Just in case there’s anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure of reading Richard Kelly’s hilariterrible early draft of a screenplay for Holes, the Disney movie based on the YA novel by Louis Sachar. Richard Kelly was apparently assigned to the script several years before making Donnie Darko, and it's . . . certainly something. Some choice highlights:
Stanley is in the prison camp not for a case of mistaken identity but for mercy-killing his little sister, who was dying of radiation poisoning after an accidental nuclear holocaust
The warden is a man, who kills a couple of the inmates
The campers are smuggled into a supply town one night for a brief taste of freedom, during which Stanley has sex for the first time, with a prostitute
The whole script is narrated with a voiceover by Zero, decades in the future
Disney rejected the script, obviously, but somehow it ended up on a fan site. The site was later taken down, but thankfully archive.org still has it. Read it. You’ll be glad you did.
i cannot POSSIBLY beg you to read this enough. it is absurd in utterly unimaginable ways. its like if a sophomore in high school who had been repeatedly told hes good at writing decided to write an “updated” take on an edgy Holes AU. its fucking incomprehensible at its best and deep into an abyss of total nonsense at worst (aka, other best)
if i won the lottery i would buy the rights to this script and get this movie made
