In Filmmaking, What a Difference a Friend Makes

"Certainly with comedy, a lot of it's about timing and playing off one another," Rudd says. "So if you know each other or you're friends with each other or have a similar sensibility . . . I think it makes the scene funnier. I don't know. You're just playing off of your friends, like people do in real life."

"Diggers" (see review on Page 35) paired Rudd and Marino for the first time since the two starred in 2001's "Wet Hot American Summer."

Marino: "From the moment I met Paul, we got along. I mean, from what I remember, I was pretty much drunk the whole time."

Rudd: "He had me at a very slurred 'Hello.' "

So anyway, when Marino took his first stab at screenwriting, he thought immediately of Rudd for the lead. The "Diggers" story is Marino's own, or at least that of his family. A drama cut with sharp one-liners, the film follows a group of clam-digging guys on Long Island, N.Y., that is being undercut by a growing clam conglomerate. The same happened to Marino's father, grandfather and uncle, who all had to find new lines of work in the late 1970s.

"I think the goal for the rest of my life is to try to create projects with my friends and put them out there," Marino says.

"We'll see if we can kind of keep this whole thing going," Rudd adds. "Of making things that we actually like and seeing if we can get somebody to give us money to make them."

They're on a roll at the moment. The two, both in their late 30s, are talking about forming a production company. And after "Diggers," Marino co-wrote a movie called "The Ten" that Rudd produced, and together they filled it with a Hollywood who's-who list -- most of whom also happened to be friends or neighbors. (Partial cast list for that one, expected to be released in August: Winona Ryder, Rob Corddry, Gretchen Mol, Liev Schreiber and, of course, Rudd and Marino.)

And the genesis of "The Ten," a collection of intertwined stories based on the Ten Commandments?

"We looked up -- on the computer -- the Ten Commandments and apparently there's a list of them. So we decided to write a story about each one of those things," Marino says. "And then somebody later told us that that was from the Bible and we shouldn't have done that, but it was too late."

Rudd: "Was that Google? Or Wikipedia?"

Marino: "Wikipedia. We went to Wikipedia."