{"id":682656,"date":"2026-05-20T20:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T20:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/682656\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T20:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T20:26:09","slug":"dernsie-review-an-entertaining-doc-portrait-of-bruce-dern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/682656\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Dernsie’ Review: An Entertaining Doc Portrait of Bruce Dern"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEven if the word doesn\u2019t register, you might recognize a Dernsie when you see one on screen. As described in this lively account of Bruce Dern\u2019s life and acting career, it\u2019s his \u201cadded dialogue or added behavior that is not in the written dialogue.\u201d It\u2019s a glare or a smirk or a line like the one Quentin Tarantino<\/a>, one of this documentary\u2019s more frequent talking heads, points to. In Tarantino\u2019s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, when Brad Pitt wakes Dern, as a napping ranch owner, and tells the barely alert man that his name is Cliff Booth, Dern\u2019s befuddled, funny response, \u201cJohn Wilkes Booth?\u201d was an improvised Dernsie.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe director, Mike Mendez, best known for horror films including Big Ass Spider!, based the film on recent interviews with Dern done over several years. There are also interviews with his daughter, Laura Dern<\/a>, and colleagues including Alexander Payne<\/a> and Walton Goggins<\/a>. But mostly the camera is close on his face as we listen to an old man with wiry grey hair and a distinctive gravelly voice \u2014 Dern is now 89 \u2014 tell stories. Fortunately, he is a terrific storyteller, as blunt as you might expect but wittier and warmer. In the way of such documentaries, the film\u2019s tone is adoring, but Dern\u2019s no-nonsense attitude cuts through most of the treacle.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDernsie\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tUnexciting style, but a great actor’s yarns.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenue: Cannes Film Festival (Cannes Classics)
Cast: Bruce Dern, Laura Dern, Quentin Tarantino, Alexander Payne, Billy Bob Thornton, Walton Goggins, Walter Hill, Patty Jenkins, Will Forte, Joe Dante, Fred Specktor
Director: Mike Mendez
Writer: Benjamin Epstein
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 51 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tGiven his gritty onscreen image, the most surprising aspect of Dern\u2019s real life is his background, illustrated with family photos. During his privileged childhood in Chicago the family had a maid and chauffeur. His grandfather was governor of Utah and a secretary of war under FDR. Adlai Stevenson was his father\u2019s law partner before he ran for president, and young Bruce called him \u201cUncle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Dern tells it, he was having none of his family\u2019s poshness, and they turned away when he decided to become an actor. He went to New York and The Actors Studio, where Elia Kazan made him do scenes without speaking for a year. Kazan, whom Dern still calls \u201cMr. Kazan\u201d here, told him his gift was for \u201cbehavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough the film doesn\u2019t explicitly make the connection, that comment goes a long way toward explaining the Dernsies. His most enduring performances, shown in inevitable but judiciously chosen clips, are full of behavior that goes beyond dialogue and gives us masterclasses in acting that range from the glowering, damaged veteran in Coming Home (1978) to the determined older man on a road trip in Nebraska (2013).<\/p>\n

\n\tHis short, early stage career was over when he left for Hollywood. Dern says, \u201cThe reason I never went back to the theater is because what we\u2019re doing here\u201d \u2014 and he points fiercely at the camera recording him \u2014 \u201cis forever.\u201d His vehement tone is bracing throughout, and his deep affection for film is evident.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis comments about his personal life, at least the ones Mendez includes, are brief but direct. He tells a colorful but vague story about his first, youthful marriage which sounds more like a throuple with two women he says were call girls for other women and who fleeced him out of all his money. His famous marriage was to the actress Diane Ladd, a sadder story. Their 18-month old daughter drowned in their swimming pool while he and Ladd were both out and the child was being cared for by a maid. He and Ladd stayed together longer than they should have, he says, \u201cbecause we shared a tragedy,\u201d but those extra years gave them Laura. Early in Laura\u2019s acting career, Bruce says, he advised her not to let herself be typecast even if it meant passing up work. It\u2019s obviously advice that he, with a range of forgettable villains roles, didn\u2019t always take himself.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film is fluidly edited and swiftly paced. But Mendez is smart to let Dern do most of the talking, because the interview subjects don\u2019t add much beyond predictable praise, and the style often strains to be more than pedestrian. Mendez\u2019 one formal flourish is to add animation, including puppets, behind Dern\u2019s voice here and there. There\u2019s a Jack Nicholson puppet leading into the clip of The King of Marvin Gardens (1977) and one of Hitchcock, who directed Dern in Family Plot (1976). These work well enough as grace notes and a way to prevent the film from being visually static. <\/p>\n

\n\tLess successfully, a live-action recreation with Dern playing himself on a hospital gurney after a heart attack is an anomaly and just creepy. And the film makes a great deal of the fact that Dern, a life-long daily runner, has done hundreds of marathons. The frequent references set it up as a clunky metaphor for his professional endurance. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tYou could quibble with this or that detail. Dern calls his Cannes Best Actor award for Nebraska \u201cthe Palme d\u2019Or for Actor,\u201d which is not a thing. But why nitpick such an amiable film, which feels very much like spending time listening to stories told by a familiar, treasured friend?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even if the word doesn\u2019t register, you might recognize a Dernsie when you see one on screen. As…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[69145,49,48,225439,5328,75,49212,337,27369,49631],"class_list":["post-682656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-alexander-payne","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cannes-2026","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-entertainment","tag-laura-dern","tag-movies","tag-quentin-tarantino","tag-walton-goggins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}