 Mackendrick assumed that Odets would need only two or three weeks to polish the script , but he took four months . The director recalled , " We started shooting with no final script at all , while Clifford reconstructed the thing from stem to stern " . The plot was largely intact , but in Mackendrick 's biography he is quoted from Notes on Sweet Smell of Success : " What Clifford did , in effect , was dismantle the structure of every single sequence in order to rebuild situations and relationships that were much more complex , had much greater tension and more dramatic energy " . This process took time , and the start date for the production could not be delayed . Odets had to accompany the production to Manhattan and continued rewriting while they shot there . Returning to the city that had shunned him for going to Hollywood made Odets very neurotic and obsessed with all kinds of rituals as he worked at a furious pace , with pages often going straight from his typewriter to being shot the same day . Mackendrick said , " So we cut the script there on the floor , with the actors , just cutting down lines , making them more spare – what Clifford would have done himself , really , had there been time " . 
