Monocle Radio’s senior correspondent, Fernando Augusto Pacheco, speaks with Alexander Payne, director of ‘The Holdovers’, a dramatic comedy that’s getting Oscar buzz. Set in the 1970s, it follows three lonely people at a New England boarding school over a winter break. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hello and welcome to the Monaco Weekly.
I'm Fernando Gusto Paseko 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.
Alexand began by explaining which 1930s French film inspired the premise of the movie.
Mr.
Hun.
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.
Stifle it, Tully.
Filmmakers 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 panol film from 1935, which had the same essential premise, not the same story at all.
The stories are going wildly different directions, but the premise was good and I left the cinema thinking, oh, that's good.
How about another movie could be made off that same general premise?
But I didn't do anything with it for years, until I met David Hemingson, who had written a pilot, which I had read that took place in a boarding school.
So I contacted him and I said, hey, I've read your pilot.