The just-released poster for Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska (Paramount, 11.22) tells you it’s a serious award-season film about the stark realities of aging. (Obviously similar to the 2002 one-sheet for Payne’s About Schmidt.) My white hair is so sparse that I might as well be bald plus I have a neck wattle plus I’ve won a million bucks from Publisher’s Clearing House plus I’ve been an abusive drunk for most of my life plus my old friends and relatives sit around their living rooms and watch TV like immobile zombies. No sedatives, no soothing bromides to speak of, no emotional comforts of the usual sort.

I admire the ballsiness of this one-sheet but if I was in charge of designing it, I would use an “ironic” full-color portrait of Bruce Dern and Will Forte grinning and hugging each other — love, family, alpha vibes, luminosity. In short I would lie about the bulk of the film’s content. As many, many posters and trailers have done in the service of hundreds of films in the past.

I’m anxious to see the slightly shortened Nebraska — the Cannes version was 114 minutes (or so says Scott Foundas’s 5.23. Variety review) while the new version is 110 minutes or thereabouts, according to the Wiki page.