ALEXANDER PAYNE: SELF-HATING MIDWESTERNER?: The other night I finally caught "About Schmidt," and I thought it was one of the best movies of '02. Great performance, against type, by Jack Nicholson, and exceptionally well-written and well-directed all around.
Director Alexander Payne and screenwriter Jim Taylor clearly worked very hard to give the midwestern-set film an authentic, lived-in feel (just like Payne's previous film, "Election," he adapted the location to his native Omaha even though the novel was set elsewhere). It's like the Coen Brothers' "Fargo" in that everyone in the film speaks in goofy midwestern aphorisms, and almost every character is decked out in Kmart and Target-purchased clothes and stuck-in-the-'70s hairstyles, on top of house decorations heavily dependent upon promotional items from Joe Camel and Miller Lite.
"About Schmidt," with the exception of a middle section in which Nicholson's character is on the road, is set primarly in the suburbs of Omaha and Denver. Now having myself grown up in the suburbs of a major midwestern city, I can say that the film's depiction of midwestern folks is accurate in some cases, yet I believe it's a bit of an exaggeration on Payne's part to pretend that everyone in, say, suburban Denver is fat and/or mulleted and/or inarticulate and/or an uncouth redneck. If it were a small, rural town, I could understand that- but Denver?
Is Omaha native Payne simply poking fun at his midwestern upbringing, like the Coens did with "Fargo" and Payne himself did with "Election?" Or by populating the midwest with stereotypical inbred hicks, is Payne perhaps signifying a deeper hurt, almost a shame, about where he grew up? Maybe, just like Warren Schmidt in the movie, the director believes his entire life in Omaha was one huge waste of time. And instead of writing letters to a 7-year-old African boy, he chose to deal with it by making a movie...