Ever since The Movie’s release last winter, Phil Kozera has gotten questions about scenes in which Warren Schmidt, played by Jack Nicholson, rode an enormous escalator to view pioneer exhibits at the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument spanning Interstate Highway 80 here. But questions don’t boost attendance figures.
“Right after the movie came out, we had a couple of college kids call us up and ask if we were for real,” said Kozera, the archway’s manager. “When I assured them we were, they drove straight here before the day was over.” Other than those curious college kids, the “About Schmidt” effect on Nebraska tourism was negligible, at least until now.
Maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s a blip in summer sightseeing. But with the help of the DVD released in June, Kozera believes “About Schmidt” has brought people to the archway and given a boost to annual attendance figures for the struggling attraction.
Kozera said visits were off by 15 to 20 percent this year from 2002, but healthy numbers in June and July — the peak months for interstate traffic — provided an overall lift.
“We averaged 910 visits per day in July,” he said, “and that’s a little better than we averaged last year. So we’re climbing back and, from the comments I get, it’s safe to say the movie’s had an impact.”
Privately owned by a non-profit educational foundation, the eight-story cement and log archway and its elaborate displays commemorate the settling and development of the American West. The escalator Schmidt rode from the archway’s lobby is the longest in the state at 70 feet.
It’s a ride he almost didn’t take. Director Alexander Payne, a native of Nebraska, originally planned for Pioneer Village, another tourist stop 12 miles south of here in Minden, to get the lion’s share of shooting with Nicholson. But Payne grew enamored of the archway, and it joined the state’s landmarks and landscapes immortalized in films, starting with the Spencer Tracy-Mickey Rooney smash “Boys Town” in 1938.
The list of movies shot, at least in part, in Nebraska includes: “Airport” (1970), “Paper Moon” (1972), “Indian Runner” (1991), “My Antonia” (1994), “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar” (1994), and two other Payne films, “Citizen Ruth” and “Election.”
“About Schmidt” was the most critically acclaimed film to be shot in the state since “Terms of Endearment” in 1983, when starring actress Debra Winger and Nebraska Gov. Robert Kerry became an item and hung out together in Lincoln’s Zoo Bar.
“Once crews do arrive, they’re usually surprised at how much they can shoot here,” said Laurie Richards, who headed the Nebraska Film Office for eight years in a stint that included the “About Schmidt” production. “Sometimes they’re even surprised everyone is standing upright, and we use cutlery, and we have indoor plumbing.”
Middle-age Odyssey
In “About Schmidt,” Warren comes to the end of a seemingly disappointing and unfulfilling career as an actuary at Woodmen of the World Insurance Society, a company that does exist and does have a tower in downtown Omaha, as shown in the film — probably the state’s second most identifiable icon after the archway.
Schmidt’s wife dies just days into his retirement and, in an attempt to stop the marriage of his only child, a daughter, into a family of wackos, Warren goes on a trip across Nebraska in his new RV. Along the way, moviegoers learn what an empty life he has led as he visits his hometown (Holdredge, played by Council Bluffs, Iowa), college alma mater (the University of Kansas, played by the University of Nebraska at Lincoln) and various state tourist attractions.
Payne’s approach is almost documentary in its use of landmarks and real people — for example, a speaking part for Omaha mortician Tom Belford of John A. Gentleman Mortuary in a scene in which Nicholson picks out a casket for his wife; and waitress Melissa Hanna in a scene shot in the Dairy Queen.
“Every day in the paper you’d read, `Where’s Jack today?'” said Sue Agnew, publications director for the highly regarded Omaha Community Playhouse. “It got kind of embarrassing, but everyone who worked on the film — and there were some from our company — had a ball.”
Vanishing Nebraska
But as time has taught so many, Tinseltown can be cruel. In theatrical release, “About Schmidt” showed no hint of Harold’s, an Omaha restaurant that hosted a day of shooting. Scenes shot in the Woodmen of the World tower were chopped. Speaking roles were silenced, extras vanished.
Nebraskans tried to bear up gracefully, finding solace in the knowledge that the University of Kansas didn’t show up in the movie, either, as any Cornhusker (or Jayhawk) would instantly detect. But when “About Schmidt” came out on DVD in June, it contained a gift from the director. Scenes using local residents as extras got restored and packaged in a special feature. “It was classy,” said Belford, who got a speaking part in the film. “A lot of people were disappointed they didn’t get in the first time, but now they can say they’re in the movie.”
Scenes shot at Harold’s now can be viewed on the DVD, and in the restaurant itself diners can see an autographed picture of Nicholson draping an arm around manager Nancy Bohnenkamp. A plaque marks the booth used by the actor.
“I call it my most excellent adventure,” said Bohnenkamp. “Everyone’s talking about the movie. I was kind of disappointed when it first came out and we weren’t in it, but this helps. Everyone talked about it here when we weren’t in it, and now they’re talking even more now that we are.”
Dave Livingstone, who operates the Douglas Theatre Co., Nebraska’s dominant chain of movie houses, said “About Schmidt” has been his firm’s top-grossing film in the state for the year (it opened in December 2002) and has done as well as any film in recent memory. “I liked seeing a lot of the Omaha and Nebraska sights, though I was a little disappointed at the overall darkness.”
Not Scott Darling, a vice president at Woodmen of the World who was a consultant for the film and appeared in the scene depicting Schmidt’s retirement dinner.
“I’ve heard the complaints, that the movie made Omaha look dreary and not a very inviting place,” he said, “but, if you followed the story line, everything needed to be drab. I respect them for sticking to it.
“This wasn’t a movie about Omaha or Woodmen, even though it was shot here. It was about a man who reached the end of his life and only then realized how empty it had been. There was a real message there to wake up and smell the roses. For us, as a conservative insurance company, this was a lot of fun to be a part of. It was a risk, but it was fun.”
ON LOCATION
From locations such as the Woodmen of The World Tower to the bleak Nebraska countryside, the Omaha-born director of “About Schmidt” knew exactly what he was looking for for his production.
The locations in Omaha included a church, cemetery, supermarket and barbershop, as well as an alley in the director’s old neighborhood where a trash bin was shot.
“If you’re from Nebraska, you could pretty much tell in a heartbeat whether `About Schmidt’ was shot on location,” said Laurie Richards, director of the Nebraska film office during production. “If you’re not, and the majority of viewers aren’t from the state, it probably didn’t make any difference.”
Many scenes, such as a visit to Holdredge, Schmidt’s hometown, were shot elsewhere, and cultural attractions depicted in the film, such as the Custer County Historical Society Museum in Broken Bow and Buffalo Bill Cody’s home in North Platte, report there has been tepid response to their 15 seconds of fame.
If there was a winner outside Omaha’s city limits in the aftermath of “About Schmidt,” it has to be the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument, which spans the major thoroughfare through the Nebraska.
The monument on Interstate Highway 80 is easily the most identifiable icon for out-of-staters, considering approximately 17,000 vehicles per day pass underneath. It is the only such archway on the country’s entire interstate system. Tourism has crept up since “About Schmidt” was released on DVD this summer, and archway staff report visitors come in talking about the movie.
Some tourism officials, who work hard to get motorists to pull off I-80 and explore the state, are privately dismayed that the archway’s faux exhibits and obligatory gift shop are all many tourists will experience in Nebraska. In some cases, the history replicated in the museum can be found for real within a few miles of the highway.
“We know for many out-of-state visitors, we will be their only stopping experience because most just drive through Nebraska on I-80,” said archway manager Phil Kozera, in a tone of consolation. “We take this responsibility very seriously.”
THE MAN WHO ISN’T JACK NICHOLSON
In “About Schmidt,” Jack Nicholson plays an actuary who retires from Woodmen of the World. In the movie scene depicting the fictional actuary’s retirement dinner at Johnny’s Cafe, a locally famous steakhouse in Omaha, there is this touch of realism: Seated at the head table, in a non-speaking role, is Jon Christopherson, a Woodmen of the World actuary who retired shortly before the film was shot.
Christopherson said his old buddies at the company could hardly wait to tell him a movie was being made starring him, as interpreted by a famous Hollywood actor.
“When Woodmen called me up and said Jack Nicholson was going to play me, I told them I had enough practical jokes pulled on me when I was working,” Christopherson said. “I told them I didn’t need it any more now that I was retired.”
After convincing him it was no joke — or at least partially no joke — Christopherson and other Woodmen execs spent a day with Nicholson talking about their company and their jobs. The film’s script actually is a combination of an earlier screenplay written by Payne and a 1995 book by Louis Begley, whose main character is a Manhattan lawyer.
“No way Warren Schmidt was really me,” said Christopherson, who headed straight for his summer home on a Minnesota lake after retirement. “A lot of people said it didn’t do any good for Omaha, it was raining all the time and all that,” he said of the movie. “Well, the truth is that the sun didn’t shine much while they filmed. “
THE JAYHAWKS
Probably no institution squeezed as many grins from the film as the University of Kansas, Schmidt’s alma mater.
Though the film’s campus scenes were actually shot at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, that didn’t prevent KU’s alert alumni department from capitalizing on the story line.
In the March 2003 Kansas Alumni magazine, editors Steven Hill and Chris Lazzarino ran a tongue-in-cheek item about the retirement of “Warren Schmidt, Class of 1958,” from Woodmen of the World. It noted that he recently completed a trip in his 35-foot motor home.
This class note prompted three letters, published in the April magazine. Two of the writers recalled their classmate Schmidt as “cheap,” “trivial” and possibly suffering from dementia, having confused the Nebraska campus for his real alma mater in Kansas.
— Mike Conklin
