 After the success of Robert Altman (I) (qv)s  _Nashville (1975)_ (qv), Vonneguts novel was bought by producer  Dino De Laurentiis (I) (qv) for Altman. Altmans cast for the film  included Peter Falk (I) (qv) as Hoover, Alice Cooper (I) (qv) as  his son Bunny, Sterling Hayden (qv) as Kilgore Trout and  Ruth Gordon (I) (qv) as Eliot Rosewater (as Rosewater was to be  portrayed as an old man, Altman thought it didnt matter that Gordon  was a woman as he believed gender differences were not as strong in  the elderly. After the De Laurentiis