Third Draft—February 7, 1986—128 pages. Joe Wizan continued to shop this screenplay for years and each time he set it up as a producer, he got a big check. Joe made more money on this movie not getting it made, than he would have gotten if it had been made five years earlier! We received small re-write fees each time we did a revision, but not near the money that Joe Wizan made on it. It’s a less on why it’s important to control your material.

Each time the movie was moved to a different studio the costs of the movie, such as producers fee, writer’s fees, offices, etc., would be charged against the movie and the previous studio would have to be bought out or become a partner. The costs eventually against WHEREABOUTS west estimated to be between 4-5 million dollars!

This time Mr. Wizan moved the project to MGM Where Frank Yablans was head of production. Joe Wizan was a consummate producer and had a lot of good relationships around town. Frank Yablans finally green lit the project, meaning go make the movie. Joe once again picked the wrong director. He picked Peter Bogdonovich.

The idea was to make the movie as economically as possible and Joe felt Bogdonovich was hungry and could make the movie for the right budget.

Joe had been told that on Bogdonovich’s last picture Bogdonovich has smeared the New York unions and the word was that Bogdonovich would not be able to make another movie in New York. He would be hounded and the picture would be a disaster to hurt Bogdonovich. Joe wanted us to move locations from New York to San Francisco!

This is ridiculous! Now we’re changing not only the location, but also the entire foundation of the screenplay, but again, Jim and I were soldiers and were willing to give it a shot. I think we did a pretty good job of moving the story to San Francisco. Again, it’s a compromise and I don’t think it’s a better screenplay. Something gets lost each time in translation.

Bogdonovich didn’t know a good thing when he saw one. A very pompous and arrogant man, he had a green-lit picture. MGM was going to make the movie and he wanted to work on a script a little more. That is the definition of an idiot! All he had to do was cast it, shoot it, and he had a movie made. But no, he wanted to make it “better”. This is from a guy who hadn’t had a hit picture in close to 15 years.

My first meeting with Bogdonovich was at his fabulous estate on Copo de Oro just north of Sunset Blvd near UCLA. The irony of that meeting is that I had been to the house nearly ten years earlier when I worked for Orson Wells as a cameraman on his last picture. TH EOTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, which is the story of a director who dies before his last work is finished, and Orson died before this film was finished Who knows where it is today. Of course Peter didn’t remember me, why would he, I was only a crewmember, and I didn’t really want to go into it with him. Peter is not a warm man and does not make one want to share anything personal with him.

The house was a U-shaped Spanish mansion set around a courtyard leading out to a cabana and a pool. It had Hollywood’s golden era written all over it. Eventually, Bogdonovich lost the house.

The meetings didn’t go well and it was the only time I was fired off a picture and was pleased. Bogdonovich wanted to change the very nature of the screenplay away from a mystery to a suspense piece and would constantly quote “Hitch”, meaning Alfred Hitchcock. WHEREABOUTS was a bit of a homage to Hitchcock’s NORTH BY NORTHWEST and Bogdonovich couldn’t see it. There was really no getting through to the man.

On a side note, Bogdonovich would spend the entire meeting nervously breaking colored toothpicks in half and littering the ashtrays with them. I suggested to Peter, in fun, that the red dye on the toothpicks might be bad for his health, and on the next meeting he had changed to natural wood toothpicks.

The subsequent meetings deteriorated and Joe Wizan was powerless to do anything about it. I refused to change the concept of the screenplay. What was the point? It was a mystery filled with suspense. I asked Bogdonovich why he wanted to do the movie in the first place since he didn’t like the screenplay. I kept telling him he was missing the movie.

I was not hired to do next draft, which was all right with me. By February 19868, TOP GUN was in production LEGAL EAGLES was also in production. I had been working with a lot of top directors, producers and studio heads and I was not going to compromise our vision.

Bogdonovich with someone else wrote a horrific draft of the screenplay and virtually killed the project. It was never made. He was the idiot who turned a green light motion picture into a development deal. All he had to do was shoot the movie as written. Joe Wizan would have been better served to have replaced Bogdonovich and shoot the original screenplay rather than replace us.

Virtually every executive and movie star in town read WHEREABOUTS DURING THIS PERIOD. Within three months our lives would drastically change with the release of TOP GUN. Within the next year we went from having no movies produced to having three movies produced in one-year period and a number one worldwide hit. We were in constant demand.

We sort of out grew WHEREABOUTS and were not interested in destroying something we loved so very much. We let it go, and it has never been made. While there is a sense of loss about it never making the screen, I’m also pleased that it was never made wrongly and compromise beyond recognition. It still exists on paper as a perfect movie.