s death coming for you? And if it is, what would you do
if you could see it before it happens? That's the
underlying premise of Final Destination, which was
written by former The X-Files scribes Glen Morgan and James
Wong, produced by Morgan, and directed by Wong. Packed
with an energetic young cast, the film tackles heady
questions about life and death, all in the guise of a
thriller flick. The cast includes Devon Sawa
(Casper, Idle Hands) , Ali Larter (The House on
Haunted Hill, Varsity Blues), Kristen Cloke (Space:
Above and Beyond, Millennium), and Kerr Smith
(Dawson's Creek).
Recently some of the cast and crew spoke to the press while promoting Final Destination, and this interview is drawn from those comments.
What brings you back to this genre?
Morgan: I don't know. We were doing Jump Street and The
Commish, and then we were doing The X-Files, and we had
hostility: "What makes you think you can write science
fiction?" And it's been nice to be recognized in that
genre. But Jim and I don't look at ourselves that way.
It's a genre that's open cinematic stuff--you can tell a
story backwards, you can hide information, you can add a
sequence, and it's fun to do as filmmakers. If you make
a straight-ahead drama, you may not have that
opportunity.
Wong: I didn't want to do a quote-unquote slasher movie,
where some guy with a knife starts hacking people. In
this genre there's going to be deaths and suspense. That's a given. But I feel like in this movie I kept it
scary, without having another human being directly
responsible for killing people.
Jim, this is your first time directing a feature. Are
you satisfied with the final result?
Wong: When I watched the movie, I think it worked the way
I hoped it would, so I felt it was successful. I think
it's exciting, I think people who watch it will get a
jolt, I think they'll react the way I felt they would
react, and so I think it's working in that sense. So I
felt good about that. When in college I changed my major
to a film major, it was Apocalypse Now that really made
me want to be a filmmaker. And this is no Apocalypse Now [laughs.] But hopefully one day. Right now I feel
pretty good about the job I've done.
Tell us about the special effects used in the film.
Morgan: We didn't want to do a lot of computer-generated
effects, because that seemed to be the norm. And oddly
enough, going back to more physical effects would have
had a different look than what audiences are used to. So
maybe it would have been a lot easier to do that water
[in the bathroom scene] with a computer-generated
effect, but we used that floor, at $5,000 a shot, three
times to get it. There were grooves in it, so
if you looked at it, you wouldn't know it, but if you
were walking on it with your shoes, you could tell where
it dented in. And even still the water wasn't very
cooperative.
Wong: We started at the beginning of the schedule in the
bathroom, and we almost ended the whole shoot in the
bathroom [laughs]. It seemed like went on forever; we
did it over and over again.
What drew you to Final Destination?
Larter: I read the script while I was doing House on Haunted
Hill. And I had been reading a lot of fluffy scripts, a
lot of them seemed like they had been done before, and
were just copying other ones. And when I read this, I
was just really attracted to the character of Clear. I
thought she was a really strong character, and that she
evolved. She started in a place, and the experiences
that happened to her turned her into a different person.
When she sees this kid have a premonition that the plane
is going to go down, she feels in her gut that she has
to follow him off the plane--and moments later the plane
explodes. And then it's their quest to figure out why it
happened, and can you really cheat death? Is there a
fate? Do you have a destiny together, or a destiny
apart? What happens after you die? So I think it goes
into some cool questions.
What are you feelings about that, about death?
Larter: That's another thing--I mean, I was drawn to this
because I'm at a stage in life where I'm kind of
questioning those things right now, and I wanted to
segue that into a character. And I believe that there
has to be a better place. With so many children dying in
the world, of hunger, of AIDS, I need to believe that
they go to a beautiful place and that they're smiling
down on us, because I can't rationalize why all of these
horrible things happen. And I believe in fate and
destiny, too.
What was it like filming your death scene?
Cloke: Well, it took a long time to do my death--like ages
and days. It was interesting, and incredibly
uncomfortable. First, I was fitted for a body mold. Then
they put a prosthetic on my neck ... and then they put tubes up through
my pants, through my body, and up in to the prosthetics,
so ... blood would
squirt out. Sometimes, the tube wasn't always attached
into the area right, so the blood would gush down and
fall over me. And the blood is like corn syrup; it's
really unpleasant.
How'd you get involved in this film?
Smith: It was exactly what
I wanted to do. It was a thriller ... but it's a
different kind of thriller, because death is represented
by death itself, not some guy running around with a
knife. And the character is the antithesis of Jack McKie
on Dawson's Creek, and I wanted to get away from that
and do something totally different.
What attracted you to this role in particular?
Smith: Well, Carter has--had--a real nice character arc
in the original ending of the film. Since we reshot the
ending of the movie, the arc for the character is not as
good. The ending of the movie is much better, because
it's an hour and a half of non-stop craziness. Whereas
originally it slowed down a lot. The new one works.
Do you spend a lot of time on the Internet?
Smith: Yes, I do. I spend a lot of time on E-trade.
Throwing money around, tyring to make some cash on
stocks. I love stocks; I mean, that's what I went to
college for. I'd probably be a stock broker if I weren't
doing this.
