Q&A photos by Marcie Revens (New York) and Elisa Haber (Los Angeles) – Print courtesy of Focus Features
Three very different people form a Christmas family in Director Alexander Payne’s comedic drama, The Holdovers.
Payne’s film tells the story of Paul Hunham, a cranky history teacher at a New England boarding school who is forced to chaperone the handful of students with nowhere to go over Christmas break. During the time, he forms an unlikely bond with Angus Tully, a brainy but troubled student and Mary Lamb, the school’s head cook who has just lost her son in the Vietnam War.
On November 19, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Payne discussed the making of The Holdovers during a Q&A moderated by Director Jason Reitman (Ghostbusters: Afterlife). He also spoke about the film during a Q&A moderated by Director Alfonso Cuarón (Roma) following the DGA membership screening in New York on November 26.
During the Los Angeles conversation, Payne spoke about his philosophy on prep.
“I was in a Director’s roundtable discussion yesterday, and they were all talking about storyboarding. Fortunately, the question never got to me because I would’ve had to say I never storyboard. I just kinda think up stuff. Not to say, you don’t want to be prepared. I sweat bullets days where I’m not prepared enough. You always want to be prepared. Even the lovely shot in the film where the boy confesses to the man at the restaurant about what happened to the father and why he’s in the asylum. It starts on a tight close-up and slowly zooms out. I didn’t think about that until the morning I was driving to set, and I thought, ‘Oh yeah. What about that first shot of The Godfather? Oh yeah. That’d be a good thing to steal today!’’
Payne’s other directorial credits include the feature films Downsizing, Nebraska, The Passion of Martin, Citizen Ruth, Election and About Schmidt. Payne garnered nominations for both the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film and the Academy Award for Best Achievement in Directing for his 2011 feature The Descendants and his 2004 feature Sideways. He has been a member of the DGA since 1997.
