[Quick Summary: Bond faces off with a media mogul who provokes a UK-China war for the benefit of his media empire.]
Q: You don't like reading first drafts, so what's the point here?
A: It's the only draft widely available.
Q: But the final script is so, so different. Isn't this a waste of time?
A: Not if you want to know WHY stories work (or not).
Q: I don't need to. I know the screenplay format.
A: The technical stuff is only part of the job. And in my opinion, the easiest.
Q: Fine, fine. What are you looking for?
A: The sifting of ideas.*
Q: Huh? I have a bazillion ideas!
A: But how do you know if it's the right idea? And how to best execute it?
This script is the beginning of that sifting process.
It lays out a potential villain, a manipulating media mogul out to cause a shipwreck and steal 1/3 of the UK's gold reserves. Good idea, right?
But along the way, I simply stopped caring. The execution in this early draft didn't deliver mogul vs. Bond thrills, despite a lot of action scenes.
However, it did flesh out a villain and his wife (ex-lover of Bond's). Here is one line which I thought made clear the villain** is the manipulative type:
WHAT I'VE LEARNED: This early draft got the tone and action pacing right. However, it is searching for better situations, which is the endless job of the writer.
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)(1st draft, 8/23/96)
by Bruce Feirstein
*Screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere, who has thought a lot about screenwriting, said it much better in an interview:
The work of a screenwriter is not only to write a film and to know all about the technical side of things: the sound, the images, the editing. His work, his function, is to look for new ideas. That is very important. To be able to offer a bouquet of different ideas. Not only one.
** For Bond fans: He is re-named Elliott Carver in the films.
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