find out how far Americans can be pushed before they fight back." The film was to be made in October 1976 in Texas, but Milius instead decided to make Big Wednesday. Development In 1982 the project was in the hands of Walter Hill. He assigned Larry Gross to do some work on the script before the latter did work on 48 Hours. In 1983 it was reported that Carolco Pictures, then flush with money from the success of First Blood, had purchased the script from Warner Bros and were hoping for Ted Kotcheff to direct. Milius was reportedly rewriting the script to bring it up to date. In 1985 Jonathan Demme was linked to the project. Then Carolco signed Walter Hill to direct and he hired Harry Kleiner to rewrite the film. Hill had known Kleiner from the film Bullitt, on which Hill was an assistant director and Kleiner the writer; Hill was impressed by Kleiner's talent for writing and rewriting on the set daily, which he needed for this film. Casting The lead role was played by Nick Nolte with whom Hill had made 48 Hours. Hill: I wanted someone who was representative of the tradition of the American West -- taciturn, stoical, enduring. Someone who carried a lot of pain with him. I told Nick, 'The kind of thing I'm talking about is Cooperesque.' I had him look at a lot of Gary Cooper films. Nick Nolte said the role made a change of pace for him: It was a chance to play a morally perfect character. Like Walter said, we spent a lot of time looking at old films to get this Old West flavor. We looked at Wayne films, at Cooper films, at Randolph Scott films. Yeah, there's a lot of High Noon in this movie. There's a lot of Howard Hawks director of Red River. There's a lot of Sam Peckinpah ... I needed to find the demeanor of how those '40s characters carried themselves -- how they dressed and carried their guns. Nolte got writer friend Peter Gent who had written North Dallas Forty to recommend a real-life Texas Ranger to act as a model for his character. Gent suggested veteran Ranger Joaquin Jackson. Jackson later said he: More or less edited the script with Nick. We got more into the type of language Rangers use, as well as the Rangers' relationship with other