Hello All! I'm going through my files on my computer and came across this interview with Final Destination's Producers Craig Perry and Warren Zide. I hope someone can write me to let me know who did the interview and where this was printed, either Online or not...I like to give credit where credit is due and am hoping that someone out there knows where this comes from... Many Thanks!!! :) Write me at: angela.wheaton@snet.net ************************************** ******************************************** ************************************************** Producers Craig Perry and Warren Zide read a lot of scripts. "Even though Final Destination came to us as a treatment - it stood out," says Perry. "On an immediate level I responded to how universal the themes are -- the feeling when you take a plane that you're placing your destiny in someone else's hands -- then taking that idea forward to question how fate interacts with our lives at every stop light, every street corner." The original treatment for Final Destination was written by Jeffrey Reddick. "We worked with Jeff to develop the treatment," Perry explains. "The story went through several incarnations. Initially, the characters who get off the plane had no immediate connection and only sought each other out after the tragic incident. We changed that, logically and organically creating a situation where a class of high school kids are at the center of the story, but the ideas and themes of the story permeate well beyond that particular demographic." New Line purchased the treatment with Reddick writing the first draft script. "We always wanted to work with Glen Morgan and James Wong," Perry recalls, "but they weren't immediately available." After about a year, Morgan and Wong finally had a chance to review the project and loved the premise. "Glen and James know how to generate an atmosphere of dread - to create suspense out of things that are ordinary. That's what their work on "The X Files" and "Millenium" is all about," Perry concludes. The cornerstone of the story for Morgan and Wong was a fascination with life and death and the workings of fate. "I believe that at one time or another we've all experienced a sense of prescience. We have a hunch, a feeling, and then that hunch proves true," says Wong. Do we become momentarily aware of our fate -- a brief glimpse at the script for the movie we're enacting -- and if so, who's the director? "Once we had a basic story," says Morgan, "I started cataloguing the strange coincidences in my own life. For example, I was in the Vancouver airport waiting for a flight when John Denver came on over the loudspeaker. I remember thinking to myself - Hey, he just died in a plane crash -- that's a little weird. We wrote a version of that experience into the script." Among their many credits, Morgan and Wong were the creators of the cult series "Space: Above and Beyond". They were Co-Executive Producers for two seasons on the Emmy nominated and Golden Globe Award winning series "The X-Files". "We want to do for planes and air travel what Jaws did for sharks and swimming," quips Wong. Morgan and Wong's second draft script got the green light from New Line Cinema. "There have been a lot of plane crashes done in the movies over the years," Perry admits. "This is probably the first one in which the audience experiences the entirety of the crash from the perspective of the person sitting in the cabin. There are no cut-aways -- it's all very claustrophobic and very real because you're experiencing it first-hand, in the same way the character is." Final Destination is James Wong's feature directorial debut. Wong was nominated for an Emmy for "Musings Of A Cigarette Smoking Man", an episode for the "X-Files". With production designer John Willett, Wong and Morgan have devised a unique visual signature for Final Destination. "The challenge," Willett explains, "is to present something that is creepy and off-putting -- that makes you feel strange -- but that you can't quite put your finger on. Rather than going for the obvious -- odd camera angles, strange lighting, dark colors -- we elected to do very subtle things. Forced perspective, corners that don't meet at 90 degrees as they should, objects that feel vaguely out of place -- these are some of the techniques we're using." "This idea of skewing things just a few degrees off-center is going to be a very subtle representation of how the world has changed for the seven survivors," says producer Warren Zide. The way the sets are used to refract and reflect the characters' state of mind will hopefully create a certain sense of unease in the audience." "One thing we were all in agreement on right from the start," says Wong, "is that we didn't want to do a slasher movie, where there's a guy in a dark cloak or some kind of monster chasing after these kids. That's been done. I became very excited when we decided to make the world at large, in the service of death, our antagonist. Everyday objects and occurrences then take on ominous proportions and it becomes less about whether or not our characters are going to die and more about how they will die and how they can delay their deaths. The entertainment value is in the 'ride' not in the outcome, and by premising the film on the inevitability of death, we play a certain philosophical note." "There are sequences in the film," says Perry, "that are designed specifically to misdirect the audience. Part of the fun of the movie is watching the sequences unfold and trying to figure out hmmm, how is this character gonna get it? But beyond the thrills, and there are lots of them as malevolent forces mass and the intensity builds, is a sense that we are not invincible. Then how we live our lives and the choices we make become important. It becomes about living in the present moment -- because that's really all we've got." "The underlying message of this film," Morgan concludes, "is live a good life - live your life to the fullest. Whether we die of old age, disease or accident, every one of us is going. I hope this movie says hang-in there and enjoy the ride."