tar fills the compartment. A final explosion seems to imply a direct hit has taken place. Cast Anthony Edwards as Harry Washello Mare Winningham as Julie Peters John Agar as Ivan Peters Lou Hancock as Lucy Peters Mykelti Williamson as Wilson Kelly Jo Minter as Charlotta Kurt Fuller as Gerstead Brian Thompson as Helicopter Pilot Denise Crosby as Landa Robert DoQui as Fred the Cook O-Lan Jones as Susie the Waitress Claude Earl Jones as Harlan Alan Rosenberg as Mike Danny De La Paz as Roger the Transvestite Earl Boen as Drunk Man in Diner Raphael Sbarge as Chip Lucille Bliss as Old Woman in Diner Diane Delano as Stewardess Edward Bunker as Nightwatchman Peter Berg as Band Member Richard Biggs as Brian Jones Jenette Goldstein as Beverly Hills Chick #1 Production Before Miracle Mile was made, its production had been legendary in Hollywood for ten years. In 1983, it had been chosen by American Film magazine as one of the ten best unmade screenplays. Steve De Jarnatt wrote it just out of the American Film Institute for Warner Brothers with the hope of directing it as well. The studio wanted to make it on a bigger scale and did not want to entrust the project with a first-time director like De Jarnatt. Miracle Mile spent three years in production limbo until De Jarnatt optioned it himself, buying the script for $25,000. He rewrote it and the studio offered him $400,000 to buy it back. He turned them down. When he shopped it around to other studios, they balked at the mix of romance and nuclear war and the film's downbeat ending. At one point, it nearly became the script for the eventual separately made Twilight Zone: The Movie. Before Anthony Edwards was cast, production nearly began with both Nicolas Cage and Kurt Russell. Of the script, Edwards said, "It scared the hell out of me. It really made me angry too ... I just couldn't believe that somebody had written this." John Daly of Hemdale Films gave De Jarnatt $3.7 million to make the film. Edwards later recalled: That was a script that everybody wanted to make, but they wanted him to change the ending. It was this great adventure, but they wanted it to have a happy ending. But he stuck it out, and luckily he stuck it out long enough that I was old enough to play