 A scene that echoes Jack Nicholson (qv)s famous diner scene in  _Five Easy Pieces (1970)_ (qv) (his exchange with the waitress) was  in an early cut of the movie in which Schmidt concedes in a cowardly  fashion to the dictates of the waitress. Though the preview audience  went wild over it, director Alexander Payne (I) (qv) cut it from  the final film because he felt that the scene was too much of a  pointed reference to Nicholsons iconography and that something so  referential took the audience out of the film.