Last week, Newsweek guessed at who the Oscar nominees for Best Director would be, gathered the five men they chose together, and let them loose. The resulting two hour conversation touched on topics from politics to the cost of making movies; from Oscar ad campaigns to The Facts of Life* and is worth a read, if only because it's rare to get so many talented, prominent people in a room together. Oh, the five directors? George Clooney, Ang Lee, Paul Haggis, Steven Spielberg, and Bennett Miller. So yeah, it was a pretty good guess.

*A bit of utterly bizarre Oscar trivia: Paul Haggis was a writer for The Facts of Life when George Clooney was on the show. I wonder how much money you could have won from of the pair of them by betting that two decades later, they'd be nominated for the best director Oscar - in the SAME FREAKING YEAR.