Steven [Spielberg] was such a nice guy. Steven was terrific. And Steven took over the making of the film and he wrote to me and asked me what I thought. And I wrote him a letter back, one page. It said, well, my idea was that this little boy was making out okay, but then he goes to a factory and in the factory he sees a production line of himself, duplicated and duplicated, and that… the shock kills him. That was what I proposed in this one letter. So, Spielberg wrote back and said, 'Brian, I would like to buy this letter from you'. And he offered me something that was the equivalent of the sort of down-payment I would get for a novel from one of the publishers. Very generous.

So that was it. That is, more or less, how the film ends with the little boy finding this production line. And Spielberg finished off the film to the best of his ability because of his friendship with Stanley.

It's curious, isn't it? I don't think it's a very good film, but the necessity to flood New York seems to me a lot of water too far, but then I am naturally prejudiced. So there we are.

So then Stanley died. His wife, who was artistic, and often when we were stuck, we would go and see her, sitting in a vast ballroom in the corner, painting. She was a sweet woman, I really loved her and it would cheer us when we went to see her. So she invited me over to some parties there. That was very nice. But now, the link has been broken. I know nothing more. Well, I wouldn't expect to know anything more. But it was rather a harrowing time of life, I have to say.