Straw Dogs (1971 film) days over schedule and $3 million over budget. Left with a limited number of directing jobs, Peckinpah was forced to travel to England to direct "Straw Dogs". Produced by Daniel Melnick, who had previously worked with Peckinpah on his 1966 television film "Noon Wine", the screenplay began from Gordon Williams' novel "The Siege of Trencher's Farm", with Peckinpah saying "David Goodman and I sat down and tried to make something of validity out of this rotten book. We did. The only thing we kept was the siege itself". "Straw Dogs" drew inspiration from Robert Ardrey's books "African Genesis" and "The
The Siege of Trencher's Farm been wholly unfair; so dazzled are the film critics by their icon." Williams' agent George Greenfield had planned for Roman Polanski to direct an adaptation, but he was unavailable. For the 1971 film adaptation, writers Sam Peckinpah and David Zelag Goodman changed several aspects of the novel's story while keeping the overall plot. Peckinpah said "David Goodman and I sat down and tried to make something of validity out of this rotten book. We did. The only thing we kept was the siege itself". Williams was "horrified" by the film and publicly denounced it; he did not approve of the