Hunt (Paul Rudd) is a clam-digger who works alongside his cantankerous father on the south shore of Long Island. It's September 1976 and the Gerald Ford/Jimmy Carter presidential campaign is underway. The diggers are more focused on the fact that their livings are being threatened by a corporate fishery that has bought out the best water rights in the area, leaving the independent fisherman high and dry.
One morning Hunt oversleeps and arrives too late to be with his father on the boat as he dies of a heart attack. A dark cloud of guilt overtakes him, which he keeps to himself. His older sister Gina (Maura Tierney) is upset about her father's death and is still reeling from a divorce. She works as a waitress at a local diner and begins having sex with Jack (Ron Eldard), one of Hunt's buddies who is known around the community as a hedonist.
Katherine Dieckmann directs this laid-back and scruffy drama about four diggers who realize that a way of life that has carried their fathers and grandfathers through their lifetimes is vanishing before their eyes. Frankie Lozo (Ken Marino) is the angry one in the group: he has the most to lose with a wife (Sarah Paulson) and four children to support. When he finds out that another child is on the way, he tries to get a job with the South Shell Fishery but is shamefully treated in their employment office. He explodes and wrecks the place, leading to a later fight in the streets.
Cons (Josh Hamilton) supplements his work as a digger by selling drugs. He spouts philosophy at the local bar and has found his own little patch of contentment. Hunt has trouble expressing his emotions but begins a very tentative affair with Zoe (Lauren Ambrose), a sexy woman from Manhattan. She is quite impressed with the black-and-white Polaroids he takes of objects that fascinate him in town.
The screenplay by Ken Marino circles around the theme of male camaraderie in a transitional time of great stress. These young men are not ready for the changes that have been thrust upon them by South Shell Fishery. Everything that happens to Hunt moves him slowly to the point of leaving town and striking out on his own. That includes creating a meaningful departing ritual for his father and his old dilapidated boat.
