Greenberg

The film opens as Florence Marr (Greta Gerwig) walks the Greenberg family dog, Mahler. She picks up Phillip Greenberg's dry cleaning and heads back to his house, where the entire family is packing for a trip to Vietnam. Phillip (Chris Messina) explains that his brother, Roger, will be staying in the house while they are away, and he asks Florence to help Roger if he needs anything. His wife, Carol (Susan Traylor), confides that Roger has just been released from a hospital after suffering a nervous breakdown. When Roger (Ben Stiller) arrives, he calls Florence to ask about the people swimming in the pool. Florence explains that they are neighbors who are allowed to use the pool. She comes to the house to pick up her paycheck and feed Mahler. She has a very brief and awkward conversation with Roger, before offering to pick up groceries for him. He gives her a two-item list, requesting whiskey and ice cream sandwiches. Roger's friend Ivan Schrank (Rhys Ifans) stops by and invites him to a barbecue at their mutual friend Eric Beller's (Mark Duplass). At the party, Roger is uncomfortable, and Eric is visibly hostile towards him. He runs into Beth (Jennifer Jason Leigh), an ex-girlfriend, and she agrees to meet up with him for some drinks. He explains that he is in Los Angeles to simply do nothing for a while. She replies that it is brave for a man in his mid-forties to have no ambition. Eric and Roger have dinner, where Eric vents his anger over the fact that Roger declined a major label recording contract that their band was offered fifteen years ago. Eric marvels over the fact that Ivan will even talk to Roger anymore, given how devastated Ivan was by losing the contract. Roger insists that conforming to the commercial contract would have been impossible for the band...