His attempt to hang himself in an upstairs bedroom fails when he crashes through the floor, injuring a Hollywood gossip columnist standing in the room below.

While Felix is variously catatonic or heavily sedated, his friends and many hangers-on occupy his Malibu beach house, which leads to a party, which degenerates into an orgy.

Thoroughly convinced that an erotic version of Night Wind will be a resounding success, Felix persuades the executives at Capitol studios to sell him the film outright.

He then attempts to convince his recently estranged wife Sally Miles, the star of Night Wind and an Oscar-winning actress with a squeaky-clean image, to perform in the revised film—now a softcore pornographic musical where she would appear topless.

Since half of Felix's assets legally belong to Sally, the studio persuades her to sign a distribution deal that also gives them the right to edit the film.

They break into the funeral home, steal his body and substitute the corpse of a largely forgotten character actor who died on the beach at the beginning of the film.

The epilogue reveals that Felix was right: His revamped Night Wind was a box-office smash for the studio, with Sally winning another Academy Award for her performance.

[1] The abbreviation means "sexually oriented business" (if pertaining to strip clubs) and more generally "son of a bitch" (a ruthless person).

[citation needed] Three years later, when Edwards had his name removed from the writing credits of 1984's City Heat, he was billed under the pseudonym Sam O.

The character of Felix Farmer is a person not unlike Edwards, while actress Sally Miles bears certain similarities to real-life wife Julie Andrews (who plays her).

Intended to reveal Andrews' heretofore unseen wicked and sexy side, that film had a troubled shoot, went significantly over budget, and was subjected to postproduction studio interference.

The early 1970s brought more bad news for Edwards; he made two films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Wild Rovers, a Western with William Holden and Ryan O'Neil and The Carey Treatment with James Coburn.

Hit hard financially and personally by these events, Edwards moved to Europe to work independently, away from the meddling and restrictions of the Hollywood studios.

[7][8] For this scene, comedian Johnny Carson thanked Andrews on the Academy Awards for "showing us that the hills were still alive," alluding to a famous line from The Sound of Music opening sequence.

The television version contains a scene where Robert Vaughn, as studio head David Blackman, receives a phone call while in bed with his mistress, and is simply seen naked from the waist up.