Nomadland (2020)

Nomadland (2020)
Director: Chloé Zhao
== Plot Synopsis ==
A woman (Frances McDormand) in her sixties, after losing everything in the Great Recession, embarks on a journey through the American West, living as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad.
== Male Deaths ==
* None
== Female Deaths ==
* Charlene Swankie [Swankie]
== Trivia ==
# Frances McDormand blended into the nomadic community so well that one of the local Targets offered her an application for a job. Her experience of living in a van took four to five months, covering seven states. She adopted a lifestyle of being constantly on the move to make the movie seem more authentic, rather than just acting the scenes.
# With the exception of Frances McDormand and David Strathairn, most of the cast members playing nomads in the film are actual nomads and local people, listing their real first names for their characters.
# Many of Frances McDormand's co-stars, such as Charlene Swankie and Bob Wells, had no idea she's a Hollywood star. Bob still did not know this until they shot an emotional scene in which Fern remembers her late husband, Bo. Afterward, he said to McDormand privately that it meant a lot for her to tell him that story and that everything was going to be OK. She subsequently revealed to him that her husband's name was actually Joel Coen and he was still alive, which surprised Bob as he learned that McDormand was in fact an actress.
# Frances McDormand nicknamed the van used in the film "Vanguard," which she decorated with her own personal items and slept in during the shoot. Eventually she stopped doing so because "it's much better for me to pretend to be exhausted than to actually be exhausted," she told The Hollywood Reporter.
# The movie was filmed in seven states over the course of four months, during which Frances McDormand actually performed several of the jobs done by people who do nomadic work and inspired the book, such as harvesting beets and packaging Amazon orders with the CamperForce program.
# The company town of Empire, Nevada is a real place that was owned by US Gypsum. In 2011, US Gypsum closed the mine, and subsequently, the town with it. Workers and their families were allowed five months of continued residency in their company-owned homes after the closure. The zip code would even later be discontinued as Empire became a ghost town.
# Linda May (Linda) was originally cast as the protagonist of the film. When Frances McDormand was brought on board, she initially tried to portray the character as Linda did, based on the main character in the book. However, Frances and director Chloé Zhao ended up deciding to base the lead character more around McDormand's own real-life personality.
# Dave's son in the film is played by David Strathairn's real life son Tay Strathairn.
# The howl that Frances McDormand made during her Oscar (Academy Award) acceptance speech was a tribute to the film's sound mixer Mike Wolf Snyder who had died only about a month earlier.
# When Chloé Zhao won the best director award at 2021 Golden Globe Awards (2021) in February 2021, a first for an Asian woman, the moment was as widely celebrated in China as it was in the U.S., with Chinese news outlets and social media users rallying around her success as a source of national pride. Within a day, however, the mood dramatically darkened. Internet sleuths unearthed old interviews in which Zhao appeared critical of her country, and before long, debate and vitriol over her "attitude towards China" was spreading just as fast as the adulation had. Beijing's internet censors were next to enter the fray, blocking most publicity for Nomadland on social media and deleting many references to the film's April 23 China release date.
# With this film, Chloé Zhao becomes the fourth person and first woman to be nominated at the Academy Awards for Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Picture and Best Film Editing in the same year.
# While testing shots in the van with director Chloé Zhao, Frances McDormand actually had an upset stomach after dinner and used a bucket in the van to defecate inside while staying in character. It was one of the first shots used in the finished film.
# The poem Fern recites to Derek is Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare. The lines her former student quotes to her in the store are Shakespeare's as well- from Act 5, Scene 5 of Macbeth. Frances McDormand also quoted Macbeth during her Oscars acceptance speech for Best Actress.
# According to the director, the film was made on a $5 million budget. [IndieWire, April 2020]
# Chloé Zhao's Oscar nomination for Best Director, along with Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman (2020), marked the first time two women have been nominated in the category in the same year.
# With 'Nomadland', Frances McDormand now has more lead actress Oscars than Meryl Streep headlined the 'Los Angeles Times' after McDormand's win of a third Best Actress Academy Award for this film in 2021. Streep at the time still has three Oscars for acting, but two are for the Lead Actress category, and one is a Supporting Actress Academy Award.
# Many have hailed Chloé Zhao's naturalistic filmmaking style as being the natural heir to Terrence Malick. Zhao was thrilled when Malick asked for a screening of the film and gave her very enthusiastic notes for it. 
# Chloé Zhao's Oscar nomination for Best Director, along with Lee Isaac Chung for Minari (2020), marked the first time two directors of East Asian descent have been nominated in the category in the same year.
# Frances McDormand is the eighth person (and first woman) to receive Oscar nominations in producing and acting categories for the same film.
# Frances McDormand's third Lead Actress Oscar (Academy Award) for this film now ranks her runner up in this category, second only to Katharine Hepburn, who won four Best Lead Actress Oscars--one of which was a tie, and two of which occurred in consecutive years.
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