Move over Brad Pitt, there’s a new star in Hollywood: craft beer.
The new movie Drinking Buddies hit theaters at the end of August and it is slowly being released in bigger cities across America. It’s a tribute to the growing craft beer movement and how the little guys are cutting into bigger beer companies’ profits over the last few years. Joe Swanberg, the film’s writer/director/producer, has created an awesome indie film that’s catching the attention of beer-loving movie goers.
Swanberg told TIME magazine, “I do suspect that the craft beer crowd is also a crowd that appreciates independent films. That cultivation of taste naturally carries over into the kinds of movies they watch.”
The film takes place in Chicago and revolves around the mid-western craft beer scene. With a small budget, Swanberg had to resort to guerilla methods to get a stash of free beer and merchandise to help make the film look local. He didn’t even ask for money when he gave screen time to smaller beer companies like Revolution Brewing, Half-Acre, Three Floyds, Founder’s and Bell’s. In fact, he paid Revolution $4,000 to use their brewery for three days so that they could film in it.
Swanberg is especially proud of the film because it doesn’t glorify working in a craft brewery and shows what it is really like. He assures there are no “sweeping vistas of stainless steel tanks” and that the movie shows “how un-fun and unglamorous most of the work is.” Since he loves beer so much, he was terrified to become the guy that made a terrible craft beer movie and couldn’t show his face in any Chicago bars ever again. Luckily, one of his old friends is now the production manager at Three Floyds Brewing and became the beer consultant on the movie. Swanberg even held a “beer boot camp” for the cast, making star Olivia Wilde brew beer using Swanberg’s own home brewing equipment.
We don’t count on this movie winning an Academy Award or anything like that, but we’re really excited to see the craft beer world being portrayed accurately on film. Will this finally get craft beer the street cred it deserves? We’ll just have to wait and see.