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Once Bitten: The (Very) First 17 Pages

 

It will never cease to amaze me how many people continue to tell me how much they enjoy Once Bitten

 

Literally. It will never cease to amaze me.

 

This appreciation picks up every year in October, as late-night cable programmers use it as a cheap timekiller, or people actually include it in their Halloween movie marathons. (See previous paragraph.)

 

For them I offer a glimpse of the film at its very earliest stages - the first 17 pages of the first draft. Why 17 pages? Because I wanted to include Mark's first encounter with the Countess in its entirety. These pages demonstrate how much changed over the next few years - as well as how much stayed remarkably the same.

 

Jeff and I wrote six drafts in total, and were the only writers until a couple months before shooting when the Goldwyn Company brought in other writers to... I'll be polite and say 'change' things.

 

You'll notice there's no gay butler following the Countess around. That's because we didn't have anything to do with that character (I'm proud to say). There's also not a talking parrot commenting on the action - a feature in one of their final rewrites that thankfully did not make it into the film.

 

An interesting story about the pages you're about to read: This is the draft that prompted a reader at Goldwyn - who by all accounts was nearly impossible to please - to recommend it, comparing it to Fellini's Satyricon and Coppola's Rumblefish. Which is completely insane, but God bless him for it. He's the reason we got our foot in the door.

 

So here y'go - the first (unbelievably overwritten) 17 pages of Nightlife, which would eventually become Once Bitten.

CLICK on the Adobe logo to see a scan of the

original pages. Liquid Paper and all.

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