U.S. writer and director Peter Hedges has built a career with movies about families and generational interaction.

There was What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, based on his novel, an Oscar nomination for co-writing About a Boy, and Hedges made his directorial debut with Pieces of April, the Katie Holmes-starrer about a family outcast.

So the bonus for Hedges in attending the Whistler Film Festival to lead a Canadian Film Centre workshop for three Canadian screenwriters was bringing along his son, Simon, a snowboarding fanatic.

“I delivered Whistler to my 17-year-old son,” a beaming Hedges, suddenly the cool dad, told Playback Daily.

So while his son snowboarded Friday, Hedges led screenwriters Elyse Friedman, Kellie Ann Benz and Jane Maggs through a full-day of candid script feedback on their scripts and valuable insight into the American writer’s own career.

“I had a fantastic time. They have terrific projects and three distinct voices,” Hedges said of the three scripts he dissected in Whistler.

Friedman brought Hedges a comedy about a social psychologist who hires a test boyfriend to try to figure out why she keeps getting dumped, while Benz also offered a comedy, this time about a young woman breaking up with her mother.

And Jane Maggs received feedback on her drama about a young woman who is stuck in a rut and goes in search of her idolized and estranged older sister, only to find a very different person than she remembers.

Hedges said it takes many years to develop a skill in reading screenplays, to be able to see what a writer had intended for the screen visually, while also hearing what the characters say.

What did Hedges learn in Whistler?

“I’m reminded of the innate beauty in a writer’s attempt to tell a story. It’s such a leap of faith to get a story that’s swimming in your head to become a collaborative attempt to make a film,” he said.