Edmunds hires prostitute Michelle Rafferty to seduce a drunken Smithee, who is in an unhappy marriage, so he can acquire blackmail material.

After Stallone requests they cut one of Chan's lines in the film, Smithee offers to make the edit and drop the master off at the lab for duplication, instead stealing it and running away.

As Challenger instructs security foreman Sam Rizzo to organize a search for Smithee, he calls into Larry King, and in the middle of a mental breakdown, announces his intention to burn the film so it may not be released.

At a gas station, he is spotted by Stagger Lee, a member of the African American Guerilla Film Family, whom he quickly befriends.

Glover offers the brothers a three-picture deal if they return the master as-is, but they refuse, insisting that Smithee be given final cut on Trio.

Smithee exits through a back window and drives to the La Brea Tar Pits, where he finally burns the film as promised.

The website's consensus reads: "A witless Hollywood satire whose hammy, obvious jokes are neither funny nor insightful of the movie business.

The film was not merely bad but "incompetent", Ebert wrote, and also seemingly represented a lapse of judgment for Eszterhas who "is sometimes a good writer".