Bob Nelson is getting loads of acclaim for his very first produced feature film script. Since Nebraska played at the Cannes Film Festival, it has been receiving a lot of buzz. Bruce Dern stars as Woody, a father traveling to Nebraska for a prize he thinks he’s won, along with his son David (Will Forte) who knows it’s a hoax. Along the way the family settles some old scores and becomes closer together. It’s a pretty good time to be Bob Nelson with Nebraska opening in theaters, expanding wider over the holidays and leading into Oscar season. We got to catch up with him by phone on the cusp of this explosion.
CraveOnline: So the last writers who wrote a screenplay for Alexander Payne won an Oscar. Did Alexander lay down the gauntlet and say, “All right, Bob. Bring it?”
Bob Nelson: [Laughs] Well, it is funny. Normally when you write a movie, you don’t have to think about those things, but he has created this legacy and you almost feel bad if you don’t continue it where normally, it would be a long way from your mind, especially when you’re starting out. Yeah, I feel a little pressure. Not much I can do at this point.
It seems like you’ve lived up to the pressure, and even if Faxon and Rash hadn’t won the Oscar, as you said about the legacy pretty much all of Payne’s films are acclaimed.
Yes. I did a tour of Pixar and sat in and did some writing for them. You can just feel it there too. They’re very proud of their work and they put out great movies. Everybody feels this great pressure to keep that up.
Was that recently or earlier in your career?
Oh, that was about four years ago now.
Was that on a Pixar movie that has been released already?
No, it was a project that I don’t know if it will ever be released. I’m still waiting to see what happens to it.
Now there’s been some debate over who the lead and who the supporting character in Nebraska are. When you wrote the script, did you think that one was the lead and one was the supporting?
Well, I thought of them as both leads. I thought of it as a buddy movie, in the case of, say, a romantic comedy where they’re both leads. I just wanted to write the story as I felt it without even thinking in those terms. I just thought I’m telling both of their stories here. Woody actually has the more classically protagonist story because he has this clear goal in mind, but I always wanted too to write a protagonist like David who doesn’t necessarily have something in mind. He knows he wants to change and do something, but he’s not sure what that is or how to get there.
Bruce Dern has been really reverent to your script. At Cannes he said he didn’t want to do any “Dernsies.” Did he very closely stick to what you envisioned for Woody?
Oh yeah. Woody is inspired by my own father. It’s not exactly my dad but he went through a few different things that are in the movie still. So when I first wrote this, there was no thought of Alexander Payne in mind or anything like that. It was just trying to write a script and maybe use it as a reading sample in Hollywood. So I used my father’s voice when I was writing Woody’s lines. I had that kernel to start with.
Then I added some different things but at the heart of it still is my dad and when I see Bruce Dern in this role, it really takes me back. He kind of even looks like my father. I think he really captures the spirit of my dad. I made Woody a little more cantankerous than my dad was but at the heart of it it’s very close to what I’ve envisioned. I heard 10 years ago that Alexander was thinking of Bruce Dern and I’m so glad that it happened because now that I see it, I can’t imagine anyone else.
