Ally Was Screaming

Ally Was Screaming (2014)

Two friends try to do the right thing. Seth and Nole's pal Ally has just died. As they sort through her things, they find a winning lottery ticket - unclaimed and for a massive sum. Legally, Ally's abusive ex-husband is entitled to the winnings but the boys decide to keep the ticket out of his hands. There's just one problem. The executor of Ally's estate is her sister, a stickler for rules.

Date of release
2014-09-16
TMDB
7.6 / 10 (5)
Runtime
1h 28m
Genres
Thriller, Comedy
Director
Jeremy Thomas

Casting

Interesting facts

Ally was Screaming is a 2014 Canadian dark comedy-thriller film written and directed by Jeremy Thomas, as well as his second feature film. The film explores the psychological and moral ramifications of "doing a bad thing in order to achieve a good result". Two men grieving for their best friend discover her winning lottery ticket. The men try to figure out how they can keep it, at first fantasizing, then actually debating, and finally plotting to murder the executrix of Ally's estate, her sister, who otherwise would allow the winnings to go to their dead friend's abusive husband.

Production

The End, the last largely self-financed film made by Thomas and his first feature film, did well at film festivals and got "great" reviews, thereby earning the trust of producers for his next film. Ally Was Screaming was produced with the assistance of the Government of Alberta, Alberta Media Fund, and the participation of Telefilm Canada.

Working from a small budget, Thomas had to produce something "feasible", so he wrote a script that was purposefully introspective with a small number of characters. "What you don't have in spectacle, you have to have in sensibility, and you have to have in interesting ideas." Unlike most writers, Thomas does not send a script out to be read; instead, he does a "test telling", sitting down with a potential producer, actor, or other interested part…

Some fifty or more titles were suggested before Ally Was Screaming was finally accepted as the most compelling, despite how the title could make it "sound like an exploitative horror flick." One of the titles Jeremy Thomas suggested was Why Saints Look Sad and Devils Look Happy, from a line of dialogue between Nole and Seth.

First day auditions for Ally Was Screaming were held in Vancouver on 19 September 2013 and in Calgary on 27 September 2013. Thomas later said it was "unfortunate" that the actors chosen were all so "good-looking"; he had wanted "normal guys".

As this was his first externally budgeted film, it was important to Telefilm Canada that the project had a "very strong" crew. To ensure this, Tom Benz was brought in as the production manager; he had been production manager for Brokeback Mountain.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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