Watch: 60 Sec Film School with Alexander Payne of ‘The Holdovers’

Watch: 60 Sec Film School with Alexander Payne of ‘The Holdovers’

by Alex Billington
November 1, 2023
Source: YouTube

“I hope audiences feel it’s a successful and unforced, lived in sense of period and time.” Focus Features has revealed a brief behind-the-scenes featurette for The Holdovers, the latest film by filmmaker Alexander Payne (Election, Sideways, The Descendants, Nebraska). It already started playing in limited theaters this past weekend, expanding in wide release throughout November. This featurette focuses on making the film feel like it was made in and takes place in the 1970s, which is not as easy anymore in the 2020s. With no family and nowhere to go over the Christmas holiday in 1970, Paul remains at school to supervise students unable to journey home. After a few days, only one student holdover remains — a trouble-making 15-year-old named Angus. Joining Paul & Angus is head cook Mary, an African American woman whose own son was recently lost in Vietnam. These very different people form an unlikely Christmas family sharing comic misadventures during two snowy weeks. With Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and Carrie Preston. The video also features Payne’s DP Eigil Bryld working with him next to the camera.

Here’s the “60 Second Film School” featurette for Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, via YouTube:

You can watch the main official trailer for Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers right here for more footage.

From filmmaker Alexander Payne, The Holdovers follows a curmudgeonly instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep school who is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to help babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go during the holidays. Eventually he forms an unlikely bond with one of them — a damaged, brainy troublemaker (newcomer Dominic Sessa) — and with the school’s head cook, who just lost a son in Vietnam (Da’Vine Joy Randolph). The Holdovers is directed by the acclaimed American writer / filmmaker Alexander Payne, director of the films The Passion of Martin, Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, The Descendants, Nebraska, Downsizing previously. The screenplay is written by David Hemingson (mainly a TV writer / creator of the series “Whiskey Cavalier” most recently). Produced by Bill Block, David Hemingson, Mark Johnson. Focus Features will debut Payne’s The Holdovers in select US theaters on October 27th, 2023, then in full wide release on November 10th coming soon.

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