Here’s a link to some early version of the screenplay for Jeremiah Johnson - starring Robert Redford, directed by Sydney Pollack. It’s an Edelson house favorite.
Here is a most excellent and epic interview with one of the writers, the inimitable John Milius.
Having just re-watched the film very closely, for the sake of inspiration for a new feature I’m going to write, I couldn’t help but notice how crazy different the script was from the finished product. Obviously that happens a lot in film, and no doubt even more so with crazy on-location shoots like Jeremiah Johnson. But was interesting to me, looking at this earlier draft, is what was undoubtedly Milius’ voice and how it made it through into the film. The script reads like Moby Dick almost - this heft novelistic compilation of scenes, lots of dialogue with these absolutely mythological, larger-than-life characters. It seems to me that Pollack decided to harness that crazy energy and unique tone and use it only at choice moments, rather than populate the entire film with scenes with it. I wonder, if it had been Milius’ film - would it have seemed utterly ridiculous? More Conan like? Pollack sheared it down and Redford gave the largest character of them all a sensitive and tragic grounding.