Jacob's Ladder

Jacob's Ladder is one of my all time favourite films and this screenplay is the perfect piece of paraphernalia for collectors and fans of the movie. Initially I bought this just as a sign of devotion to this movie but was impressed by the content of the book. There is an introduction and notes by Bruce Joel Rubin which give great insight into the politics of producing this movie. The script is also interlaced with hundreds of beautiful black and white photographs, and we are also treated to the script of a number of deleted scenes, including alternate endings. Perhaps the most fascinating part of this book is the original Buddhist ending, which initially was to represent a kind of "zen" moment for Jacob, but was deemed pretty much impossible to produce, hence leading to the current ending. Overall, a very worthwhile companion to one of the finest, scariest, most beautiful and most underrated movies ever made.

It's difficult to say too much about the insights given in this book without creating spoilers for the movie.Bruce's description of the evolution of the script and the basic story content, such as Jacob's Book of the Dead journey of the soul, including the inspiration for some of the stark gothic imagery, is enormously helpful for any fan of the movie.I found the movie to be very uplifting, and in its own way, quite beautiful. There are many excellent and representative photos to accompany the full script and Bruce's superb descriptive rundown on JL which he calls Jacob's Chronicle. This book would be very helpful for anybody who was confused by the movie or parts of the movie, yet who would like to understand more. The only minor blips in the script concern the Vietnam scenes. One point is that (in my copy anyway) he refers to a Field Hospital, yet a soldier in Jacob's shape would have been Dusted Off (air medevaced) to either a Surgical Hospital or an Evacuation Hospital (possibly having gone through the Battalion Surgeon's Forward Aid Station first.) In Nam, the Field Hospital was a larger, longer term care facility, which was more remote from likely action (despite its misleading name.)There is also a memo from Adrian Lyne stating that the movie is set in 1975, "three years after the end of the Vietnam War". The war officially ended in April 1973.The only other Nam technicality was that where Bruce refers to "two Orderlies" in the script, the men would have actually been Corpsmen (a form of Medic.)Great movie, powerful ending. Read all about it.