it was unwieldy; it needed structure." The treatment was then presented to screenwriter Jay Cocks, who turned it into a script. Cameron felt that the resulting script was very well structured and only did a dialogue polish on top of it. The script was completed in 1993. Bigelow was motivated to start work on Strange Days shortly after a series of cultural incidents that occurred in the United States in the early nineties, such as the Lorena Bobbitt trial and the 1992 Los Angeles riots that followed the Rodney King verdict. Referring to the latter, she noted, "I was involved in the downtown cleanup, and I was very moved by that experience. You got a palpable sense of the anger and frustration and economic disparity in which we live." She also developed the character of Mace from Cameron's original script to make "valuable connections between female victimisation and racial oppression." The film was named after the 1967 song of the same name by The Doors. Both Strange Days and Cameron's 1994 action film True Lies were part of a multimillion-dollar production deal between Lightstorm Entertainment and 20th Century Fox. However, the financing was unevenly divided between the two films, with Strange Days being initially budgeted at $30 million and True Lies at $70 million. Casting Academy Award nominee Angela Bassett was attached to the film from its early stages, after Bigelow sent her the treatment document and Bassett accepted the lead role of Mace. In January 1994, it was reported that actor Andy Garcia was close to being cast as Lenny. However, on February 3, 1994, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Ralph Fiennes had been cast instead and that he was wrapping up negotiations to play the role. Fiennes' starmaking role in Schindler's List, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award just days later, impressed Bigelow enough to cast him as Lenny. She stated that the role "required somebody who had a tremendous amount of intelligence, complexity, depth, a series of qualities that I really felt only Ralph could supply." Cameron, however, had first felt that a "glibber and slicker" actor would be better for the role, but admitted that Fiennes made Lenny "a sexier character—a guy you can care about very much." The Hollywood Reporter also announced that Irish rock star Bono was expected to join Fiennes and Bassett in the role of Faith's love interest Philo