Paper Moon, Sept. 1, 1972 Draft Sargent Screenplay

The draft is 142 pages long. The vast, vast majority of this draft remained intact and made it into the movie with minimal changes. But. The first two pages are X'd out. Margin note, "Omitted". And that scene never saw the screen. The rest of the draft, with exceptions totaling maybe 5 pages, has a vertical black line hand-drawn through it. Less definitive than X? I wouldn't have taken it that way if I were Alvin Sargent. It's not a damn check mark (approved).

The camera angles are numbered.

Margin note, "Retake 10/6" (scene where Moze goes back to train depot guy).

Everything until p 8, Moze at granary office vertical black-lined "I'd like a minute of your time".

Page 14: vertical black line and squiggly S-line. Some movie production code? What the fuck is this? How about if one page has a hash mark from Bogdanavich wiping his ass with it, is that a good thing?

"Dixie Bible Company". They shot it in Kansas and Missouri. They changed it to "Kansas Bible Company" in movie. I don't know why they changed the filming locale. And they did it quickly, too! The film was shot and released in Hollywood May 8, 1973 and nationwide May 9, 1973--eight months later. One thing on that change: You know the scene where Moze and Addie roll up on the rural homestead to swap vehicles? Those are hillbillies who pour out of the old man's house, real southern hillbillies. Ain't no hillbillies in Kansas 'cause there ain't no hills!

"Retake 11/8": Camera angle 50, page 27 (car passing poor family)

Man, when did they change shooting locales?!

"Dixie Bible Company out of Biloxi", Cam. angle 56, p29.

WHY did they change locales? They must have gotten into some kind of trouble shooting in the Deep South and had to make an abrupt change.

This is after the sale to the widow with the sheriff in the door: 

 

 

 

In the movie, Moze smiles wanly toward Addie. He's not confused about how he feels.

Camera angle 58, p 33, Sargent's direction to Ryan and Tatum, "It's all strictly business."

"We got it, didn't we?, Addie. At the diner, near the beginning, "Then git it", Addie to Moze re the $200.

Okay, an X does mean omit even if not written out. There's a scene that never made the movie of a widow who can't come to door because "Ah cain't come out now, Ah's on the toilet." All X'd out. (p 35)

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Paper Moon, Alvin Sargent Screenplay

I have the "Final Revised Draft, Sept. 1, 1972" in front of me. I have the movie script open in another window, but the print is quadruply spaced and difficult to read and does not have the directions to the actors that are in the Sept. 1, 1972 draft. But the draft is also very different from the movie script, the opening scene is completely different. And I have opened in a third window, an ebay offering a bound "Paper Moon Reprint Full Screenplay Full Script 1973 Film". I will buy that but have asked the seller a question, "Is it the script that corresponds, with music lyrics and actors' directions, to the film?" before I buy.

The Draft describes Addie: "9 years-old. She stares with cold, sharp eyes...Dark, baggy overalls over a checkered flannel shirt [all true to the finished film]. Her face already shows hard times. [Hmm, don't know about her face showing hard times.] Tough. Protective. Observant. [That is amazing. Yes.]

The draft opens with Miss Ollie (mentioned only once, I believe, in the diner scene at the beginning of the movie) telling Addie that her mother is dead."Don't you wanta cry, child? Addie shakes her head." I mentioned in a prior post that when Moze, beat up, tells Addie "Now, don't you cry", that Addie never cried in the movie except one time when she could use tears to effect.

"Graveyard

"A hillside. Addie dressed in her one, shabby dress with a loose hem."

Exactly as in movie.

"...She stares into the hole, her eyes as cold as ever. ..."

Already the draft is overemphasizing "cold", as if that was "ever" her eyes. Tatum O'Neal would not have won an Academy Award if her eyes were ever cold. In fact, it is the different expressive eyes and face that make her performance so accomplished.

Rock of Ages is so key to the movie but it is not sung in the draft. "Adieu, adieu, a long farewell" is sung "in a flat soprano" by the minister's wife.

No offer of water, also key. No blood and water. The draft was greatly improved upon.

Here is a tiny, but interesting change. When Moze goes to the granary of the brother, Mr. Thompson in the draft, Mr. Robertson in the movie, who was the drunk driver who killed Addie's mother to extract money from the man, Moze says in the draft, "I'm gonna go to Mr. J.T. Deeds." In the movie it's Mr. J.T. Faraday. Deeds-deeds; Faraday~Fair.

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That ritual goes back to at least last year’s playoffs. Before each game a different player would be chosen in the center of a circle of the others to “lead us”. One game that I saw with my own eyes it was “Lead us, Cody”, Cody Zeller. Even Spo laughed. Of course I am a “Heat” fan. Of course, in the moment, at the moment tonight, in those two+ hours, I will want “my” team, the one I have fanatically followed for longer than my first-born has been alive, to win. 

But however. I do believe wholeheartedly that last season’s miraculous run to the Finals set the franchise back, that it was fool’s gold that forestalled a desperately needed roster overhaul. Management did try to add another star, Damian Lillard. I was for that trade, which would have stripped the roster. I’m glad now that the trade didn’t happen. 

I now think Jimmy Butler has to go, that to trade Jovic and 3J and Tyler and draft picks would be to trade our new core, to hollow the roster out and leave a shell of Jimmy, Bam, and [insert third star]. 

LeBron James has been mentioned again. I have said for the last ten years that Pat Riley does not want LeBron back, even if LeBron wanted to come back (and all of the indications are to the contrary), and would not take LeBron back even if he could LeBron on a minimum salary. I was glad to read and to hear this:

"That's not going to happen. After what happened back then, Pat Riley is not going to him."-Tim Hardaway today on something called “The Carton Show.”

Kevin Durant has been mentioned again as he has every off-season for ten years it seems. KD will be 36 in September, Jimmy will be 35. Both have lengthy injury histories. The answer, I believe, is to trade, if it possible, the mid-‘30’s, oft-injured, fabulously salaried star we have, not add another.

Paper Moon, FDR

Addie: Frank D. Roosevelt said we're all feeling a lot better.

Moze: He did, did he?

Addie: Made me feel good when he said that.

Better than l've felt in a long time.

Moze: Bet old Frank sure does wish he was 21.

Addie: You don't like me, do you?

Moze: No, l don't like you.

That last is the most painful part of the movie to me. But that is not the point of this post. I don't know the meaning of FDR wishing he were 21, I assume, years old. But that's not the point either. 

The point is Franklin Roosevelt and the bond he had with the American people. I noticed it the first time I saw the movie as a freshman at Pitt. There are at least two separate scenes where FDR's portrait is hanging on the wall in the background, and a song plays at one point that mentions "Hoover," who Roosevelt overwhelmingly defeated in 1928.  This movie is set in 1936, by the summer scenery, before Roosevelt's even more overwhelming reelection in November of that year. The film is based on the novel, Addie Pray, by Joe David Brown. The novel is set in the Deep South. The frequent admiring mentions and allusions to Roosevelt are not 1973 political messaging. Roosevelt really did have this level of hold on the American people, especially the poor. There are photographs of poor people in their homes in the '30's and on the walls in the background are framed photos of President Roosevelt. He was the peoples' savior. Roosevelt, of course, did not get around the country as much as he might have had he not been crippled by polio, so I, at least, do not know how much of this personal affection he felt or knew about. He sent others, his wife Eleanor was a principle stand-in, for him and to report back to him. But even Mrs. Roosevelt was surprised by the affection that she witnessed as his funeral train made it back from Warm Springs, Georgia to Washington. People, poor people, Black and white, lining every mile of that final journey--Mrs. Roosevelt said that she did not know that her husband was so beloved.

Paper Moon, "Flirtation Walk"

In the car together after the first bible business:

l always knew
someday l'd accompany you
A dream foretold
a story that you would unfold

Only 18' into film, so much has been "foretold" in dialogue and in "background" (as much foreground) music. The screenplay is very "tight" in these 18', it reminds me of the Borat opening. Sometimes it isn't realistic to expect the rest of the work, whether of literature or of film, to remain as tightly scripted. Dickens lost himself many times. In Paper Moon, there is only one scene, but it is lengthy, that I think got away from the screenwriter a bit: the Trixie Delight scam that Addie pulls on Moze. That was too elaborate for a 10 year-old to concoct. It reminded me of the falsely intricate schemes in Huckleberry Finn. As I recall, in the first post I ever wrote on this film, I made the comparison, which, of course, others before me did, to Huckleberry Finn.

“Storm”; “incursion by hundreds of cops”: Despicable

https://www.ft.com/content/c95a2d96-b423-4d17-bf39-893df9af54f9

Florida’s Six-Week Abortion Ban Is Now Law

(NYT)

Paper Moon, Rock of Ages

As “If you believed in me" dissolves, the hymn Rock of Ages begins at graveside.

Rock of Ages, cleft for me
let me hide myself in thee
let the water and the blood,
from thy wounded side which flowed, 

be of sin the double cure;
save from wrath and make me pure.

Addie was born “of sin”, from her mother's, “cleft", a “wound”; she was born in blood when her mother’s water broke. 

Screenplay:

"Would you like some water, Addie?"
"We'll get the child some water."

Water and blood is a "double cure" of Addie's "sin" and makes her “pure”. Addie hid in her mother's cleft until born. "Let me hide myself in thee". Essie Mae, her mother, died in blood. Addie needs someplace to hide now that her mother is gone. She is a child, alone. She needs belief. She needs a savior. Belief in a savior. Addie has to cling to belief in something and in some being. She clings to Moze as her savior, believing him to be of the same "blood".

Paper Moon, the song

Peter Bogdanovich said he came up with the movie title while listening to the song. There's more to it than that. The song is the screenplay in miniature. The honky-tonk life, it's there; the Barnum and Bailey circus, it's there in the movie; the canvas sky; the penny arcade melody. The phoniness would be made real if Moze believed in Addie; without love it's all sham. Without love, "It's phony, it's plain to see". But, "How happy I would be, If you believed in me." Ima cry.

Say it's only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me
Yes, it's only a canvas sky
Hanging over a muslin tree
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me
Without your love
It's a honky tonk parade
Without your love
It's a melody played in a penny arcade
It's a Barnum and Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me
Say, it's only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me
Yes, it's only a canvas sky
Hanging over a muslin tree
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me
Without your love
It's a honky tonk parade
Without your love
It's a melody played in a penny arcade
It's a Barnum and Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me
It's phony, it's plain to see
How happy I would be
If you believed in me

In other action...

Doc's Brew maintained its fizz. A 115-92 demo of Indy sends the series back to Indianapolis for game 6.

Tonight at 7:30 Beans plays its close-out in Boston. Please don't do "Celtics" things and fuck this up. Just end it, please; put us out of our misery; drive a stake through our heart and bury us in a deep grave. 601 Biscayne needs that, a stark statement that it doesn't have enough and a long off-season to sink it in.

A-List Anger and Angst

Tracy Morgan giving the finger, Ben Stiller giving a piece of his mind, to Electric Maxey.

Jon Stewart in Shock & Awe catatonia.

It started with a Maxey 4-point play after receiving an inbounds pass with 28.9 seconds to go in the fourth quarter and with his Sixers down six. Mitchell Robinson never should have leaped at a shooter so recklessly.

Yes,  and I noted that in all caps as it happened.

“I’m just going to take it like a man,” Robinson said. “I fucked up. I mean, shit, I gotta be better next game.”

…

The would’ve, could’ve, should’ve did not include hypotheticals from only the final 30 seconds of regulation.

The Knicks went up five in overtime. They couldn’t hold the lead. There was the turnover from Jalen Brunson with the Knicks down two and with under 20 seconds remaining in overtime.

Yeah, I thought they had that game when Jalen scored those 5. I thought it was a duel between Maxey and Brunson, that Maxey got two exquisite knife thrusts to send it to OT but when I saw Jalen score five straight, I thought that was the kill shot.

Embiid shuffled slowly through the locker room a little more than an hour before the game, resting his head in his hand while he briefly sat before going to warm up. He may have lacked energy, but the 23-year-old Maxey, the winner of the NBA's Most Improved Player award, seems to have a limitless amount.

That’s why I nicknamed him ⚡️! 

There is something wrong with Joel, I mean something life-shorteningly wrong.

NBA playoff basketball is the more fun than a cupcake unless you’re the 🎡 🔥.

The “Knicks” lost a game that they led by SIX with :28.9 left. You know how many times that had happened previously in the whole history of the earth? 🥚 

What ⚡️Maxey did in those final seconds is instantly legendary. To the “Knicks” he becomes an instant forever bogeyman who haunts Manhattan till the end of time.