"Running for Honor"
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Cut Scenes: Tommy Thompson: "The problem NBC had with it, the big problem, was it was [originally] a teenage suicide story. It was set in a prep school, it was a much younger kid, and he was to kill himself. That was their biggest going problem with it. I did a rewrite on it. I sort of did more of the attitude of Sam defending him and Al having a problem with it, being from an old school. We aged 'em a little bit, we made the kids older, and it seemed to calm them down a lot."' In the seventh version of the script, dated 30th September 1991, when Al suggests Sam may be crossing his legs in a gay manner, Sam retorts by pointing out that Al is always puffing on a cigar, and wonders what Freud would say about it. When he instructs Al to leave later, he says "what is this, National Cliché day?" Overall, the argument runs more playfully than it does on screen, where the interaction is more tense. The confrontation between Ronnie and Sam ends as it does on screen, but an earlier version of the script closed with Sam asking "what about Phillip? What kind of chance are you gonna give him?" Sam says Karen looks like she's 15 ("17" is dubbed over for broadcast). When Phillip climbs down from the ladder at the end, Maltz salutes him and says "welcome back, Commander." Al's "I was wrong" is a brief moment in the script, not as lengthy as in the final episode. |
