Oliver Stone had available to him all the solutions for these problems that he creates through the unclear rhetoric of his film, or rather, ways for them not have been problems in the first place. The original screenplay was by now famous writer and director Quentin Tarantino. Oliver Stone essentially scrapped this script and rewrote it with David Veloz and Richard Rutowski, giving Tarantino only a story credit. The original script by Tarantino barely resembles the final version of the film. I unabashedly admit to being a fierce Tarantino plan, but even from a logical standpoint, his script would have been the better and more responsible way to go. With this script, Stone would have run into virtually none of the problems that arose out of his changes to it. Some parts of the original script were even filmed but eventually cut because Stone didn't think they fit. Even Stone's original alternate ending would have alieviated some of the fuss his movie stirred up.
In the original script, the opening scene is essentially the same, but then the movie jumps to after Mickey and Mallory have been captured and are about to be moved to the mental hospital. Nearly every bit of the romance that is in the final cut of the film is gone, whittled down to merely a love letter between Mickey and Mallory, their reunion during the riot, and their ultimate escape together. In the Tarantino script, it is really only the movie-within-the-movie Thrill Killers that portrays Mickey and Mallory as a romantic couple. For instance, in an interview with the actress that plays Mallory in the movie, as part of the montage of the "American Maniacs" show, the actress says, "I didn't play Mallory the murderer. I didn't play her as a butcher. I played her as a woman in love, who also happens to murder people" (48). This sums up Juliette Lewis's entire performance as Mallory in Natural Born Killers, something Tarantino was careful to distinguish as different from the overall movie's portrayal of her.
In the Tarantino script, there is no mention of a traumatic childhood for either, and therefore no excuses being made. They killed Mallory's parents because, "they wouldn't give them their blessing for marriage" (13).
While in the film version we only really get to know one victim, the Indian, the the screenplay there is an extended interview with the Hun Brothers, two famous bodybuilders who were some of the only victims of Mickey and Mallory to survive. They were spared only because Mickey and Mallory were fans of their movies, albeit after they have been largely dismembered, leaving them disfigured and wheelchair-bound. They are characters who the audience gets to know and can perhaps sympathize with. Additionally, the fact that they are spared by the killers because they are in movies is not something to be ignored - it further reflects what slaves they are to media and television and movies. This was actually filmed for the movie and cut because Oliver Stone felt that the scene was overacted.
Another scene from the original script that was actually filmed but unfortunately cut from the final film was the murder of Grace Mulberry as she testifies during Mickey and Mallory's trial. This scene, available as additional footage on the director's cut of the film, is one of the most powerful scenes in the movie. It begins with the arrival of Grace Mulberry, played by Ashley Judd, at the courthouse, surrounded by many of Mickey and Mallory's cheering fans. You get a real sense with the way this is filmed how awful it would be for Grace to be presented by people who are cheering for and supporting the person who murdered her brother before her very eyes. In one great shot, the camera focuses on Grace as Mickey and Mallory arrive and focus turns to them over her. The camera zooms out on Grace with her back turned to Mickey and Mallory's adoring crowd, and the sound of the cheering is slowly blocked out by the crecendo of the sound of Grace's heartbeat. In the following scene, Grace is tortuously cross-examined by Mickey, acting as his own lawyer. He insults her and the audience in the courtroom applauds. This is virutally the only instance in the film when Mickey is shown to be exceptionally cruel, and this was left on the cutting room floor. When Grace is viciously murdered by Mickey by being stabbed by a pencil, it is the only murder which is not portrayed as "cool" and his not apparently condoned or at least treated with indifference.
In the Tarantino script, the only part of Mickey and Mallory's killings besides the diner scene and the prison riot are told through the frame of the "American Maniacs" show, either in reenactments or through security cameras. Anything told about this period of their lives is clearly told through the lens of the media and is not shown to be the perspective of the writer. All romanticizing of the couple is clearly done by the media.
After the diner killings, the Tarantino script jumps not to Mallory's home life as explanation for her actions, but to Mickey and Mallory's incarceration. Rather than coming across as effect then cause like the final film version, this comes across as cause, the killing, and effect, punishment.
Tarantino didn't rely upon the killing of Wayne Gale at the end of the film to send his anti-media message. Because he set up the appropriate distinction earlier in the film between the media Mickey and Mallory and the real Mickey and Mallory, he didn't have to use this to make his point. There is no reference in the original script to killing Wayne in order to send a message. Mickey and Mallory simply say, "We hate you. If anybody in the fuckin' world's gonna die, it's gonna be you" (118). Not bestowing upon these characters a sense of making a point and sending a message keeps them from coming across as heroes of an admirable cause.
This is in no way a problem in the original script. Scagnetti is not a murderer, nor is he sexually obsessed with Mallory and attempting to rape her when he visits her in her cell on the day of the riot. McClusky in the original script is not the colorful, obnoxious character he is in the movie. Neither comes across as antagonists to Mickey and Mallory's protagonists. Because there is not the conflict between them this way, Mickey and Mallory come across less as heroes and more as criminals.
Just as there were no references in the original script to Mickey and Mallory's murder spree resulting from abusive childhoods, there is also no indication that they are spurred to these actions by demons, another way the film excuses their actions that the original script did not.
There are no references by Mickey to murder being normal animal behavior, nor other references to animals to reinforce this. Mickey still gives the "purity" speech, but it is amid such other nonsensical ramblings that there is no way it is meant to be taken seriously. Mickey in the movie, during his interview with Wayne, comes across as intelligent and articulate, and his words as prophetic or profound.
Were these scenes portrayed as part of the media portrayal of the killers, the use of the music could have remained the same, but its purpose would have been clearer and kept the movie from being accused of becoming part of the problem.
The contrast between the media portrayal of the killers and the way they really are, along with a marked lack of excuse-making for them, make Tarantino's argument very clear. He doesn't have to constantly reinforce his point because he made it well the first time.
Indeed, the original script ends almost exactly the same as the original cut of the movie, with Mickey and Mallory killing Wayne and then escaping. Whether or not they get away in the original script is uncertain, as they are last seen getting into the news van and driving off. In the film, however, there is a shot of Mickey and Mallory with kids in a Winnebago driving across the country, which implies that they "get away with it" and live happily ever after.
Stone filmed an alternative ending which featured Mickey and Mallory being killed by Owen, the inmate who helps them escape from the prison, after they've killed Wayne and are making their getaway. This ending is perhaps more satisfying if one feels that Mickey and Mallory should be punished for what they did, but still responds to violence only with more violence, which isn't much of an improvement on the overall message. In this version, the shot of Mickey and Mallory with kids is more or less a dream or vision right before Mallory is killed.
Either the uncertainty of Tarantino's ending or the consequences faced by Mickey and Mallory in the alternate ending of Stone's film would have been better than the ending that Stone chose to use. Both could have supported his overall message a little more strongly.