out that Dingleman just wants a drug mule to unknowingly take the risk of smuggling heroin. On the train, Duddy meets good-natured Virgil and offers to buy his pinball machines, which are illegal in the United States. When Virgil shows up, Duddy does not have enough money to pay him, so Duddy hires Virgil as a truck driver, even though he has epilepsy. Virgil has a seizure while driving and crashes; he is left paralyzed from the waist down. Duddy is distraught and guilt-ridden. Blaming Duddy, Yvette leaves him to care for Virgil. Duddy becomes alarmed when Dingleman finds out about his lake. When the last piece of property Duddy needs comes on the market, Dingleman bids for it. Desperate, Duddy forges Virgil's signature on a cheque to buy the land, leading to a final rupture with Yvette and Virgil. Undeterred, Duddy proudly takes Max, Lenny, and his grandfather to see his property. When Dingleman shows up to offer to raise the financing for its development, Duddy mocks him. Duddy's grandfather, however, refuses to pick out a plot for his farm, as Yvette told him what Duddy did to get it. Duddy tries but fails to reconcile with Yvette, and she tells him that she never wants to see him again. In the final scene, Duddy has risen far enough that he can run a tab at the local diner, and his father boasts about how his son made it. Cast Production Lionel Chetwynd was commissioned by John G. Kemeny to write a script based on Mordecai Richler's novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. The first draft was sent to Richler, who then showed it to his friend Ted Kotcheff. Kotcheff said that he would direct the movie if Richler wrote the second draft of the script. The film was shot from 10 September to 14 November 1973, after $910,000 () was spent. $300,000 came from the Canadian Film Development Corporation and the remainder was raised by Gerald Schneider. Miklós Lente was the director of photography for the first two weeks of filming, but was replaced by Brian West. The film was actually Kotcheff's second adaptation of Richler's 1959 novel. In 1961, he had directed a television play for ITV's Armchair Theatre based on Kravitz, with Hugh Futcher in the title role. American producer Samuel Z. Arkoff was approached to make the film, but wanted to turn Duddy into a