| Director | David Gordon Green |
|---|---|
| Genre | comedy drama, comedy film |
| Runtime | 94 min |
| Country | United States |
| Budget | $700,000 |
| Box office | $442,313 |
In 1988, an odd pair of sorts, meditative and stern Alvin and his girlfriend's brother, Lance, 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. They regularly encounter a drunk truck driver. As Lance leaves for a weekend in the city, Alvin enjoys his solitude and explores the woods by himself. He comes across a house that has been burned to the ground by the wildfire, and encounters a woman who explains that it is her house, and she is searching in the rubble for her pilot's license.
Lance returns distraught and with a black eye, claiming to have been beat up by the boyfriend of a woman he had been courting. Lance later finds that his sister Madison, Alvin's girlfriend, has sent Alvin a Dear John letter and the couple are heard arguing on the phone about Alvin's absence and Madison's new lover.
After a brief fight the two console each other about their predicaments. Lance reveals that the real reason behind his distress is that a middle-aged woman he has been seeing is pregnant with his child, and he laments and ponders his fears of fatherhood and responsibility. Alvin encourages Lance to embrace parenthood and assures him he will be a great father, and the two form an unlikely friendship. Alvin nicknames their duo "Alvinlance."
In a final scene, they greet the truck driver, and Alvin notices the woman he had encountered earlier entering his truck, but the truck driver does not see her.