About Schmidt (2002) (Movie)

format_quote Jeannie Schmidt: All of a sudden you're taking an interest in what I do? You have an opinion about my life *now*? Okay, you listen to me. I am getting married the day after tomorrow and you are going to come to my wedding and you are going to sit there and enjoy it and support me or else you can just turn right around right now and go back to Omaha.

stars  For the role of Roberta Hertzel, Shirley Jones was considered but lost the part to Kathy Bates.

stars  The scene where Warren is swinging on the monkey bars was filmed at Steinhart Park, in Nebraska City, Nebraska.

stars  The church shown during the wedding rehearsal is in Boulder, Colorado, 20 miles northwest of Denver. The church can be seen on the right from Hwy. 36 just as you enter town.

stars  A scene that echoes Jack Nicholson's famous diner scene in Five Easy Pieces (1970) (his exchange with the waitress) was in an early cut of the movie in which Schmidt concedes in a cowardly fashion to the dictates of the waitress. Though the preview audience went wild over it, director Alexander Payne cut it from the final film because he felt that the scene was too much of a pointed reference to Nicholson's iconography and that something so referential took the audience out of the film.

stars  The film's plot involves the children's charity "Childreach". Since 2002, the year of the film's release, the organization has referenced the film and featured its poster in its literature for prospective child sponsors.