When filmmaker Alexander Payne pairs up with actor Paul Giamatti, good things happen. The two received rave reviews for their work on Sideways, a film that earned major awards and box office megabucks following its premiere in 2004. And now, during the Toronto International Film Festival, Focus Films obtained the worldwide rights (excluding the Middle East) to Payne’s latest dramedy for Miramax, The Holdovers — which stars Giamatti — for $30 million. It’s the biggest deal in Toronto International Film Festival’s history. Deadline was the first to break news on the enormous deal.
Alexander Payne spent the winter of 2022 filming The Holdovers in Boston. “Getting the right screenplay is the hard part,” he said. “On one hand, I want to be making a film every single day of my life. On the other hand, I kind of want to speak only when I have something to say.” But, for whatever reason, The Holdovers script spoke to the filmmaker, and the resulting film already seems to resonate with select audiences that have previewed the movie.
When filming wrapped, Payne divided his time between Los Angeles and Nebraska while editing The Holdovers, written by David Hemingson, who also produced it along with Mark Johnson and Bill Block. “Editing is so interesting. No matter how many times you’ve done it and how skilled you think you are, every film is new, every cut is new, and you just have to try things out,” explained Payne. “It’s beautiful if done well, and you need a lot of time to really see how the film is functioning and to streamline. And also, at the beginning of the process, you’re telling the film kind of what you want it to be. And then it starts telling you what it wants to be.”
What’s Happening in The Holdovers?
The film takes place in 1970 at New England prep school Barton Academy. Giamatti stars as the disliked professor Paul Hunham. According to Alexander Payne, “The story focuses on one kid, in particular, a real smart-ass troublemaker who’s 15 years old and a good kid underneath. His widowed mother has recently married a rich guy, and she wants to use this vacation as her honeymoon. But at the last minute, she breaks the kid’s heart and tells him he has to stay at school. Selected this year [to watch the stranded students] is Paul Giamatti, this curmudgeonly, walleyed, disliked history teacher. Eventually, the other three or four boys find other places to go, and it becomes a two-hander, but actually a three-hander because of the cook who stays behind. So it becomes about the adventures of these three over a very snowy Christmas holiday in New England.”
The three most unlikely people to bond over holiday fodder will soon learn that holidays don’t require cliche cookie cutter endings and one’s past does not have to determine that parameters for the future.
Alexander Payne Predicts More Award-Winning Work In Giamatti’s Future
Payne says he was delighted to be on set with Giamatti again. “We wrapped that film at the very end of March and had a really beautiful experience,” Alexander Payne says. “It was great to be with Paul Giamatti again. I just think he’s the best actor ever.”
The film is slated for a Christmas 2023 release according to Avclub.com.
The Holdovers marks the first collaboration between Giamatti and Payne since 2004’s pinot-noir soaked masterpiece Sideways.
Payne said that he and Giamatti “had been very much wanting to make a movie together again, and it never worked out. This is a role tailor-made for him. It was actually written with him in mind.” That’s a break from the norm for Payne, who once admitted, “I’ve generally avoided in my career writing for specific actors. You don’t know if they can do it, or if they’ll be available to do it, you can get them, and I don’t want to be boxed into a situation where that’s the only actor who can do it but now can’t.”
Alexander Payne said, “I came across a writing sample for a pilot set in a prep school by David Hemingson and hired David to write The Holdovers. Then, I called [Paul], told him the idea, and he jumped at it. I hate to use the term ‘the finest actor of his generation’ because there are so many wonderful actors, but when I worked with him on Sideways, I was astounded by his range. As a director, you want actors who can make even bad dialogue work, and he can do that. He can just do anything. I think it’s just a matter of time before he gets his first Oscar.”
Sideways garnered five Academy Award nominations. Payne and writing partner Jim Taylor won the Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay Academy Award. In addition, the pair took home the Golden Globe for Best Screenplay — Motion Picture, and Sideways won for Best Motion Picture in the comedy or musical category. Payne and Taylor also won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (aka BAFTA) award for Best Screenplay — Adapted and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. What’s the secret to their professional success? “As writers, Jim Taylor and I, we are simply interested in people,” explained Payne. “ We are just interested in people and the complexities of life. I want to make characters and stories that are realistic, surprising, dramatic, ridiculous, kind of all at the same time. I think we try to have real people and then try to have the circumstances in which these characters find themselves eliciting a number of complex, if not contradictory, emotions.”
Alexander Payne is especially fond of the on-screen antics of Giamatti and co-star Thomas Hayden Church. “I cast each independently,” the filmmaker said. “But to have them develop some chemistry — because if no one believes the friendship between those two unlikely men, then the film would not work — I had them come to the location for two weeks before shooting, so we could rehearse together. But more importantly, they could hang out to play golf, see a movie, and eat together. And they did.”
