- First off, the title. The draft is "The Long Red Dark," as opposed to "The Long Bright Dark." All of the thematic, synesthetic color stuff involving yellow isn't in the script at all, so maybe Nic Pizzolatto was going another way with it at first. Or maybe somebody at HBO just misheard and the final title is a typo!
- The draft is set in Arkansas, not Louisiana, and the Dora Lange murder happens in 1988, not 1995. The “present day” timeline is 2010 in the draft, so in the end the overall timeline was also shortened. (In the draft, Hart mentions being partners with Cohle for 14 years, not 7.)
- Papania and Gilbough are neither seen nor heard in the script draft. In their interrogation scenes, Cohle and Hart speak directly to the camera and respond to unheard, off-screen questions. It's kind of weird to imagine. I once saw a production of Hamlet where they did that with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, though, and it mostly worked.
- The vast majority of the the one-liners (“He’d pick a fight with the sky…” “Just a regular-type dude with a big ass dick”) aren’t in the draft. And Rust’s nickname is The Banker, not The Tax Man. Tax Man is much better, right?
- In general Hart is much snappier in the final show. Maybe when they got an old sitcom vet like Woody Harrelson they decided he shouldn’t just scowl at Cohle while he McConalogues away but rather should repeatedly and colorfully tell him to shut the fuck up.
- In the draft, Lange’s body has a crown of thorns and taxidermied wings glued to her dead body. (Pizzolatto also mentions that her body should be depicted “as mercifully as possible.” I guess he didn’t know this would be an HBO show, eh?) The spiral symbol and the stick-sculptures are not mentioned, so all that imagery came in later.
- The basic idea of every scene is about the same, but a lot is moved around. Early on in the draft, it’s heavier on Hart monologues and the chronology-jumping is steady and frequent. The final product switches up both tendencies, balancing the Cohle/Hart speeches and waiting to REALLY throw us around the calendar until at least the ten-minute mark.
- At the crime scene, in the script, Hart tells Cohle not to jump to any conclusions. In the final version, he says a lot more, about the dangers of attaching an idea to a piece of evidence and prejudicing yourself. It’s a complicated concept that is important later, when Papania and Gilbough’s suspicions about Cohle become clearer.
- There’s a little bit of visual description in the draft, and Pizzolatto calls attention to certain visual details, but most of the visual wit and mis-en-scene isn’t in there. Cary Fukunaga maybe deserves a little more credit!
- There’s a thread in the draft about the CID higher-ups being suspicious of Cohle’s past, but it seems mostly like a delivery system for the information that his undercover records are all sealed. Instead of that scene, Hart just mentions it in passing in voice over, and Cohle overhears someone speculating that he might be from IA. It’s a lot quicker and cleaner.
- Added character relationship moment! In the final version, Hart actively chooses to keep Cohle on the Lange case with him. That’s not in the draft. (There are a lot of intra-departmental scenes in the draft, full of extra cop talk, which have been trimmed down and supplemented with material that feeds the emotional threads of the story.)
- There’s an actual visual flashback to Cohle’s daughter’s death in the draft, which is probably best left implied.
- A prostitute’s name is changed from “Precious” to “Destiny.” Presumably because the Sapphire estate is litigious? Also when Maggie wakes a sleeping Hart, she calls him “Baretta” in the script and “Lone Ranger” in the final version.
- Marie Fontenot is not in the draft at all, so nobody says the name Childress or Tuttle. The threat of the Christian Task Force doesn’t materialize, nor does Tuttle.
- Because of the absence of Tuttle/Fontenot, basically everything in the 31-37 minute range of the final episode isn’t in the script at all (canvassing, talking to Clarke Peters). And then we see Papania and Gilbough for the first time 37 minutes in. In the draft version, that seems like it was going to happen in a future episode.
- Without the Fontenot/Childress stuff, the ending of the episode comes up a lot faster. In both the draft and the final, it’s about the same, but Rust’s last line, “Start asking the right fucking questions," which was really essential to setting up the tone of the way future episodes would end, isn't in there.
So there's that! It's a great script, and Cohle in particular really jumps off the page. I don't know at what stage of the game this draft was created, whether the show was greenlit before or after. But it was very interesting to see and compare. For me, anyway. Maybe this bored you to death, but fear not: Game Of Thrones returns April 6th, so this blog will return to normal on...April 8th or so.
