Bruce Dern

I like Bruce Dern. He pops up in movies from time to time and I always like the character he plays.

With movie folk you always assume they are living large.

I just read an article in Rolling Stone about Bruce Dern and the new movie he is starring in - Nebraska.

First of all I learned that he is 77. I don't want him to be 77. What a great thing it would be if movie folk could freeze their lives in the same way the silver screen repels aging. Good actors should never age. They should be exempt from dying.

The man has not had a wildly successful career. I did not know this. The article tells me his biggest pay day was $500,000 in 1981 for a movie called  Tattoo.

That is not impressive. Between what I earn and what I steal I bring home approximately $500,000 from the evil liquor commission.

Actors come up in waves and always get compared to their peers.

Dern emerged at the same time as Jack Nicholson and Robert Redford. They were all pals. Nicholson and Redford have fatter bank accounts.

Bruce was up for The Godfather, Jaws, and Cuckoo's Nest. He didn't land any of them.

Fascinating fact - in 1972 he was in a movie with John Wayne called The Cowboys. His character shot Wayne in the back.

Fascinating story - Dern: "It was 8:30 in the morning when we did the scene, Wayne was already shitfaced on Wild Turkey, a bottle and a half. I could smell it on him, and he leans into me and says, "Ohhh, how they're gonna hate you for this."

And they did. Dern says people came up to him constantly after the movie to tell him they could not forgive him. Even today people still comment to him about it.

Amazing.

Dern won the best-actor prize at Cannes for Nebraska. Insider chat has him being considered for a Best Actor Oscar.

He was last Oscar nominated in 1978 for Coming Home.

Age can be a sweet inspiration. Or a well to draw from. Elton John just put out an album that everybody is raving about. A back to roots, simplified kind of thing.

But not simplified in emotion or intent. Creative types start out in one place, get swept up into another and, if they live long enough, return to a place of simplicity armed with a lifetime of experience.

Wisdom.

Wisdom is a great word. A great thing to earn. If you live long enough and your brain functions efficiently, you get wisdom.

You are able to get closer to your soul and to emanate a quiet and intimidating power.

This may be the ultimate goal for the creative spirit. To do it well, to do it powerfully, to do it sparingly.

Getting down to the bare bones of the talent.

Nebraska is about an old coot who thinks he has won $1 million in a sweepstakes thing and gets his son to drive him from Montana to Nebraska to pick up the money.

Sounds ripe for heartache and disappointment and pathos. Sounds like a movie about life.

Dern is a bit of a loner. Never got caught up in the Hollywood lifestyle. Probably explains in part why he never got the big payday.

His daughter tells the story of her 18th birthday. He wanted to take her on a road trip and she left the destination up to him.

He took her on a tour of California's ghost towns and state penitentiaries.

Maybe stunning creativity late in life is what life is all about. Or what it should be about.

A spirt that changes and adapts and learns over the beatings of a lifetime and crystallizes that learning, that wisdom, into something so simply powerful that it cannot be ignored.

Bruce Dern got paid $65,000 for Nebraska.