Nicholson's Payne-ful journey
By Ryan Joe
Nov. 17, 2002 9:00 p.m.
Alexander Payne is the writer-director who turned Ferris Bueller
into a pathetic, adultering, bumbling high school professor, and
abortion into the subject for a screwball comedy.
This auteur behind “Election” and “Citizen
Ruth” has now turned one of the great dynamic womanizers of
our time into an old codger.
The actor is Jack Nicholson and the movie is “About
Schmidt.” Based on the book by Louis Begley, Payne, a UCLA
alumnus, both adapted for the screen and directed “About
Schmidt.” The film screens at 7:30 p.m. tonight at the James
Bridges Theater, and will be released Dec. 13.
The film follows the post-retirement crisis of Warren Schmidt
(Nicholson) in the days preceding his daughter’s (Hope Davis)
imminent marriage to a waterbed salesman (Dermot Mulroney). Schmidt
has to deal with this man who has a mullet and a Jekyll-and-Hyde
Earth-Goddess mother (Kathy Bates). Similar to his performance in
“The Pledge,” Nicholson is toned-down here. His
trademark shark’s grin is subtler, hidden beneath a
frustrated mask of determination.
“I looked at Warren as a man I might have become if I
wasn’t lucky enough to wind up in show business,” said
Nicholson.
But Nicholson is Hollywood royalty, after all, and there has
already been early Oscar buzz for his turn as Warren in
“About Schmidt.” Nicholson shrugged his shoulders at
the mention of another Academy Award.
“We’re all only interested in people seeing the
movie,” he said.
Nicholson’s nonchalant attitude is understandable.
He’s been Oscar-nominated 11 times and has won twice.
He’s become a regular part of film history.
“The question’s come up a number of times in
interviews,” Payne added. “Is he intimidating? Does he
do what he wants to do? But he makes it easy. He’s completely
accessible and smart and widely read.”
“About Schmidt” places Nicholson in Payne’s
own hometown of Omaha, Nebraska where Warren Schmidt leads a rather
unexceptional life, going doggedly through the motions of
retirement. This is unusual material for the flamboyant Nicholson,
who typically plays jokers and crazies. But Payne was less
interested in cuckoo’s nest-type antics than understated
inner turmoil.
“I was somewhat inspired by “˜The Graduate,’ to
take someone at the crossroads of his life where people are patting
him on the back and saying congratulations when, in fact,
he’s feeling great alienation and loneliness and
hatred,” Payne said. “And treating that as a
comedy.”
“A problem with movies in general is that we’re not
seeing Americans in movies,” he continued. “We’re
seeing movie stars doing big otherworldly things that are easily
digested in buses in Thailand.”
Accordingly, “About Schmidt” is a character picture.
It is subtle and notably devoid of anything large and exploding.
Payne hopes moviegoers will be able to give up spiderwebs and
muggle-defying wizards for a naked Kathy Bates sharing a hot tub
with Jack Nicholson.
“Is subtlety and humanity a bad word in the movie
business?” Nicholson said. “No one is blowing up or
ramming a car into a supermarket. I’ll probably do that in my
next movie. But if I wasn’t in (“About Schmidt”)
myself, I’d call it quite beautiful.”
