MILLIONS (A LOTTERY STORY)

You'd think a tour of the pantry wouldn't take too long, but The Pickle Lady just kept talking and talking about its contents...

I think it's safe to say that most of us have entertained the idea of winning the lottery at some point in our lives: what we'd buy, what we'd do, and who we could be if money were no longer a concern. Some of us have even weighed the downside of winning millions of dollars, like how much it would suck to have ne'er-do-well relatives crawl out of the woodwork and hit us up for money, or how weird it would be to never work again. Millions (A Lottery Story) is a freakishly fascinating documentary that profiles six different Lotto winners and weighs both the pros and cons of becoming an instant millionaire. It also proves that hitting the jackpot is never what you expect.

Louis Eisenberg was a $5 million jackpot winner in 1981 who ditched his low-paying job changing fluorescent lightbulbs for the high life. He became a novelty celebrity in ads for the New York State Lotto, and found himself working the talk show circuit and rubbing shoulders with A-listers. He's an witty and engaging fellow, and it's as much fun listening to his stories now as it must have been in the early 80s. Trouble is, he squandered a good deal of his money visiting the dog track and generally thinking five million dollars would last forever. I'm pretty certain he's also the lottery winner who gave us a little survey of the medication he's on, and the emotional and physical problems that have beset him are enough to make your head swim. There's no saying where he'd be if he'd never won at all, but it's hard to look at his situation and feel that the outcome was entirely positive. The same goes for Curtis Sharp, the first African American to win five million dollars. He rose to fame alongside Louis Eisenberg, and was easily recognizable in his brown bowler hat. After a brief period of high-rolling fun, Sharp made a series of bad investments and wound up broke. It seems that it would take far more than money to turn some lives around.

In fact, a surprising number of lives were not turned around by these huge windfalls. One woman kept her job as a "water squirter" at a local diner even after her lottery win, and she continued seeking ten cent bargains at tag sales just as she'd always done. She felt there was no point in abandoning the life she knew, and anyway, those ten cent deals are just good sense! Another couple kept right on working after securing their retirement nest egg, but my favorite Lotto winner of all was The Pickle Lady. For some reason she wound up giving us a detailed tour of her pantry, and I actually doubled over laughing at this woman's vast supply of home canned salsa (pronounced "selsa") and pickles.

You'd think a tour of the pantry wouldn't take too long, but The Pickle Lady just kept talking and talking about its contents—"This selsa I put in a Gerber baby food jar from when my kids were little. This is the batch I put in a Musselman's Applesauce jar. This jar is really good because I can put two layers of big pickles on the bottom and another layer of tiny pickles on top. Here I have a Pace selsa jar that I saved and used for my own selsa. They're good jars because the seals still work. Ohh. We'd better use these 2004 pickles first, because they're looking kind of cloudy. But the ones from 1995 are still okay. This selsa..." And she went on and on like that, and each jar still had its original label perfectly intact, as though it probably hadn't been washed properly. I literally had tears shooting out of my eyes in a 3-D kind of way. This is the mark of a good documentary.

Despite the fact that I wound up laughing at this earnest woman and her canning, Millions does an excellent job of capturing the humanity behind the prize money. It's a thoughtful look at what many consider to be the American dream, and like so many dreams, winning the lottery can easily turn into a nightmare. It'll certainly make you think twice next time you purchase a ticket.