Watch Anna Kendrick Stitch Up Orlando Bloom

Jake Johnson is probably best-known as sourpuss Nick Miller on Zooey Deschanel's sitcom New Girl, but his recent feature-length effort Digging For Fire shows the actor in a whole new light. He co-wrote the script alongside director Joe Swanberg, and he stars in the film as a young father confronting a little quarter-to-mid-life ennui. Rosemarie DeWitt co-stars as his wife, similarly burnt out by the demands of married, domestic life. The two decide to part for a weekend, and each lives a surreal adventure — Johnson, with a dig for a buried body in his backyard accompanied by Brie Larson, and DeWitt, with a night on the town with a stranger played by Orlando Bloom.

DeWitt's character approaches, but doesn't cross the line into adultery, nor does Johnson's. Both Bloom and Larson provide appealing counterpoints to married life, but they eventually also reveal the comfort of returning home to the individual who knows you best. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Digging For Fire, which hit theaters Aug. 21 and is now on iTunes and VOD, was inspired in part by Johnson's real-life experience digging in his backyard. Bustle caught up with Johnson and DeWitt in Los Angeles to discuss his burial excavation. "I found a gun — it could have been a cap gun. I found a bone — it could have been a dog's bone," he recalled. "I found a plastic bag full of, like, marbles and chopped-up bones — which could only be a bag full of —" and here he paused, "— marbles and chopped-up bones," he concluded.

Digging For Fire possesses the realism you'd expect from a film based on lived experience. It also has the realism you'd expect from a film that was partly improvised — Joe Swanberg often begins filming with little more than a well-planned outline of the movie he envisions. This is evident in the exclusive clip below, where Orlando Bloom shows up as a stranger DeWitt encounters at a bar. A fellow patron gets a bit too aggressive in his drunken flirtation, and Bloom intervenes, taking the man outside to hail a cab. He bears the man's aggression himself — the guy leaves him with a split forehead, which DeWitt tends to.

This is where the clip below picks up — Bloom, bleeding from a gash in his forehead, and DeWitt icing the injury. The dialogue is endearingly awkward, a little stilted, a lot flirtatious. They hardly finish their sentences, trailing off in an uncomfortable way that reflects the somewhat off-the-cuff nature of the screenplay. But far from detracting from the scene, it contributes to the film's realism. It lends the sense that DeWitt and Johnson diverge and converge organically over the course of the weekend. Nothing in the screenplay feels forced, because it wasn't. It meanders at times, it takes its time, and ultimately the mystery plot leads nowhere, but it's one of those journey-destination dichotomies.

Oh, and Anna Kendrick makes a guest appearance. It's not her first part in the film, but she makes a humorous return that proves that no matter where she goes, DeWitt's character can't truly take a break from her marriage. He's still the standard against which other experiences are measured. But that's a story best left to the film.

Image: The Orchard