The Other Two Writers: Robin Hood, Part 3

Posted by Jennine Lanouette on Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

While working on my Robin Hood, Pts. 1 & 2, I did some prowling around the internet and found this interesting story about “the other two writers.” You know, the two guys who aren’t Brian Helgeland. Names are Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Vorhis and the story goes that they wrote a screenplay called  “Nottingham” that made the rounds in Hollywood and had tons of buzz on it as this great screenplay. It was eventually bought (by someone, maybe Brian Grazer, maybe the studio, I forget who) and then Russell Crowe signed on and he wanted Ridley Scott brought in to direct. So then it’s pretty much a go. But when Scott got hold of this hot property he immediately started changing it, and changing it, and changing it, and Brian Helgeland was brought in (I don’t know by who). But the long and short of it is that by the time the film reached the screen it had virtually no resemblance to the initial screenplay that had originated the project. And what a travesty! How typical Hollywood! To take a great screenplay and utterly destroy it! (Just trying to represent here the tone of the reports I was reading.)

All of this, of course, made me curious. A great screenplay? Really? Ruined by Ridley Scott? Are you sure? Hmm. Think I’d like to get a look at that screenplay and see for myself. Prowling a little further, I found the original easily accessible and downloadable, and so did just that, then printed it out (I like to scribble in margins) and settled in on my couch for a good read.

So, now having read it, I can attest to the fact that there is indeed just about zero resemblance, other than a few legendary characters, between the screenplay titled “Nottingham” by Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Vorhis and the film titled “Robin Hood” that also bears their names. As for all the buzz it got, I would not call this a “great” screenplay. I would call it an intriguing idea that needed more work. For those of you who have more important things to do with your time than download, print out and read unproduced screenplays that are about to fade into obscurity, I have decided, as a sort of public service, to summarize the main points of the story here.

Nottingham

By Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Vorhis

Sir Robert Tornham, Sheriff of Cyprus, gets word that he is being reposted to England to become Sheriff of Nottingham. He arrives in Nottingham to learn of the notorious Robin Hood, a lesser nobleman of Saxon descent, who has been robbing, pillaging and murdering nobles of Norman birth, heralded as a hero by the common folk because of his largesse with them.

Tornham examines the scene of a recent double murder learning they were guests at a party held by Lord Fitzwater for his daughter Marian. He interviews Marian who tells him she was about to be married to Robin Hood when he was unjustly outlawed for coming to the defense of a miller who had killed one of the king’s deer to feed his starving family.

While Prince John is out hunting deer, he is suddenly pursued by a wild boar until Lady Marian shoots it dead. Marian takes off on horseback, Tornham goes after her and is ambushed and taken hostage by Robin Hood and his men. Robin tells Tornham he is not the murderer he seeks.

Freed by the Merry Men, Tornham goes to see Marian. An alarm is sounded and Tornham learns of another murder. He inspects the scene of the murder and tells his squire it wasn’t Robin Hood who killed the man because he was with Robin Hood when the murder happened. Tornham is told in confidence by Queen Eleanor that King Richard has been taken hostage by the Austrians and they are holding him for ransom. Taxes will go up and it will be Tornham’s job to collect them. But Prince John will try to keep the money from being delivered to the Austrians. She makes him pledge his loyalty to King Richard.

Prince John announces that the King is reported to be near death so all ransom money will be delivered to him. Tornham surreptitiously delivers gold to the Archbishop of Canterbury to be used to free the king. He then tells Lady Marian he plans to catch Robin Hood by ambushing him at the abbey of Friar Tuck the following Sunday.

Marian sneaks out in the night to warn Robin Hood, and Tornham follows her. He tells Robin Hood he doesn’t believe he’s responsible for the murders but needs his help in finding who is. He shows him the arrowheads he’s been collecting from the corpses with the initials S.P. chiseled into them. Hood tells him it stands for Sagitarii Pedestri, which means “Foot Archer” and indicates that the arrowheads came from Prince John’s infantry archers.

The camp is suddenly surrounded by the soldiers of Prince John led by Guy of Gisborne, who was tipped off by Tornham’s squire. Robin Hood is captured and Tornham is given credit for it. At a celebration, Prince John tells Tornham Robin Hood will be executed. When Tornham insists on a trial, Prince John agrees to a test of combat against Guy of Gisborne. Tornham then asks Gisborne to defeat Robin Hood but not kill him to give him a jury trial so he doesn’t become a martyr. Gisborne refuses.

Tornham sneaks into Gisborne’s chamber, finds a secret passageway and makes his way through underground tunnels. Above, the fight between Robin Hood and Gisborne begins as King Richard approaches the castle. Below, Tornham finds a chamber with arrows matching the arrowheads from the dead bodies and a list of names of the murder victims. Above, the fight proceeds until King Richard’s horsemen gallop up to the castle gate. Tornham leads the king’s men through the tunnels into Gisborne’s chamber for a surprise attack from within. A great battle ensues. Gisborne grabs Lady Marian and gallops off with her. Tornham races after them. He finds Marian and battles it out with Gisborne, finally getting the better of him.

Tornham, recovering from his wounds, is told by Queen Eleanor that the people are saying that Gisborne’s murder, Prince John’s overthrow and King Richard’s return are all to Robin Hood’s credit. “People need heroes,” she says. Then she tells him the king is auctioning off his key positions to raise money for his next French campaign. But she assures him they have a post for him in the king’s army. Robin Hood, now Lord of Locksley, offers to buy him the position  of Sheriff of Nottingham but Tornham refuses. Robin leaves for his wedding to Lady Marian.

Clearly, the idea here was to invert the well-known legend to tell it from the “bad guy’s” point of view while adding the ironic twist at the end that Robin Hood gets all the credit for the Sheriff’s accomplishments. Ain’t that just the way things go. There’s always a more complicated truth behind the popular account. But I can’t help feeling there’s a bit of a “So what?” factor here. What have we gained by learning this? Some poor schlump got shafted again. So what? In my observation, the significance of the more-complicated-truth-behind-the-popular-account story usually has to do with an underdog who’s not being properly credited due to his (or her) disempowered status. For me, that’s when stories of underlying truth get interesting, even if only liberally imagined.

But, lest I get carried away on my disempowered underdog soapbox, let me back up to consider some practical matters of structure. What we have here is a detective story within a political power struggle. These are the two most common structures for a plot-based story – the solving of a mystery and the triumph over an enemy. Most plot stories are either one or the other, but these writers have managed to pack the two into one. Maybe that’s why this screenplay was deemed to be so great among Hollywood script readers. And I certainly grant it that as well – the external tension is definitely increased by the interweaving of these two different narrative forms.

I just have one small problem with this approach. What we’re doing here is taking a plot idea and simply adding more plot to it, which keeps everything happening on a superficial level of external conflict rather than going deeper into character and theme. Robert Tornham has about as much depth and complexity as Robert Langdon in The Da Vinci Code. And as for Robin Hood, he’s just a big blank spot running through the middle of the story. We are given very little sense of who he is and why he does what he does. In fact, Robert Tornham’s predicament – needing to solve a mystery in order to topple a corrupt king – could have easily been told without the context of the Robin Hood legend. This is made clear by the fact that Robin Hood’s primary purpose in the legend – that of stealing from the rich to give to the poor – is significantly sidelined. It is only mentioned at the beginning to provide a reason for Robin Hood to be persecuted and framed for murder.

The unfortunate result of this deprioritizing is to strip the story of its thematic potential,

In short, the plot aspects of murder mystery and power struggle have been used to drive the story at the expense of going deeper into the characters and exploring the larger meanings. Nothing wrong with that, really. Except that it runs the risk of leaving the viewer with that elusive, buzz-killing feeling of “So what?”

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You can watch Robin Hood on the following Video On Demand websites:

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