The Wendell Mayes Script
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — The Poseidon Adventure
Eric-62-2 — 3 years ago(May 17, 2022 01:42 AM)
I just came by a copy of the first draft script for the film which was written by Wendell Mayes. Thank goodness Irwin had the sense to reject this script and bring in Stirling Silliphant or else we would have wound up with a film as bad as "When Time Ran Out." The chief problem with Mayes's script is that he was following Gallico's novel too closely, and the novel's characters are dislikable and dysfunctional in the extreme. But even the changes Mayes made from the novel made things worse:
1-The Shelby family from the novel is now the Ramondi family of Italy and consists of father Mark, mother Anna and hot teen daughter Suzanne. There is no counterpart of the Robin character.
2-There's no Nonnie in this version. The prim spinster Miss Kinsale from the book is still in as is the Turkish engineer Kemal.
3-Scott is still the largely shallow ex-athlete turned minister of the book who evokes mixed reactions from all. Linda is still the one-note cursing machine who has not a single likable quality. In the end, we're not getting characters to actually LIKE which was the big problem with Gallico's novel.
4-Mayes kept the disturbing scene from the novel where Susan (now Suzanne) gets raped in the dark, though here it's in the context of looking for Mr. Rosen who has gone wandering off. Unlike the novel, where her rapist is a frightened 18 year old crewman named Herbert, her attacker here is none other than…..James Martin. Yes, the Martin character in this draft is a creepy stalker for Suzanne who acts on his impulse in the dark. And even more ludicrously is how Suzanne is able to forgive him later after he whimpers his apology (and she never tells the others).
5-And from the sublime to the ridiculous, when the last survivors reach the shaft and hear signs of a rescue outside, they find they have nothing to bang against the hull so Miss Kinsale has them all sing a loud chorus of "Roll Out The Barrel" to get their attention!
Despite getting co-screen credit on the film, only a couple tiny crumbs of Mayes' script ended up in the film. (1) the expansion of the Acres character from the "Acre" character of the novel, though his demise is different (2) a character protests being unable to swim to the engine room, only here it's Martin not the non-existent Nonnie and (3) the device of the rescue team cutting their way through. The final shot of the film was supposed to be a disturbing freeze frame of Scott's drowned body floating underwater.
After reading this, I'm now convinced Stirling Silliphant hasn't been given enough credit for making the final film the success it was. He refused to be bound by Gallico's structure and dialogue and just reimagined the material in a way where the action could be worked in properly and the character templates could be refashioned into people the audience could root for and care about along the way.