‘The Holdovers’: Read The Screenplay That Helped Get Alexander Payne Back Behind The Camera
Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the year’s most talked-about scripts continues with The Holdovers, Oscar winner Alexander Payne’s return to filmmaking after a six-year hiatus.
The Holdovers, Payne’s eighth feature, is a 1970s-set comedy centered around Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), a bad-tempered tutor at a New England prep school who is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually, he forms an unlikely bond with the damaged, brainy troublemaker Angus (Dominic Sessa) and the school’s head cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who has just lost a son in Vietnam.
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The pic was penned by writer David Hemingson, best known as the creator of Whiskey Cavalier, and marks the second feature Payne has directed from a screenplay he didn’t write. The director’s two Oscars are both in the Adapted Screenplay category (for co-writing The Descendants and Sideways, respectively).
Earlier this year, Deadline was on the ground at Greece’s Thessaloniki Film Festival, where Payne spoke at length about the film’s scripting process. When asked whether he found it difficult to direct a script he didn’t originate, Payne wryly joked: “If AI could write a script for me, I would be so happy. I trained as a director, not a writer. To be a filmmaker, you write, direct and edit. But I much prefer directing to writing. Writing is hard, and I’m slow at it.”
Payne added that he considered The Holdovers his first experience “directing a writer” as he commissioned the screenplay.
“David Hemingson had written a pilot script that took place in an all-boys prep school, and it was wonderful,” Payne says. “I called him up and said, ‘I don’t want to make your pilot but would you consider writing a feature script based on a different idea?’”
Said Hemingson: “Alexander put it this way: it’s the story of lonely people at Christmas and the way their relationship evolves and the adventures they go on.
“There’s a reason Alexander is such a great writer and it’s because he’s a humanist,” he continued. “He always wants to tell the human story and that’s what he encouraged me to do. I’m forever grateful that he drove me in that direction. He wants to see people in all their flawed glory on screen.”
The Holdovers made a splash when it had its world premiere at Telluride and opened wide November 10 via Focus Features. It popped up three times in this week’s Golden Globes nominations, scoring noms for Best Picture – Musical or Comedy as well as for Giamatti and Randolph.
Click below to read the script.
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