 Throughout the years, Sam Peckinpah (qv) (who appears briefly in  the film as the meter reader) claimed that he had done work on the  script ranging from modifications to major overhauls. Those who  worked on the film claimed that if Peckinpah had made any changes to  the script, it was limited to a few lines of dialogue. Peckinpahs  claims became so inflated that the real writer,  Daniel Mainwaring (qv), threatened to file an official complaint  with the WGA. Peckinpah backed down. When Peckinpah died in 1984,  many of his obituaries still carried the claim that he had rewritten  the script for this film.