towards the end of his work on "dr strangelove", southern began canvassing for more film work. jobs he considered included a proposed john schlesinger screen adaptation of the iris murdoch novel "a severed head", and a project called "the marriage game", to be directed by peter yates and produced by the james bond team of harry saltzman and cubby broccoli. he also wrote an essay on john fowles' novel "the collector", which led to his work as a "script doctor" on the subsequent screen version.