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ince his 1996 feature debut Citizen Ruth, director/writer Alexander Payne has created a small but potent body of work — including Sideways (which won him the Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Screenplay), About Schmidt, The Descendants, Nebraska and Election — that bears his distinctive voice and talent for balancing darkly-comedic and dramatic elements, often within the same scene. His new film, The Holdovers, reunites Payne with his Sideways star Paul Giamatti in a holiday story of three lonely people at a New England board- ing school over winter break in 1970. Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, a profes- sor who gets stuck supervising a few unlucky students who can't go home for the holidays. The motley crew of boys under Hunham's care is soon whittled down to just one: Angus Tully, a smart but damaged junior played by Dominic Sessa in his film debut. Also holding over is Mary Lamb (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), the head cook, whose only child, a recent graduate, was killed in Vietnam. Payne's creative team included his longtime editor Kevin Tent (Sideways, About Schmidt), Emmy Award-winning director of photography Eigil Bryld (In Bruges), production designer Ryan Warren Smith (True Detective) and com- poser Mark Orton (Nebraska). Here, in an exclusive interview with Post, Payne talks about making the film, which is getting a lot of awards buzz, and his love of post. Last time we talked, you told me, "I never have a vision for my films. I find out what they are as I go." Was that the case this time too? "Yes, that still holds true. Usually I do have some vague vision for a film, but then you really have to make it to see exactly how it's going to turn out. You want to make the film you yourself would want to see, and if it resembles what you had in mind. For this, I did have some specific ideas in mind that I wanted to explore, and it's a serious piece, and the idea was to make a contemporary film, but one set in 1970, so it was a kind of thought experiment in that sense. It's a period piece — my first one, actually — and also a contemporary one." You usually write your films. I assume you worked very closely with writer David Hemingson on shaping the screenplay? "Yes, very closely. The film was my idea, and it's an idea I'd had for about ten years, but I just never got around to researching it, as I hadn't had that life experience of going to a private prep school in Massachusetts. What happened was that David had written a TV pilot script set in an all-boys prep school, and it was submitted to me, and I loved it and thought it was wonderfully written. So I called him and said, 'I don't want to do the pilot, but would you consider writing a feature script based on my idea, set in that very same world?' And he agreed, and we then shaped the whole thing together, and I'm very grateful for every- thing he brought to it." As usual, you assembled a fantastic cast. What did Paul, Dominic and Da'Vine bring to their roles? "Great acting and a real understanding of their characters, and what the screenplay called for. I cast them all, and Paul's part was specifically written with him in mind, and even though it's been 20 years since we did Sideways, it was like we never stopped working together. He's just an amazing actor and such a great person. As for Da'Vine, I'd seen her in Dolomite Is My Name with Eddie Murphy, and she was so funny and compelling, I felt she'd be perfect as Mary. Then when we met about the part, I just fell in love with her. And Dominic, who plays Angus, was a complete find. We'd looked at a lot of possible actors, and then found Dominic, who was an actual senior at Deerfield Academy, where we shot. He was a star in their drama department, but he'd nev- er been in front of a camera before." Talk about working with DP Eigil Bryld and finding the right period look for the film. Did you do lots of tests? "We knew what we had in mind to a degree, and we weren't trying to emu- late any single film from the early '70s. Rather, the idea was, if we had been shooting this back then, what would our film look like given what film stocks were available to us? So we did a few tests between shooting on film and shooting digitally, and while we opted to shoot digitally, in the end we used vintage lens- es and we also did quite a bit of testing with our colorist — Joe Gawler at Harbor Picture Company — to see exactly what genuinely-filmic eˆects we could put on it in post. And then armed with that knowledge, we just lit it appropriately and very simply. It's hard to talk about the look and the photography without also acknowledging all the great work ALEXANDER PAYNE'S THE HOLDOVERS THIS DIRECTOR GOES ON- LOCATION TO SHOOT HIS FIRST PERIOD PIECE S DIRECTOR'S CHAIR www.postmagazine.com 12 POST NOV/DEC 2023 BY IAIN BLAIR Director Payne (in background), with Paul Giamatti and Da'Vine Joy Randolph.