Bruce Dern in "Nebraska"

I was invited to a SAG screening of the movie "Nebraska" last night held at the Director's Guild of America theater on 57th & 6th (thanks Todd). After the movie, Bruce Dern took the stage to be interviewed by a Time Out New York magazine reporter, followed by questions from the audience.

First, what a great movie, charming and gorgeous in black and white with an original and engaging screenplay and possibly the best performance of Dern's career. The film is filled with fantastic mid-western characters and faces which could have been lifted from an Anne Tyler novel, and brilliantly shows how mundane so much of life is, but also how funny and warm it can be. The film is intelligent and laugh-out-loud funny. It's quirky but never distancing or off-putting. Conversations are unforced and convincing. There's a great use of subtly and silence and the natural pauses that happen in real exchanges. It's a warm movie and unpredictable in the best way. It's a relationship movie, a character movie, which is sometimes code for a film lacking structure or a story, but this one has a satisfying plot. I won't give anything away by saying at the center of the story there's a guy who thinks he's won a million dollars. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't; it's worth seeing the movie to find out. 

Like many great movies, it's about so much more than the story. Melanie and I had been planning to see it this week, but when I got the screening invite, she insisted I go. Now that I've seen it, I know she's going to love it, and I'd enjoy seeing it again with her.

Bruce Dern spoke for about an hour after the screening, and man can the man speak. Talk about loquacious. A lot of actors are awkward in front of an audience without lines to repeat. Not Dern. He was interviewed by someone from Time Out New York magazine and each question was met with an answer that ran for ten minutes or more. Dern praised the producer, writer and director of "Nebraska" and talked about the excitement he had going to work each day. He described the crew as a family but it wasn't just lip-service (or it seemed that way to me). Roughly half the crew has been with the same producer on every movie he's made, so this is a closely-knit group of people. Dern also talked a lot about the courage an actor needs (being a SAG screening, there were a lot of actors in the audience), the courage to experiment, the courage to get yourself noticed and be seen, to leave an impression, and the courage to bare your soul and always strive to do something real. Very encouraging. If he was at all self-conscious, it didn't show, the man talked to the crowd like he was talking to you across the dinner table. Great night, and what a wonderful movie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebraska_(film)