Alexander Payne, ‘The Holdovers’

0:13Hello and welcome to the Monaco Weekly. I'm Fernando Augusto Pacheco, and for today's show I speak of Alexander Payne, the director of The Holdovers, a dramatic comedy that's getting a lot of Oscar buzz. Set in the 1970s, it follows three lonely people at a New England boarding school over a winter break. Alexander began by explaining which 1930s French film inspired the premise of the movie.

0:51Mr. Hunnam. Hello, Mary. I heard you got stuck with babysitting duty this year. How'd you manage that? You know, he used to be a student, right? Yeah, that's why he knows how to inflict maximum pain on us. I thought all the Nazis were hiding in Argentina. Steifle, Tully.

1:08Filmmakers are always just looking for a decent premise. I just need a hook on which to hang the meat of the rest of the film. About a dozen years ago, I was at a film festival and caught a little-known Marcel Pagnol film from 1935, which had the same essential premise, not the same story at all. The stories go in wildly different directions, but the premise was good. And I left the cinema thinking, oh, that's good. I'll bet another movie could be made off that same general premise. But I didn't do anything with it for years until I met David Hemmingson, who had written a pilot, which I had read, that took place in a boarding school.

1:47So I contacted him and I said, hey, I've read your pilot. Would you consider writing a feature in that world? Because it was a world I myself didn't know, nor had I begun the research. It was a minor miracle finding David Hemmingson. What about the script? Because you usually write the script for your own films. How was your collaboration within? How did this work out? It was my first experience, let's say, directing a writer. I asked him if he would write a script based on a premise I gave him. We worked together for the general storyline, which is to say he proposed three, four, five different storylines, and I selected the one I thought was most interesting to me.

2:31and then as he was writing drafts or even sections of drafts, he'd run them by me and I'd read them and give notes or suggest this or that. Then when we had a finished script, I would do some rewriting myself and then give it back to him. It was a lovely collaboration between the two of us. And apparently something that you changed, well, not a minor thing, but it's the decade, right? That you went to the 70s, not the 80s in a way. I didn't even remember that his pilot was set in the 80s. he and I just had this premise and we knew it couldn't be contemporary because there are no more single-sex boarding schools.

3:08So it had to be a period film, just mechanically. And then I've always wanted to start making period films. I haven't just, hadn't gotten to it yet. And the selection of 1970 just felt right to the both of us. It gave him tools to work with. I mean, and the production design, cinematography, even the way it was filmed, it felt very much like a movie from the 70s. but even the way you filmed, right? I mean, which I thought it was quite a sweet touch as well. Thanks for thinking it was a sweet touch. I thought it would be an interesting challenge to have the film not just set in 1970, but to some degree made to look and sound as though it had been made in 1970.

3:47What about the cast? I mean, of course, your relationship with Paul Giamatti. I mean, you reunited almost 20 years after, right, sideways. But what about the others? I mean, of course, Da Vinci had an amazing performance. But one thing I was surprised, I just want to mention his name's right, Dominic Cesson. Is it true? That's his first time on screen. That's unbelievable. He had never even been in a short film before. That's crazy. This was his first time in front of a camera. But he was already, I mean, at his level, an accomplished actor. We found him in a high school, indeed one of the very high schools where I shot the movie.

4:20So he was a star in their drama department, was applying to acting programs at universities. so that was his path, is his path but I just feel very lucky to have found him and what about Paul, how was it to reunite with him after 20 years more or less? ever since the last day of photography on Sideways I've been wanting to work with Paul again and he with me so it finally happened it might have happened sooner if I were faster with screenplays but it hadn't, but it didn't happen Alexander, something we're talking off the record here, but you know about the name of the film in several countries we're discussing.

5:00I mean, are you involved with any of that? I mean, it's quite an interesting one. Like even, I just came back from Brazil. It's called The Rejected, there was Rejeitados. Are you interested in those? Absolutely. I mean, I even get involved in the dubbing and subtitling scripts in Italian, Spanish, French, and German. I don't speak German, but I still worked enough to be able to figure out what was being said. But I take, we put so much care into the title of and the dialogue inside these movies that I can't just leave it to these other countries to wreck it. I hope they're not doing that. Just coming back as well from one of the films, I said the film was filmed like if it was in the 70s.

5:47the score and the music was fantastic, and I think I hope the score will do well as well. Yes, and it was a long and lovely collaboration among, we're a triumvirate, myself, Kevin Tenth, the editor, and Richard Ford, the London-born music editor we've worked with for 25 years. So that's as we're figuring everything out, and then obviously the composer as well, in this case, a fellow named Mark Orton, who had previously done my film Nebraska 10 years ago. But it's a long, long process of seeing what's right for the movie, what supports the rhythm, what supports the comedy, what supports the emotion, without ever calling attention to itself.

6:32And then, of course, in this one, an additional element, which is popular music of the period, It used both as score and as music that's being played by the characters. So it all took a long time, and you can get it in shape to where it works for the movie, and then you're faced with the reality of what you can afford. And then you have to switch things out, even often at the last minute. By the way, we're here in England. Labby Siffry, are you familiar with him? No, actually. So he was an English singer-songwriter who came to prominence in the early 70s. He's still alive. He lives in Spain. He was a discovery for me.

7:13And now Rolling Stone magazine has done an article on him based on his presence on the soundtrack of The Holdovers. Anyway, all along, when the way of saying we put a lot of time into that, and if it works, I'm happy. Amazing. Alexander, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Muito obrigado. De nada. Lying

7:37Lying Never did nobody No good, no how No how So why am I Lying now So why am I Lying So why am I lying now?

8:36Thank you very much. Alexander Payne there, director of The Holdovers. And the film is out now. The Monaco Weekly was edited by Steph Chungu. Thank you for listening.