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As you may know, two different Escape From L.A screenplays were written before the movie was made : one by Coleman Luck in 1986, the other by English screenwriter Peter Briggs, of "Aliens vs Predator" fame.

- The Coleman Luck version was ordered by Carpenter & Russell, and based on an outline by both of them. It came to nothing.

- The Peter Briggs version was written "on spec", meaning he did it on his own, without getting paid for it, in the hope of selling it to the rights owners. However, they, (the right owners & Carpenter & Russell), never got to read it, as it wasn't distributed or promoted at all.

The two versions have not made it to the general public. However, in a Looker exclusive, Peter Briggs has kindly agreed to shed a little light on his own take. So here's a cursory description of the much longer and denser plot. (The script originally was 115 pages long). All you Plissken fans, enjoy !

Alternate original "Escape From L.A." storyline copyright © Peter Briggs, all rights reserved.

This Escape From L.A version takes place some years after the events of the first film.

Because of Snake's sabotage (at the end of Escape From New York), the entire world goes to war. While the American military are abroad, drug cartels from South American move up and take control of key cities (like L.A). Only after the war's over are the military able to slowly recover lost ground (they're forced to nuke Miami!).

L.A. continues to be a bastion, although the military are slowly recapturing the city block by block. The cartels have a very sophisticated air-defence grid that prevents anybody overflying, and anyone who goes in on foot.... generally doesn't come out...

At a press conference in part of "Free L.A." celebrating the recapture of several blocks, a key U.S. senator is snatched during a vicious assault by Cartel mercenaries.

Meanwhile, Snake has become a Bounty Hunter. He brings a wanted woman criminal out of a siege in the San Diego Art Gallery, blithely blowing up the place in the process. Bits of flaming Picassos are raining down around them...

A couple of guys ask to talk to him, but Snake isn't interested. They knock him out and bring him to the Beverly Hills Hotel, where Snake meets Rehme (Hauk has retired). Rehme explains the situation :

Castenada, the leader of the L.A. cartels has the Senator and is holding him hostage, threatening to kill him unless the government seize the land reclamation deal. The problem is, this Senator is vitally important in a Congressional vote that's going down next week. Without him, the military budget is going to be severely axed.

Rehme has already sent a team in to get the Senator back. They came out in little pieces. Snake could care less. He's about to go, when Rehme shows him a tape from the conference. The leader of the mercenaries was Snake's old pal, Fresno Bob. Rehme explains that Bob wasn't fried during the raid he and Snake made on the Federal Reserve. They offered him a deal into South America during the war. Bob accepted, but when he got there, turned on his team and killed them all.

Snake can't believe this. Bob was Black Light, Special Forces like himself. Even though Snake has no love for the Government, he can't believe that Bob would have gone working for scumbags like the Cartel. Snake accepts the assignment.

Snake goes to Dreamland (no U.F.O.s!), and hooks up with a Special Forces team, each of them just as nasty as Snake is. Encased inside powered exoarmour fighting suits, they're loaded inside Stealth Bombers, and sent to fly into L.A. Unfortunately, somebody has sold them out to the Cartel, who are waiting for them. Patriot missiles shoot down the first Stealth Bomber over Downtown L.A. (watched by Hob; Castenada's aide - a weird mute who wears welder's goggles and is lethal with a laser-guided bow and arrow), and the remaining team in the Second Stealth (including Snake) barely have time to deploy before that too is shot down.

After several adventures, Snake hooks up with the Special Forces team. They decide to leave their two remaining Exos there (as they're too conspicuous), and make their way across town to Castenada's H.Q. (a former rap artiste's mansion).

More adventures ensue, and they eventually make it into the sewer system via the L.A. subway. In a carefully coordinated raid (with the Special Forces guys knocking out the mansion defences while Snake gets inside using a Longrider Cloaking coat), everything goes wrong. Snake is captured, and brought before Castenada and Bob.

Snake confronts Bob, who has changed so much Snake barely recognizes him. In Castenada's mansion, Snake meets up with a hooker and the Senator (who is completely out of his head on drugs). Snake manages to escape, just as the remaining Special Forces guys stage an assault on the mansion with their Exoarmour. Unfortunately, Bob has recovered an Exo that Hob saw crash down in the L.A. county reservoir.

All hell breaks loose. Snake has to fight Hob, who gets away. Snake kills Castenada, but then flees when Bob attacks in the recovered Exo. (He grabs an armored Greyhound Bus and rams Bob against a wall. Bob is unharmed, and rips through the bus and keeps coming after Snake!).

Meanwhile, the Special Forces guys in their Exos knock out the L.A. defence grid, and Rehme sends in attack choppers. (Bob and one of the Special Forces Exo guys get into a vicious powersuit fight, with Bob coming out the victor.)

The hooker and Snake manage to get the Senator onto an evac chopper, but Bob keeps on coming in his Exo. (Bob goes mano-a-mano against a chopper !) Snake manages to make the Exo slip into the lake of Castenada's mansion, and with Bob trapped inside the crippled Exo with ruptured pressure seals, he drowns. Snake makes an escape, dangling from the bottom of a chopper as the mansion explodes violently. Hob appears at the top of a fiery tower, and Snake is a sitting duck. The hooker kills Hob with a pistol shot.

They arrive back in Free L.A., and the Senator and the Hooker are bundled into a limo. As Rehme talks to Snake, and the hooker is busy inspecting the goodies on offer in the limo, the drugged-up and abused Senator takes the pistol, and shoots himself in the head. Snake shakes his head as pandemonium breaks out. "Fucked again" he offers, before walking off into the night.

Web page created January 1, 1997