Three hours before Wednesday night’s The Man I Love screening, I caught a grade-A Bruce Dern tribute doc — Dernsie: The Amazing Life of Bruce Dern — at the Salle Bunuel.
Dernsie is no one’s idea of a mindblowing film but is certainly a highly enjoyable stroll through a good man’s life. Plus the 89-year-old Bruce, whose legs are gone (two guys were holding him up as he walked to the small stage), took a bow and shared a few thoughts before the film began, and that was cool.
I’ve enjoyably chatted with Dern on two occasions (a 2004 press schmooze dinner at the Sundance Film Festival, a 2013 Cannes press junket for Nebraska). He’s a legendary raconteur, of course, and something told me during our Cannes chat that we could’ve continued for hours and hours.
I snapped Bruce when he took the Salle Bunuel stage, and I thought I saw a glint of recognition. Bruce has a kind, proud face.
Directed by Mike Mendez and lasting 111 minutes, Dernsie is one of those generally lively, colorful, “dutifully admiring portrait of a legendary fellow” films…beginning with an obligatory kiss-ass montage, moving into the historical-biographical section (90 or 95 minutes) and finishing up with another kiss-ass montage.
Dern played exactly one semi-lead in his life — the ornery, white-haired codger in Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska (2013). Except it wasn’t a semi-lead, not really — Dern’s codger was a strong character part, and he knew it. But the 2013 Cannes Film Festival jury gave him a Best Actor award, and that set Dern’s mind in stone. If Dern had chosen to campaign stateside for Best Supporting Actor, he would have easily won.
HE’s favorite Dernsie (i.e., seemingly improvised): During a sidewalk scene in The Laughing Policeman, an angry dude of color is staring hard and long at Dern’s racist detective. Dern reply: “What are you gonna do, eyeball me to death?”
Kicker Dern quote on abandoning his early theatre career in favor of Hollywood feature-film gigs: “The reason I never went back to the theater is because what we’re doing here” — capturing special dramatic moments on film or digital bits — “is forever.”
I arrived a bit earlier than necessary and the Salle Bunuel ushers, it seemed, made the earlybirds wait on their feet much longer than necessary….a good 45 or 50 minutes. They derive a certain kind of pleasure from dragging it out as long as possible. They glance at you from the sides of their eyes, silently asking “are you enjoying this endless standing?…heh-heh-heh.”
Dernsie costars many narrators and interpreters — daughter Laura Dern (who’s now acting in Mike White‘s currently-lensing fourth season of The White Lotus, which will use the Cannes Film Festival as a backdrop), directors Quentin Tarantino and Alexander Payne, fellow actor Walton Goggins, etc.
Almost every significant chapter in Dern’s career is covered by Mendez’s film, and it’s all flavored with Dern talk-throughs and interpretations, of course. A whole lot of fun.
Mendez misses one important footnote — Dern’s darkly comedic performance as Lt. Billy Byron Bix in Sydney Pollack‘s Castle Keep (’69). Bix is the leader of a small group of conscientious objectors, and during a conversation with Peter Falk, a soldier who puts on a white apron and becomes a baker for a short time, they all hum a kind of religious hymn. Dern, I realized, was clearly aware of the absurd, dryly comic nature of Castle Keep, and for me his performance was the first conveyance that he was a wise hipster type.
Four years later Dern finally broke out of playing generically intense, crazy-eyed villains. It happened when old pal Jack Nicholson got him a costarring role in Bob Rafelson‘s The King of Marvin Gardens (’73).
HE’s roster of films containing the best Dern performances: The Trip, Castle Keep, Will Penny, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, Drive He Said, The Cowboys (drilled John Wayne!), Silent Running, The Laughing Policeman, The Great Gatsby, Family Plot, Black Sunday, Coming Home, That Championship Season, Nebraska.
