Prince Avalanche

Prince Avalanche
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	David Gordon Green
Produced by	Lisa Muskat Derrick Tseng Craig Zobel James Belfer David Gordon Green
Screenplay by	David Gordon Green
Based on	Either Way by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson
Starring	Paul Rudd Emile Hirsch
Music by	Explosions in the Sky David Wingo
Cinematography	Tim Orr
Edited by	Colin Patton
Production company	Dogfish Pictures
Distributed by	Magnolia Pictures
Release date	January 20, 2013 (2013-01-20) (Sundance) August 9, 2013 (2013-08-09) (United States)
Running time	94 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$725,000
Box office	$442,313

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	72/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
Alternative Press
Clash	7/10
Consequence of Sound	C+
Drowned in Sound	8/10
Exclaim!	6/10
NME	6/10
Pitchfork Media	6.5/10
Popmatters	7/10
Rolling Stone

Prince Avalanche is a 2013 American comedy-drama film starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch. It was directed by David Gordon Green, who also wrote the screenplay based on the 2011 Icelandic film Either Way (Á annan veg). The film was shot in Bastrop, Texas, after the Bastrop County Complex Fire.

In 1988, an odd pair of sorts, meditative and stern Alvin (Paul Rudd) and his girlfriend's brother, Lance (Emile Hirsch), dopey and insecure, leave the city behind to spend the summer in solitude repainting traffic lines down the center of a country highway ravaged by wildfire. As they sink into their job in the remarkable landscape, they learn more than they want to about each other and their own limitations. An unlikely friendship develops through humor and nasty exchanges, leading to surprising affection.

The idea of making Prince Avalanche came when the band Explosions in the Sky proposed the idea of making a movie with director David Gordon Green at Bastrop State Park, which was being restored following the 2011 Bastrop County Complex fire. Adapted from Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson's 2011 film Either Way, the script for Prince Avalanche consisted of roughly 65 pages – about 30 pages short of an average feature-length screenplay. From development onward, the film was fast tracked to completion. "We really didn’t have time for proper or traditional development," said Gordon Green. "We had the idea in February of 2012, we were filming in May, and sound mixing in July. It was an unusually tight production schedule." Paul Rudd joked to an Entertainment Weekly interviewer, "I found the biggest challenge of working on this was trying to stifle my alpha-male [masculinity]."