DEL TORO: I was writer/producer/director, and even then it took over two years to get "Pan's Labyrinth" made.

MORGAN: I think if you're talking about a spec script, the longer you keep it yourself the greater power you've got.

DEL TORO: If they want it. [Laughs]

MORGAN: Yeah, if they want it. But it gives you the opportunity to go around, and if people don't like it, that's absolutely fine. It doesn't then kill it. It might take time until you find the right home or the right people for it, and maybe that's within the system and maybe that's outside the system. But then I think you've got a so much better chance of making it…

DEL TORO: Good.

MORGAN: Yeah. And surviving. Of making it at all.

Would you ever hesitate to write a spec in the current filmmaking environment?

ARRIAGA: For me, no. I hope that the original screenplay form will be healthy, because it's the only kind of screenplays I write. I have been refusing to adapt or to develop other people's ideas for stories, and I have been very fortunate to have my screenplays sold.

DEL TORO: When I came here for the first time, it was for a movie ["Cronos"] that had been produced and successful in festivals. I think that the most unfortunate position is when you aspire to become a cog in an industry. I think that can be maddening because then you want to fit in, and that is truly when they are least interested in your fitting in.

ARNDT: Yeah, based on "Little Miss Sunshine" I've had meetings with a lot of producers and studio executives and even though they didn't want to produce the script, I was offered a lot of jobs because they say, "Your voice is really original. You're doing something really different." The problem is that a lot of the stuff they read is very homogenous. I think that most studio executives are like most movie audiences: They're looking for something that's gonna surprise them, they're looking for something that's unusual and out of the ordinary.

Did any of you either lose things from your screenplay that you really wished had stayed in the final film, or keep things that you really fought for?

DEL TORO: One of the reasons why financing collapsed on "Pan's Labyrinth" so many times is because the movie opened with a 10-year-old girl dying of a shot in the gut. And I kept telling people: By the time the movie's over it is my hope that people realize it's about rebirth. I said, "That's the journey, that's the trip in the movie." And they really were set against that. There was somebody who said, "You could end the movie with her going to the magical kingdom, just don't show her face dying." And I said, "But that's the whole purpose. The point is for someone to feel. . . . "

YAMASHITA: They weren't so big to the story, but things like, "You know where you have the boat coming in from the mainland? Can you make that a small, light plane?" There were a lot of things that they had to cut out from a budgetary point of view.

ARNDT: The producers were always trying to make the script shorter. And it got to the point where there was this one line -- it was Alan Arkin saying, "Dwayne? That's your name, right? Dwayne?" -- it had been taken out and I wanted to put it back in. They said, "Well, you can put it back in if you take out an equal number of syllables somewhere else." I think I added in 11 syllables and took out nine.

MORGAN: Does that constitute a draft? Is it billable?