Ganadores – Story Line Treatment – Inspired by Fate Happens/Death Of A Mad Son

I envisioned “Ganadores” (Winners) as a telenovela. It was inspired by the years I spent studying Psychology and all the people I met.

At the end of the third to last episode of the series, I had pictured the four male principals driving at night through an almost empty street. Earlier that evening they had been clubbing with the principal female characters because they had already finished all pending assignments, and all they had to do was wait for graduation a few weeks away, in late October.

The guys had been drinking, and this being 1987, the culture of designated drivers didn’t exist in Venezuela. As the Los Lobos version of “La Bamba”, which had been a huge hit in the summer of 1987, plays loudly on the radio, a car comes out of nowhere and violently crashes into the guys’ car. The radio still plays “La Bamba”. As we hear the guitars at the end of the song, we crossfade to a coffin being lowered. Fade to black.

The second to last episode starts at a concert hall, the orchestra starts playing a big and bombastic original piece. We see the date in a poster; it is 24 October 2012; 25 years have passed. For the next hour, we see the accident happening from the point of view of each of the victims, and the young driver who caused the accident, who walks away from the accident uninjured. Each of the main characters is suspended in limbo, reliving certain parts of their lives, talking to dead friends and relatives, trying to figure out if they want to live or die. At the same time, we see their friends and relatives reacting to the news of the accident and the possibility of one of them not making it. We also get to see a little bit of the other young driver’s life and how the events of his day put him in a cross path with the four friends.

In the last five minutes, everything comes together. We see the accident one last time, which segues to a dynamic montage.  Ambulances and paramedics arrive at the scene. In the hospital, the doctors attend the victims. An undertaker prepares a corpse for viewing. A typesetter at a newspaper prepares an obituary. A large group of young people walks into a cemetery. All the scenes intercut with each other to a point of almost pandemonium. We see the young man who caused the accident boarding a plane to escape overseas. At a big church, a coffin is placed in front of the altar, a choir sings, people cry. We end on a POV of the coffin going down, cut to black.

Next, we see the finished obituary; it is then when we learn who died in the accident.