southern, fonda, and hopper met in new york city in november 1967 to develop their ideas. these brainstorming sessions formed the basis of the screenplay that southern then wrote from december 1967 to april 1968. on the basis of southern's treatment, raybert productions, which had produced the tv series "the monkees" and the monkees movie "head", agreed to finance the film with a budget of us$350,000 (in return for one-third of the profits), with columbia pictures agreeing to distribute the film.