In the comedy Prince Avalanche, Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch play two guys working a lonely job – painting the yellow line in the middle of a forlorn road through a wildfire-decimated Texas landscape. Neither guy is what you would call smart, but Rudd’s Alvin is brighter than Hirsch’s Lance. Alvin is quirky and more than a bit anal. Lance’s horizon isn’t much farther than his next sexual encounter. It’s funny when Alvin tries to keep Lance on task. As each faces some personal bad news, all semblance of order crumbles. Along the way, they meet a hilariously gonzo trucker (Lance LeGault). It’s all very funny in a droll kind of way.
Rudd, of course, is a solid comic actor, but Hirsch is the surprise. Hirsch has been very strong in dramatic roles (especially in Into the Wild), but he was the weak link in last year’s darkly funny Killer Joe. Here, he plays his dunderhead entirely straight, and the result is very funny. Who knew?
Green is now a successful director for hire (Pineapple Express and a load of commercials). But all of the indies that he’s written and directed have been really excellent: George Washington, Undertow, All the Real Girls and Snow Angels (which made my Best Movies of 2008).
I saw Prince Avalanche at a San Francisco International Film Festival screening introduced by Green. He said that, after filming Snow Angels’ suicide in frozen Nova Scotia, he was ready for something lighter. A member of the band Explosions in the Sky (his frequent collaborator) told him about the burned-out landscape around Bastrop, Texas. Having found a location, he needed a two-actor story, and so he adapted the Icelandic movie Either Way. Fueled by lots of coffee, he whipped out the screenplay in two days, with two more days for a rewrite.
One of the real pleasures of Prince Avalanche is the performance of Lance LeGault, who died just before he could have seen the movie, as the truck driver. LeGault was a veteran character actor who started off as Elvis’ stunt double and played scads of nasty military guys; Green discovered him working as an extra while shooting an auto commercial in Tehachapi. Now we can remember LeGault for stealing all his scenes in Prince Avalanche.
Prince Avalanche is in theaters, and is also streaming on Amazon, iTunes, DirecTV, Comcast, Vudu, GooglePlay and other VOD outlets.