WHEREABOUTS was our breakthrough script. Based on our second script, DANGEROUSLY, Jim and I started to take meetings around town. This was a shift in our career since people were now interested in hiring us to work on their projects and ideas. Instead of speculating on a screenplay, we now could get contract work and was thereby guaranteed an income.

I went to producer Joe Wizan’s office on Sunset Blvd to take a meeting. Joe had read DANGEROUSLY and had liked it. During that meeting Mr. Wizan pitched me an idea about two people who are challenged to find each other and end up finding each other at the end of the movie. My immediate response was that wouldn’t work because we keep the lovers apart the entire movie.

I had a quick thought. I pitched it back to him, what if the two people find each other and then they find the man who challenged them dead and now they are on the run and are forced to work together. Mr. Wizan loved the idea. Jim and I wrote a fast story pitch, pitched the idea and we set it up at a production company.

Although there was a previous script, we never looked at it, or discussed it again. We started from page one. It was a difficult start and we make a lot of false starts before we got it right.

When we turned in the draft, Joe Wizan loved it. He was head over heels and was hoping the original small studio, who I can’t even remember the name of at this time, would pass on the project. When they did, he bought them out and owned the screenplay outright. That was a move that would make Mr. Wizan millions of dollars as he moved the screenplay from studio to studio.

This was not just a home run piece of work; we hit this one out of the ballpark and really launched our career. Jim’s dialogue is masterful and I believe my storytelling is the best work I have ever done. The screenplay was a great success and was seen by virtually every executive and actor in the Hollywood in the early 80’s. It catapulted Jim and I into an entirely different ballgame and put us on the “A” list of writers. This screenplay along with TOP GUN, had the greatest influence on our career and really changed our lives.

John Landis was involved to direct the script and unfortunately that was I think a big mistake. He wasn’t an actor’s director, and was known more for his outrageous comedies, and this wasn’t outrageous. It is our homage to Hitchcock and probably would have benefited from another director. John was very likable and the best part of working with him is that he didn’t have a lot of changes for the screenplay. We trimmed it down but it pretty much remained as we originally wrote it. Mr. Landis did have a meeting scheduled with Robert Redford on a Friday evening to discuss the idea. The screenplay was new and very hot. But on the day before that meeting, Mr. Landis had his accident on THE TWLIGHT ZONE where three people were killed and that meeting never took place. In many ways that terrible tragedy put some kind of a jinx on the project. Landis exited the project because he had a court case to attend to.

The project did move around to several other directors, Barry Levinson, Peter Bogdonovich, and others. But it was ultimately never made. I believe if the movie had been made when it was written, with the right case, it would have been very successful.

This is, in my opinion, and I know Jim’s opinion, our best work and although it may read a little dated by today’s standards, it’s filled with a great relationship, a lot of twists and turns, and I believe a lot of inventiveness. People that have read it always remember it and I do get calls about it from time to time. Two things that date the screenplay is that there are no computers and no cell phones.