it was written by martin sixsmith, who i play in the movie. and it moved know tears and i decided -- i thought i could maybe tell a story about this. what accompanied the piece was the photograph of martin six smith with philomena lee, the woman who was searching for her son. and the photograph was of them laughing. they seemed like an unlikely couple and martin is an, ford educated liberal intellectual and philomena is a blue-collar retired nurse and i just thought -- >> there's chemistry there? >> there's god to be some sort of -- they're from such different walks of life and i thought the idea of talking to them, the more i spoke to them-- because i interviewed them both-- the more i saw there was a story there about not so much about the missing son but about attitudes to life. >> rose: was this after you optioned it or before? >> well, i option it had book before it came out, so i hadn't even read it when i optioned it. >> rose: you were optioning books you had not read? (laughs) >> yeah. because i saw the story and that enough -- that was