NEW YORK—Hunched over a pint of beer, Paul Giamatti’s fake lazy eye from The Holdovers was reportedly drunkenly watching the Oscars broadcast from a corner of the dive bar, sources confirmed Sunday. “Turn it up, turn it up, I can’t hear!” said the prosthetic eyeball, which slurred its words as it tried to tell everyone in the vicinity that it had been invited to the 2024 Academy Awards ceremony, but had chosen to eschew it because everyone was “uptight.” “You guys saw it right? You saw me in The Holdovers? Giamatti’s not going to win. He doesn’t stand a chance. Alexander Payne, he’s the director, he told me I should have been the nominee, but his hands were tied. That’s fine by me. I don’t like the spotlight anyway. I’d rather be here.” At press time, the eyeball was boasting that it was up to be Quasimodo’s eye in the Disney live-action remake of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Da’Vine Joy Randolph is on the hunt for a few more tickets to the Oscars. “They’re telling me I may only have one extra ticket, so that’s my mission,” the Holdovers star tells me. “Can you imagine the people in your life that are like, ‘I want to come!’ And you’re like, ‘And you should come because you’ve helped me significantly in my life.’” The first-time nominee shares this conundrum on this week’s Little Gold Men (listen below) with both firm conviction and good humor—after all, this is a moment that doesn’t come around even once for most in her profession. “If I can get five—I don’t care if my people are back there [on the balcony], I don’t need five people in my row,” she says. “Get Oscar tickets, or buy Oscar tickets, whatever we’ve got to do—I have some family members that would be very upset, so I’ve got to figure that out.”
Call it a new kind of problem for Randolph, a Tony nominee turned Hollywood utility player now on the cusp of Oscar gold. (She’s already won the Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award for best supporting actress.) Her turn in The Holdovers as Mary Lamb—cafeteria manager of the boarding school where she, classics teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti), and misanthropic student Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) get holed up together during the Christmas break—showcases deft range. Randolph somehow serves as both the film’s comic relief, mediating tense standoffs between the two men, and its tragic heart. As Mary grieves the death of her son over the lonely holiday, Randolph’s work is devastating—bringing an emotional depth that allows The Holdovers’ explorations of connection and kindness to land all the more potently.
The role was awards-tipped the moment The Holdovers bowed in Telluride over Labor Day, during the SAG-AFTRA strike. The film is distributed by Focus Features, the specialty studio under Universal’s umbrella, which meant the cast did not complete any promotion until the studios and the guild reached an agreement more than two months later. Randolph was thrust into the campaigning machine at that point, racing between interviews and red carpets and tastemaker events, and hasn’t stopped since.
The closer she gets to the actual Oscars, the more she thinks back to her childhood watching the show every year with her family. “The Oscars were like the Olympics…I remember that as a kid being like, ‘Wow, this is everything to these people’—which is so unique, especially, as you start to experience it,” she says. “All of this is very out of body. None of this stuff has processed.”
It can be easy to get swept up in the circus. There’s so much noise around you, you’re meeting so many people, your work is being recognized like never before. Randolph’s presence on the trail, though, has stood out for its authenticity. “I’m just trying to be true to myself,” she says. This goes even for the acceptance speeches. Randolph has already delivered a few on national television, writing each out in advance. She’ll start thinking about the speech’s shape while on the plane ride over to the show, the “forced timeout” of being tens of thousands of feet up in the air. Then she writes it out while in hair-and-makeup, just before hitting the red carpet. “It feels raw—doing it any other time just doesn’t hit the same way,” she says.
Randolph approaches this part of the season as she does everything else: considered, careful, open-hearted. “It’s a wild thing to be sitting there and then people are screaming and yelling and clapping and cheering—it’s one of the most beautiful sounds, but it can be intimidating, it can be overwhelming, and then you have to calm your nervous system and go up there and deliver this beautiful speech,” Randolph says. “It’s an intense feeling. You just try to steady yourself in the midst of it.” So far, she’s done a pretty good job of that.
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Best actor went to All of Us Strangers‘ Andrew Scott, and The Holdovers‘ Da’Vine Joy Randolph won best supporting actress. Best cinematography went to Rodrigo Prieto for Killers of the Flower Moon.
The NSFC, founded in 1966 and made up of more than 60 critics from prominent outlets across the country, annually votes on its selections for best picture, director, actor, actress, supporting actor and actress, screenplay and cinematography. Awards may also be given out to film not in the English language, nonfiction film, production design and film heritage.
This year, the group began with a number of special awards, including film heritage honors for Criterion Channel and Facets, Kim’s Video, Scarecrow Video and Vidiots.
The NSFC praised Criterion for its “adventurous, wide-ranging, finely curated selection of films, ranging from American independents to world cinema to short films to classic Hollywood, making readily available the kind of repertory cinema that every city should have.”
Facet’s, Kim’s Video, Scarecrow Video and Vidiots were recognized for “maintaining wide-reaching libraries of films on disc and tape and making those libraries available to the general public.”
Voting is conducted via a weighted ballot system, the group explained on its X (formerly known as Twitter) account. On the first ballot, members vote for their top three choices, with the first choice getting three points, second choice getting two points and third choice getting one point. The nominee that receives the most points and appears on the majority of ballots wins. If no winner is declared on the first ballot, the category goes to a second ballot, without proxies. Voting continues with as many rounds as necessary until a nominee receives the most points and appears on the majority of ballots.
Any film that debuted in theaters or on streaming platforms in the U.S. during 2023 was eligible for awards consideration.
Last year, the NSFC named Tár as its best film of 2022, with Cate Blanchett also awarded best actress for her starring role and writer-director Todd Field getting the best screenplay award. Separately, The Banshees of Inisherin‘s Colin Farrell won best actor for his performances in both that film and After Yang, and Banshees‘ Kerry Condon was named best supporting actress.
A complete list of the winners and runners-up from 2023 follows.
Best picture:Past Lives Runners-up: The Zone of Interest Oppenheimer
Best director: Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest Runners-up: Todd Haynes, May December Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Best actor: Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers Runners-up: Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Best actress: Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest Runners-up: Emma Stone, Poor Things Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Best supporting actor: Charles Melton, May December Runners-up: Robert Downey, Jr., Oppenheimer, and Ryan Gosling, Barbie (tie)
Best supporting actress: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers Runners-up: Penélope Cruz, Ferrari Rachel McAdams, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
Best screenplay: Samy Burch, May December Runners-up: Celine Song, Past Lives David Hemingson, The Holdovers
Best cinematography: Rodrigo Prieto, Killers of the Flower Moon Runners-up: Łukasz Żal, The Zone of Interest Hoyte van Hoytema, Oppenheimer
Best experimental film: Jean Luc-Godard’s Trailer of a Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars
Film heritage award: Criterion Channel
Film heritage award: Facets, Kim’s Video, Scarecrow Video and Vidiots
Special citation for a film awaiting U.S. distribution: Víctor Erice’s Close Your Eyes
This story was first published on Jan. 6 at 10:05 a.m.
Da’Vine Joy Randolph had grown weary of scripts that offered her shallow or one-dimensional characters. “I’ve felt like I had to fight for fully realized characters with complexities or even start writing or producing myself,” she says.
Then she was sent David Hemingson’s script for “The Holdovers,” for the role of Mary Lamb, who works in the cafeteria of a prep school for the wealthy, soldiering on even as she mourns the death of her son in Vietnam.
“I was so overjoyed to read this character, someone who was really struggling, but also trying to persevere in spite of her situation,” says Randolph, who was nominated for a Tony Award in 2012 for her performance in “Ghost: The Musical.” She has since appeared in everything from “Dolemite Is My Name,” “High Fidelity” and “Only Murders in the Building” to “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” and this year’s “Rustin,” where she sings as Mahalia Jackson at the March on Washington.
Randolph was so moved that when she first talked about the part with director Alexander Payne, she compared the script to Chekov. “He took misery, boredom, silence and normal behavior and made them real but in an interesting way,” Randolph says.
Payne, who had admired Randolph’s comedic performance in “Dolemite,” was struck in their initial conversation by her understanding of the film, but once they started filming what impressed him most was how Randolph played those silences, especially in the dramatic moments. “There’s a moment where she’s unpacking her son’s baby stuff at her sister’s house and she brought a subtlety and profundity to it,” Payne says. “And when she’s in a drunk reverie at a party, the camera dollies in and she expresses a myriad of emotions I can’t fully name but which moved me.”
Randolph liked that she was playing a mother mourning her son’s death in a Christmas movie and that she was named Mary, and her son had been a sacrificial “Lamb” in Vietnam. “The more details, the better and a name holds a lot of meaning, in what people project onto you, what you embody and what you feel expectations are,” she says, pointing to her unique first name and her middle name as well. “You carry that with you everywhere you go.”
Her character must also swing from drama to comedy and back again — Payne says he tends to prefer actors with comedic chops for those shifts and Randolph agrees. Comedic actors “don’t get too precious with things and can throw things away because the biggest trap for this film would have been if it became melodramatic and really milked that,” she says. “Adding that flare of comedy after a really intense moment is quite a punch combo.”
Randolph found an easy chemistry with the film’s star, Paul Giamatti, who plays a cynical curmudgeon who uses verbal zingers like a shield. Both studied at the Yale School of Drama, which she thinks helped.
“I didn’t think that was going to mean anything but from the first take or two we were creating from a similar place and I knew our foundation was developed by our shared institution and the curriculum,” she says.
Randolph, who doesn’t like watching her performances, just “surrenders” to her characters. “You turn your vessel over to her,” she says, adding that when she watched herself in “The Holdovers” it didn’t even feel like her. “I thought, ‘Who is that,’” she says with a laugh. “It’s like there’s the text, but when it’s on its feet, it just takes on a life on its own.”
David Hemingson is one of those screenwriters whose handprint has been left on many TV series (starting with the immortal and life-changing The Adventures of Pete and Pete). The type of writer one is latently aware of without actually being aware of it. And yet, it wasn’t until now that Hemingson’s first screenplay for a feature came to fruition with some directorial help from Alexander Payne. The latter having struck out (critically at least) for the first time in his career with 2017’s Downsizing. Perhaps that’s why, after a six-year break from releasing new work, Payne opted to make someone else’s script come to life. In fact, it was Payne who approached Hemignson about directing the movie, which started out as a pilot for a series set at a New England boarding school. The boarding school idea long kicking around in Hemingson’s head after he himself attended one in Hartford, Connecticut.
The experience clearly stuck with him as the years passed, and he seemed to let the idea keep percolating until the right opportunity materialized via Payne’s interest in the project. Particularly since he wanted his next movie to be contained within a prep school type of setting. Despite being the only film from his oeuvre besides Nebraska that Payne didn’t also write, The Holdovers still bears that distinct Payne stamp of wryness. And, obviously, Paul Giamatti’s (who famously worked with Payne in 2004’s Sideways) performance as Paul Hunham is a large contributing factor to the acerbic wit that permeates any Payne movie. After all, with a last name like his, he’s not going to do his best to make the audience feel “comfortable.” As a matter of fact, the tagline for The Holdovers is “Discomfort and Joy.” But, in the end, doesn’t all discomfort lead to the “growth” required to achieve joy (however ephemeral)? That’s what Hunham’s only diligent student, Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), seems to learn by the end of a winter break spent in pretty much total solitude with the most hated professor at Barton, the New England boarding school that serves as a foil for the one Hemingson attended in his own youth. But rather than setting the film in Connecticut, Hemingson and Payne chose Massachusetts, during the year 1970. Naturally, anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of American history will note that 1970 was fresh with collective societal trauma as a result of the U.S. government instating the draft at the end of 1969. This “lottery” all but signing any drafted man’s death warrant.
In The Holdovers, this trauma extends very personally to Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph, cleansing herself from the part she played in The Idol), the head cook at Barton who just lost her only son, Curtis, to another senseless war. Thanks to her employment at the school, Mary (whose last name not only reminds us that “Mary had a little lamb,” but also that Curtis was her little lamb who got sacrificed on the pyre of the U.S. government’s hubris) was able to secure Curtis’ attendance as a student there. Even though Barton is illustriously reserved as a space for privileged white men. A demographic that Paul clearly can’t stand as much as Mary. Why else would he “dare” to fail the “legacy” student (and son of a major donor) in his much-dreaded classics course? This being a politically incorrect faux pas that leads the headmaster, Hardy Woodrip (Andrew Garman), to assign Paul with the unwanted task of “babysitting” the few “holdovers,” or students who don’t leave campus during the holidays, for the two-week winter break. Which means Woodrip is only too ready to believe the original teacher saddled with the burden when he tells him he can’t do it because his mother has lupus. Assuming that just because Paul has no plans to leave the campus infers that he has nothing “better to do” anyway, Woodrip doesn’t feel too guilty about this unique form of punishment that fell into his lap like a gift from the gods.
Also being punished are the five holdovers stuck in Paul’s “care”: the aforementioned Angus Tully, Teddy Kountze (Brady Hepner), Alex Ollerman (Ian Dolley), Ye-Joon Park (Jim Kaplan) and Jason Smith (Michael Provost). It is the latter’s father who ends up offering the quintet a lifeline by sending a helicopter to pick up Jason (after feeling remorse for exiling him just because he refused to cut his long hair), and then saying, sure, he can bring his “friends” along, too. Unfortunately for Angus (venomously called “Anus” by Teddy), Paul is unable to reach his parents on the phone in order to get permission for him to accompany the others. Thus, leaving him marooned all alone with the curmudgeonly pedagogue. Indeed, the only person he’s ever met that was so curmudgeonly was his own damn self. Thus, the “unlikely pairing” is actually a perfect match, though both men are reluctant to recognize it at first.
Mary, of course, is on her own planet of grief, not much concerned for what these white boys are getting up to so long as they don’t annoy her. That, however, proves to be a tall order most of the time. As Angus and Paul gradually start to “warm” to one another (as much as two cold-hearted bastards can), the holiday suddenly doesn’t feel like as much of a spotlight on what societal rejects they are. Mary, although a Black woman, therefore condemned to be an automatic societal reject in 1970, actually does have family she can go home to in Roxbury. Specifically, her sister (who happens to be pregnant) and brother-in-law. When the viewer realizes this, it becomes apparent that, in contrast to Paul and Angus, her life (in spite of losing her only son) comes across as far less depressing because it is much more rooted in having a sense of community outside of the oppressive school walls. This seems to be a pointed choice on Hemingson’s part, as he seeks to highlight that all the privilege in the world can’t make up for being emotionally bereft. Leading viewers to the notion that one wound will always find another in the hope that, together, they can heal. Or something to that effect that doesn’t sound so cheesy (ergo, would probably make Mr. Hunham want to vomit).
In this regard, The Holdovers emphasizes a message still little at play in mainstream movies (especially mainstream holiday ones). Which is that whatever love you’re trying to find isn’t going to be gleaned from the nuclear family model. Ultimately, you have to create a “family” from the fellow emotionally stunted ilk you encounter out there in the world. Even if you manage to come together solely due to unforeseen circumstances and only for a short period in your life.
Paul Giamatti, the revered character actor who has elevated projects on screens big and small, will receive the Palm Springs International Film Festival’s Icon Award, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.
The 56-year-old, who is receiving rave reviews and Oscar buzz for his lead performance in Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, will — along with a host of this award season’s other standouts who are lined up for honors — be feted during a dinner at the Palm Springs Convention Center on Jan. 4.
An Oscar nominee and winner of Emmy, Spirit and Critics Choice Awards, two Golden Globes and three SAG Awards, his past credits include 2003’s American Splendor, 2004’s Sideways, 2005’s Cinderella Man, 2006’s The Illusionist, the 2008 limited series John Adams, 2012’s Win Win, 2013’s 12 Years a Slave and the drama series Billions, which ran from 2016 through earlier this year.
“In The Holdovers, Paul Giamatti inhabits a complex character who is both challenging and rewarding, and ultimately reminds us of what it means to be connected as human beings,” PSIFF chairman Nachhattar Singh Chandi said in a statement. “For his storied career of quintessential cinematic roles, it is our honor to present him with the Icon Award for this career-best performance.”
Past winners of the Icon Award include Glenn Close, Willem Dafoe, Michael Douglas, Robert Duvall, Lady Gaga, Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep.
Others who will be honored at this year’s PSIFF Awards Gala include Danielle Brooks (Spotlight Award, Actress), Colman Domingo (Spotlight Award, Actor), Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell (Chairman’s Award), Greta Gerwig (Director of the Year), Carey Mulligan (International Star Award, Actress), Cillian Murphy (Desert Palm Achievement Award, Actor), Da’Vine Joy Randolph (Breakthrough Performance Award), Emma Stone (Desert Palm Achievement Award, Actress), Jeffrey Wright (Career Achievement Award) and Killers of the Flower Moon (Vanguard Award).
Many industry folks, some of whom are no doubt Oscar voters, are grateful to Nolan for all that he’s done for the business: tethering auteur-ish prestige to marketability, vocally resisting the streaming incursion. That, coupled with the fact that Nolan is widely seen as overdue for his first Oscar, makes him a strong best director contender. But Oppenheimer as a whole should not be discounted. It may not be as screener-friendly as some of its competitors, but Oppenheimer has enjoyed one of the defining film narratives of 2023. A best picture win would be a fitting end to that story.
As for the other half of the summer box office equation, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie made more money than Oppenheimer, most of it without the advantage of IMAX pricing. It’s not a weighty, masculine affair like Oppenheimer—which better fits the traditional best picture mold—but Barbie’s difference is probably its greatest asset. Gerwig’s film created a new version of branded filmmaking, swaddling its IP commercialism in sociopolitical commentary. If 2023 becomes known for one film, it will be Barbie, a movie that leaned into its cynical origins hard enough that it broke through to some other realm.
But maybe the Academy, or at least enough of the Academy, isn’t quite ready for that seismic shift. They could, instead, turn to Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, a Leonard Bernstein biopic that is comfortably recognizable as an old-fashioned awards movie while still taking artistic swings. Cooper is mesmerizing in the lead role, as is his costar, Carey Mulligan. While reviews for the film may be somewhat muted, the stars have been almost universally praised. Which might mean that Maestro’s best chances are in the acting categories—or, the film, buoyed by its beloved performances, could snatch best picture as a popular tiered-ballot second choice.
At this year’s Venice Film Festival, Maestro was perhaps the glitziest competition entry. But it had a bit of its thunder stolen by Yorgos Lanthimos’s sex-happy bildungsroman Poor Things, a movie originally scheduled for release in early September but that was, in a bit of strange luck, pushed to the more prestigious climes of December. Poor Things is in much better position now, with time to build on the momentum created by its top-prize victory at Venice and sustained good notices from subsequent festivals.
All of the filmmakers I’ve thus far mentioned have directed best picture nominees in the past. So what of the new class? First-time filmmaker Celine Song had a debut for the ages in Past Lives, a Sundance breakout that was a modest summer hit for A24. A decades-spanning romantic drama, Past Lives is gauzy and gentle but far from insubstantial. It offers a bleary, soul-stirring consideration of immigration and aging, animated by lovely performances from Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, and John Magaro.
Jonathan Glazer is perhaps one of the cinéaste world’s most respected filmmakers, despite having made only four films. His latest is The Zone of Interest, a Holocaust movie focused on the perpetrators rather than the victims. Glazer’s film is harrowing, operating at a clinical remove but certainly not spare in style or effect. The Zone of Interest is such a visceral statement of artistic vision that even the more art-film-averse members of the Academy might embrace it. The Zone of Interest took second place at Cannes; the Palme d’Or winner was Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, an electrifying drama starring best actress contender Sandra Hüller, who also plays a supporting role in Glazer’s film. Anatomy has played like gangbusters at subsequent film festivals—a frequent Telluride talking point, a hot-ticket sensation at Toronto—and may be the best positioned of any non-American film.
Erika Alexander and Jeffrey Wright in Orion/Amazon MGM Studios’ American Fiction.
Claire Folger/MGM/Courtesy Everett Collection
Producer Jermaine Johnson worked primarily as a literary manager for clients like first-time movie writer-director Cord Jefferson (whom he’s represented for close to a decade) before the pair collaborated on Jefferson’s darkly comic adaptation of the novel Erasure by Percival Everett, which Jefferson wrote on spec with Johnson’s encouragement.
Naturally, first-time filmmaking meant an inherent learning curve. “Day one was a tough day because Cord didn’t really feel qualified to tell Jeffrey Wright how to act,” Johnson recalls. “He did not feel like he was the guy for the job.” That meant adding pep talks to Johnson’s job description. “The conversation was, ‘Hey, man, Jeffrey wants to be directed. Actors want to collaborate and get in the clay with you,’ ” he says. “Next thing, he’s just in there, between takes, talking to Jeffrey, playing around with it. And they established a rapport, from day two on.”
Shooting constraints prompted production to relocate from New York to the Boston area, where Jefferson would be able to film the scenes at Monk’s (Wright) family beach house in the Massachusetts coastal town of Scituate. “You start to crunch the numbers and think about what it takes to shoot in New York,” Johnson says. “Once we landed on Boston, it was a very quick yes.”
Northeastern weather, however, proved one of the main production challenges. “I learned what it takes to light a beach at night. That is an extremely difficult task,” Johnson says of a scene in which Leslie Uggams, as Monk’s aging mother, wanders away from her home. Rigging lights amid 20-mile-an-hour winds proved nearly impossible. But for the 80-year-old actress, the wind was no problem. “We’ve got Leslie the legend out in this weather, and she is such a professional that she did as many takes as we needed,” Johnson says, adding that Uggams was “just the brightest light there.”
From left: Dominic Sessa, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Paul Giamatti in Focus Features’ The Holdovers.
Seacia Pavao/Focus Features
An Oscar winner for Rain Man, Mark Johnson wasn’t cowed by Alexander Payne’s rigorous commitment to getting his story right. But The Holdovers, set in a New England boarding school over Christmas break, proved a particular exercise in patience. “With Alexander, the script is understandably the most important part of moviemaking,” Johnson says. “He spent a lot of time [giving first-time feature writer David Hemingson feedback] on it.” One of the main developmental changes was expanding the character of grieving chef Mary, played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph. “I really do believe her performance is the heart of the movie,” he adds.
Finding financing for a story on this scale — an intimate, humanist dramedy centered on Mary along with Paul Giamatti’s weathered teacher Paul Hunham and troubled schoolboy Angus (newcomer Dominic Sessa) — also proved a challenge: “It’s not a big, bombastic subject. Paul Giamatti has such great respect, but is he a big box office name? No,” says Johnson. But midscale films about life are “the movies that so many of us really enjoy,” he says. “These movies are harder and harder to put together. Movies that I’ve made from the very beginning, like Diner or even, quite frankly, Rain Man, I wonder how we would go about putting them together today?”
Another challenge was location: The preppy Barton Academy where most of the movie takes place is actually a composite of multiple New England schools — though all that snow is, remarkably, very real (about “85 percent” of it, anyway). “I’ve had people come up to me after screenings saying, ‘Oh, I went to that school,’ ” says Johnson. “Well, no, they didn’t, because that school didn’t exist.”
From left: Harris Dickinson, Zac Efron, Stanley Simons and Jeremy Allen White in A24’s The Iron Claw.
Eric Chakeen/A24
Writer-director-producer Sean Durkin had been obsessed with his drama’s subject matter — the Von Erich wrestling family — since an early age, having read about them in magazines and watched old tapes of their matches. When he began writing the script, he was very conscious of the constraints he would need to adhere to. “When I started out, I really did all the line producing myself,” says Durkin, whose films include Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) and The Nest (2020). “I’ve never been able to separate financials. I’m so envious of writers who can just not worry about it. I’m very conscious of how to craft a world and to be aware of the type of budget [for] the film I’m making.”
Most of the film takes place in the wrestling arena known as the Sportatorium or on the Von Erichs’ Texas ranch, and simulating those spots proved surprisingly difficult. Preparing to shoot in Louisiana, the scouting team had their work cut out for them. “We really covered the entire state to find the right feel for the ranch,” Durkin says. After landing in the Baton Rouge area, finding a warehouse that could house a wrestling stadium was equally tough. Production designer James Price “was going into every single building that could work size-wise, but it’d be the wrong shape inside, or the wrong texture.” The solution was found in a furniture showroom. “It was just a bunch of fake living rooms. We had to convince the place to let us clear out everything, knock down all the walls.”
Zac Efron and the cast worked intensely to transform physically to play the Von Erichs, though Durkin didn’t require it. “I wanted them to feel comfortable getting to whatever shape they felt was best for the character,” he says. But for the wrestling, authenticity was key. “They had to learn how to wrestle all the way through from top to bottom, and do multiple takes,” he says, noting that he filmed matches live in front of an audience. “We got really lucky with the Baton Rouge crowd, because they were really into wrestling. It was really quite beautiful, that energy between the background [performers] and the actors.”
Kristie Macosko Krieger was originally planning to produce a Leonard Bernstein biopic directed by her longtime collaborator, Steven Spielberg, with Bradley Cooper signed on to star as the famed conductor and composer. When Spielberg made the decision to step away from the director’s chair, Cooper offered his own name as a replacement, and asked Spielberg and Krieger to watch an early cut of his directorial debut, A Star Is Born.
Krieger recalls, “Twenty minutes into the film, Spielberg got up and walked over to Bradley and said, ‘You’re directing this fucking movie.’ ”
Cooper had a clear vision of the details he wanted to bring to Maestro, and he would not budge on any of them. “He was like, ‘We’re absolutely going to go over many time periods,’ ” Krieger says. (The film spans from the 1940s through the 1980s.) Cooper also worked with prosthetics designer Kazu Hiro for three and a half years to transform his face into Bernstein’s. “He wouldn’t stop until he got it right,” Krieger says.
The film was shot on location in New York’s Carnegie Hall and Central Park, in England’s Ely Cathedral and at Massachusetts’ Tanglewood Estate. Some desired locations, however, were impossible to get. “We could not shoot in the Dakota apartment [on Central Park West],” she says. “Bradley wanted to re-create that to almost exactly what it looked like. He enlisted Kevin Thompson, our production designer, to build the entire Dakota set.”
Cooper also insisted they shoot with live orchestras, which meant that the film could not shoot during the height of COVID and had to be postponed. “But again, he wasn’t compromising,” says Krieger. “He was like, ‘It will look better, it will be better, it will be the movie that I want to make.’ He made all of us better as department heads in figuring out this film, so none of us were settling, either.”
Florence Pugh and Cillian Murphy in Universal’s Oppenheimer.
Courtesy of Universal Pictures
Emma Thomas has worked as a producer for her husband, Christopher Nolan, “on pretty much all of his films, ever,” as she puts it. “When I first read Chris’ script, I thought it was the best he’d ever written. It was very clear that he was approaching the story with a large scope in mind, as a blockbuster.”
But despite Nolan’s pedigree and Oppenheimer’s seemingly endless scale, the biggest production challenge was working on a minimal budget. “It’s about very difficult and weighty subjects,” Thomas explains. “I wasn’t daunted by the things he was proposing shooting, but I knew that the only responsible way to make a film this challenging, that was inevitably going to be R-rated and three hours long, was to make it for a reasonable amount of money. And a reasonable amount of money was probably going to be about half of what anyone else would do it for.”
Proposing a budget cut in half to department heads meant each sector of the crew had to find creative ways to consolidate resources. “Our production designer, Ruth De Jong, got really smart about ways in which she could build things, with a very targeted eye, building only what was necessary for the shots,” says Thomas. “Our DP, Hoyte van Hoytema, said, ‘There are things that I can do to go faster: to only have one camera, to do as much handheld as possible.’ Our actors were all on set all the time, ready to go as soon as the camera was ready. Those are things that added up to us being able to finish the film on this incredibly punishing schedule.”
Building Los Alamos, the site of the atomic bomb’s creation, meant battling freezing temperatures in the mesas of New Mexico. “The weather was so cold, it was impossible to dig into the ground because it was frozen,” says Thomas. “We had snowstorms and windstorms. And that was just when we were building the town. Once we got the shoot there, we had another great big windstorm, and we weren’t even sure that the tents were going to stand.” But the production ultimately used the weather to its advantage. “It looks amazing on film — that shot of Cillian when he walks up to the Trinity Tower, and climbs up it, that’s real wind.”
Jon Bernthal and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor in Neon’s Origin.
Courtesy Array Filmworks
Paul Garnes had worked as a producer with writer-director Ava DuVernay in the past, but it had been some time since the pair had operated outside the studio system. “In the early days, we were at Netflix,” he says. “[Origin] got caught up in the industry slowdown. Ava made the really bold choice to go out and make this independently.”
That decision made things more exhilarating and terrifying, Garnes says. “In every production, there’s some executive that you can call and say, ‘Hey, this is happening, what do we do?’ We didn’t have that. It was just me and Ava. We could really only depend on each other.”
The film spans centuries and continents, with scenes in Berlin at the height of World War II, aboard slave ships in the 1600s and in the streets of contemporary India. The decision to finance independently meant working with local governments to shoot in as many historical locations as possible. “We weren’t going to build a bunch of sets on soundstages,” Garnes says. “Outside of the slave ship sequence, because obviously slave ships don’t exist, we shot everything else pretty much on location.”
That made for some awkward asks. “Could we shoot a Nazi rally in downtown Berlin, in the place where that book burning in the Bebelplatz really happened?” says Garnes. “We didn’t know at the time, but they had never let anyone film there.” Filming also took place at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. “It’s a sensitive place. You don’t want to cause any stress or damage or anything to a place people visit in very solemn moments.”
As a home base, production landed on Savannah, Georgia, where they were able to re-create a concentration camp. Bringing in those extras meant “Ava [taking] very careful time to get the background talent to understand what they were doing, who they were,” says Garnes. A sequence portraying the murder of Trayvon Martin was also filmed in that area, as well as scenes set in cotton fields in the 1930s South.
This story first appeared in the Dec. 7 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
When cinematographer Eigil Bryld paired with director Alexander Payne on Focus Features’ Nov. 10 release The Holdovers, which is set at a New England boarding school in 1970, one of the first things the Sideways helmer emphasized was that he didn’t want it to “just look like a movie set the ’70s.” The DP clarifies, “He really wanted it to look and feel and sound like it was a movie that was actually made in the ’70s.”
The Holdovers follows a curmudgeonly high school history teacher named Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) who reluctantly remains on campus at the fictional boarding school Barton Academy during Christmas break. He forms unlikely bonds with a damaged but brainy student, Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa, in his feature debut), and the school’s grieving head cook, Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who has lost her son in Vietnam.
Bryld and Payne turned to films from the period, including Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, for inspiration. “We saw a lot of prints. We found a small cinema in Boston with a very eccentric projectionist who could get all these original prints from his friends. That subculture is very specific,” Bryld remembers, adding that he started with — but quickly abandoned — the intent to use ’70s tools and film stock, which wasn’t readily available.
“I was thinking, ‘What is it that I really love about that era?’ ” says Bryld. “There’s a sense of a spirit of the ’70s movies — breaking away from your studios. And all the DPs of the period that I really admired would push the film stock or they would do handheld or whatever. And then I started thinking, ‘That’s really what I should be going for.’ ”
The Danish DP behind such films as 2008’s In Bruges, 2022’s Deep Water and this year’s rom-com No Hard Feelings tested both film and digital approaches and chose to shoot digitally with an ARRI Alexa. He also created a lookup table (a sort of blueprint for the color grading step) with colorist Joe Gawler. “He’s done a lot of Criterion restoration, so he really knows how the negative ages over time. So I thought, ‘Well, I’d rather build that into it.’ ”
Dominic Sessa, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Paul Giamatti in the Alexander Payne film, which takes place at Christmas in 1970.
Seacia Pavao / FOCUS FEATURES LLC
They also used Panavision H series lenses, particularly a 55mm lens, to evoke a vintage portrait look. “They had really a sense of immediacy and intimacy,” the DP says of the lens choice. “A lot of the film is done on that because the film is ultimately, in one way, a lot of portraits.
“It’s a movie about people who are forced into the frame together, and they don’t necessarily want to be in the same frame,” he adds. “They all have their own portrait. Sometimes they’re in the frame and there’s several people in the frame, but I still thought of it as individual portraits within a group photo.” As the trio become closer emotionally, the DP captures their burgeoning friendships with the camera. “Gradually over time, they come together more and more,” says Bryld. “And that was one arc we were looking for — how we would reflect that, how we framed it and where we put the camera.”
The Holdovers was filmed in Boston and western Massachusetts at Deerfield Academy, which also happens to be the high school that Sessa attended (according to the DP, the actor stayed in his former dorm room during production). “He was amazing,” Bryld says. “I mean, they’re all great, but obviously Paul and Dominic carry the movie. Paul is a pleasure to work with. He also makes things seem very easy just because he’s so good. There was sort of a calmness that Alexander has and Paul has, that, I imagine, would’ve been incredibly comforting for Dominic.”
Bryld also served as the film’s camera operator. “That’s where you should be as the DP,” he says. “You should be there, be able to look up and see what’s going on around you, but also create that little community around the camera. I think it’s incredibly important in working with the actors, that it’s familiar faces. It becomes a little bit of a dance between the camera and the actors … that is rarely something that’s put into words, but just something that has to be organic.”
This story first appeared in the Nov. 29 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
Universal and Blumhouse‘s Five Nights at Freddy’s is off to a historic start at the domestic box office, helping drive overall revenue
The latest horror offering from Universal and Blumhouse opened to a record-smashing $78 million, despite debuting simultaneously on sister streaming service Peacock. It started off with a monstrous Friday haul of $39.5 million, including $10.3 million in Thursday previews.
The pic — which came in notably ahead of industry expectations — scared up the third-biggest horror opening of all time behind New Line’s two It movies, as well as the best showing ever for Halloween weekend. It’s also the biggest horror opening of 2023 to date, besting Scream VI ($44.4 million), and the second-biggest opening of all time for a video-game adaptation behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($146.3 million), not adjusted for inflation.
The news is just as good overseas, where Five Nights at Freddy’s opened to an estimated $52.6 million from 60 markets for a global start of $130.6 million against a modest $25 million production budget. It supplants New Line’s The Nun II ($88.1 million) to boast the year’s biggest worldwide start for a horror film.
Freddy’s passed up Halloween, which started off with $76.2 million in 2018, to mark the biggest domestic opening ever for Blumhouse, not adjusted for inflation. It is also Blumhouse’s top global launch. Other honorable mentions: Freddy’s supplants The Mummy Returns ($68.1 million) to rank as the top opening ever for a horror pic rated PG-13, not adjusted for inflation.
While most critics bashed Freddy’s, the audience graced the movie with an A- CinemaScore (it is rare for a horror pic to receive an A or any variation thereof).
Universal insiders say the decision to do a day-and-date release is a win-win for the overall ecosystem (only paid-tier Peacock subscribers have access). Those who want the communal experience of watching a horror movie in a theater can do so, while Peacock can woo much-needed subscribers. Streamers see notable growth in October because of Halloween-themed offerings.
Before the pandemic, most theaters would have outright refused to book a title already available in the home. The COVID-19 crisis changed everything, however, with the traditional 72- to 90-day theatrical window shrinking dramatically to as little as three weeks for films that open to less than $50 million. Day-and-date releases aren’t the norm, but no cinema operator was going to refuse to play Five Nights at Freddy’s.
Directed by Emma Tammi, Freddy‘s stars Josh Hutcherson as a washed-up security guard who has no choice but to take a crappy job safeguarding a long-shuttered family-themed pizza restaurant. The only problem — the pizzeria’s giant animatronic animal characters spring to life and go on murderous rampages. He’s also trying to maintain sole custody of his 10-year-old sister (Piper Rubio) and prevent her from falling into the clutches of their Aunt Jane (Mary Stuart Masterson).
Things go from bad to worse when a group of local toughs hired by Jane break into Freddy’s while Mike is off-duty to trash the joint so he’ll lose his job. Needless to say, the giant animatronic animals don’t like the intrusion and try to exact their revenge.
Kat Conner Sterling and Matthew Lillard also star. Jim Henson’s Creature Shop created the animatronic characters.
Elsewhere, Taylor Swift and AMC Theatres’ Eras Tour achieved another huge milestone in singing past the $200 million mark at the worldwide box office, a first for a concert film. It earned another $14.7 million domestically to finish its third weekend with a North American cume of $149.3 million and $203 million globally (the pic only plays Thursday-Sunday).
Martin Scorsese‘s adult-skewing Killers of the Flower Moon came in third behind Freddy’s and Eras Tour with an estimated $9 million, a sharp decline of 61 percent. Apple Original Films produced and financed the $200 million film, with Paramount handling distribution duties. The movie, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro, is counting on being a slow burn as Oscar season unfolds, but the producers had hoped for a smaller drop in the film’s second weekend.
Killers of the Flower Moon earned another $14.1 million from 64 markets oversea for a foreign tally of $44 million and $88.6 million globally.
Angel Studios opened its first release since its indie film Sound of Freedom took the summer box office by storm. Its new faith-based movie, After Death, took in $5 million to come in No. 4.
Blumhouse and Universal’s The Exorcist: The Believer, which is now available on Premium VOD after a disappointing showing at the box office, rounded out the top five in its fourth weekend. The movie grossed $3.1 million for a domestic total of $61 million and $120.4 million globally.
The specialty box office saw two high-profile Oscar hopefuls enter the fray, Focus Features’ The Holdovers and A24’s Priscilla. The two films opened in several locations both in New York and Los Angeles, with each reporting a promising per-location average in the $33,000 range.
The Holdovers grossed $200,000 from six locations for a per-theater average of $33,333. Priscilla, launching in four cinemas, earned $132,139 for a location average of $33,035.
Oct. 29, 8:10 a.m.: Updated with revised weekend estimates.
This story was originally published at 7:55 a.m. Saturday.
new video loaded: ‘The Holdovers’ | Anatomy of a Scene
transcript
transcript
‘The Holdovers’ | Anatomy of a Scene
Alexander Payne narrates a sequence from his film featuring Paul Giamatti and Dominic Sessa.
“Hi, I’m Alexander Payne. I directed ‘The Holdovers.’” I thought Barton Men don’t lie. Don’t get me wrong, that was fun. But you just lied through your teeth. “The story is basically about a bunch of students at an all-boys prep school in New England who have nowhere to go for the holidays. And eventually, the story boils down to the relationship between the very curmudgeonly teacher selected to stay behind with the boys this year, Paul Giamatti and one student in particular, played by Dominic Sessa, a new actor.” There was an incident when I was at Harvard with my roommate. And? He accused me of copying from his senior thesis. Plagiarizing. Well, did you? No! He stole from me. “A cook is only as good as his or her ingredients, and having Paul Giamatti and Dominic Sessa, both are capable of learning and performing pages of dialogue at a crack.” So you got kicked out of Harvard for cheating? No, I got kicked out of Harvard for hitting him. You hit him? What, like, punched him out? Nope I hit him with a car. “It’s about three or four pages of dialogue, and I wanted to do it in one go and choreograph it to the camera.” “At first, you’re fooled into thinking that only these two characters are alone at the liquor store. But suddenly you’re surprised at the end of the scene by the appearance of the liquor store salesman.” There you go, killer. “And he was played by a guy named Joe Howell who actually works at that liquor store.”
Recent episodes in Anatomy of a Scene
Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.
Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.
