This director Boorman had a very special reputation with campus film groups and youth orientated filmmakers in the United States and the United Kingdom. He was considered one of the voices of the new wave of picture making – daring, innovative, imaginative. This is the type of director motion picture companies were gravitating to in 1969 when it appeared that all traditional picture making was outmoded and audiences – mainly youthful – were ready to support only the off beat. By the time the picture was made, this premise had been proven erroneous. The actual audience for this type of film could justify a cost of only a few hundred thousand dollars, if that much – not the substantial budget allocated here, which in turn was exceeded by hundreds of thousands of dollars through the director's excessive preoccupation with his own ideas of "perfection". The picture came out much too long and slow but this director – as part of his unrealistic approach to picture making – refused to make necessary cuts. By contract he could not be overruled.