Two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker Alexander Payne visited the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Cinematheque for a showing of his 2023 hit film “The Holdovers” on April 12 followed by a Q&A.
“The Holdovers” depicts the lives of three unlikely friends stuck at a New England boarding school over Christmas break. The melancholy group bonds over shared loneliness in this instant holiday classic.
Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) is a bright but unruly student who has been left behind by his mother. Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) is his strict classics professor andMary Lamb (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) is a grieving mother and cafeteria manager.
Payne presented the showing on one of his limited 35mm prints. Jim Healy, the Cinematheque’s director of programming, helped to expand the immersive time-traveling experience by preceding the showing with various 1970s movie trailers.
But “The Holdovers” isn’t your mother’s period film. Payne wanted to make a movie that looked like it was actually made in the 70s.
He said his team was “making a contemporary film while pretending we were alive in 1971” with the “patina of real reality and not movie reality.”
This exciting approach to period filmmaking may be why it resonated so strongly with viewers. Outstanding performances from Giamatti, Randolph and breakout star Sessa may have also bolstered the film’s success.
David Hemingson’s screenplay had the Cinematheque crowd rolling with laughter. Practically every line Sessa and Giamatti delivered crackled with incredible wit. The contrast of Randolph’s heart-wrenching dialogue and Oscar winning delivery makes “The Holdovers” perfectly bittersweet.
In the Q&A portion, Payne answered fans’ questions and shared exciting behind-the-scenes information with Healy.
In the film, Giamatti wore an opaque contact lens to simulate a lazy eye. Payne revealed the prosthetic eye switched from left to right sporadically throughout shooting — even switching sides in the middle of scenes — to support the recurring joke that Angus can’t figure out which eye to look at.
Payne dished out other behind-the-scenes details like how most of the snow seen in “The Holdovers” was real.
Payne also revealed Sessa had never been in front of a camera before this role. He said the breakout star had been scouted from his drama department at Deerfield Academy, one of the schools in which “The Holdovers” was shot.
Many aspiring filmmakers in the audience asked for guidance from Payne. His best advice? Don’t hire bad actors. You can’t edit out a bad performance!
Payne was wonderfully charismatic and unsurprisingly hilarious, allowing UW-Madison film lovers the opportunity to connect with a veteran screenwriter and director. Nobody left the cozy Cinematheque theater without a smile on their face.
