One Saturday in March 1988 Michael J. Bird got a telephone call from David Cunliffe to say he had a crew and cast in Athens to make a film but the script was terrible and the producer had been fired. Cunliffe asked if Bird would fly out to Athens the following week and rescue the whole thing. Bird agreed on condition they sent him the book and the current script. They did and a week later he was on his way to Athens. His wife, Olive Bird, recalls that the two of them sat in a suite in the King George II Hotel "while he dictated the outdoor scenes to me. I typed them, one of the crew collected them, had them copied and distributed them to the cast. We were in Athens and then the island of Hydra for a few weeks. When we came back he had to work out and write all the studio scenes. I don't know how he did it but he did have an incredible imagination. It was quite a tortured production in one way or another and it's amazing it turned out as well as it did."