John Jackson has had a hand in casting all of Alexander Payne’s films, from “Citizen Ruth” to the current “Nebraska.” And he’s just fine with that, calling their work together a “crazy, creative orgy of ideas and thoughts.” When it came to casting “Nebraska,” in which a father and a son (played by Bruce Dern and Will Forte) travel across the country to claim a million-dollar prize, ideas and faces came at Payne and Jackson from all directions. “He’ll call me up or send me a text and say, ‘Hey, I was having lunch, and there’s this waitress, and you should really meet her!’ ” Jackson says. “Or ‘I was talking to a friend of mine, and he said we should meet this actor who lives in North Carolina. Can you find them?’ And of course I can. That’s what I do.” But first and foremost,...
- 11/28/2013
- backstage.com
Alexander Payne is no stranger to awards season buzz, at least not after two Oscars and a slew of nominations for his last two directorial efforts. This time, for "Nebraska," the filmmaker's latest ode to the Midwest, it's Bruce Dern getting all the attention, after winning the Best Actor prize when the movie premiered at Cannes.
In the film, Dern plays Woody Grant, a retiree who's convinced that he has to travel from Montana to Nebraska to claim the million dollars he "won" in a sweepstakes scam. And since Woody can't be persuaded otherwise, his son David (Will Forte) agrees to drive him. Casting the right actors for the right parts has always been a crucial aspect of Payne's films, leading to a string of Oscar nominations for his casts, a streak that's likely to continue this year with Dern. It's why he was so confident in giving Dern what...
In the film, Dern plays Woody Grant, a retiree who's convinced that he has to travel from Montana to Nebraska to claim the million dollars he "won" in a sweepstakes scam. And since Woody can't be persuaded otherwise, his son David (Will Forte) agrees to drive him. Casting the right actors for the right parts has always been a crucial aspect of Payne's films, leading to a string of Oscar nominations for his casts, a streak that's likely to continue this year with Dern. It's why he was so confident in giving Dern what...
- 11/20/2013
- by Rick Mele
- Moviefone
There can't be too many casting directors living in Iowa, but John Jackson is not your usual CD. Jackson is a resident of the Hawkeye State, where he "decompresses" from casting jobs and occasionally works with a local theater company. (He's also an actor and a director, currently acting in a production of "Tartuffe.") But he travels to Los Angeles or to wherever his current project happens to be.One of his most recent trips was to Hawaii to work on Alexander Payne's "The Descendants," headlined by George Clooney as Matt King, a landowner who awkwardly attempts to reconnect with his two young daughters after his wife is seriously injured in a boating accident. The idyllic setting contrasts with Matt's inner turmoil as he discovers that his wife was having an affair at the time of the accident; he later takes one daughter on a search to find his spouse's lover.
- 11/17/2011
- by help@backstage.com (David Sheward)
- backstage.com
"Alexander Payne's first feature in seven years seems much less marked by schadenfreude than his previous efforts," writes Leo Goldsmith at Not Coming to a Theater Near You. "At times, it seems downright sincere, narrating as it does the tale of a busy, midlife crisis-ready lawyer from Hawaii — played by reliable George — whose life is upended when his wife Elizabeth suffers a waterskiing accident and is stricken with a coma from which she will never recover. Add to his woes a pair of unruly daughters, each on opposite sides of puberty, a super-important real estate deal in which his family plans to sell off some pristine beachfront wilderness to some kind of resort hotel developer, and the revelation that his wife was cheating on him before her accident, and one finds a set-up for a film that's very much of a piece with Payne's other portraits of dysfunctional middle-aged white guys…...
- 10/17/2011
- MUBI
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