John Patrick Shanley

What is the opposite of doubt? Is it certainty? Belief? Or is it hope?

When John Patrick Shanley decided to bring Doubt, his Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning play, to the screen as both the film’s director and writer, he tackled the project, which he called “the hardest script I ever wrote,” with a tremendous amount of love, trust and belief that the adaptation could soar as the stage production had.

He may be a Broadway veteran, but John Patrick Shanley might want to brush up on his rules of Hollywood etiquette

At the junket of his new film Doubt, starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, we asked writer-director Shanley how Adams had been cast when originally there was another actor offered the role of the emotionally conflicted nun.

"I'm trying to think of what the etiquette is on this," Shanley chuckled, blushing a bit.

"Hit us with it," we said.