Wong Time Coming
Glen Morgan and James Wong talk Final Destination, The Others and the loaned Gunmen.
      by Sarah Kendzior

The lenticular Final Destination poster, crafted entirely of cheese.

Morgan cites the poster for Final Destination as one example of this breach between creative and promotional perspectives. "A few years ago when we all had the go-ahead to write the script, we all said, 'Okay, now, when we make this, right, when this is going to be released, we're not going to have one of these one-sheets with the teenage kids splayed across the thing,'" he says, referring to the design shared by Scream and its successors. "They go, 'Oh yeah, we're not doing that.' And when I saw the one-sheet, in 3-D or whatever, it's that, and they turn into skulls, and it's like Richard Leaky skulls, you know?" He laughs. "I think it's kind of goofy. I hope it works, but I think it's goofy."

Then there was the change in title. "Final Destination sounds like something my uncle in Syracuse, New York would rent at Blockbuster, and I would laugh at him for having done it," Morgan says. "The thing that is most irritating about it -- and this happens everywhere, this isn't just a New Line situation -- is that they said, 'I don't want Flight 180, because it will get confused with Air Force One, or Turbulence, or some other plane crash movie.' But if you have the trailer that's out now, and you call it Flight 180, no one would think it's Air Force One."

"People who go to see the movie are going to know something about the movie," agrees Wong. "Usually people don't just go to a movie because of the title. They know something about it, and [Flight 180] works really well because a flight number these days has a sort of death connotation, it means more than a plane crash." Adds Morgan, "When you're doing this, maybe this is the wrong way to go about it, but to pretend you have nothing to do with the project -- what would make you go to it? You go, 'Flight 180 -- what is that?' It has an ambiguity. And once you find out what it means, it has an eeriness to it."

These terrified expressions are much like the ones on our staffers' faces in reaction to some of Final Destination's rejected titles.

Eerie doesn't even begin to describe some of the other suggested titles for the project. "If you read that book on Brazil -- Brazil, the Terry Gilliam movie," begins Morgan, sighing heavily, "And you read the suggested titles, you just laugh your head off. When you get that memo for your movie, you just sit in your office in the dark and get so depressed." Among the rejected choices: Alex's Vision, The Visionary, and, oh yes, The Third Eye.

The most controversial change made, however, involved the film's conclusion, which was reshot last January when the original failed to merit the necessary test scores. "It's a much softer, quieter version," says Wong of the initial ending. "Thematically, I think it works very well in that it says the only way to escape death is to lead a good life, and the only thing we can pass on is the next generation. We tested it a few times and I think it worked. It's going to be on the DVD. But it was really different; it wasn't one of those kind of whiz-bang endings. The test scores were very good, but they weren't as high as the studio had hoped," he continues. "They talked to us said, 'I think you should reshoot the ending.' I said, well, I think this works thematically, but we want this movie to reach as many people as we can."

"It was going to be done, they were going to reshoot the ending, and if it wasn't going to be us, it was going to be someone else," explains Morgan of the second, more violent conclusion, which raised test scores 25 points. "Jim and I went off to a bar one night and said, 'OK, how about this, what if this happens?' Jim really handled a lot of the ending because I was on The Others. But I was in a theater with a test audience who saw that new ending and just went bananas, and I turned around and the owner of New Line just looked at me like, 'Ha ha ha! You are mine!'"

"In a way, it was a blessing and a curse," muses Wong. "I think the [new] work is more fun in that it's more of a jolting, adrenaline rush of an ending, but as far as I'm concerned, the first ending works the best. I'm glad I shot both, but I'm also glad people can see the original on DVD instead. You get a different feeling when you come out of the movie with each. It's hard for me, because I can't divorce myself from the certain immediate gratification of an audience going 'Whoo-hoo!' You have that with the second ending, and the first ending is much more subdued."

The cast and crew of Final Destination: Glen Morgan (far left, rear, in the Padres cap), Kristen Cloke, James Wong, Seann William Scott, Chad Donella, Ali Larter, Devon Sawa, Amanda Detmer, and Kerr Smith.

Overall, however, Morgan and Wong view the making of Final Destination as a positive and educational experience. "Right now all I want is the chance to make another movie, whether it's a horror movie or something else. Jim and I both know how much we learned and how much better we could do the next time, and I just hope we have the chance to do it," says Morgan, who adds that in the future he would like to direct. "Absolutely -- I did a bunch of second unit stuff [on Final Destination]. Like a one-second shot will go by and I'll go, 'I shot that!' I don't know how I got stuck in the producer role. It's a bad job. It sucks. You have to be a problem solver," he hastens to explain, "And I'm pretty lazy, and I just don't want to deal with that. It's like trying to be a referee amongst personalities, things like that."

Devon Sawa narrowly avoiding death -- again -- in Final Destination.

One project long in the works is Hangman, a screenplay which Jodie Foster's film company, Egg Pictures, has expressed interest in producing. "That's been around forever," says Morgan. "It's a pet project of ours. [Casting director and longtime friend] Randy Stone had read it and gave it to Jodie, and they actually optioned it, so all of us are trying to get that made." The film, originally written in 1988, revolves around an executioner visited by a supernatural force.

"It used to be that the people who turned the switch would write an essay as to why they would volunteer to do it," explains Morgan. "So in the movie you see this man, he's somebody just like any of our dads, he's an insurance salesman and he's got this regular life. But you see that the people that the man has executed are going through the system of justice to get back at everybody, and he's the last one. We saw that episode, I think it's called 'The Walk', on The X-Files. We were doing Space and I came back and watched them all in one clump, saw that one and was like, 'Hey!'" When asked if the similarity was purely coincidental, Morgan sighs and answers, "Probably. I really hope so."

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