DERNSIE: THE AMAZING LIFE OF BRUCE DERN
The Amazing Life of Bruce Dern: iconic villain
From B movie crooks to Hollywood leading men, Bruce Dern’s career, which includes two Best Acting Performance awards in Cannes, spans six decades of cinema. Dernsie: the Amazing Life of Bruce Dern, a documentary by the American genre film director Mike Mendez, is being presented at Cannes Classics, and gives a voice to the reminiscing actor.
Bruce Dern started out in the 1960s at a time where TV bad guy roles seemed to be a dime a dozen, playing gangsters, cowards, and traitors at an impressive rate. When Elia Kazan took notice of him, his career really picked up. Then, Alfred Hitchcock offered him a role in Marnie (1964), and John Wayne cast him in The Cowboys (1972). In the latter, Dern killed Wayne on-screen, something few actors were willing to do, afraid of what it would do to their career. No one kills John Wayne.
The 1970s meant freedom. He worked with Bob Rafelson, with Jack Nicholson in The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), and with Hitchcock again in Family Plot (1976). In 1978, he was nominated for an Oscar and he won the Best Acting Performance in Cannes for Coming Home, where he played the betrayed husband, a worn-out Vietnam veteran, alongside Jane Fonda and Jon Voight.
After that followed a string of supporting roles in genre films and TV movies. It seemed as if Hollywood had forgotten about him. Until 2013, when Alexander Payne offered him the role of Woody Grant in Nebraska, playing a stubborn old father who believed he won the lottery as he drove to Lincoln with his son. It earned Laura Dern’s father a second Best Acting Performance at Cannes.
The documentary, Dernsie: the Amazing Life of Bruce Dern, is a true homage to this exceptional career and celebrates someone who was long underappreciated by Hollywood, something his daughter, with whom he is very close, can also attest to.
The film will be screened in the presence of the director Mike Mendez, the actor Bruce Dern, and the actress Laura Dern.
