A new film is being made based on Boris Pasternak's epic novel Doctor Zhivago (1965), the book which was banned in his home country. The novel became more widely known when in October 1958 Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for the book. He, however, was not present at the award's ceremony, as the Soviet authorities would not allow it. Pasternak needed to smuggle the manuscript, based on his own recollections of the Russian Revolution, out of the Soviet Union to Italy to get published. Producer Carlo Ponti and MGM Studio head Robert H. O'Brien were interested in making a movie of the book, and enlisted the services of acclaimed director David Lean and screenwriter Robert Bolt. Spain and Finland would fill in for the Russian locales where they could not film. The most elaborate set was a 10 acre recreation of Moscow in the Spanish plains.