Dominic Sessa, Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph appear in Focus Features’ “The Holdovers”
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Mark Johnson is a veteran producer who won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1989. rain manone of his many collaborations with director Barry Levinson (the pair were the second to win Best Picture at the Film Awards in 1992) bugsy). Just over 30 years later, Johnson received his third Oscar nomination for Focus Features. holdoversThis is the second work with director Alexander Payne, following 2017. Downsizing.
The story is set in a lively boarding school in New England during the Christmas holidays of 1970. holdovers Oscar nominee Paul Giamatti plays Paul Hunnam, a history teacher who is unable to be home with his family for the holidays and must look after the anxious Angus (newcomer Dominic Sessa). The lonely trio is joined by Mary Lamb, played by Oscar nominee Davine Joy Randolph. She is a grieving school cook who recently lost her son in Vietnam.
“Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie that resonated like this,” Johnson said, adding that by the end of the weekend, he’ll hear from “five or six” people who recently saw the movie. added. A beloved movie. Here he looks back on the production and explains why the project, which was sold to distributor Focus Features a year before its release, was worth the wait.
When did you get involved with this project?
Alexander and I have known each other for a while and he asked me if I would be interested in producing it. Downsizing,I did so. He and I are both very proud of it, but I don’t think he wants to repeat that experience. He wasn’t into visual effects or anything like that. But we get along very well and work together very smoothly. We’re both not very fickle people, so somehow things worked out. I tricked him into saying, “Why don’t you come and produce this?”he showed me holdovers I wrote the script over a year before we actually started filming. One of his pre-production characteristics is that [process] The amount of time he spends on the script. And it’s never completely completed, and so on.
Do you remember how the script changed a lot between the first time you read it and when filming began?
The one character who really benefited the most from this time was probably Mary, who became increasingly important to the film. I’m a bit of an anxious producer. They get a draft and say, “This is great, let’s make it.”And he said, “No, I’ll work on it a little bit more.” I have a favorite scene of all time. all that jazzwhen Joe Gideon [the Bob Fosse-inspired protagonist played by Roy Scheider] was editing the film and one of the beleaguered producers said, “Oh my god, the studio is yelling at me.” And Gideon said, “Yeah, but let me show you another shot.” And he showed it to him and the producer looked at it and said, “You know what? teeth Better. “This process works, but it’s very frustrating.
For Alexander, there are three truly sacred stages of filmmaking. One is the development stage, or how long it takes to get the script right. Another thing he wants to do is make sure he has enough filming days. There are people who can shoot his movies in less time than him, but he needs that time. And the third thing is editing. He takes more time than most directors. But the proof is in the pudding. He’s right on all three of his counts.
Focus Features acquired the film in 2022, more than a year before its release. Did that give Alexander more time to tinker with it?
There are very few filmmakers who don’t continue editing their films until release. There is a famous story that in the past, negatives were cut the day before a movie was released. But yes, that allowed him to screen it and show it to his family’s friends and family. [make changes]. Maybe the snow tone is too low or needs to be turned up. And of course, at some point you’ll lock the movie. And in theory it’s locked. However, you can always change it until you need to release it. Just when I thought everyone was done, I made some changes.
Speaking of snow, I imagine filming a movie set in a New England winter could be a producer’s nightmare.
that’s right. They could have shot it in August and it would have cost a lot of money to put the snow in, and I’m not sure it would have looked real.
I’ve read that people recognized their boarding school and said they attended the fictional Barton Academy. However, in reality, there were multiple schools that Frankenstein brought together in his one location for the film. Is that common in your career as a producer?
The second film I produced was The Natural, there’s a very simple scene where Glenn Close’s character looks out the window and Robert Redford is walking down the sidewalk. Well, we photographed Glenn at a window in Buffalo, New York. Six months later, we photographed Robert on a sidewalk in Venice, California. That’s a fun trick you can do in movies.
Barton Academy does not exist. There were six or seven different schools. At some point, we’re going to shoot a lot at one particular school, the Groten School, but then for various reasons. [the administrators] I decided against it. It was during the coronavirus pandemic, so having a bunch of strangers at school probably didn’t appeal to them.
This is clearly a reunion for Payne and Paul Giamatti; Landscape. Da’Vine Joy Randolph isn’t exactly a newcomer, but this feels like her breakout role. And of course, there’s Dominic Sessa, who had never been in a movie before. What did you think after seeing Da’Vine and Dominic’s performance garner so much attention?
When we started filming, we were filming dorm scenes while Dominic was at his actual school. He stayed there and slept in a dormitory. Why go anywhere else? He is a remarkable person. He’s very good in this movie, but I don’t know if he knows it, but it definitely doesn’t go into his head. To be honest, we knew how good his screen test was, but could he do it with a 45-day shooting schedule? 75 people and a camera looking down on his tonsils Could he do that? He got up and did it, and he was quite remarkable.
Alexander introduced me to Davine and reminded me of seeing her in a movie. Dolomites is my name. She is primarily known for her comedy. She really invented Mary. That accent she came up with in her movies was really hers. We had no idea what she was going to sound like. All three are very similar to the characters they play. None of them had partners or visitors. They were there, they came to work, they did what was asked of them. And it’s really great to see them become a family on film and behind the scenes.
When you were making this, did you have any idea that it might be added to the canon of Christmas movies? Because I think this is the kind of movie that people come back to every year.
Your hope is that everyone will see it. But no, that never occurred to me. When you’re creating something, you want it to be good. I want it to be interesting.Many years ago, when we were doing rain manIn the middle of filming, someone from the film crew turned to me and said, I remember thinking, “This movie is going to win an Oscar.” “I can’t even begin to think about that.” I’m worried about whether the image is in focus. ”
Interview edited for length and clarity
