His screenplay (with Furio Scarpelli ) for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) was dismissed by director
Sergio Leone as "a disaster. There were jokes and nothing else. I couldn't
use a single thing they'd written." Despite this, the pair still
received an on-screen credit for their contribution.
Together with his colleague Furio Scarpelli , he helped create the commedia
all'italiana style of film-making which satirised contemporary Italian
life during the economic boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s.