Student Hold Close Ties to "Lovely, Still"

Merydeth Cummings
1.10.08

Everyone has had the experience of watching a movie when they find themselves wondering how they filmed that shot from the skyscraper or how they managed to make get that angle from underwater. Junior Drew Altman knows all of the secrets and skills from behind the scenes, as he’s grown up witnessing them through a producer’s eyes.

“Now I can’t help but watch a movie sometimes and wonder what’s going on behind the camera,” Altman said.

This is because Drew’s father, Dana Altman, is a producer and owns the production company North Sea Films. His family has a long history in the movie making industry, and Drew grew up on the set and behind the scenes of movies. His grandfather, the late Robert Altman, was the director of “M.A.S.H.,” “Gosford Park” and, most-recently, “Prairie Home Companion,” starring such talent as Lindsay Lohan, Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep.

Dana Altman is currently producing the film  Lovely, Still,” with director Nik Fackler, in Omaha. The movie stars Academy Award winners Ellen Burnstyn and Martin Landau. Fackler’s debut film is a non-traditional romance.

“It’s about an older man coming to the later stages of his life and never having found love, and then he finds it near Christmas time,” Dana Altman said.

Landau plays the older man and Burnstyn plays the woman he falls in love with.

“They were chosen because they are exceptional actors and have a history of talent and fit the demeanor of the characters,” Dana said.

As a producer, Dana Altman is in charge of hiring the cast and crew for the film and negotiating contracts and budgets,  making sure the movie is the best possible.

“Filming a low-budget film in Omaha during the winter has been very difficult because the ice storms and snow complicates things,” he said.

However, filming a movie is always hectic and chaotic, no matter the circumstances behind it.

“I see my dad about half an hour every night and that’s it,” Drew Altman said. “And when he is home, he heads straight to bed because he’s so tired.”

Fackler wanted to film in Omaha for a couple of different reasons.

“Nik was born and raised in Omaha, so he’s been exposed to all the places in here. When he was writing the story, he saw all the different parts of the story being played out in places he knew in Omaha,” Dana Altman said.

Being a producer, Altman works very closely with 21- year-old Fackler. The two knew each other since Fackler was in high school.

“He showed me a short film in high school and I loved it. I knew he had a lot of promise, so he went to school to direct and then he wrote ‘Lovely, Still,’” Dana Altman said. “When he came to me and I saw the screenplay, I was really excited to make the film.”

“Lovely, Still” is Fackler’s debut film in the industry, while Altman has much more experience in movie making.

“As a young person I was exposed to the film industry, and so I was always very intrigued by cinematic art as a kid, then I decided to study it,” Dana said.

Dana Altman started off working as a grip in Los Angeles, a person who sets up lights and fixes the set, and he then moved to Nebraska. Here he made the production Company North Sea Films. The company has produced such films as “The Private Public,” “Kolobos” and “Omaha The Movie.”

Photo courtesy of Dana Altman