 Gilbert was mostly collaborative with Dahl 's work , as the writer declared : " He not only helped in script conferences , but had some good ideas and then left you alone , and when you produced the finished thing , he shot it . Other directors have such an ego that they want to rewrite it and put their own dialogue in , and it 's usually disastrous . What I admired so much about Lewis Gilbert was that he just took the screenplay and shot it . That 's the way to direct : You either trust your writer or you don 't . " 
