About Schmidt

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About Schmidt

Directed by	Alexander Payne
Produced by	Michael Besman and Harry Gittes
Written by	Novel: Louis Begley Screenplay: Alexander Payne Jim Taylor
Starring	Jack Nicholson Kathy Bates Hope Davis Dermot Mulroney
Music by	Rolfe Kent
Cinematography	James Glennon
Editing by	Kevin Tent
Distributed by	New Line
Release date(s)	December 13, 2002
Running time	125 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

About Schmidt is a 2002 American film directed by Alexander Payne and starring Jack Nicholson as Warren Schmidt and Hope Davis as his daughter Jeannie. It is based on the 1996 novel of the same title by Louis Begley.

The film begins with the retirement of Schmidt from his position as an actuary in an insurance company in Omaha, Nebraska. Schmidt finds it hard to adjust to his new life and feels useless and impotent. One evening, he is detachedly watching a television advertisement about a foster program for African children. He enters the sponsorship program and soon receives an information package with a photo of "his" foster child, a small Tanzanian boy named Ndugu, to whom he relates his life in self-centric letters. The main narrative of the film follows Schmidt as he goes on a road trip in order to attend the wedding of his daughter to a man and family he doesn't particularly like at all.

1 Plot
2 Classification and awards
3 Trivia
4 Box office
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Schmidt narrates his life to Ndugu. The film opens with a death and a funeral, and closes with a wedding.

Schmidt retires from a lifetime's work in the Woodmen of the World insurance company, and is given an interchangeable retirement dinner at a cheap banquet hall. He visits his young successor's office to offer help, but who impatiently ushers Schmidt back out the door, shaking Schmidt's hand and saying he needs no help. Schmidt leaves the building to see the contents of his office in the basement, set out for garbage-collectors.

Schmidt describes his longtime alienation from his wife, who suddenly dies from a blood clot in her brain just after his retirement and their purchase of a Winnebago motor home. His friends and his only daughter Jeannie and her fiance Randall Hertzel arrive from Denver and briefly console him at a funeral ridden with arguments over money and funeral caskets. Jeannie intends to marry Randall (played by Dermot Mulroney), a union opposed by Schmidt, who feels Randall, a water bed salesman, is mediocre and unsuited to his daughter. Randall recommends the book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" by Harold Kushner to Schmidt and then tries to entice him into a pyramid scheme. After the couple returns to Denver, Colorado, Schmidt is again left alone.

Living alone, Schmidt stops washing, is shown sleeping and waking in front of the television, eating the entire contents of the kitchen, and goes outside with a coat over pajamas to load up on frozen foods in the supermarket. In a closet he discovers some hidden love letters disclosing his wife's long-ago affair with a mutual friend nearby, whom Schmidt angrily confronts. He decides to take a journey in his new Winnebago to see his daughter and convince her not to marry. When he phones her to tell her he is coming a few weeks earlier than planned, she insists that he only arrive shortly before the wedding.

Schmidt in his last moment at the office, the day he retired.

Schmidt then decides to travel to places of his past, and finds his childhood home has been replaced by a tire shop; he visits his former college frat house, and a small museum. At a trailer campground, he is a dinner guest of a friendly and sympathetic couple there, but is ejected out after he makes a pass at the wife afterwards. Schmidt arrives in Denver shortly before his daughter's wedding, stays there with her fiance's mother, and wakes after a night in a water bed with severe pain and immobility in his back and neck. He meets her fiancé's family and unsuccessfully tries to dissuade her from the marriage. She and her fiancé argue. The family dinner conversation is full of criticism and profanity, then more pleasant at the wedding. Although not feeling well, Schmidt attends the wedding and delivers a cordial speech at the wedding dinner, withholding his disapproval. After the speech, he leaves to get sick in the bathroom.

When he returns home to Omaha, his narrative to the orphan Ndugu questions what he has ever accomplished in his life. A pile of mail is waiting for him inside the empty house. Schmidt opens a surprise letter from Tanzania. It is written by a nun who cares for Ndugu, and she writes briefly but warmly that Ndugu is illiterate but enjoys Schmidt's letters and financial aid very much. The little boy's hand-drawn picture is enclosed, showing two smiling stick figures, one large and one small, holding hands in the blazing sun. Schmidt weeps with emotion, and the film ends.

[edit] Classification and awards

The movie has been rated R ("Restricted; Under 17 Requires Accompanying Parent or Adult Guardian") in the United States for some profanity and some very brief nudity in a scene where Randall's sexually promiscuous mother Roberta (played by Kathy Bates, known for her lead role in Misery) tries to seduce Schmidt in a hot tub.

Jack Nicholson was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role in 2003 and Kathy Bates was nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role but neither won. The film did receive the 2003 Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay - Motion Picture, as well as the Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama (Jack Nicholson, who stated "I'm a little surprised. I thought we made a comedy.").

[edit] Trivia

The tire shop on the site of Schmidt's childhood home is at 2103 West Broadway in Council Bluffs, IA.
The shot where Schmidt has dozed off while writing a letter in his bathtub is supposed to resemble the Jacques-Louis David painting "The Death of Marat".
Listed on a cinema marquee in a scene of the movie: (Left) Closed for repairs / (Right) Sideways. Sideways ended up being the next movie directed by Alexander Payne.
The church shown during the wedding rehearsal is in Boulder, Colorado, 20 miles northwest of Denver. The church can be seen on the right from Highway 36 just as one enters town.
Scenes supposedly taking place in a neighborhood in Denver actually were filmed in Omaha.
Scenes supposedly taking place at the University of Kansas were actually shot at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The production crew created a lifetime Endowed Scholarship for the real-life Ndugu, Abdallah Mtulu, through the real Childreach organisation.
The scene where Warren is swinging on the monkey bars was filmed at Steinhart Park, in Nebraska City, Nebraska.
A scene that echoes Jack Nicholson's famous diner scene in Five Easy Pieces (1970) (his exchange with the waitress) was in an early cut of the movie in which Schmidt concedes in a cowardly fashion to the dictates of the waitress. Though the preview audience went wild over it, director Alexander Payne cut it from the final film because he felt that the scene was too much of a pointed reference to Jack Nicholson's iconography and that something so referential took the audience out of the film.
The cinema that Warren drives by before he goes to the museum to look at the arrowheads is the Pioneer 3 in Nebraska City, Nebraska. The "museum" is a Civil War museum in the same town, just down the street.
The Woodmen Life Assurance Co. is an actual firm. Jack Nicholson filmed his scenes at the company's offices and was given a plaque making him an honorary Woodmen member.
The word "Ndugu" means "brother" literally in Swahili. It is also used as slang for "friend" as in the US.
The film's plot involves the children's charity "Childreach". Since 2002, the year of the film's release, the organisation has referenced the film and featured its poster in its literature for prospective child sponsors.
A short story written by John Updike , "Dear Alexandros" , has a similar plot to the movie.
Nationally syndicated political cartoonist Jeff Koterba had a walk-on role in the film; however, it was cut from the final version.
Once the filmmakers bought the rights to the Louis Begley novel, they kept the title and the main character but changed just about everything else. In the book, the main character lived in the Hamptons and his daughter was about to marry a lawyer.
The person Warren listens to on his car stereo is famous conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
Thomas Michael Belford, who plays the funeral director in the film, is a funeral director at John A. Gentleman Funeral Home in Omaha, Nebraska.
Nicholson would fly back to Los Angeles during filming for every Lakers home game.
Melissa Hanna, who plays "Dairy Queen Employee", is an actual employee of the Dairy Queen in Omaha, Nebraska where her scene was filmed.
A scene where Schmidt pees all over the bathroom is replaced on the television and airline versions of the movie with a scene where he talks to a neighbour about the loss of Helen.
A scene where Schmidt has to spend a night in jail for shoplifting a case of Preparation H and a bottle of J. B. Scotch was cut before the film was released.
Other actors were also in the movie but cut before release. These were (with their character names): Tim Driscoll (grocery store manager) and Jeff Morris (farmer at petrol station).
Thomas Haden Church was originally considered for Randall. Payne later cast him for the role of Jack in Sideways, his next film.
Alexander Payne owns the Winnebago that Schmidt drives during the movie.