be published in 1969). He read it and bought the film rights with partner Bob Chartoff. "We thought it could create understanding – the schism was so great between the generations then", said Winkler. "It was an important subject. These youths who are looked upon as anarchists are really just American kids reacting to problems in our society. Here was a story about an ordinary guy becoming an anarchist." Winkler had seen The Indian Wants the Bronx and It's the Called the Sugar Plum by Israel Horovitz and asked if he had an idea how to adapt the book. Horovitz pitched the movie to MGM saying it should be shot at Columbia (University). "At the time, there was a student group that had shot a lot of black and white documentary footage of the strikes at Columbia", he said. "I wanted to intercut this documentary footage with the fiction that I planned to write. " The pitch was successful as MGM announced they would make it in May 1969. MGM's president at the time was "Bo" Polk and the head of production was Herb Solow. Israel Horovitz was signed to do the screenplay. He said he wrote ten drafts over two years. François Truffaut was offered the film to direct but turned it down. The job eventually went to Stuart Hagmann who had worked in television and advertising. Horovitz says he struggled to write the film after MGM wanted to shift it to the west coast. He talked to Kunen for a few days then asked himself, "Who is this movie for really? What's the point of this? If it's to preach to the learned already--then it will have no worth"." Horovitz says "I took the approach that Michael Moore must take with his documentaries. Moore doesn't talk to the people who are already in the know--he's talking to those who don't know. So I started to head in that direction with the re-write of the script." Irwin Winkler later wrote in his memoirs that Hagman's directorial style, which involved "a great deal of camera movement" meant "the actors sometimes suffered from the crew's allocation of production time versus acting time. But they were game and young, though they required a lot of on-set communication." "The scenario was cut by the director", said Horovitz, "but not by MGM. It was diluted by cutting – it should have been much stronger