By now, anyone that visits this site and has read Writer’s Style: Walter Hill knows I’m searching for Alexander Jacobs’ draft of Point Blank. It is, indeed, my single most sought-after script at the moment (with Jacobs’ draft of The Seven-Ups running a close second).
There are, currently, two tangible drafts that I’m aware of, neither of which seem to be the draft I’m searching for. So, to better aid in its search, I’m going to give you the details I’ve gathered in the hopes that, if you know what I know, maybe together we can locate the whereabouts of this holy grail. Just like a real, live Indiana Jones crusade!
Draft #1
The first draft that I became aware of is a non-circulating copy available at the the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library. If you’re an Academy member, I assume, you’re allowed to view items, but not copy, so I’m not sure what version or draft this truly is. Any Academy members willing to help out with this one?
Credits: David & Rafe Newhouse and Alexander Jacobs
Pages: 153
Date: No date.
Link: http://bit.ly/d6y6CD
Draft #2
Credits: Writer: Alexander Jacobs. Previous writers: Rafe and David Newhouse.
Pages: 92
Date: February 13, 1967. Revised through April 17, 1967.
Link: Point Blank
While this draft definitely appears to be a production draft, it is not the draft I’m looking for. Why? Because of these details:
1. On the Point Blank DVD commentary with John Boorman and Steven Soderbergh, Boorman tells an amusing anecdote concerning the script around the 35 minute mark:
When we put the script in, he sent for me, and he had it on his desk, and he said… he picked it up and was sort of slapping it, as though he was trying to punish this script, and he was saying it was only 70 pages long and this is not a script, he said, in any sense that we at MGM know how a script should be. And you’ll have to explain it to me, he said.
The first clue: only 70 pages long.
2. There is an interview with Alexander Jacobs available in Film Quaterly, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Winter 1968 – Winter 1969), pp. 2-14, in which he answers this question (I’ve placed the interesting clues in bold):
How did the script for Point Blank come to be written?
There were three main versions of the script. The first I did during my first stay in Hollywood, in four weeks, and that consisted of writing the script once and then rewriting it completely. I only had four weeks because I was working on a picture in England. John gave me the script that the Newhouses had written, which was a craftsmanlike piece of work but very old-fashioned. And the idea was to make a thriller that was enterprising. What I argued from the beginning was we couldn’t make an Asphalt Jungle, we couldn’t make a Harper, we couldn’t make a Sweet Smell of Success. I thought all those days were over-television had scraped them clean.
We had to do something completely fresh. We wanted to make a film that was a half reel ahead of the audience, that was the whole idea. We made a vow that we’d have no people getting in and out of cars, no shots of car doors opening and closing, unless there was a really important reason. And then I wrote a second version which consisted mainly of long letters from me in England to John in Hollywood, plus long telephone conversations on casting and all sorts of things, and of course letters from John, which were amalgamated into a second-draft script.
And then I went out to San Francisco on the shooting of the picture the first two weeks. The ending and the beginning of the film take place in San Francisco and that’s where we shot. I then wrote a lot more stuff including a completely new ending and a new beginning, some of which was done in script form, some of which was in discussion, and some of which was literally dictated to a girl and rushed out to location as they were shooting. This included the whole idea of using the sightseeing boat as a means of linking the past and the present. I wrote a new ending which wasn’t used. I don’t really agree with the ending in the film at the moment — I think it’s evasive — but that’s the one that was finally shot.
3. In this same interview, it actually shows the opening that Jacobs wrote for the film:
FADE IN:
INT. ALCATRAZ – NIGHT
WALKER walks down a long, dim corridor of gray stone walls. He passes a grill in the brickwork; then a steel mesh; and another grill.
No real light yet, just shafts of fitful illumination peeping through gaps in the corridor walls.
Now Walker passes some scrawls chalked on the wall: amongst them a nude figure; a pair of crossed hearts and the legend: I DIED HERE.
The corridor leads through a steel-barred door to a main hall with steel-stanchioned balconies all around it.
Walker’s FOOTSTEPS GRATE.
His walk is deliberate, characteristic, and a groundeater. The arms swing slightly, ready for a fight.
No face yet, just a powerful silhouette.
He stops dead: frozen, alert, remembering his bearings.
He looks up and then gropes over his head into an open, rusted elevator shaft. Finding a foothold in the wall, he raises his head to the level of the recess. He shines a flashlight into the rust and cobwebs. The shaft is empty. He lowers himself down slowly. He walks past the succession of cells, then he stops at one.
Walker stands before an iron-barred door, gripping its bolt. He slides the door sideways-rusted steel SCREECHES.
He enters a small cell-like room beyond.
He is a pilgrim, returning to the source of his strength.
Which we can see is definitely not the opening in the draft available from Between the Covers, which now given the information Jacobs relayed in the interview, their draft seems to be one of the later drafts that he wrote while on set in San Francisco.
And I’m not entirely sure which draft Film Quarterly is quoting, exactly, but I have to assume it’s one of the first two drafts Jacobs wrote based on the interview.
So, now what?
Indeed, now what.
The clincher here is I have no idea which draft Walter Hill is referring to in his interview, but, again, I have to assume it’s probably Jacobs’ first draft: the one he wrote and then rewrote while in Hollywood.
So, there you go. Those are the details I have concerning the Alexander Jacobs draft of Point Blank.
And, yes, myself and Scott Myers are still offering the $200 reward for the first draft. While the version available at Between the Covers is tempting, I’ll close with this quote by Scott on why we want that first draft:
We want the script that Walter Hill read and inspired him to write haiku style. Not something futzed with by a script supervisor.
UPDATE: June 19, 2011 – I have procured a copy of the 92-page draft mentioned above. It is now linked for your perusal. And I’m still very much searching for that 70-page version Boorman has made mention of.