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...
“I did Jurassic World because Colin Trevorrow is directing it, who [I worked with on] Safety Not Guaranteed,” said Johnson when Total Film caught up with the pair on Park City’s Main Street after the screening. “He called and said do you want to trip out and do a dinosaur movie and I was like, ‘Fuck yes!’”
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.”
