#29 About Schmidt

Warren Schmidt is retiring from his position as an actuary with an insurance company in Omaha, Nebraska. Schmidt finds it hard to adjust to his new life and feels useless. One evening, he sees a television advertisement about a foster program for African children and decides to sponsor a child. He soon receives an information package with a photo of his foster child, a small Tanzanian boy named Ndugu Umbo, to whom he relates his life in a series of rambling letters.

Schmidt is given an impersonal retirement dinner. He visits his young successor's office to offer his help, but the offer is politely declined. As he leaves the building, Schmidt sees the contents and files of his office in the basement, set out for garbage collectors.

He describes to Ndugu his longtime alienation from his wife, who suddenly dies from a blood clot in her brain just after his retirement and their purchase of a Winnebago motor home. Friends arrive, along with his only daughter Jeannie and her fiance Randall Hertzel from Denver. They console him at the funeral, but Jeannie later berates him for taking his wife for granted, buying her a cheap casket. He asks her to move back for a while to take care of him, but she refuses.

Schmidt feels that Randall, a waterbed salesman, is unsuited to his daughter. Randall recommends the book "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" by Harold Kushner to Schmidt and then tries to entice him into a pyramid scheme. After the couple leaves, Schmidt is alone.

He stops showering, is shown sleeping in front of the television, and going outside with a coat over pajamas to load up on frozen foods in the supermarket. In a closet he discovers some hidden love letters disclosing his wife's long-ago affair with a mutual friend. Schmidt angrily confronts him.

In order to find some control in his life, he decides to take a journey alone in his new Winnebago to see his daughter and convince her not to marry. He tells Jeannie he's headed out early to the wedding; she makes it clear she doesn't want him there until right before the ceremony.