About Schmidt

The Woodmen of the World Life Insurance Society is a real organization. Jack Nicholson shot his scenes in the company's offices and was given a plaque making him an honorary Woodmen member.

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Two sequels to the novel About Schmidt were written by Louis Begley: Schmidt Delivered and Schmidt Steps Back. Writer-director Alexander Payne, who held the film rights to the series, declined to produce either because he avoided making sequels to his work. He took a similar stance with Sideways (2004), refusing to adapt any of Rex Pickett's sequel novels.

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Through the real Childreach organization, the production team set up a lifetime sponsorship for the real-life Ndugu Abdallah Mtulu.

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Alexander Payne said Jack Nicholson was the only actor he had in mind for the role of Warren Schmidt and that he would do everything he could to persuade him to work on the film.

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The story features the children's charity Childreach. Since the film's release in 2002, the organization has referenced the film and included its poster in its literature for potential child sponsors.

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The word "Ndugu" literally means "brother" in Kiswahili (the same language as Swahili). It is also used as slang for "friend" in the US.

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Asked about the film, author Louis Begley said he liked it and felt that, although it changed almost everything in the novel, it kept the novel's spirit alive. The only thing he said he missed was the removal of Schmidt's Spanish-origin girlfriend, one of the novel's key characters, who was dropped from the film version.

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A scene reminiscent of Jack Nicholson's famous diner scene (his exchange with the waitress) in Five Easy Pieces (1970) had Schmidt meekly submitting to a waitress's orders in an early cut of the film. Although preview audiences went wild for it, writer-director Alexander Payne cut the scene from the final film because he felt it referenced Nicholson's iconography too heavily and that something so referential would pull the audience out of the film.

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After the producers bought the rights to Louis Begley's novel, they kept the title and the main character but changed everything else. In the book the main character lived in the Hamptons and his daughter was about to marry a lawyer. One element writer-director Alexander Payne considered dropping from the novel was Warren Schmidt's antisemitism, which would have been preserved by making Dermot Mulroney's character Randall Jewish (like the lawyer Jeanie was preparing to marry in the book), but Payne decided the film would work better if Schmidt were not a bigot.

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Since Jack Nicholson retired in 2010, this has been the last film for which he received an Oscar nomination.

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Melissa Hanna (Dairy Queen Employee) is an employee of the Dairy Queen in Omaha, Nebraska, where her scene was shot.

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Alexander Payne did not meet Louis Begley, the author of the source novel, until the film's premiere.

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Alexander Payne said the screenplay was a hybrid of Louis Begley's novel and his own original screenplay "The Coward," which he wrote while a student at U.C.L.A. The title, main character, general plot and theme were kept from About Schmidt, while "The Coward" was the story of a narrow-minded man who undergoes a spiritual awakening as his life nears its end.

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That year it was the only film nominated for Best Drama Film at the Golden Globes but not for Best Picture at the Oscars.

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It is listed on the cinema marquee: (on the left) Closed for repairs/(on the right) Sideways (2004), also written and directed by Alexander Payne.

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The shoebox in which Warren finds the love letters his friend Ray wrote to Ray's wife Helen bears the brand name "Triangle," subtly underscoring the situation the contents reveal.

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The cinema Warren passes before going to the museum to look at arrowheads is the Pioneer 3 in Nebraska City, Nebraska. The "museum" is a Civil War museum just down the street in the same town.

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Thomas Haden Church was originally considered for the role of Randall Hertzel. He went on to appear in Alexander Payne's next film, Sideways (2004).

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The scenes set at the University of Kansas were filmed at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.

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Miriam Margolyes said she lost the role played by Kathy Bates because she did not have enough 'pubic growth' in the pubic area and therefore would not have been suitable for a scripted nude scene.

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Shirley Jones was considered for the role of Roberta Hertzel.

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The person Warren listens to on his car stereo is conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh.

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The scene in which Warren swings at the monkey bars was filmed at Steinhart Park in Nebraska City, Nebraska.

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Len Cariou played Ray, and Dame Angela Lansbury narrated the "Childreach" commercial. In the original Broadway version of the musical "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," they played Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Nellie Lovett, respectively.

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The exterior shots of the "fraternity house" belong to the Tri Delta sorority house at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.

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Other actors were also in this film but were cut before release. They are (with character names): Tim Driscoll (Market Manager) and Jeff Morris (Farmer at the Gas Station).

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Jack Nicholson was born in 1937. During filming in 2002, this made him 65 years old. The film's character is said to be 66 years old.

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Warren Schmidt lives in Omaha, Nebraska, the state's largest city, with a population of about 390,000 in 2002, when this film was shot. The metro area was 770,000 in 2002.

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Nationally syndicated political cartoonist Jeff Koterba had a supporting role in this film. However, it was cut from the final version.

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Jack Nicholson had previously appeared in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, in which his character (who won him an Oscar for the role) clashes with a sadistic nurse, and in The Shining, in which he plays a writer vacationing in Colorado during a snowstorm, adapted from a Stephen King novel. Kathy Bates won an Oscar for her performance in Misery, in which she played a sadistic nurse who torments a writer stranded in Colorado during a snowstorm. That too was adapted from a Stephen King novel.

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Dermot Mulroney had previously played a groom in My Best Friend's Wedding (1997).

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The phone number that prompts Warren to look into third-world child sponsorship is 1-888-927-HOPE. Warren's daughter is played by Hope Davis.

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