Last night saw the Sundance premiere of Digging For Fire, a funny, improv heavy romantic dramedy propelled by a light-hearted murder mystery. Directed and co-written by Mumblecore stalwart Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies), the film also stars his friend and co-writer Jake Johnson – who’ll next be seen in this summer’s mega-sequel, Jurassic World...
So, was his first experience of a huge studio blockbuster a bit of a shock to the system compared to Fire, a small-budget indie that was shot in just 17 days? “I don’t really think there is an actual difference even though there really is a huge difference,” said Johnson. “From action to cut [on Jurassic World] it’s still my buddy Colin and the writer is Derek Connolly, who wrote Safety, and you go into the same bars at night talking about the next day’s scene. [The only difference was] there was so many people on the set and a huge set, as opposed to the one house that we did Digging For Fire in.”
And would Swanberg, the prolifically busy indie director, ever be tempted to ‘do a Trevorrow’? “Sure, I’m very open to it,” he said. “But when I think about those kinds of movies and talk to my friends about those movies there are a lot of limiting factors. It would be exciting for me to tap into a different audience and mess with that a little bit, but the truth is I’m really happy making the movies I’m making now.”
