Kirk Douglas bought the rights to the novel, but couldn""t convince film studios to produce the film.Many years after its short theatrical run, Douglas transferred the rights to his son, actor/producer Michael Douglas, who co-produced the United Artists film with Saul Zaentz.The hideous lonely emptiness of existence.Nothingness.The predicament of Man forced to live in a barren, Godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror and degradation, forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos"), and then when he asked what she was doing on Saturday night, she responded: "Committing suicide" - hen undeterred, he asked about Friday night instead!During a visit to Dick""s and Linda""s beach house, the hreesome visited a discotheque, where on the dance floor, Allan ogled a big-breasted blonde Discotheque Girl (Susanne Zenor) and imagined propositioning her: "I love you, miss, whoever you are.As they spoke together, Bilbo noticed a vulnerable bare spot on Smaug""s upper chest where Bard""s ancestor Girion centuries earlier had fired a Black Arrow and dislodged an armored-scale.It was also remade as a TV movie by Ted Turner""s TBS station with Tom Skerritt as the lead character and Michael Madsen as the heavy named Frank Miller.