Dave, Mike, Cyril, and Moocher are working-class friends living in the college town of Bloomington, Indiana. Now turning 19, they all graduated from high school the year before and are not sure what to do with their lives. They spend much of their time together swimming in an old abandoned water-filled quarry. They sometimes Town and gown with the more affluent Indiana University Bloomington students in their hometown, who habitually refer to them as "cutters", a derogatory term for locals related to the local Indiana Limestone industry and the stonecutters who worked the quarries.