According to Deric Washburn, he and Michael Cimino spent three days together in Los Angeles at the Sunset Marquis hammering out the plot. The script eventually went through several drafts, evolving into a story with three distinct acts. Washburn did not interview any veterans to write the script, nor do any research. "I had a month, that was it," he explains. "The clock was ticking. Write the fucking script! But all I had to do was watch television. Those combat cameramen in Vietnam were out there in the field with the guys. I mean, they had stuff that you wouldn't dream of seeing about Iraq." When Washburn was finished, he says, Cimino and associate producer Joann Carelli took him to dinner at a cheap restaurant off the Sunset Strip. He recalls, "We finished, and Joann looks at me across the table, and she says, 'Well, Deric, it's fuck-off time.' I was fired. It was a classic case: you get a dummy, get him to write the goddamn thing, tell him to go fuck himself, put your name on the thing, and he'll go away. I was so tired, I didn't care. I'd been working twenty hours a day for a month. I got on the plane the next day, and I went back to Manhattan and my carpenter job."

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