Roger Spottiswoode

Roger Spottiswoode's Under Fire was to have been set in another war: the AFI says the project was first built around the Vietnam War and was then moved to the Nicaraguan revolution as a more current ground. The Hollywood Reporter of 11 January 1981 had announced his plan to cast Treat Williams in the film. Spottiswoode says that he and Ron Shelton did extensive research on Nicaragua and drew on the first-hand accounts of war correspondents; the two of them went to the country, read its history in books and documentaries, and spoke with a good many journalists who had witnessed the conflict. Their aim in the production, budgeted at 8.5 million dollars, was to fix the subject not on a particular event but on what war photographers go through and on the force of the images they produce.