Jason Sperb
Day 2 of my Payne/Nebraska trip started in Lincoln. I was primed to like this town beforehand since, on paper, it sounded a lot like my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin--another mid-sized Midwestern city that was home both to a major Big 10 University and to their respective state's capital building and seat of government.
I was not disappointed--any town with a giant statue of a paper airplane outside its airport is doing something right:
For being the capital of Nebraska, there is surprisingly little connection in Payne's movies to the city itself. The only connection in his early work was when the U of Nebraska-Lincoln's campus stood in for the University of Kansas for one brief sequence in About Schmidt when Warren visits his alma mater.
Lincoln only has a major supporting role in Nebraska--the final destination to which Woody (Bruce Dern) and his son (Will Forte) travel in his quixotic quest to retrieve the million dollars he allows himself to be fooled into thinking he'd won, thanks to a Publisher's Clearing House-type scam. That painfully anti-climatic sequence, where he has to settle for a hideously ugly and humiliating hat, was filmed here:
As I followed their route in and through downtown (on "O" Street) I thought at first that it part of the old Lincoln Highway, due to the signs along the road.
However, the old highway appeared to run north of Lincoln, passing near the Archway monument I visited the previous day outside Kearney on its way through Omaha. I'm hoping later to do more with the significance of this historic thoroughfare (which is a structuring absence in the Archway museum sequence from About Schmidt)--the symbolism of the open road in a lot of Payne's films, a modern equivalent to the endless frontier imagery in their margins (and connects to the reference to Grapes of Wrath, starring Omaha native Henry Fonda, in Sideways), and for Nebraska in particular--the first coast to coast highway (NY to San Francisco) that is both a major part of the state's own cultural history and a symbol of how Nebraska was part of the journey for most travelers and not the destination.
One other aspect of Lincoln I noticed driving myself is how many of the angles used in Nebraska were clearly chosen to show the state capital building, a massively impressive tower (rare for US state capitals), directly in the center background of the frame. One is the O Street Bridge when the first arrive in Lincoln:
The next is the auto dealer on the other side of downtown, on the same street, when they decide to purchase the pick-up truck.
These remind me of the old joke about Hollywood's version of Paris--in the movies, every apartment always magically has an unobstructed view of the Eiffel Tower. Even Lincoln, Nebraska, is being subtly framed through this same type of cinematic point of view (what John Urry called "touristic signs")--that we recognize famous landscapes not by how they actually look most of the time, but by how we are conditioned through touristic media to expect them to look. On film, Lincoln needs the state capital in the frame to be recognized as "Lincoln."
After Lincoln, I headed straight east to Nebraska City (just south of Omaha), which was featured in a couple of shots in About Schmidt, such as the exterior of the historical museum where Schmidt sees the arrowheads as part of a gradually realization about the history of indigenous people.
The "Pioneer" Theatre (you can't make that name up!) might be familiar to any Payne fans out there as the location for the Sideways easter egg in About Schmidt (when the film was made in 2001, only Payne's inner circle would have been cued to the fact that he intended Sideways to be his next film). In a thrift store close by, I found a generic movie theatre sign that instantly became a favorite souvenir of mine by virtue of its proximity to the Pioneer (though, kind of like the original Sideways in-joke, no one else would appreciate the significance without knowing the context).
After Nebraska City, I made my way finally to Omaha, briefly passing through Bellevue to snap a couple of photos of the dumpy motel where Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) stays in Election.
Upon reflection, I was disappointed I didn't see more Election locations during my NE trip. It was the film that first introduced me to Payne's work decades ago and was for the longest time still my favorite of his (nowadays, I find that About Schmidt stays with me the most, following closely by Nebraska, the movie that re-sparked my interest in his career after a decade of neglect).
Finally, I arrived in Omaha that night (a little behind schedule, which led to a hectic next day running around that massive metro area). I ate dinner at Jack's Cafe, the steakhouse that was prominently featured in the first part of About Schmidt, when he has his retirement dinner.
In quiet resignation, he then leaves the reception and moves to the bar for a solitary drink:
The main dining room where I ate was also featured in a deleted scene where he and his wife dine with another couple (if you're noticing a trend, I find the deleted scenes sometimes as interesting as the movie itself). Re-watching that clip now, I regret not ordering the prime rib!
The whole place has not changed a bit since its appearance in the film twenty years ago, and the entire Cafe screams "old school Omaha" in ways that make it clear why it would appeal to Payne. As with the Archway Monument, it was one of the few locations I visited that took pride in its Payne affiliation.
I spent the night, ironically, across the border in Council Bluffs, Iowa (in a motel that actually was on the old Lincoln Highway). So I got to check the Hawkeye State off my travel list as well. There were at least two filming locations as well in this Iowa town, and I sought them out first thing the next morning . . .
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