In an interview recently published in The Australian, Tim Winton offered the reason he felt it had taken two decades to bring his iconic novel to the screen. He said: "No director wanted to do it. You don't want to be remembered as the bloke who stuffed up Cloudstreet".

Reading this reminded me of the afternoon, fourteen months ago, when I was offered the job. At first, I felt a rush of joy. Then I began to feel humbled by the task ahead, and the trust that been vested in me. Soon after, of course, the terror set in.

I knew it would be, and would probably remain, the most extraordinary experience of my professional life. The fourteen months I spent working with Tim Winton, the producers, and the cast and crew not only met, but exceeded these expectations, tenfold. Looking back, I am still astounded by the trust Winton vested, the support Des Monaghan, Greg Haddrick, Kim Vecera, Peter Rose and Brenda Pam so doggedly maintained, the fearlessness of the cast, and the tirelessness of the crew.

On any other text, sixty five days of continuous shooting would have exhausted us, but cloudstreet touched us all in a way none of us could have imagined. Was it the ghosts of the Lambs and the Pickles, and the high standards they had set; their common regard for each other, despite their differences? Or was it their innate need to struggle on –"stickability", Oriel calls it – that made us, in turn, shoulder the great wheel with such a collective effort? Was it their extraordinary tolerance, even empathy for the weaknesses and failings in others – and their tacit acknowledgement of their own - that made us feel so obliged to do the same; to never apportion blame if something went wrong, and never celebrate too much if the day went well? With the benefit of hindsight, I'd say it was all of these things. The Lambs and the Pickles demanded that we worked just as hard, and with as great an appreciation for the opportunity we'd been given. They made us beholden to feel the same sense of gratitude for having a job to do.

Quite aside from the sheer beauty of Winton's prose (although I call it poetry), this is what I suspect almost everyone who has read the book responds to. It's an ecstatic rendering of people who are a bit better than us. They're better at living (and dying), probably because, as Lester so succinctly puts it, "life is something you can't argue with".

Now, having gone through the journey, which was too wonderful to describe here, I'm in two minds. I have a wardrobe of emotions about the work that has emerged, and the experience of making it, as I know the hundreds of artists and technicians who have been touched by this project also feel. We all understand that we will either be feted for bringing Winton's epic, sprawling poetry to the screen, or remonstrated for entertaining the notion we had the right to do so. Either way, I subscribe to both arguments. I'm certain that for every person who applauds our efforts, there'll be another who questions whether cloudstreet would best remain as it is, in the country's collective imagination, untainted by the frailties and concessions of the filmed medium.

I have no argument there. The book will always be better, and I invite those who haven't read it to do so. It's a great book. Not good. Great. It's won awards.

But Winton is wrong about directors. He's right in saying that no one wants to be the one who stuffed it up. But on the other hand, no one wants to be remembered as the idiot that turned it down.

Matthew Saville