We were hired by Director John Landis to write Dick Tracy. We were writing BLACKTHORNE at the time. John was hired by Joe Wizan to direct WHEREABOUTS and wanted to hire us to write DICK TRACY based on our work with WHEREABOUTS.

John gave us very little instruction. He told me he wanted it “set in the 30’s and to make it revolve around Big Boy”. That’s it. Really. This is a project that I wasn’t really interested in, but Jim really wanted to do it. I began to do research, read the strips and look for a story. I began to become very enthusiastic about the project the deeper I became involved. The most exciting thing about Tracy is all the bizarre characters he created. I decided early on that rather than just do one bizarre character, I would try to bring as many into the story as possible.

The draft with cartoon characters on the front is the actual First Draft handed into John Landis. It was not handed into the studio at this time. The character of Junior is missing in this draft because John had a serious accident while shooting THE TWILIGHT ZONE where two young children were killed and we thought that we would not want to do a movie involving a young child. John’s biggest note was to put Junior into the script. He was right. Junior became the heart of the screenplay.