The Lottery

Here's a weird one for you.

Due to my incalculable fame, a movie was chosen as the special project in my Advanced Speech class. After picking a story--Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"--all we had to do was adapt it to script form, assign ourselves roles, raid the school's costume room, and shoot the thing. After so recently knocking back epics like The Godfathers and Father Sin, it sounded like a cakewalk.

And it was. But secretly (or not so secretly?) the group setting frustrated me, especially during the process of adaptation. Didn't these fool amateurs know anything about narrative economy? About the amalgamation of minor characters? Perhaps the true gift of this odd footnote is that it makes the usual Danman Productions team look like seasoned pros.

The fact is that I was control freak. I probably drove everyone nuts shooting this. That might be okay if the whole movie was as cool as the opening sequence, but, sadly, the rest is a mess, right down to the incomprehensible climax. It was like hiring David Lynch to direct Dune. It was out of my comfort zone and I didn't play well with strangers.

So, no. Not officially a Danman Production. But who are we kidding?