Director takes the long way home in 'Nebraska'

It's no surprise the script for Nebraska found its way to Alexander Payne. The Midwestern state where the American filmmaker was born and raised is also where he based his first three features Citizen Ruth, Election and About Schmidt.

But while Bruce Springsteen might have mythologised it in the title of his 1982 album, don't expect Payne to do the same. Ask him what the significance of his state is and you get a stark answer. "Nothing!" he says, grinning. "When people ask me, 'Where are you from?' and I say, 'Nebraska - have you been there?'… they say, 'Oh, I drove through Nebraska once. Boy, that's a long state. Sure is boring!'"

The same can't be said for his film, an elegant black-and-white father-son road movie. It tells the story of Woody Grant (Bruce Dern), a curmudgeonly and mildly confused soul living in Billings, Montana, with his long-suffering wife, Kate (June Squibb). When he receives a piece of junk mail proclaiming he's won US$1 million - if he collects in person - he resolves to head to his old stomping ground of Lincoln, Nebraska, to claim his payout, much to the disbelief of his wife and grown-up sons David (Will Forte) and Ross (Bob Odenkirk). Reluctantly, David agrees to drive Woody there.

Nebraska, for which Dern won the best actor award in Cannes, is a bittersweet study of familial relationships that demonstrates just how the 53-year-old Payne has matured as a filmmaker since he made 2002's About Schmidt, which similarly dealt with an irascible old fellow (played by Jack Nicholson) on a road trip. Payne says the "existential crisis" Schmidt undergoes - expressed in a series of letters he writes - is presented in a more understated way in Nebraska. "It's a little more poetic," he says, "but it's informed by the experience of making About Schmidt."

With a script by first-time screenwriter Bob Nelson, it's the first of Payne's six films for which he hasn't received a writing credit, although he worked on the script to ensure it's still flush with his own experiences. "My parents are old now too, and I have to take care of them, so there were some feelings I was able to put into the film to make it a little more personal to me," the filmmaker says.

His ethnic Greek parents, who ran a restaurant, still live in Omaha where Payne grew up before he moved away to California to study at Stanford University, where he majored in Spanish and history, and UCLA film school.

"I have a nice relationship with my father", unlike Woody and David, the director says. "He's in a home. He has most of his marbles but he's got a bum leg." It was a gift from his father, an 8mm film projector received from a client, that set Payne on his journey to becoming a filmmaker.