his stuff was unusable, but to her delight the outline was wonderful and she went to work. It was her first project with living subjects, and Allen interviewed nearly everyone in the book and had endless hours of Bob Leuci's tapes for back-up. With all her research and Lumet's outline, she eventually turned out a 365-page script in 10 days. It was nearly impossible to sell the studio on a three-hour picture, but by offering to slash the budget to $10 million they agreed. When asked if the original author ever has anything to say about how their book is treated, Allen replied: "Not if I can help it. You cannot open that can of worms. You sell your book, you go to the bank, you shut up." Orion Pictures had bought Daley's book for $500,000 in 1978. Daley was a former New York Deputy Police Commissioner for Public Affairs who wrote about Robert Leuci, an NYPD detective whose testimony and secret tape recordings helped indict 52 members of the Special Investigation Unit and convict them of income tax evasion. Originally, Brian De Palma was going to direct with David Rabe adapting the book and Robert De Niro playing Leuci but the project fell through. Sidney Lumet came aboard to direct under two conditions: He did not want a big name movie star playing Leuci because he did not "want to spend two reels getting over past associations," and the movie's running time would be at least three hours. Lumet cast Williams after spending three weeks talking to him and listening to the actor read the script and then reading it again with 50 other cast members. In order to research the role, the actor spent a month learning about police work, hung out at 23rd Precinct in New York City, went on a drug bust, and lived with Leuci for some time. By the time rehearsals started, Williams said "I was thinking like a cop." Lumet felt guilty about the two-dimensional way he had treated cops in the 1973 film Serpico and said that Prince of the City was his way to rectify this depiction. He and Jay Presson Allen wrote a 240-page script in 30 days. The film was budgeted at $10 million, but the director was able to make it for under $8.6 million. Supposedly, Bruce Willis has a role as a background actor in this film,