The Big Picture

Your Lucky Day marks Dan Brown’s feature debut. It’s about a group of people at a convenience store who are caught in a deadly situation when the wealthiest person among them wins the lottery. While at Fantastic Fest 2023, Brown and star Jessica Garza revisit making the movie, including taking the concept from short film to feature, working with Angus Cloud, overcoming production challenges and more. Your Lucky Day is in theaters now and set to hit digital on November 14th.

What would you do if you won the lottery? Could you contain your excitement or are you bound to let everyone around you know? Dan Brown’s feature directorial debut, Your Lucky Day, might make you think twice about having a big reaction in a public place.

The movie focuses on a group of people at a convenience store. When the wealthiest of the bunch wins $156 million in the lottery, a man holds him at gunpoint and tries to steal the ticket. After the situation turns deadly, the survivors must figure out their next move. Do they turn to the authorities or do whatever it takes to get a cut of the winnings?

With Your Lucky Day now in theaters and due out on digital on November 14th, it’s time to share my chat with Brown and star Jessica Garza from Fantastic Fest 2023! Brown walks us through the process of taking the concept from short film to feature film, Garza explains why she had great faith in Brown as a first time feature director, and both sing Angus Cloud’s praises.

Hear about all of that and more straight from Brown and Garza in the video interview at the top of this article, or you can read the conversation in transcript form below.

Your Lucky Day After a dispute over a winning lottery ticket turns into a deadly hostage situation, the witnesses must decide exactly how far they’ll go—and how much blood they’re willing to spill—for a cut of the $156 million. Director Dan Brown Cast Angus Cloud, Jessica Garza, Elliot Knight, Sterling Beaumon, Mousa Hussein Kraish, Spencer Garrett, Jason O’Mara Runtime 89 Minutes Main Genre Action Genres Horror Studio Well Go USA
PERRI NEMIROFF: Clearly I quite like Your Lucky Day, but our audience might not know about it yet so Dan, can you give everyone a brief synopsis of your movie?

DAN BROWN: I’m really bad at this so if it sounds bad, I think it’s still a pretty good movie. [Laughs] The basic concept is a wealthier man wins the lottery. He does it right in front of somebody else who would like that money for himself, and he robs him. Then you sort of have basically a hostage situation with everybody who was in the store at the same time. There’s a cop who comes around the corner, things just kind of spiral out of control, and we just sort of watch what people are willing to do for $156 million.

You got it! And no surprise you’re a synopsis pro given this is something that went from a short to a feature film. I believe that you said there was a lot of interest in turning it into a feature after the short came out. What did that interest look like and why did you turn it down then?

BROWN: It came out a while ago when the contained thriller was super hot, and so I got a lot of meetings asking for a feature. The short has a very – I’m still very into tragedy, I guess, but it was very much a tragic ending, and I didn’t feel like making – I was like, “Well, what would I do with this? I would have to change this. I don’t think it would be satisfying in the same way as a movie.”

So I didn’t want to just make a feature, I think, is part of it, and then I had a completely unsellable script. I was like, “Let’s make this thing!” It was anti-war, anti-everything. It was really a mess. So it was kind of like I just took a bunch of meetings and I just didn’t feel like that was the right time. And maybe, I think also, some of just my own personal – I was kind of more hopeful about certain things, I guess, at the time, that things were gonna get maybe a little bit better and that some of the things that I felt like were really [relevant] maybe were gonna be a little less relevant, and then it was clearly still very relevant. It felt like it was just growing in the back of my mind watching things happening, and I was like, “Okay, I think there’s a lot more I can do here.” And that sort of gave me the idea to be like, “Okay, I know how to make this work for me as a feature and how to kind of help flesh it out and make a story that I would be happy with.”

Is there a specific thing in the feature version that you would call your break story idea, the thing that convinced you, “Yes, I do have a feature idea for this now?”

BROWN: I think the main one was that a rich person would win the lottery. That was sort of like, “Okay, that works. That I can make sense of.” Before, it was just a sweet old guy and he won a bunch of money, and I felt like that’s a different feeling than someone who didn’t deserve it, didn’t need, didn’t want it. I just felt like, “Oh, that has something to say,” and I could see how that would make it more interesting and more powerful.

Image via Well Go USA

Jessica, I want to touch on the fact that this is Dan’s first feature. There was a particular quote Dan said in our production notes, “If we could find a cast that would be interested in taking a chance on a director who had never made a feature, maybe it could happen.” So, for you, what was it about him and the script that made you think, “Yep, this is a guy and material that’s worth taking a chance on?”

JESSICA GARZA: It was a pretty easy decision, not one I had to spend a lot of time on. I read a lot of scripts — well, not currently, given the current state of the industry — but when we are up and running, I read many scripts in a week and there are some easy no’s sometimes [laughs], but Dan’s script was definitely not a no. It was a yes.

I was really interested in doing something different than past work, a challenge, getting down in the trenches and the dirt with you and everyone else, and really going for it. I also had seen a short film of his called Color TV No Vacancy, and I really loved it. It was so specific and it had its own style and voice and point of view and perspective, and I knew Dan had stuff to say, and that’s the most important thing, I think, when looking at these scripts or, you know, these “newbies” or first-time directors. I told Dan, I was like, “Don’t you worry. There are people who are making their tenth feature, and maybe they should stop.” [Laughs] So a first-time one is not too scary when everything’s on the paper and everything’s in his brain and there’s past work that backs him up.

Dan, let’s talk about casting Jessica now because another thing that I was reading was that her self-tape blew you away. What was it about her self-tape that set her audition apart from the other tapes you received?

BROWN: I don’t want to say anything bad about anyone else. It was just a great tape. I was just looking and I had gotten great tapes in, but it wasn’t quite right yet, and you had this one – it had strength, it had vulnerability, it had all the elements that I was really hoping for. I just remember being very excited and – oh, there’s a story I shouldn’t tell …

Well, now I want to hear it! [Laughs]

GARZA: [Laughs] You can’t go back! If it’s about me, I really wanna know.

BROWN: I think when you’re making a movie and you have no backup, really, and there wasn’t a lot of money, it just sort of felt like you were kind of an exposed person, I think, which makes sense, and anyone could say no at any time. I remember we had you audition with somebody else for a part …

GARZA: I remember.

BROWN: … and I was like, “Oh no.” He didn’t work. Terrible human being.

GARZA: I feel a little bit less bad because my manager was like, “How did that read go?” And I was like, “Umm…” [Laughs]

BROWN: And I was like, “Oh no, does she think that’s her scene partner? Is she gonna be like, this is a no?” So I was very nervous at that moment. “She’s gonna say no. She’s gonna think this is her co-star.” This is terrible. They didn’t have the right chemistry. Let’s just say that!

It’s always interesting to get a look behind the curtain at that process because there is a significant amount of mixing and matching that goes on in order to find the perfect balance, which is what you do with your core ensemble in the film ultimately.

BROWN: Thank you. We got really good offers too from bigger names and stuff that were interested in it, but it was offer-only and I wasn’t gonna do that. There was really good interest in the script, but I wanted to see what you were gonna do because I feel like you have this wonderful story to tell. I don’t want to give anything away about the movie, but you go on a journey that I was like, “Okay, I’m really excited about this part of it.” We get to see an unexpected kind of hero come forward. I was really excited about that. That was one of the ideas, again when it became an idea of a feature, that was the thing that cracked it, but the thing before was always like, “Oh, I think there’s something really fun.”

I watched my wife have a natural birth and I was like, “Oh, this is an amazing powerful thing. I want the hero – she can do anything.” There’s a part of her that switched over midway and I was like, “Oh, this is amazing. I haven’t seen someone turn this into something.” There’s normally a certain way they handle babies, and really, in another movie, I think they’d be like, “Oh, and then she has the baby when it’s really stressful,” and you’re like, “But that’s not actually how your human body works.” Your body won’t let you have a baby when it’s in a stressful time, like in — it’s a good movie, but what’s the one where she has birth in bathtub?

GARZA: Emily Blunt and John Krasinski.

A Quiet Place.

BROWN: Yes, but it happens, right? I just felt like it’d be fun to have that kind of powerful female character. She’s gonna take care of things, and [we’re] gonna watch that person rise from the background to the foreground. So I was really excited about that.

To build on that, Jessica, when you’re jumping into filming this, what quality of hers were you most excited to get to play, but then also, what is something about her that wound up being more creatively fulfilling to tap into than you ever could have imagined?

GARZA: Well, definitely to add on to what Dan said, the complexity of her and the way that she surprised me on the page is probably what interested me the most about her, and what I think will interest other people. All human beings are very complex, especially when you’re put into situations that are life or death. And I really resonated with her being okay to be vulnerable all the time because I tend to be on the vulnerable side. But then I loved her ability to put that in her pocket and survive and fight for what she believes in, for what she wants, what she needs in this life, all of those things.

All good qualities to highlight. A multitude of layers there.

GARZA: I would hope to be as strong as she is. I don’t want to give myself the credit there, but I think that’s what really draws me into her, and I think what will draw in other people.

Well Go USA Entertainment

I did want to highlight Angus [Cloud’s] wonderful work in the film, but actually, more so something that I read in the notes about how he carried himself on set, which I think is something very special. Dan, you said this; “He would openly celebrate everyone around him.” Can you each give me an example of a time on set when he celebrated you when you needed it?

BROWN: I just remember there’s a scene, and he’s not in the scene, I can’t talk about the scene, but he’s not in the scene really. He’s kind of almost background. He doesn’t need to be there in some ways, and he was just there, and we’d do a take and he would cheer everybody on and say that everyone was doing a great job. I’ve never seen that before from anybody else, but he was like, “Great job, everybody!”

GARZA: Yeah, he was out there on set when he didn’t need to be. It’s easy to go back to your trailer or to go to get a snack or whatever the case may be, and he was always present and always not just willing but excited to be there at four in the morning into hour 10 or whatever it was, and excited to work and to get to know people from me, a co-star, to Dan as director, to caterers. Everyone on set, he knew their names and wanted to get to know who they were.

No better kind of partner to have on a film set.

To open this up to more of the ensemble now, Jessica, can you give me an example of a scene partner you had in this movie where your approach to the work was very similar and the second you met, you were immediately in sync, but then I also want the opposite, someone with a different approach that challenged you to adapt and maybe try something new and for the better?

GARZA: I am very lucky that me and my baby daddy, Elliot [Knight], we got along great. I can’t tell you how many silly photos and videos I have of me and him in my phone. We’re joking around and laughing, and it was great because we could do that in one second, and then the next second, when the camera started rolling, we were ready to go for the next thing. And so we had great chemistry, luckily. And I hadn’t met him before! It was really risky. It could have been scary because we did not have a chem read or anything, but I lucked out because he’s a great guy. We just had the same flow. We operated on the same flow.

Maybe someone who challenged me was actually Angus. He’s so charismatic and so magnetic, but he was unpredictable sometimes or would do something that I didn’t expect or that I couldn’t have guessed or wasn’t ready for, and having to listen and be there and be present with him, moment to moment, and kind of let him take me for a ride was so much fun and different than maybe my approach, which could be a little bit more rigid. It’s all different, but it all worked out, and it’s all great.

Image via Well Go USA.

That’s making me think of a question that I love asking because when you make a movie, you want to plan, plan, plan, but sometimes when things go wrong, that unexpected magic you find is better than anything you had planned for. Can you give me an example of a day on set when things weren’t going to plan, you found a good way to pivot, and a scene in the movie is better off for it?

BROWN: One of them was I had written this scene, Angus has this moment, in the script it was a generic version of what an empty vessel of a human being would talk about. That sounds terrible, but you know what I mean? He wasn’t deep-thinking. In the script he was more like a motor mouth, kind of brash and jumped into something, so he just listed off things that he would do if he was a millionaire, which is very generic, and that was sort of the point. Angus was running the line and it just wasn’t working right. I think because we had a good working relationship, it was easy to sort of shift it if it needed to shift, or sometimes I’d be like, “Oh, we can lose that line,” and he’s like, “No, I really want to keep that line.” But this was one of those cases where it wasn’t working and what he was saying wasn’t connecting. I remember him running the line and he said, “Live life like Pablo,” and [Jessica’s] like, “Oh, that’s great.” So I was like, “Okay, I’ll trust the room that that’s working right.”

And he just sort of did almost like a monologue that was all kind of on his own. Some of it had been on the page, but most of it was just stuff he was making up. Really, he took what was written, just shifted it around a little bit, and then he added a bunch of stuff at the end that made it poignant in a way that I hadn’t kind of expected. So that was really just kind of like a lovely moment where he took this scene in a place and portrayed a sadness and a deepness that the character didn’t have in that moment, and I felt like it was much stronger for that.

That’s an excellent example right there.

Image via Well Go USA

I am always eager to highlight unsung heroes on a film and ADs are often the unsung heroes on a set who keep it up and running. Dan, you had said this about [Michelle McGhan], “Mitchy has an energy and a spark that you needed to push on through all this.” How did Mitchy do that and what qualities does she have that you hope to see in more ADs in the future?

BROWN: She had a wonderful energy and then just a great kind of caring atmosphere about her, which is definitely what I wanted as well. There was another AD on for like a second and I was like, “This isn’t working. We need to find someone else,” and he was only there for a day. Then, thankfully, we found Mitchy, and she was just this wonderful person. We were working on it, she was excited about the script. I remember going over to her house and like, “Okay, let’s work on the schedule a little bit,” because she came in a little late, so it was just sort of like, “Let’s work on it together.” She just really cared about what we were doing and what the process was gonna be like.

Part of doing a small movie is some stuff wasn’t all the way done. We were working on the store still kind of while we were already shooting it …

I heard about the production designer too, and you stepped in and did a significant amount of work in that department as well.

BROWN: [Laughs] Yes I did. But Mitchy, she started hanging tinsel around. She’s like, “You’re making a Christmas movie!” So she kept that kind of thing, and then she would just be a fun person to have around on set and just sort of a real sweetheart. Again, I think the exact kind of energy that I think the set needed. It was an intense shoot. It was a fast shoot. To have someone who was really so openly caring, and she just really loved Angus, too.

GARZA: Yeah, she was efficient but good at taking care of people, which is harder than you think to find both qualities in someone, and she had both.

BROWN: I think sometimes that role can kind of take on an adversarial, but they don’t have to, and I felt like she did a really great job with getting people together and keeping us on track.

GARZA: And getting creative and having ideas and all the great things.

That’s why I’ll always take the opportunity to highlight an AD because it is very, very challenging to find that balance between being efficient and getting work done, but also doing it with kindness and enthusiasm, so when I hear someone who can do that, I like to highlight them.

Before I let you go, some silly questions about winning the lottery. I’m sure you’re gonna get a lot of these while you’re here. I hope these are somewhat original!

You both win the lottery, who is the first person in your life that you tell?

GARZA: Definitely my mom. Definitely my mom, and then my dad. Yeah, those two.

BROWN: Mine’s easy. It’s my wife.

Smart answers. You win the lottery and buy an unlimited supply of your favorite thing in the world. What are you buying?

GARZA: Hot Cheetos. [Laughs]

I respect that answer so much.

BROWN: That’s a great answer.

GARZA: That was the first thing that came to my brain, and I couldn’t think of anything else to lie about. That’s the truth.

BROWN: I don’t know if this is exactly what your question was, but I would probably buy international travel tickets.

No, that counts.

BROWN: Because I think I’d love to go around the world.

GARZA: That’s so much better than mine.

My mind went down that route. This is the dumbest answer I could give, but I would buy a lifetime supply of Whole Foods peanut butter.

GARZA: There’s just so much daily guilt we all have getting our snacks. It’s like, I know I don’t need the snack, but I want the snack, and so if I could get rid of my day-to-day guilt about snacks … [Laughs]

It’s also the mentality that I need to know that I have an absurd amount of my favorite snacks so I never run out.

Last one. You can finance the dream project of your choice. What is that project?

GARZA: The first thing that comes to my head because that’s all I’m going off, instinct here, is Kill Bill 3. I would just love to see that. I know that’s kind of a fanfic dream and hope and wish that I know is not happening, but I just would love to see what that would look like with the daughter coming back and seeing Uma Thurman on the screen again. All those things.

BROWN: That’s a great answer.

GARZA: I’m sure there’s plenty of money to do that if there’s interest in it. [Laughs]

BROWN: If he’s interested.

GARZA: Yeah, exactly.

Now I’m thinking of a million projects that I want to bring back. I can name-drop quite a few. I would finance another season of Ash vs. Evil Dead. I feel like that’s a good Fantastic Fest-y answer.

GARZA: That reminds me, I would do The Newsroom on HBO.

That’s a good choice, too.

GARZA: I miss that show, especially in this time, you know what I mean? In this crazy world. That came in 2012 or something like that and so much has changed.

That’s for sure. What do you have for us, Dan?

BROWN: Dream project. Let me think.

You need an answer to this question now! You come to a festival with a really hot feature debut, you’ve gotta be ready to go!

BROWN: I have a movie that I wanna do next, which is called The Afterlife. It’s about two brothers who escape a suicide cult, and then there’s a genre twist on it. I think it’s really exciting. But if I had all the money in the world, this is maybe a nerdy answer, but I would like to do Slaughterhouse-Five. That book is just amazing. I love Kurt Vonnegut. It just feels like the way your memory works where you’re living in the moment right now, and your head’s somewhere else. I just felt like it’s a wonderful book that I’m obsessed with.

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