During my early days of knocking out spec scripts and such for fun and no profit, my friend Mysti pointed out an element of screenplays, and therefore movies, that I did not learn in any screenwriting class: The Unbelievable Coincidence.

Apparently, there is a general rule in Western Cinema that allows for one Unbelievable Coincidence (I’ll call it a “UC” to save space) per story. That is, any narrative can be advanced by the juxtaposition of two characters or events that do not need to be strictly justified by empirical logic or the intrinsic reality of the story’s universe.

This little fact came to me Friday, when I was attending Guy’s Movie Night at an old friend’s house in Santa Cruz. He was proudly showing off his awesome home theatre set-up– A Panasonic PT-AE2000U LCD projector, an 8′ wide screen, and 1500 watts of audio thump. We watched Live Free or Die Hard (d. Len Wiseman, 2007), which showed off the subwoofer nicely, so much so we became a bit worried about the structural integrity of the house during the BIG rumbles.

Near the end of this film, I pointed out to assembled Guys the film’s UC. If you’ve seen this, you might be led to believe the whole damn movie was a series of UCs, but it wasn’t– It mostly obeyed a brand of stylized narrative logic specially formulated for the action-film genre. No– there is but one UC, and it drops near the end (and this is a ***Near-Spoiler***): After a particularly intense action sequence, our protagonist John McClane stands up, dusts himself off, and sees the bad guys he was pursuing have arrived at their destination– a comfortably short walk way. This UC was well-disguised by the brigade of LFODH screenwriters by having the preceding action sequence stretch the bounds of credibility to near-breaking point.

The UC was placed a bit more starkly in the next film I viewed: The Bank Job (d. Roger Donaldson, 2008). This one was fit, oddly enough, well within the first third of this very fine British caper thriller, in the first act: It involved one of our protagonist’s likable sidekicks in the heist being recognized by one of the true baddies in front of the very Lloyd’s Bank they were casing. As an UC, it seemed strangely contrived, but it played into the final act with devastating consequences.

The evening after seeing the matinee of The Bank Job I watched Grindhouse Presents: Planet Terror (d. Robert Rodriguez, 2007) on Showtime (in HD). Planet Terror is a cheeky pastiche of cheesy 1970s-era exploitation movies, complete with film scratches and missing frames. The problem here is that behind the oh-so-cute bad-film-print effects is a turgid, nonsensical, strangely star-studded zombie movie. The story is literally a joke: it’s supposed to be like, this bad action movie, so it doesn’t have to make sense, get it? No I don’t. Anyway, UCs abound: characters cross paths so conveniently you’d think the film takes place on a rowboat. In fact, half-way through the film there’s a “missing reel:” The (overly numerous) plotlines suddenly all jump together into one location on the other side of the cut. All I could think of this cutesy-pie trick was “thank God that reel was missing, or else this mess would be even longer.”

Really, all the UCs brought Planet Terror into another genre entirely– Magical narrative. The Wizard of Oz (d. Victor Fleming et al, 1939) has all sorts of marvelous UCs. Dorothy herself hangs a lantern on it: “People come and go so quickly here!” Of course, on a film that purposefully meant to be badly written, faux-junk cinema like Planet Terror the effect is deadening.

Finally, late Sunday I watched Training Day (d. Antoine Fuqua, 2001) on HD-DVD, as a last hurrah for that moribund format. It featured what can be considered an industry standard UC. Our rookie cop protagonist (Ethan Hawke) rescues the victim of a rape attempt in an alleyway. It is a strange pause in the action, though it gives lots of time for exposition highlighting the paladin-like morals of the Rookie Cop versus the street-wise ways of his mentor, the Rogue Veteran Detective (Denzel Washington). Rookie Cop keeps the girl’s dropped wallet– a seemingly innocuous act that leads to a crucial, completely UC later on. It’s a well-set-up UC in that it advances character, but as all UC set-ups do, it stops the story– ostensibly so we’ll remember this set-up later when it pays off.

Such a strange little rule, the UC. Even though it pains more structurally oriented writers to admit it, this illogical device works well. Of course, some movies can do without them entirely. Courtroom dramas (well, good courtroom dramas) tend to only work with vigorous logic: Find Me Guilty (d. Sidney Lumet, 2006), based as it was on real events and actual court transcripts, told a story with no need for the UC device.

I think it works well in movies because in some small, spooky way, an Unbelievable Coincidence, folded into an otherwise logical narrative mix, somehow mirrors reality more accurately than one without it. Coincidences do indeed happen in the real world, every bit as Unbelievable as the ones slotted into movies. There is an aspect of human reality that surpasses the mundane: Rare, strange events and happenstances that make a hash of the laws of averages. The sense of wonder these coincidences elicit when they manifest is a reminder of the depths of the unknowable, dimensions of causality and existence only sanctioned in brief to our mortal lives.

Or they’re just a coincidence.

–Skot C.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 8:11 am and is filed under General, Motion Pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.