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The comedy is raw, bitter, and misanthropic. “Let me add this up,” Hopfnagel snaps at one of the doctors in Peter’s most pinched American accent to date. “A) Your sister-in-law, Mrs. Manzini, needs a hysterectomy; b) she wants you to operate; and c) she wants to pay for the hysterectomy with S&H Green Stamps. Does she have any idea of how many S&H Green Stamps this operation would take?” “She has,” the doctor replies. “She was president of the Blessed Sacrament Ladies’ Auxiliary. They collected Green Stamps. They broke up over birth control, and she kept the stamps.” Hopfnagel works with this information: “As you know, our customary charge for a hysterectomy is $500. We shall have to charge her $2,000 because we are taking Green Stamps. Yes or no?!”

Where Does It Hurt? is an equal opportunity offender. “So much for faggot power,” Hopfnagel mutters discontentedly after a gay informant fails to provide precise information on the potential visit of the city’s hospital commissioner. He then calls the hospital’s Japanese-American lab technician (Pat Morita) a “greedy little Buddha-head.” “If it hadn’t been for my creative white cell count,” Mr. Nishimoto retorts, “that sore-ass Hebe wouldn’t even be a patient.” (Patient Hammond has been confused with patient Epstein and has been treated accordingly.) “So much for the Yellow Peril,” says Hopfnagel after throwing Mr. Nishimoto out of his office. It’s a nasty comedy, but that’s its aesthetic. In its bitterness, if not its political incorrectness, Where Does It Hurt? was ahead of its time.

• • •

According to Rod Amateau, money was the key to understanding Peter Sellers. In the director’s words, Peter was “economically determined.” (“The word is penurious,” Amateau adds by way of clarification.) In a meeting in Ireland at what Amateau calls Peter’s “drafty manor—it was terribly cold,” they agreed to finance the film fifty-fifty and take equal shares of the profits. (Where Does It Hurt? was coproduced by Josef Shaftel.) “This was an independent production done on the cheap,” Amateau bluntly states. “About $600,000. I mean, really low.” “We can make this picture for short money,” Amateau remembers telling Peter, which provoked the following reply. Peter (in Hopfnagel’s reedy American twang): “Rod, yer my kinda guy.”

There was a brief rehearsal period before shooting began in Los Angeles on July 7, at which point Peter called and asked for his limousine. Rod replied that he could certainly provide a limo for Peter if that was what Peter wished, but since their deal was to split the costs evenly as well as the profits, the car would cost Peter $50 a day. The following morning, Peter left his rented Benedict Canyon house and arrived at the studio in the passenger seat of the key grip’s pickup truck. “He lives near me,” was the way Peter explained his transportation to Amateau, who adds that “from then on there wasn’t one moment of delay on the whole picture. He couldn’t have been nicer. He was watching the clock the whole time.”

Peter was very well liked by the cast and crew. He was efficient, helpful, and methodical in getting the film completed on schedule. Asked if he was doing any drugs at the time, Amateau replies, “Who didn’t do drugs?”

“It wasn’t a very good picture,” Amateau acknowledges, but it did end up in the black. “It made money not because it was a great picture but because it was cheap. Peter was very happy to go home with a full wallet.”

For a birthday present, Peter gave Amateau a copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica in two condensed, microprinted volumes, along with an accompanying magnifying glass. “You want to know everything,” Peter told his director, “here’s your chance to know everything else.” Soon thereafter, Peter and Amateau happened to be in Rome at the same time, and the three of them—Rod, Peter, and Bert—went out to dinner in Trastevere, where Peter and Rod launched into an argument about Fellini. “He’s great,” said Rod. “You’re crazy,” said Peter. “You like everybody.” No, Rod protested, Fellini is a