On September 20, the DGA screened Director John Butler’s The Stag at the Guild’s theater complex in Los Angeles.

Butler’s comedy tells the story of Fionnan, an urbane bridegroom who reluctantly agrees to accompany his equally genteel friends on a final camping trip in the wilds of western Ireland. Their plan for a leisurely weekend of fresh air and hiking are hijacked by Fionnan’s prospective future brother-in-law, an obnoxious alpha male nicknamed “The Machine” who has his own ideas about the definition of a stag party.

The screening was co-presented by the the Screen Directors Guild of Ireland (SDGI) as part of the DGA’s “Director’s Finder” series, which was created in 1998 by the Independent Directors Committee to spotlight undistributed low budget and/or independent feature films directed by DGA members. As part of our bilateral relationships with other English-speaking directors' guilds abroad, the DGA began also hosting country-specific Director's Finder screenings in 2004.

After introductions by SDGI Executive Director Birch Hamilton, DGA Associate Executive Director, Government & International Affairs Kathy Garmezy, and Los Angeles Irish Film Festival founder Lisa McLaughlin, Butler discussed the making of The Stag in a Q&A moderated by writer-director Matt Byrne (Case of the Paper Anchor).

Butler’s other films include the movie for television Immaturity for Charity, the documentary The Million Dollar Deal, and episodes of the Irish television sketch comedy series Your Bad Self.