The Odds Aren't Good for Lynn Shelton's Humpday
The stats geeks at Deconstructing Sundance aim to be the FiveThirtyEight of the film festival world by predicting the future box office success of Sundance films, using the words in their festival guide descriptions (and a Bayesian algorithm) alone. Example: 62% of Sundance competition films in the last 15 years whose descriptions included the words "gay," "gays," or "homosexual" went on to commercial success. So "gay" becomes a positive indicator of success, and so on and so forth.
They've got their 2009 predictions out now, and the news ain't good for local filmmaker Lynn Shelton. Her bromantic mumblecore film Humpday is predicted to be a "has been" at this year's fest with 89.69% confidence. What's to blame? The words in the film's description that don't bode well: "bad," "easily," "dynamic," "mutual," "big," "camera," "beyond," "Anna," "writer," "expertly," "get," and "classic." On the other hand, the film's got a few positive indicators going for it, including that one of the main characters is named Ben.
