Post by BlackHillsHermit on Nov 8, 2017 15:24:03 GMT -6
After acquiring the dossier and watching the mockumentary for BW2 (both of which somewhat contradictory to the movie and each other), I had always kind of wondered what other differences may exist within the world of Book of Shadows. I found the draft script a few years after it was posted in 2007 and was amazed at the little changes that would have made the movie feel so different within it. Below, I will attempt to list (in detail) the big differences and such that would have made for a movie that played out differently while still having very much the same feel about it.
Most who frequent this forum likely have already read the script and know all of this, but I have not found a source that complied the differences and changes, so I thought I would. Get a beer (and keep your motherf--kin' change!); it's a bit of a read.
KEY DIFFERENCES:
-Character names were entirely different. For reference, I will list the character name in the movie vs. the script, but any time I talk about them thereafter, I will refer to them by their name in the film.
--Jeff Patterson = Cotter Kaller
--Tristen Ryler = Anna Tassio
--Stephen Ryan Parker = Nick Leavitt
--Erica Geerson = Heather Arendt
--Kim Diamond = Domini Von Teer
-Sheriff Cravens only appeared in the beginning during the interview scenes.
-There wasn't another tour group. Instead, there was a group of three stoners who had some expensive filming equipment who ran into the main group in the middle of the night at the Parr foundation. There was once again a fight about who would be staying there, with the main group tricking the three into going to Coffin Rock. However, that is the last we hear of the stoners. They are not murdered or anything of the like.
-The first draft of the script calls for the film to take place nine months after TBWP is recognized as a world-wide blockbuster of a film (around June of 2000 going by a certain date in the script).
-While we get Marylin Manson's "Disposable Teens" playing over the opening in the film, director Joe Berlinger wanted Frank Sinatra's "Witchcraft" to play. However, the first draft cited Type O Negative's "Haunted" playing.
-Jeff had shoulder-length hair.
-Stephen's character was lanky and wore glasses.
-Stephen and Tristen were doing a graduate thesis together, not writing a book.
-Erica was far more skeptical about whether Elly Kedward ever even existed.
-Erica identifies as a witch instead of a Wiccan.
-Erica seems to hate The Blair Witch Project in this, making her reasoning for coming on the trip... nonexistent?
-Stephen and Tristen hired Kim to come along on the trip. While Tristen believes in her, Stephen is skeptical.
-Kim has helped local authorities solve several murders across several states due to her psychic ability (or so her website says, at least).
-While attempting to locate Kim in the graveyard, the group comes across Mary Brown, who warns them all that they are going to die (going into detail, particularly, with Erica).
-Kim is the youngest in the group in the script, being only 18. She is also extremely skinny ('Heroin-chic skinny' according to the script). The first body part we see of her, her arm, is described as, 'stick-thin, almost skeletal'
-The gravemarker Kim is laying on in the cemetery is not that of Eileen Treacle in the script. Instead, the marker reads, 'Boy Kurth - May 28 '00' (hence why I imagine the script takes place in June or July). The 'Boy Kurth' (spelled 'Boyd Kurth' this time and the next) makes another appearance during the hospital scene where, instead of seeing the ghost of Treacle, walking backwards and delivering a warning, Tristen notices the nurse in the room writing down the name 'Boyd Kurth' on her chart.
-Kim and Erica somewhat switch places in the script. Early on, it is mentioned that Kim's father is the sheriff of Taos County. Later, after Kim vanishes (much like Erica did in the movie), the group tried to contact the sheriff and ask about Kim, see if she has spoken to her father, when they are informed that the sheriff is a widower and has no children.
-The scene in the Black Hills Gas Market is not in the script. Instead, the section of dialogue where the first location (Parr ruins) and the murders that happened there solely happens within the van.
-It is the collective idea of Stephen, Tristen and Jeff to film the events of their trip. Jeff borrowed the cameras from a friend.
-Tristen questions the large Oak in the middle of the Parr foundation, not Jeff.
-There are stickmen and rune markings all over the ruins. They are quickly debunked by Stephen as he wipes away the freshly chalk-marked markings and removes the scotch tape holding one of the stickmen together.
-Stephen and Tristen argue about the baby while setting up their tent for the night. The roles are reversed, as Stephen wants nothing to do with having even a choice on the matter and Tristen begins to question just what he wants out of their relationship.
-Instead of the abortion scene in the stream, the script has small, unseen children stab Tristen in the belly with sharp sticks, though it is still only a nightmare that she wakes up from. During the nightmare, Stephen remarks that she calls out the name, 'James'.
-Instead of a heavy night of drinking and pot, the group just literally loses five hours of their life during the night, all vowing to stay up and keep watch over the camp after the stoners leave, but waking up in the morning with no idea how they even fell asleep. (this, honestly, works much better... but it also sounds painfully boring to watch).
-Instead of being discovered at the same time, it is revealed that the research Tristen and Stephen brought with them has been destroyed after they noticed all of the damaged camera equipment (no 'snowing' pieces of paper)
-Jeff lives in an apartment in Baltimore and the group all go there to watch the tapes and figure out what happened.
-The markings that begin to appear on their bodies are not the runes that they see at the ruins, but instead are 'good-sized burgundy-colored mark(s), oblong, vaguely spidery in shape.' When the markings really begin to take form, Kim and Erica seem to switch again, with Kim being the one to truly freak out at the realization that they are growing.
-Instead of Stephen checking on Tristen and hearing the laughter, he falls asleep next to her on the bed and is awoken by the sounds. At first, he assumes it is the others laughing as they watch the tapes and he yells at them, but he hears the laughter again when he goes back towards the bedroom, seeming to be coming from the room. When he enters the laughing stops suddenly and so does Tristen, as she was standing in the middle of the room, twirling around and around when he had left her sleeping not more than a minute before.
-Kim notices something on one of the tapes: a blur right next to a branch of a huge tree. It is too out of focus for anyone to make out what it is, but Kim is sure it is important. She makes Jeff go to a friend who can blow the image up (no re-digitizing in this) and when he comes back, it is revealed that the image is a rope (later revealed to be a noose) hanging from the tree. After getting a few pages from the BW Cult book (1809 edition!) sent over through email (and printing without command!), it is revealed that the witch was hanged and that is the reason she kills children.
-While going through the tapes, Erica notices a flash and, pausing it on that frame, thinks it looks like a middle-aged man is standing between two trees while the group fights with the stoners. As she turns around to ask Kim if she sees the same thing, the middle aged man is standing right behind her in the loft; there's a horrible wound in his forehead. She recognizes the man as looking like her father, and even calls out to him before Kim calls out to her, redirecting her attention and making her realize she's not at the computer, but sitting on the couch next to Kim, and there is no man in the room with them.
-It is Erica, instead of Kim, who goes out to replenish the group's beer supply.
--While at the store, Erica sees the the middle aged man once again, but only briefly before he vanishes once more. Worried, she calls home. We learn through a stressed few words between her mother and her that she has a troubled past with her parents. We also learn that Erica's father was in a car accident earlier in the day and died instantly, meaning the middle-aged man with the head wound was a flash of her deceased father.
-When Kim vanishes, leaving her clothing on the floor just like Erica did in the film, it is Erica who goes a tad mad looking for her, tearing through Jeff's house and calling out her name repeatedly, each call seeming more desperate than the last.
-Tristen blames Kim for what happened to her unborn child and what is happening to them. "I'm glad she's dead. She brought the thing that killed my child."
-Slight switch in roles when Erica and Stephen hook up. Erica breaks down and Stephen comforts her, lightly massaging her neck. When they awake from their dream of desire though, they find it wasn't a dream. There is blood on Erica's lips from when they bit each other too hard and blood streaming down Stephen's chest from where Erica's nails clawed him.
-With Erica and Kim switching spots in the script, Kim is the one seen outside after she disappears. As Erica and Jeff search the park across the street for Kim, they feel the temperature around them drop to freezing and see an old, bare, wooden ox cart (much like the one Elly was tied to) in the clearing in front of them, moonlight shining on it as snow is seen around its wheel hubs. When the clear the thicket to get closer, the snow is gone, the cart is gone and the naked body they soon find is not Kim's, but a transient that has been dead for some time.
-Briefly, Stephen blames Kim for what is happening as well, almost having the same mindset Jeff did with Erica in the film.
-Jeff's place is not loaded with cameras filming everything. They decide to rig up countless 'palm corders' through his place once things really start to get strange.
-Towards the end of the film the group begin to notice runes in the marks that are appearing on them. Putting all the letters together, the decipher that they spell out the name 'James Kurth'.
-Boy Kurth and Boyd Kurth are both James (Jamie) Kurth, the first child to disappear from the town of Blair after they banished Elly Kedward. He seemingly led the assault against the dying woman in the woods when she just wouldn't die fast enough for the kids' liking. Erica experiences a flashback of this when searching for Kim in the park, hearing James talk and then turning to see a pack of little boys, wild-eyed and wielding sticks, rushing towards her.
-Elly Kedward may not have been the thing torturing our protagonists in this. At least that was the theory Kim was building towards before we were thrown into obscurity with a missing script page! Later, it is revealed that when Elly died, the witch rose up through the mortal husk and began to take revenge.
-While Erica and Tristen talk about the dreams Tristen is having, she suddenly complains about something in her eye and asks Erica to check and see if there is something under her lid. While doing so, Tristen seduces her, gently stroking her face before the two begin a make-out session the likes of one Erica had earlier with Stephen. However, as Tristen guides Erica's hand down the length of her body to a spot on the mattress between Tristen's legs, she finds that the area is 'soaked solid with fresh, gleaming blood. (Erica) yanks herself away, now seeing that the entire mattress is blood-covered. (She) runs from the room.'
-In their earlier encounter with Mary Brown, it is recalled that the woman stated, 'Elly Kedward's hands were on her (Erica's) throat, and she was sucking out the girl's insides with her mouth.' From what she had just experienced with Tristen, Erica concludes that Tristen is the witch, and Jeff instantly agrees.
-The markings hit full-bloom, unmistakably resembling bloody, child-like palm prints all over their bodies. The last two to appear on Erica are on her neck and they're a very clear image of the palm-prints of a child, ringing around Erica's neck as if strangling her. The red stains appearing on Stephen go from his waist up to his abdomen, almost appearing to be a blueprint for disembowelment.
-After everyone is convinced that Tristen is the witch, with another scene of her twirling around and around, laughing her head off, it is Jeff who ties the rope around her neck and Erica who films it.
-After more shouting and threats, Tristen admits to being the witch, telling Stephen that he was going to be the next to die. THEN WE LOSE ANOTHER PAGE FROM THE SCRIPT! It was one that likely explained more and showed the group (perhaps just Stephen) hanging Tristen.
-Jeff, Erica and Stephen are arrested, quick shots of news coverage, grainy interrogation scenes, Tristen's body is found and so is Kim's. Kim is found 'crumpled in (the) closet, visible rope burns on her neck.'
SPECULATION:
-Patricia DeCou (who portrayed Mary Brown in TBWP) may have had a chance to reprise her role in BoS. In the dossier, there is a picture of (who I assume to be) Patricia DeCou dressed up as her character from TBWP. The picture is accompanied by an article about Mary Brown being interviewed about warning the tour group they were going to die.
-According to the dossier, Mary Brown's part in BoS may have been around the time the group was leaving the Black Hills Gas Market in the film, as the article states that she was the last person to see the group of five before they left for the Black Hills. 'I told him what was going to happen," Brown said. 'But he wouldn't listen.' (Interestingly, this was said to have happened on June 23, despite every other date in the dossier placing events in later September. This also helped me decide the script called for events to take place during June).
FOURTH WALL(ISH):
-Stephen, yelling at Jeff in the van, proclaims they are not making 'Blair Witch 2' when he refuses to stop filming. Jeff, however, states that they might not be, but he is.
-The stoners who try to take the foundation, showing up with expensive film equipment, claim that they are there to make, 'Blair Witch 2', and are not pleased when Jeff makes the same statement.
SOME THINGS STAY THE SAME:
-The owl is still present, still watching them throughout the script and does a kamikaze through the window.
-Kim still drinks like a fish.
Most who frequent this forum likely have already read the script and know all of this, but I have not found a source that complied the differences and changes, so I thought I would. Get a beer (and keep your motherf--kin' change!); it's a bit of a read.
KEY DIFFERENCES:
-Character names were entirely different. For reference, I will list the character name in the movie vs. the script, but any time I talk about them thereafter, I will refer to them by their name in the film.
--Jeff Patterson = Cotter Kaller
--Tristen Ryler = Anna Tassio
--Stephen Ryan Parker = Nick Leavitt
--Erica Geerson = Heather Arendt
--Kim Diamond = Domini Von Teer
-Sheriff Cravens only appeared in the beginning during the interview scenes.
-There wasn't another tour group. Instead, there was a group of three stoners who had some expensive filming equipment who ran into the main group in the middle of the night at the Parr foundation. There was once again a fight about who would be staying there, with the main group tricking the three into going to Coffin Rock. However, that is the last we hear of the stoners. They are not murdered or anything of the like.
-The first draft of the script calls for the film to take place nine months after TBWP is recognized as a world-wide blockbuster of a film (around June of 2000 going by a certain date in the script).
-While we get Marylin Manson's "Disposable Teens" playing over the opening in the film, director Joe Berlinger wanted Frank Sinatra's "Witchcraft" to play. However, the first draft cited Type O Negative's "Haunted" playing.
-Jeff had shoulder-length hair.
-Stephen's character was lanky and wore glasses.
-Stephen and Tristen were doing a graduate thesis together, not writing a book.
-Erica was far more skeptical about whether Elly Kedward ever even existed.
-Erica identifies as a witch instead of a Wiccan.
-Erica seems to hate The Blair Witch Project in this, making her reasoning for coming on the trip... nonexistent?
-Stephen and Tristen hired Kim to come along on the trip. While Tristen believes in her, Stephen is skeptical.
-Kim has helped local authorities solve several murders across several states due to her psychic ability (or so her website says, at least).
-While attempting to locate Kim in the graveyard, the group comes across Mary Brown, who warns them all that they are going to die (going into detail, particularly, with Erica).
-Kim is the youngest in the group in the script, being only 18. She is also extremely skinny ('Heroin-chic skinny' according to the script). The first body part we see of her, her arm, is described as, 'stick-thin, almost skeletal'
-The gravemarker Kim is laying on in the cemetery is not that of Eileen Treacle in the script. Instead, the marker reads, 'Boy Kurth - May 28 '00' (hence why I imagine the script takes place in June or July). The 'Boy Kurth' (spelled 'Boyd Kurth' this time and the next) makes another appearance during the hospital scene where, instead of seeing the ghost of Treacle, walking backwards and delivering a warning, Tristen notices the nurse in the room writing down the name 'Boyd Kurth' on her chart.
-Kim and Erica somewhat switch places in the script. Early on, it is mentioned that Kim's father is the sheriff of Taos County. Later, after Kim vanishes (much like Erica did in the movie), the group tried to contact the sheriff and ask about Kim, see if she has spoken to her father, when they are informed that the sheriff is a widower and has no children.
-The scene in the Black Hills Gas Market is not in the script. Instead, the section of dialogue where the first location (Parr ruins) and the murders that happened there solely happens within the van.
-It is the collective idea of Stephen, Tristen and Jeff to film the events of their trip. Jeff borrowed the cameras from a friend.
-Tristen questions the large Oak in the middle of the Parr foundation, not Jeff.
-There are stickmen and rune markings all over the ruins. They are quickly debunked by Stephen as he wipes away the freshly chalk-marked markings and removes the scotch tape holding one of the stickmen together.
-Stephen and Tristen argue about the baby while setting up their tent for the night. The roles are reversed, as Stephen wants nothing to do with having even a choice on the matter and Tristen begins to question just what he wants out of their relationship.
-Instead of the abortion scene in the stream, the script has small, unseen children stab Tristen in the belly with sharp sticks, though it is still only a nightmare that she wakes up from. During the nightmare, Stephen remarks that she calls out the name, 'James'.
-Instead of a heavy night of drinking and pot, the group just literally loses five hours of their life during the night, all vowing to stay up and keep watch over the camp after the stoners leave, but waking up in the morning with no idea how they even fell asleep. (this, honestly, works much better... but it also sounds painfully boring to watch).
-Instead of being discovered at the same time, it is revealed that the research Tristen and Stephen brought with them has been destroyed after they noticed all of the damaged camera equipment (no 'snowing' pieces of paper)
-Jeff lives in an apartment in Baltimore and the group all go there to watch the tapes and figure out what happened.
-The markings that begin to appear on their bodies are not the runes that they see at the ruins, but instead are 'good-sized burgundy-colored mark(s), oblong, vaguely spidery in shape.' When the markings really begin to take form, Kim and Erica seem to switch again, with Kim being the one to truly freak out at the realization that they are growing.
-Instead of Stephen checking on Tristen and hearing the laughter, he falls asleep next to her on the bed and is awoken by the sounds. At first, he assumes it is the others laughing as they watch the tapes and he yells at them, but he hears the laughter again when he goes back towards the bedroom, seeming to be coming from the room. When he enters the laughing stops suddenly and so does Tristen, as she was standing in the middle of the room, twirling around and around when he had left her sleeping not more than a minute before.
-Kim notices something on one of the tapes: a blur right next to a branch of a huge tree. It is too out of focus for anyone to make out what it is, but Kim is sure it is important. She makes Jeff go to a friend who can blow the image up (no re-digitizing in this) and when he comes back, it is revealed that the image is a rope (later revealed to be a noose) hanging from the tree. After getting a few pages from the BW Cult book (1809 edition!) sent over through email (and printing without command!), it is revealed that the witch was hanged and that is the reason she kills children.
-While going through the tapes, Erica notices a flash and, pausing it on that frame, thinks it looks like a middle-aged man is standing between two trees while the group fights with the stoners. As she turns around to ask Kim if she sees the same thing, the middle aged man is standing right behind her in the loft; there's a horrible wound in his forehead. She recognizes the man as looking like her father, and even calls out to him before Kim calls out to her, redirecting her attention and making her realize she's not at the computer, but sitting on the couch next to Kim, and there is no man in the room with them.
-It is Erica, instead of Kim, who goes out to replenish the group's beer supply.
--While at the store, Erica sees the the middle aged man once again, but only briefly before he vanishes once more. Worried, she calls home. We learn through a stressed few words between her mother and her that she has a troubled past with her parents. We also learn that Erica's father was in a car accident earlier in the day and died instantly, meaning the middle-aged man with the head wound was a flash of her deceased father.
-When Kim vanishes, leaving her clothing on the floor just like Erica did in the film, it is Erica who goes a tad mad looking for her, tearing through Jeff's house and calling out her name repeatedly, each call seeming more desperate than the last.
-Tristen blames Kim for what happened to her unborn child and what is happening to them. "I'm glad she's dead. She brought the thing that killed my child."
-Slight switch in roles when Erica and Stephen hook up. Erica breaks down and Stephen comforts her, lightly massaging her neck. When they awake from their dream of desire though, they find it wasn't a dream. There is blood on Erica's lips from when they bit each other too hard and blood streaming down Stephen's chest from where Erica's nails clawed him.
-With Erica and Kim switching spots in the script, Kim is the one seen outside after she disappears. As Erica and Jeff search the park across the street for Kim, they feel the temperature around them drop to freezing and see an old, bare, wooden ox cart (much like the one Elly was tied to) in the clearing in front of them, moonlight shining on it as snow is seen around its wheel hubs. When the clear the thicket to get closer, the snow is gone, the cart is gone and the naked body they soon find is not Kim's, but a transient that has been dead for some time.
-Briefly, Stephen blames Kim for what is happening as well, almost having the same mindset Jeff did with Erica in the film.
-Jeff's place is not loaded with cameras filming everything. They decide to rig up countless 'palm corders' through his place once things really start to get strange.
-Towards the end of the film the group begin to notice runes in the marks that are appearing on them. Putting all the letters together, the decipher that they spell out the name 'James Kurth'.
-Boy Kurth and Boyd Kurth are both James (Jamie) Kurth, the first child to disappear from the town of Blair after they banished Elly Kedward. He seemingly led the assault against the dying woman in the woods when she just wouldn't die fast enough for the kids' liking. Erica experiences a flashback of this when searching for Kim in the park, hearing James talk and then turning to see a pack of little boys, wild-eyed and wielding sticks, rushing towards her.
-Elly Kedward may not have been the thing torturing our protagonists in this. At least that was the theory Kim was building towards before we were thrown into obscurity with a missing script page! Later, it is revealed that when Elly died, the witch rose up through the mortal husk and began to take revenge.
-While Erica and Tristen talk about the dreams Tristen is having, she suddenly complains about something in her eye and asks Erica to check and see if there is something under her lid. While doing so, Tristen seduces her, gently stroking her face before the two begin a make-out session the likes of one Erica had earlier with Stephen. However, as Tristen guides Erica's hand down the length of her body to a spot on the mattress between Tristen's legs, she finds that the area is 'soaked solid with fresh, gleaming blood. (Erica) yanks herself away, now seeing that the entire mattress is blood-covered. (She) runs from the room.'
-In their earlier encounter with Mary Brown, it is recalled that the woman stated, 'Elly Kedward's hands were on her (Erica's) throat, and she was sucking out the girl's insides with her mouth.' From what she had just experienced with Tristen, Erica concludes that Tristen is the witch, and Jeff instantly agrees.
-The markings hit full-bloom, unmistakably resembling bloody, child-like palm prints all over their bodies. The last two to appear on Erica are on her neck and they're a very clear image of the palm-prints of a child, ringing around Erica's neck as if strangling her. The red stains appearing on Stephen go from his waist up to his abdomen, almost appearing to be a blueprint for disembowelment.
-After everyone is convinced that Tristen is the witch, with another scene of her twirling around and around, laughing her head off, it is Jeff who ties the rope around her neck and Erica who films it.
-After more shouting and threats, Tristen admits to being the witch, telling Stephen that he was going to be the next to die. THEN WE LOSE ANOTHER PAGE FROM THE SCRIPT! It was one that likely explained more and showed the group (perhaps just Stephen) hanging Tristen.
-Jeff, Erica and Stephen are arrested, quick shots of news coverage, grainy interrogation scenes, Tristen's body is found and so is Kim's. Kim is found 'crumpled in (the) closet, visible rope burns on her neck.'
SPECULATION:
-Patricia DeCou (who portrayed Mary Brown in TBWP) may have had a chance to reprise her role in BoS. In the dossier, there is a picture of (who I assume to be) Patricia DeCou dressed up as her character from TBWP. The picture is accompanied by an article about Mary Brown being interviewed about warning the tour group they were going to die.
-According to the dossier, Mary Brown's part in BoS may have been around the time the group was leaving the Black Hills Gas Market in the film, as the article states that she was the last person to see the group of five before they left for the Black Hills. 'I told him what was going to happen," Brown said. 'But he wouldn't listen.' (Interestingly, this was said to have happened on June 23, despite every other date in the dossier placing events in later September. This also helped me decide the script called for events to take place during June).
FOURTH WALL(ISH):
-Stephen, yelling at Jeff in the van, proclaims they are not making 'Blair Witch 2' when he refuses to stop filming. Jeff, however, states that they might not be, but he is.
-The stoners who try to take the foundation, showing up with expensive film equipment, claim that they are there to make, 'Blair Witch 2', and are not pleased when Jeff makes the same statement.
SOME THINGS STAY THE SAME:
-The owl is still present, still watching them throughout the script and does a kamikaze through the window.
-Kim still drinks like a fish.