NEW YORK (AP) ā The great films of the 1970s have long loomed in the imagination of filmmakers raised during one of the most fertile periods of American movies. But wanted to take it a step further.
Payneās latest film, isnāt just set in 1970, it seeks to imbibe the humanistic spirit of films like ," and ā all movies he screened for his cast and crew.
āWe were very fully making a ā70s movie,ā Payne says, recently speaking by phone from his desk in Omaha, Nebraska.
Payne, 62, shot āThe Holdovers,ā set at a New England boarding school, largely with filmmaking equipment and camera lenses from that period. He mixed it in mono. āWe were trying to play the exercise of: We are in 1970 making this movie,ā he says.
āThe Holdovers,ā which Focus Features will release Oct. 27 and expand on Nov. 10, is Payneās first film in six years and itās one of his best. Payne, the filmmaker of and has long made āthe kind of films they donāt make anymoreā: smart, funny, melancholic dramas for adults. And yet heās kept making them. After decades of making contemporary films that in some way evoke a ā70s sensibility of cinema, heās finally made the genuine article.
āI was just trying to replicate the experience of the movies I love as much as possible,ā says Payne. āI donāt think it makes the movie quaint. I hope it lends it the warmth of nostalgia, the warmth of a lost time, maybe even some traces of memory.ā
āThe Holdoversā reunites Payne with Paul Giamatti nearly two decades after the actorās memorable, merlot-loathing breakthrough performance in āSideways.ā This time, Giamatti plays a curmudgeonly Barton Academy classics teacher named Paul Hunham tasked to stay at school with a handful of kids without family plans over the Christmas break.
The set-up could be broad: a gang of outcasts and troublemakers sneaking joints while the widely loathed Hunham chases them down the halls. And while there is some of that, Payne pares the group down to Hunham, Angus (Dominic Sessa), a bright student whoās one mishap away from being sent to a lesser school (and thus likely to Vietnam) and Mary (DaāVine Joy Randolph), a grieving school cook whose son has recently died in the war.
Something remarkably tender and stirring follows. Digging into each characterās life, āThe Holdoversā ruminates on privilege in class and race, while steadily building an anti-authoritarian streak for the much-espoused supposedly high-minded ideals of Barton.
If Giamattiās āĀŁ¾±»å±š·É²¹²ā²õā character ā a lonely unpublished writer with a manuscript no one wants to read ā was in need of a road trip to jostle him out of a rut, his Hunham is likewise due for some self-reflection and maybe a little encouragement.
For Payne, it was a long-overdue reunion.
āI wanted to work with that guy again for 20 years,ā he says. āI was waiting for the right thing ā and created it. I told (screenwriter) David Hemingson: āWeāre writing for Paul Giamatti. Thatās who weāre writing for.ā"
āHeās just the best actor,ā adds Payne. āHeās the finest actor. Not casting aspersions on others, I just think thereās nothing he cannot do.ā
When Payne screened āThe Holdoversā for buyers at last yearās Toronto International Film Festival, it prompted heated interest. Focus snapped it up for $30 million ā far more than is typical ā a sign of the indie distributor's belief in the movie as a crowd-pleaser and an awards contender. The three lead actors are likely to be in the Oscar mix.
But while Giamatti and Randolph are well-known performers, Sessa is appearing in his first film. After sifting through some 800 submissions, Payne felt like he still hadnāt found someone to play Angus. He and the casting director decided to call up the schools they were going to be shooting in to see if their drama departments had anyone to recommend.
āOne of the schools we were going to be shooting was Deerfield Academy in Western Massachusetts. We called up the drama teacher who said, āOh, yes, we have quite a few who would be happy to try out for your little movie.ā And Dominic was one of them.ā
Sessa was a senior when he shot āThe Holdovers.ā He hadnāt acted in front of a camera before, though youād be hard-pressed to tell by the naturalness of his presence on screen.
āWhat you see is some people are born with it. You see all these people in New York taking classes on film acting. This guy can just do it,ā Payne says. āI learned a long time ago that the best actors are also the best technically. From day one, man, this guy could hit his marks and do his dialogue backward and forward. Heās built to do it. And then you see him go toe-for-toe with Paul Giamatti, give him a run for his money.ā
Payneās last film was his biggest budget gambit: in which people can be made miniature. After āDownsizingā struggled at the box office and found mixed reviews, Payne dabbled in a number of projects (he had been attached to direct, among others, āThe Menuā and āLandscapersā), but āThe Holdoversā is the one that stuck.
It started for him years earlier after seeing a similarly plotted 1930s French film by Marcel Pagnol called āMerlusse.ā Payne, who had written all of his films except āNebraska,ā didnāt feel he had the right personal experience. (He attended an all-boys Jesuit day school in Omaha, Nebraska.) Instead he turned to Hemingson and ābeveled the edgesā of the witty and soulful script he turned in.
But as long-term and ā70s-oriented as making āThe Holdoversā was, it struck Payne as a contemporary story, too. āTrump years and Nixon years,ā he says.
āGravity led me and my collaborators to 1970 for some reason. I canāt necessarily articulate it,ā Payne says. "Itās obviously not a message film or any crap like that. As Marx would say, all films are political films.ā
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Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
