Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider, road pictures were a popular genre in Hollywood. Eastwood himself wanted to do a road movie. Agent Leonard Hirshan brought the script to Eastwood from fellow agent Kamen. Reading it, Eastwood liked it so much that he originally intended to direct it himself. However, on meeting Cimino, he decided to give him the directing job instead, giving Cimino his big break and feature-film directorial debut. Cimino later said that if it was not for Eastwood, he never would have had a career in film. Cimino patterned Thunderbolt after one of his favorite '50s films, Captain Lightfoot. The music was composed by Dee Barton but the end titles song "Where Do I Go From Here?" was composed and performed by Paul Williams. Shooting Although Eastwood generally refused to spend much time in scouting for locations, particularly unfamiliar ones, Cimino and Eastwood's producer Robert Daley traveled extensively around the Big Sky Country in Montana for thousands of miles and eventually decided on the Great Falls area and to shoot the film in the towns of Ulm, Hobson, Fort Benton, Augusta and Choteau and surrounding mountainous countryside. The film was shot in 47 days from July to September 1973. It was filmed in Fort Benton, Wolf Creek, Great Falls, and Hobson. St. John's Lutheran Church in Hobson was used for the opening scene. The imaginary freeway exit signage (Warsaw Exit 250) for the fictional town of Warsaw, was in reality, the Interstate 15 exit for Dearborn, an unincorporated community that straddles the Cascade/Lewis & Clark County Line. The scene where Thunderbolt recovers the money from the one-room schoolhouse was filmed at the rest stop just south of Exit 240, which is the exit for Dearborn. Eastwood did not like to do any more than three takes on any given shot, according to co-star Bridges. "I would always go to Mike and say 'I think I can do one more. I got an idea.' And Mike would say 'I gotta ask Clint.' Clint would say, 'Give the kid a shot.'" Charles Okun, first assistant director on Thunderbolt, added, "Clint was the only guy that ever said 'no'. Michael said 'OK, let's go for another take.' It was take four, Clint would say 'No we got enough. We got it.' [...] And if [Cimino] took too long to get it ready, [Clint] would say, 'It's good, let's go.'" Release Thunderbolt was