Nebraska's Oscar buzz may be more than hype; film got 7 SAG and Golden Globe nominations this week

Nebraska wasn't octogenarian June Squibb's first Alexander Payne rodeo; she played Jack Nicholson's wife in About Schmidt. Payne kept the Winnebago used in that movie and the entire cast took a road trip in it from Wyoming to Lincoln, Nebraska. More in AKSARBENT about Nebraska here.

 

Below are the SAG and Golden Globe categories in which Nebraska has been nominated for awards:

Screen Actor's Guild (SAG):

Male Actor, Lead: Bruce Dern, Nebraska

Female Actor, Supporting: June Squibb, Nebraska

Hollywood Foreign Press Association (Golden Globes):

Best motion picture, musical or comedy: Nebraska

Best actor in a motion picture, musical or comedy: Bruce Dern - Nebraska

Best supporting Actress in a motion picture: June Squibb - Nebraska

Best Director – motion picture: Alexander Payne - Nebraska

Best Screenplay – motion picture: Bob Nelson - Nebraska

Nebraska: CBS goes to Norfolk to interview Bruce Dern, whose rather patrician family disowned him

From CBS' Sunday Morning, which seems to have added to the Oscar buzz surrounding Dern's performance in Alexander Payne's Nebraska.

Did he ever tire of playing the wacko, psycho, terrorist?
     No, Dern said, "because they're just guys that live just beyond where the buses run. And that's the way I've always looked at it. I mean, who knows who's out there? I just know that they're out there!"
     The underbelly of society is exactly the opposite of his high society upbringing. He was born into old money in Winnetka, Illinois. His grandfather, George Dern, was governor of Utah, who later went on to become Secretary of War under FDR. 
     His great-uncle was Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Archibald MacLeish.
     When Dern dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania to pursue acting, his family largely disowned him.

Will Forte at Alexander Payne roast: Nebraska isn't a black-and-white movie, it's pretty much all white. 'I don't recall a single black person in this movie'

His remarks were made at the Omaha Press Club roast of two-time Oscar winner Alexander Payne, director of Nebraska, Sideways, The Descendants, About Schmidt and other features. Payne, accused during the roast of being both obsessed with cats and becoming the most famous Nebraskan, is now the 139th face on the barroom floor of the Press Club.
     On the one hand, if the white characters in Nebraska are any indication, AKSARBENT seriously doubts that a black presence in the movie would have done much for the image of African Americans.
     On the other hand, it doesn't seem as if Alexander Payne has exactly bent over backwards to be inclusive in any of his films. And no, we're not suggesting that the dearth of black (or gay) characters in his work indicates a personal bias. Payne did, after all, testify in favor of the LGBT ordinance last year, doing much to counteract the widely-publicized antigay opinions of NU football coach Ron Brown.

Wrote Bob Fischbach:

     Kurt Andersen, a fellow Nebraska native and host of NPR's “Studio 360,” reminded Payne he was not the Omaha Press Club's first honoree of Greek heritage. In 1972, a year before he resigned as vice president of the United States, Spiro Agnew was the club's fourth Face on the Barroom Floor.
     ...Andersen complained about how a recent feature he wrote for the New York Times, about a road trip he took across Nebraska with Payne, was edited. “There's a vast conspiracy in the American press to protect Alexander Payne because they love him and his movies,” Andersen said. 

     Payne joked that he cast Forte in Nebraska because “I needed an actor I was sure would not overshadow Bruce's performance.”

More press on Nebraska, now in wider theatrical release

From the New York Times: (Nebraska author Kurt Anderson took a road trip across the state with Payne in his 1988 station wagon in an assignment for the newspaper):

Driving through Seward (population 6,964), we pass the Rivoli Theatre, where “Blue Jasmine” and “The Grandmaster” are playing. “They’re showing Woody Allen and Wong Kar-wai in Seward, Nebraska! Hip little town.” Out in Ogallala (population 4,737) a decade ago, he recalls, “I met a guy who remembered Coppola shooting ‘Rain People’ there in 1968!”

From the New Yorker:

The loveliest, most poignant scene in the film takes place in the sleepy office of the town’s newspaper, where David goes in quest of information and chats with the elderly editor (Angela McEwan), who, it turns out, has history with the family. It’s the scene that quietly wrenches the movie apart and makes the distant, unspoken past vibrate with a revived passionate power. It’s a scene that Payne doubles with another, of Kate’s own long-silenced reminiscences; the two women’s performances—McEwan’s, tremulously discursive, and Squibb’s, brashly so—are the true heart of the movie. 

 From the Daily Beast:

Out of nowhere, the year’s funniest female performance comes courtesy of 84-year-old journeywoman actress June Squibb, whose turn as an expletive-hurling mom in Alexander Payne’s Nebraska will have you in stitches.

From Salon:

     June Squibb steals scenes from two very funny guys Will Forte and Bob Odenkirk.  Were you immediately confident that she could nail those really bawdy punch lines? 
     Yes. I was immediately confident when I saw her audition. That character has the most flashily written part, so I needed an actress who would really be able to go to town with that dialogue.
     Black-and-white serves as a beautiful backdrop to what is essentially a dying Midwest. Was it difficult to view your home state in this blighted light? 
     Over time, not just in Nebraska but everywhere, younger people leave small towns, and the small towns begin to be populated more by their older citizens. At the economic times we’ve been living in recently, and especially for this film, black-and-white acquires a kind of Depression-era feel. That aspect had not existed when the screenplay first reached me nine years ago. But the fact that it was in the air when we turned the camera on in 2012 added, I feel, a very interesting comment. Not just on small town Nebraska or small town America, but on the state of the country in general. It’s not a devastating critique in the film by any means. It’s a gentler film than that, but I’m glad it’s there. Even lightly.

From the AP:

Payne: Growing up in Omaha in the '60s and '70s, we could see foreign films all the time. ... Then when we were teenagers, because it was in my neighborhood, we could walk to the university and see 16mm prints of second-run foreign films on Friday nights. At 16, we were watching "The Night Porter" and "Amarcord" and "Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie." I was always in search of silent film.
AP: Why is that?
Payne: Because they're so good. Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd are like Da Vinci, Giotto, Michelangelo. The first comedy that really knocked me out was "Modern Times."
AP: Some critics have questioned whether there's sometimes an ironic distance between you and your characters.
Payne: Not in my heart. I find often, not always, that those who accuse me of making fun of the characters are themselves the most arrogant. Not always, but often.

From Esquire:

     I won't criticize Hollywood for the other films it makes, but I do lament that we don't have more intelligent, literate, human films about Americans. I wish there were more than eight or ten films made by studios, which all get pushed into distribution in the last quarter of the year and are expected to gird for awards battles, and I don't think that's very fair. I want to see good human movies throughout the whole year. I lament the loss of — let's call it the $20 to $40 million adult comedy and adult drama like we used to have frequently. I'm very proud to be an American filmmaker, it's a rich heritage, but it's just that today quality has dropped...
     Henry Fonda, Marlon Brando. Monty Cliff, Fred Astaire, Dorothy Maguire, and Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett both — they're all from Nebraska. We have talent! Tons of talent. But I really don't know why

Alexander Payne on why he filmed Nebraska in black and white

From Mike Ryan's Huffington Post interview with Alexander Payne:

It's interesting you filmed this in black and white because the look did remind me of the cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska."
      And?
     Was there any influence?
     [Laughs] No.
     I guess my point is that the perfect image of Nebraska is in black and white. Why does Nebraska work so well in black and white?
      I don't know. My mom said -- my mom saw it last night -- and she said in the car driving home, she goes, "Now I see why you had to make it in black and white. It would have been stupid in color." I said, "Mom, I'm going to use that line." [laughs]
     ...Speaking of subtle jokes, there's an entire sequence of the family discussing a character because "his foot's been bothering him." This would for sure be a topic for my family at any holiday gathering.
      You know who played that uncle? It's Rance Howard, that's Ron Howard's father. Another excellent actor I feel, who I was lucky enough to find.

Rex Reed in the New York Observer: Woe be the fool who misses Alexander Payne’s Nebraska

Nebraska still from Vantage Paramount via Slate

We suspect that Reed is cheerleading the film because he thinks Alexander Payne's motion picture is some kind of documentary which validates Reed's apparent notions about small town Americana. Most New Yorkers, especially those aware of record grain prices in recent years, are not this provincial:

Through Wyoming and South Dakota, Phedon Papamichael’s camera paints a moving portrait of the barren ugliness of the changing landscape of the American grain belt, with its empty fields, shingle houses and dying mom-and-pop businesses decimated by the economy. And Mr. Nelson’s observant, detailed script flawlessly captures the mood of what American ennui has done to both old and young men on their way to becoming losers, lending a look and feel that seems like the Great Depression.

A second opinion from Slate's Dana Stevens (who also was enthralled with June Squibb's performance — she played Jack Nicholson's wife in Payne's best film, About Schmidt):

There are viewers who will find the folksy humor of Nebraska’s comic scenes too broad, and others who will condemn Payne’s portrayal of Midwesterners as caricatured and condescending. I am not among those viewers: I’ve always admired this director’s commitment to both seriousness and laughter, to showing the beauty and significance of ordinary human life side by side with its petty, venal absurdity. Nebraska’s unsentimental but ultimately loving vision of small-town America seems closer than ever to Preston Sturges’—a director to whom Payne is often compared, and whose great satire Hail the Conquering Hero (about a hapless soldier who’s mistaken for a war hero without ever having fought a day in his life) seems like a clear influence here.

Paramount trailer for Alexander Payne's new film, Nebraska released; film has Bruce Dern, Will Forte, Stacy Keach and Breaking Bad's Bob Odenkirk; debuts Nov. 15

The performance of 77-year-old Bruce Dern already has Oscar buzz, though no one knows whether as best or best supporting actor. Dern said he won't campaign for supporting actor, "If I go supporting, I'm a whore."

New Alexander Payne film, Nebraska debuts at Cannes film festival

Here's an outrageous scene with SNL's Will Forte and veteran character actor Bruce Dern (looking excruciatingly hot sporting a BandAid and Nick Nolte hair — but Nolte is from Omaha, so it all makes sense.)
     Nebraska tourism hucksters are going to LOVE this film! Who wouldn't want to visit the friendly inhabitants of the Cornhusker State after seeing this?



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