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When I got the chance join a handful of other critics at a round table interview with the men behind The Cove, director Louie Psihoyos and producer Fisher Stevens, I saw it as a wonderfully unique opportunity. Most interviews with filmmakers are all past tense, including insight into their processes, challenges they faced during the shoot, pranks Mel Gibson played on set. But The Cove, a subversive documentary focusing on a dolphin slaughter in Japan and the ramifications it causes - also the summer's best thriller - does not necessarily end. Instead, it closes with an open-ended call to arms to push for change. The film, which has been touring festivals for some time, shines such a bright light on such a shrouded subject that I figured there must be more to story now.

The other burning questions I had were in the more typical interview vein, primarily on how they constructed such an atypical film. If you've seen The Cove – I know it may not be in your city yet, but when it is you'd darned well better run to the theater – you know that it's a potpourri of genres evoking films that range from An Inconvenient Truth to Mission: Impossible to Night and Fog. What I wanted to know was...

Was that the plan all along? Or did something change in postproduction?

Fisher Stevens: I got involved a year and a half ago. Jim Clark, who financed the film and is the founder of Netscape among other things, [like] Silicon Graphics, one of the partners of WebMD, was a good friend of Louie's and mine. I met Louie on Jim's boat, the Athena, where we had been diving together. Louie would always be shooting dolphins and I would be like, "what're you doing?" He said, " Making a doc." I said, "Oh cool."

And on one of the trips we screened Crazy Love, this other film I was involved in, and about six months later Jim said, hey look, we'd really like you to help out on this epic journey that Louie had already been on for two years. I looked at some of the footage that Louie had done and I was blown away. I thought there was an amazing film here.

My idea was to make it an action thriller, even though it's a doc, but make it like it's not a doc - almost like you don't know if you're seeing the real thing or a fictional film. So basically, I brought on Geoffrey Richman, who edited Sicko and Murderball, [and] Mark Monroe (he and I made a film called Once in a Lifetime) to come in and write and we came up with what you guys saw.

Louie, when did you get started on this?

Louie Psihoyos: I've been working for National Geographic over the course of about 18 years as a still photographer; I worked for Fortune Magazine for about five, that's where I met Jim. I was a pretty successful still photographer but I feel like I was just walking in the wilderness until now. This is such a more powerful experience. Making a film is just...I wish I would've done this 20-30 years ago. I've reached so many more people in a deeper way. I've never seen a businessman cry over anything I did for National Geographic. You see audiences reacting like that - laughing, crying, cheering, standing ovations and people asking what they can do to help. It's a really, really powerful experience.

When Jim gave me the money to do this film, he said just make a difference. Coming from a guy who's used to hitting it out of the park all the time, I thought, I really need to try to change the world, because that's what he does.

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