A road trip that ventures through family life in America’s heartland sets the stage for Director Alexander Payne’s new comedic drama Nebraska.
Payne’s black and white film stars Bruce Dern as a cranky, dementia-addled old man who thinks he has struck it rich in a sweepstakes contest. So he wheedles his son (Will Forte) into taking him on a road trip from Montana to Nebraska to collect the prize money and along the way, they encounter relatives and acquaintances and the past.
Nebraska earned a Best Actor prize for Dern at the 2013 Cannes Film and garnered Payne a nomination for the coveted Palme d'Or.
Payne spoke about the making of the film in a conversation with Director Jim Jarmusch (Only Lovers Left Alive) after the DGA membership screening in New York on November 20.
Payne’s other works include the feature films The Passion of Martin, Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt, and the DGA and Academy Award®- nominated The Descendants and Sideways. He has been a member of the DGA since 1997.