Re-Write / Re-Polish - the famous script reworks

quick pull from the PTA thread because this is something that deserves a bigger discussion

Paul Thomas Anderson: C or D?

Scorsese's Raging Bull would be an interesting one to look at. IIRC Mardik Martin wrote it, then Scorsese (who typically rewrites all of his scripts even though he doesn't always take credit) reworked it with DeNiro, and then Paul Schrader came in and made substantial changes as well. It's also based on a book, so that's another layer that's essentially the foundation before the first draft.

Most famous is Welles and Citizen Kane, and David Fincher's movie makes the same mistake Pauline Karel did in shortchanging Welles's considerable changes even though his rewrites were well-documented. In Kael's defense though, she never saw anything on paper before she made that claim.

*Kael not Karel

Also saw Mulholland Drive this weekend, and Lynch turning a series pilot into the resultant feature film is a brilliant "rewrite" on his part. (The pilot is pretty much intact within the film though, it's really the final stretch beginning somewhere around the "Apartment 17" scene that's newly written material done after the pilot was completed.)

John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola are credited for Apocalypse Now, but arguably the best lines were written for the narration, and those were completely rewritten by Michael Herr. (Coppola was already writing narration inspired by Herr's Dispatches, so it made sense to hire the source when he wasn't getting a satisfactory result.)

Also To Have and Have Not, ostensibly based on an Ernest Hemingway novel - it got a major rewrite from William Faulkner:

Hemingway and Hawks were close friends and, on a fishing trip, Hawks told Hemingway, who was reluctant to go into screenwriting, that he could make a great movie from his worst book, which Hemingway admitted was To Have and Have Not. Jules Furthman wrote the first screenplay, which, like the novel, was set in Cuba. However, later versions changed this to Martinique to avoid violating President Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy. Hawks's friend William Faulkner was the main contributor to the screenplay, including and following the revisions. Because of the contributions from both Hemingway and Faulkner, it is the only film story on which two winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature worked. Filming began on February 29, 1944, while Faulkner continued to work on the script, and ended on May 10.

Scorsese (who typically rewrites all of his scripts even though he doesn't always take credit)

Even though I think directors rewriting their films-in-progress is different than an outside hand, after watching After Hours a few weeks ago, I learned that Scorcese added his own scene to the screenplay, the one with Griffin Dunne and the bouncer outside Club Berlin. He modeled it on Kafka's parable Before The Law.

Aaron Sorkin is another name (along with Tarantino) that's been attached to "The Rock," which supposedly had tons of external input; wiki even claims that Sean Connery brought in his own writers for his dialogue, and they ended up rewriting a lot of the script. "Groundhog Day" is definitely one of the more famous rewrite stories, bouncing back and forth between Danny Rubin, Harold Ramis and the occasional input/interference from Bill Murray. And of course there are movies like "Jaws" that got punched up by a lot of writers. Joss Whedon famously punched up "Speed," but got steamrollered on "Alien 4." There were rumors that William Goldman *and* Robert Towne contributed to "Good Will Hunting," even if Ben and Matt got the Oscar, but I think that's just rumor. Of course there are different kinds of rewrites. There are rewrites that take a plot or premise but start over from scratch, there are screen doctor rewrites on dialogue, there are loose collaborations, there are contractually anonymous contributions and there are antagonistic rewrites that lead to legal action, etc.

I found this fun old New Yorker article about arbitration:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/10/20/credit-grab

A famous one is M*A*S*H which was thoroughly reworked even though Ring Lardner Jr. is the ONLY credited screenwriter. He was very upset by how much Robert Altman et al changed his script, but he ended up winning the film's only Oscar for it.

wiki even claims

“his own writers” were Clement & LaFrenais, who have openly discussed their work on the movie

There is a great little ebook by Danny Rubin about the writing of Groundhog Day, and (iirc) he was amiably non-defensive about what was his and what wasn't

Supposedly Bob Gordon wrote "Galaxy Quest" based entirely on the log line he was provided summarizing David Howard's spec script, never even reading the original script until the movie was completed.

The bonus features on Batman include an interview with Sam Hamm where he goes over a few common complaints comic book fans have given him about the movie, and long story short, they're changes made after he was done working on the film (like Alfred bringing Vicki Vale into the Batcave, something the Tiny Toons cartoon show even poked fun at).

Re: MASH & Ring Lardner Jr. His script was a very straightforward adaptation of the original novel, which got retooled on-set by Altman and the cast via improvs. This was the first time Altman had been able to indulge in what would become his trademark. The vibe of the scenes generally stayed the same; mostly what was changed was dialog, but he also notably dropped both the beginning and ending from the original script, and slightly expanded Sally Kellerman's role to carry through to the end of the film.

"Alien" is credited solely to Dan O'Bannon, but apparently the shooting script was written by David Giler and Walter Hill, who had already done several rewrites of the draft by O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett. I haven't read them, but here are the two different scripts, if anyone wanted to compare:

https://www.avpgalaxy.net/files/scripts/alien-dan-bannon.pdf

https://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/alien_shooting.html

My limited understanding is that the O'Bannon/Shusett script is really fleshed out, and the Hill/Giler script is pared down? I glanced at the latter, though, and clearly the dialogue as we know it is a far cry from what is on the page, so someone must have taken another pass at it. Like, check out this familiar scene/exchange. Scene is basically the same, dialogue is a lot less refined.

RIPLEY
Ash let it on board. Ash let it
grow inside Kane. Ash blew the
warning signal.

LAMBERT
Why.

RIPLEY
Special Order 937.

PARKER
What's that.

RIPLEY
That's what I want to know.

Ash's head is placed on the table.
His eyes flicker into consciousness.

RIPLEY
What is Special Order 937.

ASH
You know I can't tell you that.

RIPLEY
Then there's not point in talking
to you. Pull the plug.

ASH
Special Order 937 in essence
asked me to direct the ship to
the planet, investigate a life
form, possibly hostile and bring
it back for observation. With
discretion, of course.

RIPLEY
Why. Why not tell us.

ASH
Would you have gone.

PARKER
It wasn't in the contract.

ASH
My very point.

RIPLEY
They wanted to investigate the
Alien. No matter what happened
to us.

ASH
That's unfair. Actually, you
weren't mentioned in the order.

LAMBERT
Those bastards.

ASH
See it from their point of view.
They didn't know what the Alien is.

RIPLEY
How do we kill it.

ASH
I don't think you can. Not
in this ship, given its life
support systems. But I might
be able to.

RIPLEY
How.

ASH
I don't know quite yet. I'm not
exactly at my best at the moment.
If you would reconnect...

RIPLEY
No way.

ASH
Don't be so hasty. You'll never
kill it without my help.

RIPLEY
We've had enough of your help.

ASH
You've barely got any oxygen left.
If you don't go into hypersleep,
you'll die with or without the
Alien.

RIPLEY
Nice try, Ash.

ASH
I will do whatever I can to help
you. I swear it.

PARKER
Pull the plug.

LAMBERT
I agree.

ASH
You idiots. You still don't
realize what you're dealing with.
The Alien is a perfect organism.
Superbly structured, cunning,
quintessentially violent. With
your limited capabilities you have
no chance against it.

LAMBERT
You admire it.

ASH
How can one not admire perfection.
I will kill it because I am
programmed to protect human life
as you know.

RIPLEY
Even if you have contempt for it.

ASH
Even then.

Bitter and angry.

RIPLEY
Sorry Ash. I don't buy it.

ASH
You egocentric morons. You'll
be ripped to shreds, destroyed
and...

I found this which goes into a fair amount of detail, rewrites were ongoing even as it was being shot - and after!
https://alienseries.wordpress.com/2016/07/27/alien-the-1978-scripts/

That's pretty interesting. I imagine that kind of stuff happens with a lot of movies.

Again, with Batman, they were rewriting the end up until the last minute, literally. Nicholson was climbing the bell tower and yelled at Burton “why am I climbing the tower? What’s going on?” and Burton replied “we’ll talk about it when you get to the top” because he didn’t have the new pages yet and needed to buy some time.