Omaha gets a taste of life on set
BY MICAH MERTES / Lincoln Journal Star
Thursday, Dec 20, 2007 - 12:08:03 am CST
OMAHA — On a frigid Monday evening in Omaha’s Old Market, a movie crew and two Oscar winners huddled around 11th and Howard streets, waiting for the camera to roll — just as soon as inattentive holiday shoppers quit trying to walk in front of the shot.

For the production team of “Lovely, Still,” an independent drama starring Martin Landau and Ellen Burstyn, there’s palpable pressure to crank out as many shots as soon as possible. This night is the 24th day of a 28-day shoot, and a lot of scenes still need to be shot, many outdoors.

Whatever doesn’t get filmed before Saturday, wrap day, doesn’t go in the movie. It’s going to be a late night and a long, hard, hectic week.
“This is our biggest, most ambitious day,” says Lars Knudsen, one of the film’s producers. “At the end of the day, we’re still a small movie, and we’re trying to make a low-budget film, but it seems like we’re making a much bigger movie. And we don’t have the luxury of more time or money.”

But Omaha’s Nik Fackler, the 23-year-old writer/director of “Lovely, Still” and the most buzzed-about Omaha filmmaker since Alexander Payne, doesn’t seem on the verge of mentally imploding. Even though he’s on the final few anxiety-laden laps of shooting his first feature film — one budgeted at $1.2 million at that — Fackler is jovial as the unforgiving clock looms. He even bursts into ecstatic dance when things are going well.

“I feel so privileged to be born in this time,” says Fackler, a self-taught filmmaker, “to be able to be an artist doing film.

“But it does suck sometimes.”

Wearing tight, thrift-store-bought jeans, retro tennis shoes and a mop of curls, Fackler is an indie rock poster boy. But his film centers on a subject you wouldn’t expect from a Gen Y filmmaker: a couple in their twilight years falling in love.

Fackler got his start directing music videos for Omaha’s Saddle Creek label, which is producing the film’s soundtrack. He finished the script for “Lovely, Still” when he was 18.

But how does an 18-year-old convey the emotions of a senior citizen’s coming of age?

“It’s not that hard,” Fackler says. “Emotions are universal. I know what feeling like crap feels like, and I’m sure it feels pretty much like that for everybody, no matter what age you are. And if the dialogue sounded like an 18-year-old wrote it, I wasn’t worried because I knew it was going to get filtered through people that age.”

In Landau and Burstyn, Fackler found his filter. Throughout the shoot, the two Hollywood vets, who’ve worked with the likes of Tim Burton, Darren Aronofsky and Alfred Hitchcock, have contributed their own experiences to the project, Fackler said.

“I learned more from working with them than I probably ever will the rest of my life,” he said. “This is my film school right now. The better, most amazing people I can get involved, the more they’re going to make sure the film doesn’t suck. ”

Also making sure that his film doesn’t suck is North Sea Films, the Omaha-based production house behind “Lovely, Still.” North Sea producer Dana Altman — grandson of late filmmaker Robert Altman — is financing the film, along with New York-based Jay Van Hoy and Knudsen.

Knudsen, who also produced last year’s critically acclaimed indie “Old Joy,” said he and his company usually seek writer/directors with a fresh perspective.

“What I saw in Nik was a truly original filmmaker,” Knudsen says. “He lives in Omaha, will probably live here until the day he dies. He never went to film school. He’s entirely self-taught. And there’s an innocence and purity to him.”

And Fackler’s keeping it in the city, fostering what many movie-business-bound locals hope to be a burgeoning film scene. With the exception of the cast, producers and some other key actors and crew members, most of the production team is local or from the Midwest. A lot of them have other jobs but would like to work in the movies full time, all the time.

“When I was 14,” says Jacy Riedmann, a 22-year-old Omaha native, “I couldn’t wait to get out of Omaha, stupid Omaha, and now I just graduated from college a few days ago, and I’m not ready to leave. You don’t have to rush to L.A. like you used to.”

Riedmann is working craft services for the production — what she calls the bottom rung on the film-industry ladder. She spends most days on set, stocking soda and trying not to spill hot coffee on herself.

“It’s not always great,” she says, “but I wouldn’t give it up for anything. I’m meeting so many people from so many different places. There’s not a lot of work in Omaha right now, so it’s really about who you know.”

Riedmann just graduated from South Dakota State University with a degree in film production. She wants to direct her own movie someday.

Even the set medic has his sights set on the industry. Glen Rademacher normally works at the Nebraska Medical Center and has lived in Omaha for the past 30 years. For all those 30 years, he’s been writing original screenplays.

“I’ve never had one made,” he says. “There is one in consideration, though. There’s actually a lot of writers in Omaha. There’s a lot of film people in Omaha. They’re doing more and more all the time.”

One script Rademacher’s trying to get adapted is a “murder mystery/period piece/tear-jerker/date movie” about a ghost from 1907 who falls in love with a ghost from 2007, he says.

Whether his works get adapted or not, he says he just loves being on a movie set. On his last film job, he bandaged actress Lea Thompson’s foot when she cut it walking out of her trailer.

How one goes from bandaging Lea Thompson’s foot to directing his own $1 million-plus film is anybody’s guess. But Fackler is proof that talent and good timing can launch you into the industry.

But the question is: Does he want to stay in the industry?

“The best part about filmmaking is once you really get into it,” Fackler says, “it really becomes a test to see if this is what you want to continue doing. Because it can be hard sometimes. You start out with your vision, and then somebody comes along and starts beating the crap out of it. But while you’re getting the crap beat out of you, you have to go on.”

And for the wunderkind’s next project?

“Now my goal is to make an even harder film.”

As long as he finishes his first one by Saturday.

Reach Micah Mertes at mmertes@journalstar.com or 473-7395.