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At the end of the credits wrapping up Digging for Fire (2015), Joe Swanberg’s dramedy about facing adulthood in modern times, a line of text dedicates the picture to Mazursky, who passed away in June 2014 shortly before Digging for Fire started filming.

Actor/director Paul Mazursky jumped into the film industry in 1969 with the Natalie Wood/Elliott Gould dramedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. The raconteur went on to direct over 15 films, primarily in the 1970s and 80s, and was nominated for multiple Academy Awards: three times for Best Original Screenplay, once for Best Adapted Screenplay, and once for Best Picture (for 1978’s An Unmarried Woman). His films tended to focus on modern social issues.

During an interview with Moveablefest, Swanberg talked about Mazursky’s influence on films like Digging for Fire, and a conversation they had shortly before filming. “Mazursky was in my head all through this shoot. Just in the ways that he talked about relationships, wealth and class – it’s very much a movie that’s indebted to Mazursky and his interests and how they overlapped with mine and how I feel connected to him just as a human being.”

It’s easy to see the tonal influence of Mazursky’s work on Swanberg’s film. Digging for Fire explores the ideas of sacrificed dreams, making hard parenting decisions, feigning optimism, and the complex inner tug-of-war one plays with one’s own identity as a married person working to retain a sense of self.

As American Thinker puts it, “the entire skein of interesting California Gen-X and near-Middle Agers is an homage to Mazursky, genial genii of the genre.”

More than that, Swanberg talked about a kinship he felt with Mazursky, the way he worked, and his experience with the industry: “[Mazursky] had this whole life before he made a movie that got recognized and made him money. He was already in his forties and married with kids when he made Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, which became a big hit. I love the fact that he had this long career where he was a performer and a writer, and then, had this second stage, which in a way is how I feel what has happened to me. I made a lot of movies, then I made ‘Drinking Buddies,’ which suddenly a lot of people saw and connected with in a bigger way, so it was as if it were my first feature, even though I was essentially deep into my career.”

Mazursky entered the Hollywood world as an adult, which required him to relate to and cajole with well-known, rich and famous-types. It’s not a common route, and it’s one Swanberg (a Chicago resident) identifies with when he travels to Los Angeles to work.

“[Mazurky] talked about that – the time when it shifts from being a family man to suddenly having attention and money and what that stuff meant, especially, in the context of Los Angeles,” Swanberg said. “I live in Chicago, but I go to Los Angeles for work and there’s this aspect of being around money and people with money, but not really having money and the strange currencies that creates. Mazursky’s one of the only filmmakers that’s ever dealt with those issues head-on.”

The surface of Digging for Fire can be silly, humorous, and undemanding, and the target audience is likely constrained to those who have attempted marriage and parenthood. But beneath that, the film reveals the very real difficulties the characters are working with and the inevitably wam luxury of comparing yourself to who you were in simpler times.