Second Draft Screenplay, September, 7, 1984—118 pages. This is the TORK DRAFT. We added another character, a friend for Turner to make it a little more crazy. Sort of a John Candy type of character to bring a little more humor to the screenplay. In addition, we changed the ending to the screenplay in this draft. People had continued problems with the “Maze” ending so I had an idea for another ending. The “Maze” ending was inspired by Orson Wells’ LADY FROM SHANGHI mirror sequence, which is still considered one of the finest visual endings of all time. It is constantly alluded to in many films and no one yet has figured out how Wells shot it exactly.

The ending in this draft was inspired by trips I took to New York as a young boy with my parents. O the side of a building in Times Square there used to be a famous Camel’s cigarettes sign where the arm moved and smoke was blown out of the sign. I thought that it would make a great set piece, and also be a huge publicity event putting the sign back up for the movie. Although I think we did a good job writing the sequence, the original ending is still the best.

By this time, Jim and I had written DICK TRACY, TOP GUN, and were doing rewrites on WHEREABOUTS depending on who was interested in the project at the time.

To my mind, this is an example of a good screenplay being changed just to change something. The “master copy” draft is the draft that Jim and I believed should have been shot as written.