Production Budget Analysis

The production budget for Digging for Fire (2015) has not been publicly disclosed.

CAST: Jake Johnson, Rosemarie DeWitt, Jude Swanberg, Alicia Van Couvering, Timothy Simons, Jenny Slate DIRECTOR: Joe Swanberg CINEMATOGRAPHY: Ben Richardson MUSIC: Dan Romer PRODUCTION: Lucky Coffee Productions, Walcott Productions

Box Office Performance

Theatrical box office data is not publicly available for Digging for Fire (2015). This may indicate a limited release, direct-to-streaming, or a release predating modern box office tracking.

Profitability Assessment

Insufficient publicly available data to assess profitability.

INDUSTRY IMPACT

PRODUCTION NOTES

▸ Production

Digging for Fire was based on a real incident in which Jake Johnson and his wife dug up a bone and a gun in the garden of a house they had rented. Over a couple of weeks, he and a group of his friends dug up various objects before deciding to bury them again. Johnson described the experience to Joe Swanberg about three years later and they decided to make a film about it. They wrote a two-and-a-half–page outline that summarized the plot but included no dialogue or detailed character descriptions. Swanberg wanted the actors to improvise the details of each scene and allowed them to make choices about their characters: for instance, Orlando Bloom decided that his character would ride a motorcycle, Chris Messina suggested that his character go swimming naked,

Digging for Fire features an ensemble cast, the largest Swanberg had worked with at the time. He and Johnson cast the film by contacting friends and other actors who they knew had enjoyed their previous film together, Drinking Buddies. and Malibu, California. Swanberg and cinematographer Ben Richardson decided to shoot on 35 mm film rather than digitally, as most of Swanberg's previous films had been made. They decided to shoot on film, Richardson said, because "there is a certain visual integrity to a film-derived image that is still lacking for me in most of the digitally-derived imagery that we see".

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

No awards data currently available for this title.

CRITICAL RECEPTION

Digging for Fire has been met with generally positive reviews from critics. On the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 66% approval rating, based on 67 reviews with an average rating of 6.15/10. The site's consensus states: "Digging for Fire finds director/co-writer Joe Swanberg working from a familiar palette, but in ways that suggest he's taking new and exciting strides as a filmmaker." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 69 out of 100 based on reviews from 22 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

Film critic Richard Roeper described Digging for Fire as "a movie made by someone who clearly loves the art of movies" and praised the casting and editing. A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote of the film's "appealing honesty" and its "tight, satisfying narrative". Variety Ben Kenigsberg characterized the film as "a lovely slice of everything and nothing" and gave particular praise to the cinematography, editing and improvisation. Peter Travers, who awarded the film 3 out of 4 stars in a review for Rolling Stone, highlighted the performances, cinematography and score, and felt that Digging for Fire showed Swanberg to be "a true filmmaker". Screen International critic Tim Grierson found the film to be honest and insightful, and drew particular attention to Johnson and DeWitt's "nimble, low-key performances". An Banh of Indiewire opined that the film was the most "emotionally mature" of Swanberg's works and that each of the actors gave "purposeful, plot-driven performances" in spite of the large cast.

The Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones, on the other hand, felt that the story suffered because of the large cast and wrote that "mostly it's just a toe listlessly pushing dirt around". Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune praised Ben Richardson's cinematography and "natural tone" of the acting but felt that the dialogue was lacking, giving the film 2 out of 4 stars. The San Francisco Chronicle G.