 Reports that James Agee wrote an incoherent screenplay have been  proved false by the 2004 discovery of his first draft. That  document, although 293 pages in length and manifestly overwritten  (as is common with first drafts), is scene for scene the film  Charles Laughton directed. Likewise false are the reports that Agee  was fired. Laughton, however much he gnashed his teeth at having  such a behemoth of a text in his hands with only five weeks to go  before the start of principal photography, calmly renewed Agees  contract and directed him to cut it in half. He did. In Laughtons  stage work (GALILEO, CAIN MUTINY COURT MARTIAL, etc), the great  actor demonstrated he was a script editor of genius 