So at least three: 8/3/73, this 9/7/73, 10/9/73. And then the moviescript.
Differences Between 9/7/73 Screenplay Draft and Film
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The 9/7/73 screenplay has essentially the same scene-by-scene structure as the released film – although some of the dialogue, and even some entire scenes, have been eliminated in order to streamline the narrative.
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A deleted scene explains why police Lieutenant Lou Escobar is antagonistic toward the murdered Hollis Mulwray. He blames Mulwray for the collapse of a dam which killed hundreds of Mexican-Americans, his people.
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There is a scene not in the film where a pilot flying Jake in a small plane talks about Cross’s runaway daughter, “Rumor was she was knocked up.” In another deleted scene taking place in an orchard, Jake talks with a professional rainmaker (a “precipitator”).
The Revised Ending
The ending of the screenplay is bleak. The ending of the film, at the insistence of director Roman Polanski, is even bleaker. In both screenplay and film, Evelyn Mulwray is shot by the police while attempting to flee from the father who sexually abused her. However, in the screenplay, Evelyn’s sister/daughter, Katherine, manages to escape, driven away from the scene by Jake’s client, Curly. In the film, she is present at the story’s conclusion, heart-breakingly delivered into the custody of her wealthy, clutching, psychopathic father. And both screenplay and film end with the same immortal line, “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
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Well, at least they have that in common. I get the impression that Hollywood was...informal about crediting. Shocking because so much, the Academy Awards, future projects, rides on accurate crediting. But the stone wall I hit in Paper Moon over who the genius was who selected the songs, and scripted them to the scenes, and now this in Chinatown, lead me to believe that it is so. It is incomprehensible to me but this is now two major, major films, both Academy Award winners, from the "second golden age" of Hollywood where attribution has either vanished or is blurred into obscurity.
