A largely untouched interior made it the right fit when the filmmaker, location manager John Latense

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That earlier project’s superstar lead, Jack Nicholson, oscar live naturally dominated media coverage. Nicholson s character, the dour Warren Schmidt, lived in the Dundee home at 5402 Izard St. Bess Ogborn owned the house during filming, but the Jill and Mike Bydalek family moved into the home in mid-2003.
“Every time Payne has a successful movie there’ll oscar live be people that show an interest in the house,” says Mike, who practices technology law for Kutak Rock. “The guy has a following. Random people visiting Omaha will, on their way to the airport, detour and drive by.”
“And it’s not just here, it’s a half dozen other places around town,” Mike says, referring to the favorite Midtown spots the filmmaker oscar live made part of his Omaha trilogy ( Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt ).
In a city with few degrees of separation, the Bydaleks claim a connection to another Omaha Payne house. Grace attended a nearby home daycare that served as the residence of the family friend Matthew Broderick’s character hits on in Election.
But because it’s so closely associated with Nicholson’s potent cinema legacy, few other Omaha movie locations oscar live have the iconic pull as does the Izard Street house. To capitalize on this intrigue the Omaha YWCA (now the Women s Center for Advancement) held a Home for the Holidays fundraiser at the three-story, oscar live red brick Colonial constructed in 1923.
A largely untouched interior made it the right fit when the filmmaker, location manager John Latenser V, and production designer Jane Stewart scouted it.”We’d searched for the ‘Schmidt House’ for quite some time,” says Latenser, who comes from a long line of architects that designed enduring Omaha public structures. “We knew we wanted Warren Schmidt to live in the Dundee neighborhood. We had scouted nearly 50 houses there, but nearly every one had updated-upgraded interiors. We were looking for a house that had not been updated.”
Bess Ogborn’s daughter, Susan Ogborn, president and CEO of the Food Bank of the Heartland, was there for much of the shoot. She says her family “thoroughly enjoyed the experience” of their house becoming a movie artifact. Her folks moved there in 1964. After the death of her father in 1967, her widowed mother hung onto the place.
“Mother redecorated it in 1971, and other than basic maintenance, that was the way the filmmakers found it. But she would want you to know they moved her furniture oscar live out and used set furniture, and that her house was never that dirty or gloomy as it was in the movie. I don’t think she regretted letting them use her home at all. Seeing the house in the film didn’t seem strange, oscar live but walking through that set was very odd.”
As things worked out, the Bydaleks’ daughter, Grace, 18, became the family’s own resident movie star. Acting on stage since childhood, she’s done voice-over work for animated television series, and she portrayed the title role in the Omaha-made film For Love of Amy (2009). During a Carnegie Mellon (Pittsburgh) theater camp, she says she used the Schmidt tie “as my fun fact during my dorm floor ice-breaker,” adding, “People oscar live were impressed a girl from Omaha would have a connection with the movies.”
Posted in: At Home , Dundee , Home , Neighborhoods , Omaha Home , Omaha Magazine , Publications Topics: About Schmidt , Alexander Payne , Bess Ogborn , cinema , Dundee , featured , film , Grace Bydalek , home , Jack Nicholson , Jane Stewart , Jill and Mike Bydalek , John Latenser V , Kutak Rock , Nebraska oscar live , Omaha , Oscar , Warren Schmidt Post navigation ← René Orduña Omaha s Growing Landscape →
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