Alexander Payne's Nebraska Commencement Address

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05/05/2018 Added

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After receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, filmmaker Alexander Payne delivered the May 2018 commencement address titled, "A Legendary Commencement Address."

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[00:00:00.124](audience applauds)
[00:00:02.270]Chancellor Green, Board of Regents,
[00:00:05.400]Faculty and Administration,
[00:00:07.540]family and friends of the graduates,
[00:00:09.570]but mostly, and I mean 99% to you,
[00:00:13.520]the proud new alumnae and alumni
[00:00:16.650]of the University of Nebraska.
[00:00:18.940]Thank you so much, and I salute you,
[00:00:21.660]for asking me to speak to you on this milestone day.
[00:00:25.290]Most of you have worked very hard
[00:00:27.930]to achieve what only a tiny minority of Earthlings
[00:00:32.070]have been able to do,
[00:00:33.780]which is graduate from a University.
[00:00:36.640]All of you have won what Warren Buffett calls
[00:00:39.370]the great birth lottery.
[00:00:42.090]And I hope you feel proud, and, as we were saying,
[00:00:45.780]grateful, appreciative.
[00:00:48.050]A few months ago, when Chancellor Green invited me
[00:00:50.520]to give this address,
[00:00:51.690]I decided to seize the opportunity
[00:00:54.550]to compose a legendary speech
[00:00:57.330]that would put your entire lives in perspective,
[00:01:00.690]and go down in history
[00:01:01.710]as one of the greatest commencement speeches ever given,
[00:01:04.730]right alongside those of Winston Churchill, Steve Jobs,
[00:01:08.460]Kurt Vonnegut, and Barack Obama.
[00:01:11.300]So last night in Omaha,
[00:01:12.470]when I got home from Cantina Laredo's happy hour,
[00:01:16.091](audience laughs)
[00:01:17.610]and I actually sat down to write,
[00:01:21.420]I recommend the Ginger Mint Mango Rita, by the way,
[00:01:25.070]especially if Stacy or Chad is working,
[00:01:29.290]I went online and I skimmed through
[00:01:31.170]a number of those classic speeches, and here's what I found.
[00:01:34.750]Basic components of a commencement speech.
[00:01:37.690]Number one, a story of personal struggle,
[00:01:41.090]and overcoming the odds, that segues to number two.
[00:01:45.580]An inspiring and motivating talk
[00:01:47.720]about taking chances in life,
[00:01:50.430]following your dreams, and doing what you love.
[00:01:53.560]Number three, a mention of contemporary society
[00:01:57.690]that tries to be political without being too political,
[00:02:02.350]as a call for you to take your place
[00:02:04.270]as an educated citizen with moral and spiritual values.
[00:02:08.690]And I'm gonna add a fourth section as well.
[00:02:11.320]A brief discussion of why simply being from Nebraska
[00:02:15.550]guarantees your success in life.
[00:02:18.820]Now don't worry.
[00:02:19.653]They told me to keep it short,
[00:02:20.680]and I've got it well under two hours.
[00:02:22.376](audience laughs)
[00:02:26.400]I'm guessing Chancellor Green asked me to speak
[00:02:28.810]because I'm a Nebraskan who has achieved success
[00:02:32.510]in a public, some would say even glamorous, art form.
[00:02:37.570]But my success, such as it is, was far from overnight.
[00:02:43.560]And at least in my case, I had to postpone
[00:02:46.150]a lot of the personal and professional security
[00:02:49.900]that my high school and college peers had enjoyed early on.
[00:02:54.380]I lived like a student until I was 38,
[00:02:57.510]didn't marry until later,
[00:02:58.970]didn't have kids until just recently,
[00:03:02.120]never made much money until I was after 40.
[00:03:05.340]So I'll tell my story, but it's just my story.
[00:03:09.260]You have yours.
[00:03:11.254]I'm the grandson of immigrants.
[00:03:14.090]My father's father arrived in Nebraska
[00:03:16.680]three years after an anti-Greek riot, if you can believe it,
[00:03:21.720]hit South Omaha in 1909,
[00:03:24.350]and so Nicholas Spiros Papadopoulos
[00:03:27.860]Americanized his name to Nick Payne.
[00:03:32.390]He married a girl from Wahoo,
[00:03:35.620]herself the daughter of German immigrants,
[00:03:37.730]and he later, together with my father,
[00:03:40.420]ran a 24-hour restaurant in Downtown Omaha for 50 years.
[00:03:45.000]Both of may parents were the first ever to attend college.
[00:03:49.240]Me, I grew up in Dundee, went to Creighton Prep,
[00:03:52.310]later to Stanford, and UCLA.
[00:03:55.060]Oh, I did do summer school here in Lincoln, by the way.
[00:03:58.410]My older brother was a doctor,
[00:04:00.200]and my parents absolutely hammered me to be a lawyer.
[00:04:06.040]But I had been movie-crazy since I was a little kid,
[00:04:09.870]and it was all I could think about.
[00:04:11.200]So as a senior in college, I applied to film school.
[00:04:15.480]My thought being that, even if I sucked at it,
[00:04:18.740]at least I could go to my grave knowing I had tried it.
[00:04:23.990]I needed to see whether my love of watching movies
[00:04:27.110]would translate into enjoying making them,
[00:04:29.830]and also whether I had any talent at it.
[00:04:31.880]I had never made a movie.
[00:04:33.850]My parents, however, kept repeating
[00:04:36.650]the single worst advice in the world,
[00:04:39.800]and this will really strike a chord
[00:04:41.620]with you artists in the crowd,
[00:04:43.230]which is, go to law school first,
[00:04:45.730]so you'll always have something to fall back on.
[00:04:48.247](audience laughs)
[00:04:50.660]In fact, the opposite is true.
[00:04:53.900]Do what you wanna do first,
[00:04:55.890]because you can always fall back on going to law school.
[00:04:58.902](audience laughs)
[00:05:00.470]These years right now,
[00:05:04.150]when you're 21, 22, 23, 24,
[00:05:07.050]are the precious years,
[00:05:09.230]when you're done with school,
[00:05:10.790]and can get out in the world
[00:05:12.230]and try any damn thing you want.
[00:05:15.100]The word risk should not be a part of your vocabulary,
[00:05:19.200]nor should the words failure, success, or practical.
[00:05:23.900]The most important words for you now are
[00:05:26.430]interesting and fun.
[00:05:29.740]The realities of life are gonna hit you like a ton of bricks
[00:05:32.980]soon enough, and once you get on that train
[00:05:35.430]of family, house, job, responsibilities,
[00:05:39.660]you realize you can never get these precious years back,
[00:05:43.030]and if there's something you wanna try
[00:05:44.760]more than anything in the world,
[00:05:46.150]right now, this is the time.
[00:05:48.750]The worst thing in the world is to die with regrets,
[00:05:52.340]and you can start troubleshooting that now.
[00:05:57.070]I stayed in graduate, oh, shucks, okay (laughs).
[00:06:01.579](audience applauds)
[00:06:05.630]I stayed in graduate school until I was 29,
[00:06:09.540]and then it took me five more years
[00:06:11.250]until I directed my first feature film.
[00:06:14.160]I made so little money on that movie
[00:06:16.530]that I had to borrow money from my dad to pay my taxes.
[00:06:21.160]And as I said before,
[00:06:22.080]I lived like a student until I was 38,
[00:06:24.530]never paid more than $700 a month rent,
[00:06:28.380]remained an aspiring director,
[00:06:31.280]and my father never stopped offering
[00:06:33.000]to send me to law school.
[00:06:34.324](audience laughs)
[00:06:36.100]Of course, as soon as I got my first Oscar nomination,
[00:06:38.570]it all changed to, my son the director.
[00:06:41.042](audience laughs)
[00:06:42.640]Now, a lot of you will have pressure
[00:06:45.380]both from family and from within,
[00:06:48.820]to find financial security and job stability
[00:06:52.810]as soon as possible.
[00:06:54.620]And many of you with genuine financial need
[00:06:57.770]feel that pressure doubly, and I understand it.
[00:07:01.420]But, I still suggest that you can figure out
[00:07:05.370]how to do it your way.
[00:07:07.730]I repeat, my story's unique to me.
[00:07:11.090]But what's not unique to me
[00:07:12.790]is something that I both observed in others
[00:07:15.480]and learned from my own experience,
[00:07:17.490]which is that, most of the time,
[00:07:19.770]nothing in life is quite as hard as they tell you it is.
[00:07:24.310]You just have to stick with it.
[00:07:26.870]The world is both encouraging
[00:07:28.780]and even a little disappointing
[00:07:31.330]in how easily it clears a path
[00:07:33.990]for people who use their elbows.
[00:07:36.920]My road was long, but I felt lucky
[00:07:39.140]in that I knew exactly what I wanted to do,
[00:07:41.800]but as Kurt Vonnegut said, in his commencement speech,
[00:07:45.207]"Don't feel guilty
[00:07:47.357]"if you don't know what you wanna do with your life.
[00:07:50.777]"The most interesting people I know
[00:07:52.447]"didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives,
[00:07:56.047]"and some of the most interesting
[00:07:57.437]"40-year-olds I know still don't."
[00:08:01.890]Here's the Nebraska part.
[00:08:03.410]Here's the big secret which isn't so secret.
[00:08:05.970]You will go farther in life, and get there quicker
[00:08:09.830]precisely because you're from Nebraska.
[00:08:13.130]And if you're not from Nebraska,
[00:08:14.630]but only went to school here, you qualify too,
[00:08:17.720]because you get it.
[00:08:19.530]I kid you not.
[00:08:21.250]Conspiracy theorists tell us that secret cabals
[00:08:28.280]actually run the world and pull the strings,
[00:08:30.400]the Freemasons, and the Illuminati, and Skull and Bones,
[00:08:35.040]and the Deep State, but as it always does,
[00:08:38.600]the truth hides in plain sight.
[00:08:40.470]It's actually us, the Cornhuskers.
[00:08:42.772](audience laughs and applauds)
[00:08:51.900]We Nebraskans come armed with tools for success,
[00:08:55.580]and other Nebraskans know it.
[00:08:57.520]I'm telling you right now,
[00:08:58.690]Nebraskans in New York, or L.A., or Chicago, or Seattle,
[00:09:02.440]or Paris, or Shanghai, or wherever,
[00:09:04.670]will hire you as soon as they know you're from Nebraska.
[00:09:08.040]They know what they're gonna get,
[00:09:09.970]someone who's honest, a straight shooter, on time,
[00:09:13.710]has a good work ethic, a sense of humor,
[00:09:16.260]knows what a Runza is, and is generally,
[00:09:18.722](audience laughs)
[00:09:19.730]generally pleasant to be around.
[00:09:22.260]Just in my own field, entertainment and the arts,
[00:09:26.190]often, when I tell people on the coasts where I'm from,
[00:09:30.050]they snicker, and say, oh, geez, who's from Nebraska?
[00:09:33.570]And I say, I'm sorry.
[00:09:35.430]What part of Fred Astaire, Marlon Brando, Henry Fonda,
[00:09:38.440]Montgomery Clift, Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, Willa Cather,
[00:09:40.900]Mari Sandoz (inhales), Harold Lloyd, Darryl F. Zanuck,
[00:09:43.960]Hilary Swank, Ed Ruscha, Conor Oberst, Gabrielle Union,
[00:09:46.770]Nick Nolte, Marg Helgenberger, Ted Kooser, and I don't know,
[00:09:49.190]geez, let's see, maybe Warren Buffett, don't you understand?
[00:09:52.534](audience laughs and applauds)
[00:10:01.300]And then, then there are all the other Nebraskans
[00:10:04.790]you maybe don't hear about as much.
[00:10:06.580]Guess who wrote, "Ask not what your country can do for you.
[00:10:10.227]"Ask what you can do for your country."?
[00:10:12.700]JFK speech writer Ted Sorensen, that's who.
[00:10:15.330]Born right here in Lincoln.
[00:10:17.819]How 'bout the guy who carved Mount Rushmore?
[00:10:21.700]Grew up in Omaha and Fremont, attended Creighton Prep,
[00:10:24.760]just like your humble speaker today.
[00:10:27.560]How about Mahatma Gandhi?
[00:10:30.470]Pioneer of non-violent protest,
[00:10:32.620]and leader of Indian independence from the British.
[00:10:35.570]He was from India, right?
[00:10:37.460]No, siree, Bob.
[00:10:38.800]Gandhi was born in Schuyler, Nebraska.
[00:10:41.720]His family didn't move to India until he was eight.
[00:10:45.670]Mother Theresa, founder of the Missionaries of Charity,
[00:10:49.350]and inspiration to the world.
[00:10:51.090]Hell, she's gonna be a saint one day.
[00:10:53.680]She was born on a farm just outside Waverly, Nebraska,
[00:10:56.890]not too far from here, just up Highway 6.
[00:10:58.713](audience laughs)
[00:11:00.090]Her family moved to Europe when she finished studies
[00:11:02.640]at her little one-room school house.
[00:11:05.960]We all know Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little, in Omaha,
[00:11:10.660]but what about Martin Luther King?
[00:11:12.930]Surely Doctor King couldn't also be a Cornhusker.
[00:11:16.380]Well, ho, ho, ho, think again.
[00:11:18.693]North Platte, Nebraska,
[00:11:21.520]the King house was right across the park
[00:11:23.310]from Buffalo Bill's place.
[00:11:24.610]His dad got transferred to Atlanta when he was about eight.
[00:11:27.490]Of course, he wasn't a doctor yet.
[00:11:29.620]But, and one last one,
[00:11:31.360]and this one will really surprise you,
[00:11:33.570]Jesus Christ.
[00:11:34.828](audience laughs)
[00:11:37.540]Super famous Jewish guy, Lord and Savior to many,
[00:11:43.930]Jesus Christ, born, by the way, 2,018 years ago,
[00:11:47.600]this same year that you're graduating.
[00:11:49.230]That's pretty wild.
[00:11:50.550]Okay, no.
[00:11:52.350]Jesus was not from Nebraska.
[00:11:54.240]There wasn't a Nebraska yet.
[00:11:55.780]But, if you took a big shish kebab skewer,
[00:11:59.580]and pushed it right through Bethlehem and the Holy Land,
[00:12:02.410]and directly through the center of the Earth,
[00:12:04.280]you know where it would come out?
[00:12:06.110]Even accounting for continental drift?
[00:12:08.140]Cherry County, Nebraska.
[00:12:09.815](audience applauds and laughs)
[00:12:12.070]Smack dab between Valentine and Merriman.
[00:12:18.760]These women and men from Nebraska
[00:12:21.200]changed the course of history, and so can each of you.
[00:12:24.900]And even if you don't aspire to change history,
[00:12:27.490]most of us don't,
[00:12:29.190]I repeat that you can get where you wanna go,
[00:12:32.470]farther and faster, simply by being a Nebraskan.
[00:12:37.270]Use it.
[00:12:38.390]Don't tell anyone.
[00:12:39.630]It's a secret.
[00:12:40.479](audience laughs)
[00:12:42.530]Part four, society and you.
[00:12:46.010]Okay, it's a pretty wild time out there,
[00:12:48.400]and I'm saying the obvious.
[00:12:49.700]The political scene seems divided,
[00:12:52.010]not between right and left, but between crazy and non-crazy.
[00:12:56.280]You guys know it all,
[00:12:57.680]but I just have two little favors to ask.
[00:13:00.120]First, don't be a sap.
[00:13:03.320]Don't buy their crap.
[00:13:04.970]You're college graduates,
[00:13:06.270]and I hope you've learned one important thing,
[00:13:09.130]question everything.
[00:13:12.070]Take nothing at face value.
[00:13:14.167](audience applauds)
[00:13:20.640]See through propaganda,
[00:13:22.490]and I don't mean that ridiculous fake-news, post-truth,
[00:13:25.810]there-are-no-facts, non-thinking way,
[00:13:28.110]which is itself propaganda,
[00:13:29.620]I mean actually looking, examining, and thinking.
[00:13:34.780]Aspire to be someone on whom nothing is lost.
[00:13:39.070]As Yogi Berra said, "You can observe a lot just by looking."
[00:13:44.880]Democracy is fragile.
[00:13:47.690]The Athenians invented it, and had it for 200 years,
[00:13:52.320]then it disappeared for 2,000 years.
[00:13:56.410]A country can have political parties, checks and balances,
[00:13:59.960]regular elections, and still, the majority of people
[00:14:03.380]may not have a real voice in shaping their future.
[00:14:07.260]A democracy works only if we remain informed,
[00:14:11.210]educated, and involved.
[00:14:13.950]The second little favor I want to ask you
[00:14:16.440]is to remain mindful of something,
[00:14:19.310]whether you're conservative or liberal, doesn't matter,
[00:14:22.640]and you've heard it before.
[00:14:24.167]This is nothing new.
[00:14:25.740]But just remember that,
[00:14:29.960]please remember that the enormous influence
[00:14:33.640]of corporations and the wealthy
[00:14:36.210]on our politicians and on our government policy.
[00:14:39.630]Are we a government of the people?
[00:14:41.610]All the people?
[00:14:42.730]Or a government of the wealthy?
[00:14:46.737](audience applauds)
[00:14:49.270]Okay.
[00:14:51.170]The gap between rich and poor gets bigger.
[00:14:53.750]Politicians, all of 'em, they run constantly,
[00:14:56.370]I'm an outsider.
[00:14:57.730]They're promising to drain the swamp
[00:15:00.360]and restore the voice of the people,
[00:15:01.990]only to take office and kiss the feet of the rich.
[00:15:05.200]The corporations, the wealthy donors,
[00:15:07.220]the military-industrial complex, just keep this in mind.
[00:15:11.930]And please remember that the question is not
[00:15:14.330]whether our country should be more conservative,
[00:15:17.285]or more liberal, everybody's here to stay.
[00:15:20.500]What we need are better conservatives and better liberals.
[00:15:25.370](audience applauds)
[00:15:31.730]I stole that line, by the way.
[00:15:33.300]It's not original.
[00:15:34.890]Politicians think about the next election.
[00:15:37.890]Statesmen think about the next generation.
[00:15:41.350]If you can actually find any,
[00:15:43.210]Republican or Democrat, doesn't matter,
[00:15:45.840]please seek out and vote for statesmen and women.
[00:15:49.940]Or better yet, become one yourself.
[00:15:53.760]Because you know what?
[00:15:55.410]It really is up to you, the young, and the educated,
[00:16:00.090]and the participatory, it's you,
[00:16:04.260]young people, exactly your age,
[00:16:06.340]who always, all throughout history, have spearheaded change.
[00:16:10.910]They did it in 1848, that's for you history majors,
[00:16:14.044]and in 1968, and now, just one example,
[00:16:17.930]the teenagers in Florida, and their mushrooming movement.
[00:16:21.440]It's young people like you
[00:16:24.050]who look at the world they're about to enter, and say, WTF.
[00:16:29.550]It's you who must say to politicians,
[00:16:32.620]we don't work for you.
[00:16:34.120]You work for us, and you know what?
[00:16:36.200]You suck.
[00:16:37.440]And we can do better.
[00:16:39.260](audience applauds)
[00:16:48.270]Please remember that this is your time,
[00:16:51.110]your time, right now.
[00:16:52.640]You, you, you.
[00:16:54.145]And who are you?
[00:16:57.170]And who are all of us?
[00:16:59.650]We are Nebraskans.
[00:17:01.580]We are sane.
[00:17:03.420]We are fair-minded.
[00:17:04.860]We value integrity and honesty.
[00:17:07.600]We are humble.
[00:17:09.060]In fact, we're very proud of how humble we are.
[00:17:11.454](audience laughs)
[00:17:13.500]We put ourselves into other person's shoes.
[00:17:16.840]We do not judge our fellow citizens by class or race,
[00:17:21.080]but by character.
[00:17:22.640]We like to be friendly and helpful.
[00:17:26.250]And if I can tie this whole talk up,
[00:17:28.480]and thanks for indulging me,
[00:17:30.250]in one little phrase,
[00:17:32.100]if you can find a way to be true to yourself,
[00:17:35.510]your deepest self,
[00:17:37.210]you automatically are part of a better society.
[00:17:41.480]So that's it.
[00:17:42.730]Have fun.
[00:17:43.860]Life is really, really, really short, so have a lot of fun.
[00:17:47.910]Work hard.
[00:17:48.743]Play hard.
[00:17:49.576]Buy low.
[00:17:50.409]Sell high.
[00:17:51.320]The way you do anything is the way you do everything.
[00:17:53.850]The love you take is equal to the love you make.
[00:17:56.400]Don't die with regrets; you'll regret it.
[00:17:59.490]P.S. Go Scott Frost!
[00:18:01.890]Go Scott Frost!
[00:18:03.188](audience cheers and applauds)
[00:18:13.440]Peace and love.
[00:18:14.490]Congratulations.
[00:18:16.421](audience applauds)

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Alexander Payne's Nebraska Commencement Address

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