Finest Hours director talks about the film

Gillespie jumped at the chance to direct The Finest Hours. Photo: AFP

As soon as he read the script for The Finest Hours, filmmaker Craig Gillespie called his agent and told him he wanted to direct it.

“Scott Silver had done the draft that I read,” the affable Australian-born Gillespie said over lunch recently at his favourite greasy spoon in Santa Monica, California. The script, he added, “was beautifully restrained” and the characters “clearly defined. It was so emotional and visual.”