen visionaries we interacted with.

One-on-one session

After eight hectic interviews, we were utterly exhausted when evening finally came, and we were more than ready to call it a day. Uh-oh, not so fast: The studio (surprise, surprise) kept its most daunting interview for last?a one-on-one session with no less than animation studio head, Jeffrey Katzenberg, himself!

What lousy timing, we thought. They should have scheduled Mr. Katzenberg earlier in the day, when we were still bushy-tailed and in full possession of all our faculties.

But, this was not the time to throw in the towel, because an interview with the usually reticent Katzenberg was deemed a great honor. So, we girded what were left of our interviewing loins and sallied into what had to be one of the best interviews of our life.

After our scheduled 30 minutes with Katzenberg were up, we thought that was the end of it?but, we were amazed to realize that he had no intention of stopping. He went on for another half hour, sharing his deepest thoughts on seminal topics related to animation and other aspects of filmmaking.

We then espied some executives quietly entering the room and listening to our interview ?word had apparently leaked out that their boss was conducting a significant interaction that they might benefit from.

When Katzenberg finally decided that he had said everything he wanted to share, he thanked us and even joshed that we had helped him clarify certain issues, so he was hiring us. Laughter all around. After weakly retorting, ?Conflict of interest, Mr. Katzenberg,? we took our leave of the big studio head and staggered off to our hotel room?for a well-deserved snooze!