Nebraska

Making Things Right
or
And Everything Looks Worse in Black and White

There's a story that Peter Bogdanovich got sick of telling during all the press junkets he did for The Last Picture Show about why he shot in black and white rather than color.  Truth was, that he started test-shots of the Archer City location (author Larry McMurtry's home town) in color, but the town always looked too good, and didn't have the sense of bleakness that he wanted.  The story goes that he went to Orson Welles (who was staying at his house) and mused maybe he should shoot the movie in black and white. "Of COURSE you'll shoot it in black and white!" Welles barked back.  After repeating the story over and over again at press interview after press interview, the last few times Bogdanovich simplified his answer: "Because Orson Welles told me to."

I don't think Alexander Payne shot Nebraska in black and white for that reason, or because it might recall the cover of the same-titled Bruce Springsteen album.  But, I think the bleakness is there, running as an under-current through the film as a view of life—not rosy and pink with vitality, green with verdancy, but shades of gray and the occasional extreme of black or white—the palette for a story of folks with limited choices in the nuances of life...and truth.  But, lest you think this one's about old folks with one foot in the grave, or Alzheimer's or something like that, it's not.  Not really.  It's about living life before you run out of it, and grabbing any kind of dignity out of that life, despite Nature's determination to take it away in any way it can.

And not to mention your relatives and acquaintances.

It's also a damned funny movie, in the same low-key, sometimes painful way that its writer, Bob Nelson, wrote sketches for the late, lamented "Almost Live!" show which seemed to focus more on human dysfunction, rather than Pacific Northwest eccentricities.  The old saw "familiarity breeds contempt" is apt here, as the extended Gates family, long separated (for good reason, apparently), is blandly caustic, bringing up family histories and past imperfections as grist for the family grinding mill.

The Gates clan watch a baseball game: Rance Howard (far left);
Bruce Dern (asleep in the back) and Will Forte (placating, far right)
"Wow, this feels too much like real life" said one of the patrons in Nebraska's audience.

The story's simple and seemingly uneventful, but mindful of David Lynch's The Straight Story.  Woodrow Gates (Bruce Dern) is picked up by the police walking the highway in Billings, Montana.  "Where ya goin'?" says the Sheriff. "Headed down the road there,' says Woody, none too helpfully.

O-kay, there's a little detour to the police station, where his son David (Will Forte) comes to pick him up. "So you told the Sheriff you were walking to Nebraska..."  Woody's wife (June Squibb) won't drive him, he doesn't have a car, and he won't be given money for the bus. The reason he wants to go to Nebraska (Lincoln, specifically) is because he got a certificate in the mail from a magazine promotion company saying that he could have won a million dollars. Woody doesn't "buy" that it's a way to get him to buy magazines; he thinks he's won it, so he's walking to Lincoln to get his million.  Why didn't he just mail it in? "I'm not going to trust the mail with a million dollars."  Makes perfect sense.  Walking, though, doesn't.

There's no sympathy at home.  Wife Kate won't entertain any of this "I didn't know the son-of-a-bitch wanted to be a millionaire!  Know what I'd do with a million dollars? I'd put him in a home!!"  Brother Ross (Bob Odenkirk) thinks Dad's senile and doesn't want to hear of it.  Only David will entertain the notion of driving Woody to Lincoln, if only for the chance to connect with the old man.  They set off with some hitches and fits along the way, eventually stopping at relatives' to get a breather from what would seem to be a continuing series of minor disasters.  But, his old stomping grounds bring no comfort, as word soon gets around that Woody's driving to Lincoln to get a million dollars—a sum that strikes everyone dumb...and a little bit stupid. Old debts are brought up, and quite a few people want a part of that million dollars whether they deserve it or not...and for some reason, nobody thinks twice about how Woody might have come into that money—the amount leaves them a little blinkered.  And envious.  And opportunistic.

For David, it's an opportunity to gain some perspective (just the ability to see Woody's past surroundings adds a little knowledge) and, as he's stuck in a pattern of "getting by," some insight into both Dad and himself.  By the time the two ride off into the last shot—one of the loveliest and most potent of the past year's movies, a black-and-white sunset—a nice, warming resolution has been reached.  But not too warming.  It is a sunset.  And it is in black-and-white, lest it betray any cheer or a rosy sensibility.  Payne, evidently, did make a color version of Nebraska to satisfy some niche contractual requirements for the studio (Paramount Vantage), but has expressed hope that it never sees the light of electronics.

OF COURSE, it won't.  It would be a completely different movie, and a less effective one.

Nebraska is a Full-Price Ticket.

Silent Running

"Silent Running" (Douglas Trumbull, 1972) I'd been planning to look at this movie for a long time now, but the release of "Moon" put me in mind of it again, the two films sharing a melancholy feel for the isolated man in space, both of whom are dirt-farmers of their own kind.

"Silent Running" postulates a world so over-populated that the planet becomes overrun with cities, the flora (and some fauna) rocketed into space until such a time that the Earth can find space for them again.

Questions immediately come up: no room for vegetation? Where does the planet get its oxygen? It's phyto-plankton? It seems that if you take vegetation out of the equation that the food pyramid will pretty much collapse in on itself, and with it, the human population who are subsisting on what...space food sticks? Soylent green?

None of this matters to the four caretakers (Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin, Jesse Vint and Bruce Dern), three of whom could care less, and Astronaut Freeman Lowell (Dern)being the one for whom the Mission is a sacred trust. Needless to say, they don't get along, Lowell's sole companions being the nursery-bots tending to the plants' daily needs.

Things go to seed, when word comes up from Mission Control that Earth doesn't give a rip anymore—budget cuts or some such—so they should jettison the space-green-houses, blow 'em up, and return home. Rather than commit planticide, Lowell chooses, instead to go all-PETA and decide that his fellow agro-nauts' best function would be as fertlizer. A bit extreme, maybe, but we are talking about Bruce Dern here. And, to hide his crimes, he sends the ship into a collision course with Saturn's rings to try and convince Mission Control the ship will be destroyed. However, pesky-persistent techies that they are, NASA manages to find him, and Lowell must come up with a way of saving the plants and allaying any suspicions.

Douglas Trumbull did some of the FX work on "2001: A Space Odyssey," creating 3-D forced perspective lunar landscapes and perfecting the "slit-scan" technique—a frame-by-frame animated geometric horizon that made up the bulk of the "Star-gate" sequence near the film's end. "Silent Running" was his first feature, and he maintained a healthy career as director ("Brainstorm"), special effects guru ("Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "Blade Runner"), pioneer with film formats (his "Showscan" became a staple at world's fairs displaying huge 70mm films at a reality-approaching 60 frames per second, and designer of thrill rides (for the Luxor and Universal Tours).

In "Silent Running," Trumbull managed to make an ecological low budget sci-fi film, with illusion work that rivalled "2001"—he even managed to make a realistic looking Saturn, something that wasn't possible years before with the Kubrick film. His robots were strange little non-humanoids forms that suggested walking amplifiers, and the story (and Dern's acting) makes them sympathetic little synth's. The ships designed for "Silent Running" were subsequently used for stock footage for years in such shows as "Battlestar Galactica" and Trumbull's considerable work served to influence the look and techniques of "Star Wars."*

Not the greatest of films, but not through lack of trying, as director, star and art team stretch their budget impressively and play it for all the drama it's worth. But the story is a little skimpy, the protagonist a bit bi-polar, and the conclusion not exactly rousing. A good study in movie-making, if not necessarily story-telling.

* Specifically, the look of R2-D2, and the flotsam scattering separations (emulating real NASA footage) that are in both movies. Trumbull's squat little helper-bots were performed with the help of double amputees in plastiform shells walking on their hands. The effect is totally convincing, and he avoids the cliche of the humanoid robots.