 The novel had long been considered impossible to film because its characters express themselves through considerable “internal dialogues.” Huston had been interested in adapting the novel for more than thirty years and had rejected more than twenty potential screenplays.Guy Gallo, a playwright who had never writtten a screenplay before, had penned two papers on Malcolm Lowry as a Yale University graduate student, and was inspired to write a speculative screenplay.He received additional encouragement from Paul Bluhdorn, a friend from his undergraduate days at Harvard University, who was now a production executive at Paramount Pictures, and the son of Charles Bluhdorn, former head of Gulf & Western, then parent company of Paramount.