That led to Keitel rewriting most of his own lines - which in turn meant almost daily revisions for cast members who had scenes with him.
A particular point of contention was a scene in which O'Neill, observing reams of Arabic documents, asks his assistant, "Do we have Arab translators?" only to be told, "I don't know of any. I'll call around."
"Keitel couldn't understand why the FBI didn't have Arabic translators, so the dialogue was changed on the spot," said a script supervisor.
On one occasion, Keitel holed up in his hotel for an entire day with director David Cunningham revising the script.
Other times, Cunningham would "fumble through the 9/11 Commission book trying to figure out how to correct details Keitel called into question," said the script supervisor.
Wow. Thanks Harvey. Too bad it didn't get the project scuttled, but it could have obviously been much worse.
