What he did not mention was that Chayefsky’s full creative control meant that he would have rejected any established performer whose persona would have caused audiences to see the film with pre-existing associations. It was precisely because Hurt was unknown that he was perfect for the role. And, as the actor said: “This had to be made because this was the best idea that anybody had had for a long time. This was not a movie, this was great ideas, and those ideas had to get out.”

Hurt met Chayefsky, Penn and Gottfried a fortnight later after treating the screenplay as he might a stage play. He treated them to an hour-long monologue as to why it was important that it was made, ending with “That’s why I think you have to make it, and I’m going.” Yet it was made clear to him that the film would not be produced unless he agreed to star in it. Hurt eventually cracked and agreed to star in Altered States, albeit with provisos that were practically unheard-of for an unknown actor to be granted. Hurt did not have to do any publicity appearances, had approval of any directorial decisions and was allowed three weeks of rehearsal time. 

But he was in, and the project seemed buoyant. Until, that is, when Chayefsky, ill with the cancer that would kill him two years later, saw to it that Penn was removed. The screenwriter feared that Penn would not work quickly enough for him to see a finished version of the project, and so ensured that he was fired in favour of a malleable and faster director, albeit one blessed with a visual sensibility strong enough to turn Chayefsky’s ideas into hallucinatory imagery. 

Enter Russell, who swiftly established an inability to work with the demanding Chayefsky. The screenwriter did not help himself by telling the director that he would be on set as a “benign influence”; when Russell asked the writer how “benign” would be spelt, Chayefsky answered “w-i-c-k-e-d”. The director said that “he was joking, but he wasn’t joking.” Three days into rehearsals, the two men had what Hurt called “a full-out full fight” in an Italian restaurant, and then Chayefsky left the project for good, choosing to do so over assuming responsibility for the direction himself. 

According to Russell, the “impossible to please” writer’s micromanagement became ridiculous: “Chayefsky didn’t like the colour of the paint on the isolation tank … he didn’t like the lighting, then he didn’t like the machinery, then he thought I was making the actors appear drunk in a scene where they were written to be slightly tipsy in a bar.” 

Calling the dialogue “embarrassing”, Russell said that “Paddy’s hallucinations were impossible to film. He’d write a direction, something like ‘interstellar gas shot through 5 million miles of universe like a puff of cigarette smoke.’” The director’s attitude was to ground the action in something more universally applicable, saying “We shot every word that Paddy wrote except for some trifling changes in the Mexican sequences … I was more faithful to the script in Altered States than in any previous movie, and I think I did it great justice.” (Chayefsky later claimed that the dialogue was delivered incomprehensibly fast much of the time; Russell stated that this was the only way of faithfully presenting the screenplay on film.) 

Hurt, meanwhile, began to regret his move into film: “I was working a minimum of 14- to 18- to 20-hour days for seven months. I knew about Ken Russell. A little bit. I’d seen his movies. But I didn’t like him personally.” Yet the director’s eccentricity also endeared himself to his star. As Hurt contemplated leaving the project after Chayefsky’s departure, he had a conference with Russell, in which the two of them paced around a room for half an hour. Then, in Hurt’s telling, “Finally he sat on a radiator and I sat on the floor. When he sat on the radiator his pants pulled up and I saw he had Betty Boop socks on. It was then I thought, I’ll do it.”

Once Chayefsky departed the project, demanding that the screenplay be credited to “Sidney Aaron” – his middle names – Russell was able to exert full control over his film, saying “there can only be one director on a picture”. Although he soon antagonised Gottfried, who bemoaned the shift from the willing and friendly director  he hired to the “mean and sarcastic” and “duplicitous” filmmaker who took over the project, Russell enjoyed himself on his first studio project.