DIGGERS

Year: 2006
USA: Magnolia Pictures
Cast: Paul Rudd, Lauren Ambrose, Ron Eldard, Josh Hamilton, Sarah Paulson, Ken Marino, Maura Tierney
Director: Katherine Dieckmann
Country: USA
USA: 90 mins
USA Rated: R for language, drug use and some sexual content
USA Release Date: 27 April 2007 (Limited Release)
US Distributor

Synopsis

DIGGERS combines humor and pathos in a bittersweet story about a tightly knit cluster of friends, all of whom are forced to embrace change as their small-town way of life is soon to be altered forever.

It's September 1976 on the south shore of Long Island. Ads on the TV in the local bar announce "a change coming over America" with the upcoming Ford-Carter presidential election, but local clam diggers are more worried about losing their already-fragile trade to an encroaching corporation.

Like his father and grandfather before him, Hunt (Paul Rudd) is a digger, but one with a restless, imaginative side exemplified by the black-and-white Polaroids he takes. Hunt's lifelong buddies and fellow diggers include Frankie Lozo (Ken Marino), a brash father struggling to support five kids and his longsuffering but spunky wife, Julie (Sarah Paulson); laid-back local ladies' man Jack (Ron Eldard); and philosophy spouting pot dealer Cons (Josh Hamilton).

A sudden death propels the four best friends to look at their lives, as it does for Hunt's recently divorced (and "Hite Report" reading) older sister, Gina (Maura Tierney), who works as a waitress at the local diner. Meanwhile, Hunt falls for a hip young woman visiting from Manhattan, Zoe (Lauren Ambrose), who wonders why his artistic impulses don't propel him out of a dead-end town.