Boxoffice Pro - Winter 2020

didn’t really think about that when I was
younger.” The enormity and age of the
landscapes impressed upon Zhao a sense
of the profound: “You look up [and] see
that lightning storm coming, [and] you
understand where the Lakotas’ thunder
god, the Great Spirit, [might have]
come from. That’s something I didn’t
understand when I was growing up. It
made me who I am as a filmmaker today.”
In Nomadland, Zhao and her small
crew roved around much of America to tell
the story of Fern (Frances McDormand),
a modern-day nomad who takes to van
living after the Great Recession leaves
her jobless and her small town wiped
from the map—it literally loses its ZIP
Code. The odd recognizable face peppers
the cast—McDormand and co-star David
Strathairn mix seamlessly with the real-life
van dwellers playing themselves. Producer
Peter Spears (Call Me by Your Name), upon
reading the nonfiction book Nomadland is
based on (by Jessica Bruder, who co-wrote
the script with Zhao), initially envisioned
the movie as something more like a biopic,
with McDormand playing Linda May, one of
the main subjects of Bruder’s book. “About
that time, Frances was at the Toronto Film
Festival with Three Billboards. And she sort
of slipped away from press responsibilities.
She saw The Rider. And she texted me. ‘I
think I may have just seen the person who’s
going to be perfect for this movie.’” It was
Zhao who had the “spark,” recalls Spears,
that Nomadland “would not necessarily be
just this idea of turning Linda May’s life into
a cinematic treatment, but that she want[ed]
to explore something even deeper and larger,
and the landscape of that.”
Fern, traveling through vistas that cry
out for the big screen, finds new friends
Star Frances
McDormand (left),
with director Chloé
Zhao (right, top), and
Zhao and director of
photography Joshua
James Richards (right)
on the Nomadland set
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