ReelReveal #81

Steven Spielberg was going to direct it with Jack Nicholson, had new scenes written to give Nicholson more to do, then left for Catch Me If You Can — and later admitted the rewrite was a mistake. The director who replaced him wanted something small after Planet of the Apes, and said it was the first genuinely original script he'd been sent since Beetlejuice. His own father had just died. The crew tracked down one of the banjo boys from Deliverance and put him on a porch.