Top 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2013: #56. Joe Swanberg’s Drinking Buddies

Drinking Buddies

Director/Writer: Joe Swanberg
Producer(s): Swanberg, Burn Later Productions’ Paul Bernon and Sam Slater, Andrea Roa (Sunlight Jr.) and Alicia Van Couvering (Nobody Walks)
U.S. Distributor: Rights Available
Cast: Anna Kendrick, Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, Ron Livingston, Ti West

While Woody Allen was venturing oversees for the past decade, we could undoubtedly mention that it was Joe Swanberg who merits the label of hardest working American filmmaker. I imagine it has paid dividends as after years of micro-budget productions, the filmmaker’s latest features Olivia Wilde, Anna Kendrick, Jake Johnson and Ron Livingston and the ace talent of Beasts of the Southern Wild Cinematographer Ben Richardson.

Gist: Drinking Buddies is the story of what happens when the worlds of home life and work-buddy camaraderie collide. LUKE and KATE are two beer geeks in a Chicago brewery. Inseparable on the job, the two share everything from childish inside jokes and a penchant for alcoholic snobbery to a congenial attraction barely masked by their casual flirting. Both are in committed relationships – Jake with his live-in girlfriend, JILL and Kate with her older music-producer boyfriend, CHRIS. A spin on the tangled relationship politics for the age of texting, Drinking Buddies is about the limits of friendship, the rules and trials of relationships, and, of course, the unique fellowship that comes from sharing a perfect craft beer.

Release Date: Thinking this was a Sundance entry, but now I’m beginning to think that nor will SXSW be the lieu of the premiere. It might be time for the Swanberg name to make an international premiere first.