Everybody here was just doing their own thing, and nobody seemed to know what anyone else’s thing was. The other word that gets used, only slightly less than “waste,” is “mess.” Those five directors and dozen screenwriters should give you some idea of what is meant by this. Included among the latter group were names like Ben Hecht and Billy Wilder, whose early drafts were tossed. plus at least five directors (the final sequence was co-directed by the stunt coordinator), and maybe twice as many screenwriters. I mean Peter Sellers, Orson Welles, David Niven, Woody Allen, Deborah Kerr, a really nice performance by Joanna Pettet, the beauty of Ursula Andress.
More than money, however, it was a waste of talent.
Woody Allen was amazed that he was put up in an expensive hotel for weeks before they even got around to shooting his scenes. It was certainly a waste of money, going over double its original budget, and indeed coming in as more costly than the “serious” James Bond films being made at the same time. The one word you’ll see used in almost every review of this movie, both contemporary and appearing more recently online, is “waste.” I’ll just quote Leslie Halliwell, who called it “One of the most shameless wastes of time and talent in screen history.”