Starring, Texas!
Jack Black & Shirley MacLaine to star in new Richard Linklater film
Jack Black
Shirley MacLaine
Richard LinklaterPhoto courtesy of Detour Filmproduction
Scene from the classic movie, "Terms of Endearment," filmed in Houston. JackNicholson, left, and Shirley MacLaine both won Oscars.
Linklater's most recent movie, "Me and Orson Welles," opened the Houston CinemaArts Festival last November. Linklater, right, on the set.
Houston-born filmmaker Richard Linklater is back — with Jack. Actor Jack Black, that is. And this time it’s over a dead body.
Linklater has cast Black as the title character in his upcoming film Bernie, to be shot in and around Austin and Bastrop, sometime in late September for four to five weeks. He masterfully directed Black in 2003’s comedy The School of Rock, in which the comedian played a low-on-dough rock musician, kicked out of his own band, who gets the gig of his life; turning a fifth grade class into rock stars – all while staying under the radar of the school’s principal. It was a break-out role for Black.
In Bernie, however, Black won’t quite be his wild and wooly self. He will portray an undertaker and community leader whose friendship with a rich widow in an eccentric Texas town “full of rich widows” has fatal consequences. Director Linklater is dubbing this one as his “Fargo in east Texas,” referencing the Coen brother’s quirky dark comedy set in North Dakota.
Back to that dead body.
Bernie is actually based on the true story of Bernie Tiede of small town Carthage. He killed his widow friend Marjorie Nugent, stashed her body in her freezer, and managed to make everyone think she was still alive for nine months. Veteran actress Shirley MacLaine will play the unfortunate widow and, one has to assume, also her dead body.
Linklater’s office says there are a couple of other big-name actors who might get added to the mix, but for certain, some local folks will be cast. Texas-based casting director Beth Sepko (up for a Primetime Emmy herself Aug. 29th for casting Friday Night Lights and Temple Grandin) is looking for non-professional actors who are “real characters” — over 40 — who will have roles as town gossips, providing the mechanism for backstory. If you think you are a “Texas character," click here for details. No spring chickens need apply.
Bernie’s story came to Linklater’s attention through writer Skip Hollandsworth’s Texas Monthly article, “Midnight in the Garden of East Texas.” Hollandsworth's articles are always attracting attention beyond Texas. The scribe has a knack for uncovering true events as interesting and often bizarre as any fiction, and crafting each into an engrossing read you can’t put down. This year, he was presented the National Magazine Award for feature writing; the equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize to the magazine industry.
Hollandsworth, who lives in Dallas, co-wrote the screenplay with Linklater. I pried for some juicy details about the script but Hollandsworth was mum.
“I've been asked, for now, to say nothing until the project gets further along, closer to filming. They think I'm going to shoot my mouth off, which I would, of course,” he admits.
At $6 million, the budget for Bernie is way lower than what Linklater had to play with on The School of Rock, which has been reported at $35-36 million. But the anti-Hollywood filmmaker, steadfastly based in Austin, is adept at sculpting his art with less money. One of his first films, Slacker (1991), was said to be shot for around $23,000 - that’s thousand, not million.
On a side note, Linklater’s cult fave, Dazed and Confused (1993), featured two more Texans whose careers later skyrocketed into movie stardom; Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey. Both actors were around 23 at the time. Zellweger, from Katy, was only credited as “Girl in a Blue Truck,” while McConaughey, raised in Longview, impressed the director so much he was given additional lines (even if he was made to tone down his good looks with scruffy long hair).
Back, one last time, to that dead body.
Though not from Texas herself, actress Shirley MacLaine isn’t a stranger to the Lone Star state. In fact, she won the Best Actress Oscar in 1983 for her role in the Houston-shot film, Terms of Endearment. It won five Oscars, including Best Picture, and was nominated for six more. For me, MacLaine will always be Aurora Greenway, the uptight mother of Emma Horton (Debra Winger) and reluctant lover of astronaut Garrett Breedlove (Jack Nicholson). Nicholson’s character was hilarious and sometimes pitiful as an astronaut/playboy past his prime. Nicholson also won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.
You can recognize the Bayou City in scenes at Brennan’s restaurant, a garage apartment in the Heights, and the Avalon neighborhood that stood in for River Oaks where MacLaine and Nicholson’s characters lived.
Terms of Endearment made us laugh, made us cry, made us want to wring Flap Horton’s neck (Jeff Daniels as the unfaithful, unfeeling son-in-law), and made Houston very proud as the location for an Academy Award slam-dunk.
