There are many movies dealing with the inner workings of Fate. The best - NEXT STOP WONDERLAND comes immediately to mind; as does SERENDIPITY - deal with flesh and blood characters who are moved closer and closer together through the story by the machinations of Fate. The worst treat the characters merely as chess pieces, as the machinations are the focus of the story. (Oddly, this works fine in the FINAL DESTINATION movies, which are the flip side of the same coin - showing Death (Fate) working in a sequence of events. It works because it's horror. Horror is about the horror more than the characters.)Several years ago I co-wrote a romantic comedy that was more overtly about the hand of Fate in our romantic lives. Being obsessed with the subject, I wanted to write another one, but how to do it without repeating myself?
Enter "Mad Men" and TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY.
In newspaper and magazine articles, you should never "bury your lead." In this case - the doings of Fate - I would have to, so not to copy my previous script. But how? Mad Men" and TINKER served as models. They bury important information in a mound of chitchat. You think you're just listening to conversation, until you realize you're being told very important information. In this new Fate script, why not "bury" the connections underneath the character interactions? The connections are there, but obvious attention aren't drawn to them. Only after the movie is over will the viewer think back and say, "ah, okay: this happened, which caused this, which caused that." At the time, it's just a movie dealing with what most of us deal with - that ever-elusive search for love.
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