I remember Chloe joking with me that she figured she’d be saying, "Linda, that’s great", and, "Frances, act less.” That said, nothing was definite.
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In a strange way, the challenge wasn’t how to work with non-actors, but rather how to integrate Frances McDormand. JB: Chloe Zhao has a tradition of working with non-actors.
What do you know about how that came to be? Amy SussmanĮSQ: I found it so wonderful and surprising to actually see Swankie, Linda, and Bob playing themselves. Seeing Swankie and Linda and Bob on the big screen doing so well, telling versions of their stories, and being validated was really exciting.įrances McDormand, Chloe Zhao, Charlene Swankie, and Linda May at a Telluride Film Festival screening of Nomadland. For me, it was incredibly poignant, and I thought they did a fantastic job with the emotions of the landscape. In the very first scene, Fern hugs a gentleman I reported with about seven years ago. I’ve been to so many of the places that are in the film, reporting with people who are actually in the film, so the feeling of déjà vu is overwhelming. Obviously I'm not a neutral viewer, of course. Esquire spoke with Bruder about where the nomads featured in her book have ended up, as well as how life on the road has changed in just a handful of years.Įsquire: What did you think of the film adaptation of Nomadland? In her travels, Fern encounters many of Bruder's real life nomads, including Linda, with whom she works at a campsite in the Badlands Swankie, with whom she spends time in Arizona and Bob, who pours his heart out to Fern at the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous.Īt the conclusion of Nomadland, Linda had purchased acreage in Douglas, Arizona, where she intended to build an Earthship and live a homesteading lifestyle. In Zhao's adaptation, McDormand plays Fern, a 61-year-old widow who embarks on the vandwelling life after the shuttering of Empire, the United States Gympsum Corporation's company town in Nevada, where she and her late husband lived and worked. Other nomads from the book who appear in the film are Charlene Swankie, an experienced kayaker who's been living on the road for over a decade, and Bob Wells, a famous YouTuber and the founder of the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous (an annual gathering of vandwellers in Quartzsite, Arizona). Nomadland is a modern Grapes of Wrath, depicting the dystopian economic dispossession of an aging population for whom retirement is an out-of-reach dream.īruder's book centers on Linda May, a 64-year-old grandmother living out of a secondhand Jeep who dreams of building a sustainable " Earthship" dwelling. For years, Bruder lived with and reported on these itinerant laborers, traveling the American West in her own van (christened Van Halen) and working grueling jobs alongside them everywhere from an Amazon fulfillment center to a sugar beet harvesting plant.
Nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress, and Best Director, Nomadland is directed by Chloe Zhao, starring Frances McDormand as a fictional protagonist alongside the real-life nomads featured in Bruder's book, who appear as themselves. Almost four years out from the book's publication, Nomadland has become a feature film, as well as an awards season darling.
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When Jessica Bruder was reporting Nomadland, her award-winning gonzo investigation of transient American seniors who follow seasonal employment while living out of their vans, she never imagined that the nomads with whom she was up to her elbows in campground toilets would become movie stars.
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