Not much is known about Serling’s screenplay draft except that he was involved with the project until Rosenberg passed it on to director/screenwriter Sam Peckinpah, who later used parts of this working screenplay to direct “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid” in 1973 (which underwent critical reappraisal years after the controversy surrounding its release). Per Criterion, other writers attached to the project after Peckinpah were Calder Willingham and Guy Trosper, with the latter being the final screenwriter brought on the team by the time Brando stepped up to direct the western.
Although Peckinpah’s version of the adaptation was initially considered perfect, prompting Rosenberg to send it to Brando, whose Pennebaker Productions bought the rights and arranged for Stanley Kubrick to direct for Paramount, he was fired by Brando himself due to unknown reasons. With Kubrick set to direct, it seemed that “One-Eyed Jacks” was finally on the right path, but Kubrick swiftly exited two weeks before production started. The reason? Well, Brando and Kubrick butted heads over casting decisions and script alterations, with Brando making things particularly difficult for the auteur with his indecisive approach to problem-solving, which Kubrick had had enough of.
After Brando took over the project, the story had little resemblance to Neider’s novel, as the screenplay was a revised culmination of all the writers who took a stab at it, with Brando’s own vision mixed in. The end result was not easily salvaged either, as Brando’s first rough cut was an indulgent 8 hours, which was then trimmed to 141 minutes of footage, which remarkably does not feel cobbled together by many means. “One-Eyed Jacks” still emerges as a remarkable, singular experience, its notoriously complicated behind-the-scenes history only solidifying the merits of its existence.
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