At last January's Sundance Film Festival, the big finds were The Blair Witch Project and Happy, Texas. The first film, which its makers sold to Artisan Entertainment for $1.1 million, went on to become the feel-scared (or -shafted) movie of the summer and to earn nearly $140 million at the domestic box office. By this yardstick, Happy, Texas, which Miramax Films picked up for about $6 million, should sweep the Oscars and outgross Titanic.
In movies, of course, the rules of mathematics apply less universally than the law of the fluke. Blair Witch was a cunning fluke; Happy, Texas is...