Random Hearts (1999)

Taglines: He’ll stop at nothing to find the truth.

Random Hearts movie storyline. Sergeant William “Dutch” Van Den Broeck (Harrison Ford) is a Washington, D.C., police sergeant who is working on a case involving a crooked detective; he is married to a magazine editor. Kay Chandler (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a congresswoman running for re-election; she is married to a lawyer and has a teenage daughter. A plane bound for Miami crashes, and everyone on board is killed.

Dutch realizes that his wife was on the plane, but the airline has no record of her. He believes that she was registered under another name and was having an affair. He finds out that she was sitting next to Kay’s husband. Wanting to learn more about the affair, he meets with Kay. Concerned about the publicity, she is not willing to talk and tells him to leave her alone.

Dutch goes to Miami and visits the hotel that his wife was planning to go to. Kay, who has changed her mind, meets with him there. They talk more about the situation. After flying back home, they make out in her car. Dutch goes to a campaign fundraiser for Kay and convinces her to not drop out of the race. He invites her to his cabin near Chesapeake Bay. She visits him, and they have sex. Dutch still wants to know more about the affair and believes that their two spouses had an apartment together, but Kay tells him that they should forget about the past and move on with their lives.

Random Hearts is a 1999 American romantic drama film directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas. Based on the 1984 novel of the same name by Warren Adler, the film is about a police officer and a congresswoman who discover that their spouses were having an affair prior to being killed in an air disaster.

Film Review for Random Hearts

SOME time in late 1998, I read in Variety that Harrison Ford would star in the adaptation of my novel ”Random Hearts,” to be directed by Sydney Pollack. The news stunned me. The project had been in development for 15 years, and I had long since abandoned the idea that it would ever be made.

Published in 1984 and translated into more than 25 languages, ”Random Hearts” had been almost immediately optioned for the movies and put into the hellhole of ”development.” Having sold or optioned 10 of my 25 published novels to the movies (including ”The War of the Roses,” the only other one to reach the screen), I believed I had encountered every conceivable permutation of the development process. Not so. My ”Random Hearts” experience shattered the smugness of those conclusions.

No, this is not going to be another complaint about how badly Hollywood treats the novelist. We’ve heard that story ad infinitum; it is a given. This story is about time. Why did they take so long (the movie opens Friday), and how did my book survive the ordeal?

If memory serves, the novel’s movie life began in the mind of Dustin Hoffman. He had seen a precis of the plot in Publishers Weekly. The novel deals with the aftermath of a plane crash in which two cheating spouses are killed, leaving the surviving spouses baffled by the revelations that follow. It explores the emotional consequences of sudden loss, the discovery of betrayal and the unfathomable and random nature of human attraction.

I met with Dustin at a coffee shop near Lincoln Center. He expressed his enthusiasm for my novel, which he instantly dubbed ”our project.” The story was exactly what he had been searching for, he told me — an intelligent adult love story. Although I had already sold two books to the movies, ”Trans-Siberian Express” and ”The War of the Roses,” I had not yet learned to armor myself against the Hollywood weapon of choice, designed to kill or maim the most resilient ego. It is called flattery.

By the end of our meeting, I was convinced that I had gained a place of immortality in the pantheon of literary genius. My ”input” on the potential movie was eagerly solicited. It was the last time it would be sought. From that moment on, I would be out of the creative loop forever.

Anointed by Dustin, ”Random Hearts” was optioned by CBS Theatrical Films. Dustin chose Naomi Foner to write the screenplay. I was still naive enough to believe that this meant ”Random Hearts” would quickly grace the silver screen. Was I wrong!

Nearing the first year of the option period, I learned that Dustin had rejected the Foner script and was now seeking another writer. In a vain effort to gain more knowledge about the future of ”our project,” I lunched with Bernie Sofronski, then an executive at CBS Theatrical.

At lunch, he talked about his own vision for the adaptation. All movie executives have their own visions. In fact, everybody who ever touches these projects has a vision. None of these visions ever goes anywhere. The only visions that ever reach some form of reality are the visions of the director and the bankable star.

As Bernie and I parted company at that lunch, his last words to me were ”Good luck.” Good luck? There it was, another code word for ”The end.” At that moment, I knew it was over between ”Random Hearts” and CBS Theatrical. A week later, CBS disbanded the company and the option had expired. The Hollywood community is at heart a yenta business: they all know, or think they know, what is in everybody’s soup. With Dustin Hoffman still ”attached,” ”Random Hearts” would be eagerly sought after by other studios.

My friend Dan Sherkow was now an executive at TriStar. Ahead of the pack of new suitors, he quickly interested his boss, Jeff Sagansky, who was then running the studio. After a conference with my literary agent, we shuffled through the offers and agreed to let Jeff, who had become an enthusiastic ”Random Hearts” fan, option it for TriStar. Jeff assigned the adaptation to the screenwriter Darryl Ponicsan, who produced another script. Par for the course. Screenwriters are an expendable species.

From time to time after ”Random Hearts” landed at TriStar, I visited with Jeff, whose accessibility was a Hollywood aberration. Mostly, I showed my tattered flag and pumped him for information about what had become of my wayward work. He assured me that it was still on the front burner. In addition to visions, Hollywood has burners, front and back. With Dustin involved, it was still on the front burner.