With a script co-written by the director and Mardik Martin, the original film was a low-budget (at $300,000), semi-autobiographical, realistic tale about four struggling, small-time hoods and hustlers in New York""s grim Little Italy in Manhattan""s Lower East Side who were trying to establish themselves...You truly are incorruptible, aren""t you? Huh? You won""t kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness").]" In a spectacularly-composed shot, the Prince is pulled along in a chariot on the top of the wall, while below the wall to the left of the frame, he procession of Ishtar proceeds to move ahead in the distance.Hitchcock was noted for films with voyeuristic themes, and this one could be construed as part of a ""trilogy"" of films with that preoccupation:Rear Window (1954)Vertigo (1958)Psycho (1960)The film""s screenplay, written by Alec Coppel and Samuel Taylor, was based upon the 1954 mystery novelD""Entre les Morts(literally meaning "From Among the Dead" or "Between Deaths") by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac." Loomis refused, claiming he had buried the "ghosts" in a manuscript.Jamie drove up to the local bus depot, as she listened to the broadcast on the PA system inside the darkened and empty terminal (a sign at the desk read "Back in 20").