On Movies: 'Nebraska' and Dern: Perfect together
Alexander Payne knew he wanted to make Nebraska - from a screenplay named for his home state - more than nine years ago, back when the director was shooting Sideways.
Alexander Payne knew he wanted to make Nebraska - from a screenplay named for his home state - more than nine years ago, back when the director was shooting Sideways.
It's taken him this long for a couple of reasons: The Descendants, for one, and some stymied projects in between. But mostly, Payne didn't want to follow one road movie with another.
"Two guys in a car," Payne explains. "I didn't want to go from one two-guys-in-a-car to another two-guys-in-a-car. I just didn't know it was going to be so long between Sideways and The Descendants."
The two guys in a car in Nebraska are Bruce Dern and Will Forte. Dern is Woody Grant, a taciturn, old coot whose life, and mind, are slipping away. But there's hope: he gets a junk-mail letter promising $1 million, and somehow he's going to make the sojourn from Billings, Mont., where he lives, to Lincoln, Neb., where the subscription service is HQ-ed, to claim his winnings.
Forte, the comedian and former Saturday Night Live cast member, plays Woody's son, David, who has his own issues and disappointments, but who decides to drive his dad to Lincoln rather than see him get lost, or arrested, or worse.
The father's and son's travels and travails are what Nebraska - shot in stark, beautiful black-and-white Cinemascope - is all about. Dern won the best-actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his efforts, and Forte, a relative novice, is winning praise, too. Nebraska opened Friday at the Ritz Five and Carmike at the Ritz Center/NJ. It will roll out to additional theaters in the coming weeks.
"It's a smaller film in a minor key," Payne says. "But it still got into competition at Cannes, and I was very proud to be in. I knew we wouldn't win a big prize. And then Bruce came away with best actor . . . . That put a real bounce in his step."
The performance, and the kudos, have also put Dern on the short list of Academy Award contenders. It's a crowded field, this year's best-actor race, but Dern's portrayal is so deep and quiet, funny and sad, that it's difficult to ignore.
"I don't know if you've ever met him, but Bruce is a great, great raconteur. Ceaseless," says Payne, who directed Laura Dern, the actor's daughter, in Citizen Ruth. "And he has great stories. Hitchcock stories, [Elia] Kazan stories, Hal Ashby stories, Bob Rafelson stories. You know, he's been in everything. . . . And he's quite disinhibited. He'll tell you the good stuff."
But on set in Nebraska, once Payne called, "Action!" the veteran of Coming Home and Silent Running and Black Sunday and The King of Marvin Gardens stopped yammering and dug into the soul of this creaky, cantankerous Midwesterner.
"There wasn't really a conflict there between who Bruce is in real life and the part," Payne says. "You know, he's a great actor, so he knew what it called for, and he realized that Woody was, in his words - Bruce's words - a guy who checks out for about 20 minutes of every hour.
"So, he just did it."
When Payne first read Bob Nelson's screenplay a decade ago, the nation's economy was humming, the housing bubble hadn't yet burst, things were flush.
By the time Payne and company were in production - just about a year ago - the country was pulling itself out of a long downturn, and the small towns of the Cornhusker State looked particularly bleak and battered. All of a sudden, Nebraska's story of imagined wealth and people looking for a piece of it resonated in different ways.
"Obviously, I did not have that in mind when I first read it," Payne says. "The movie functioned like a magnet, that way . . . . But I always knew there would be a desolate, small town that maybe had economic hardship anyway. It's just that now, it's exacerbated by these times . . . . And I've said this before, but because it's in black-and-white, it then becomes like a modern Depression-era film, to some degree."
Payne was in town last month when Nebraska premiered at the Philadelphia Film Festival. Forte came with him, and in a separate interview, the sitcom writer, sketch-comedy performer, and SNL player talked about landing the role - over hundreds of candidates Payne had considered by watching audition videos.
"It was just a lot of waiting," Forte recalls. "I didn't hear anything for about four months, four-and-a-half months, and I just assumed that nothing would come of it. I mean, I went in thinking nothing will come of it.
"So I was so surprised when I got this call that said Alexander had liked what I had done on the tape enough to have me come in and read the scene in person.
"I didn't know if he said that to 50 people, or five people, so I went in and, not knowing much, had a wonderful time. . . .
"I don't like the audition process at all, but we went through the scenes once, talked for a little bit afterward, and I left there feeling pretty good - just not ever thinking that I would get the role.
"And then, about a month later, Alexander called me up to tell me. I think he was in Omaha at the time, and my mom was staying with me, and it was the best phone call.
"I was playing it cool with him, and then hung up and ran downstairs screaming, 'Ma! Ma!' "
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