A bit more information about The Holdovers
Julie McMorran
Hello Everyone (the following may contain SPOILERS if you’ve not yet watched The Holdovers and/or Downsizing)
I thought I’d send a few extra pieces of information and quotes from last night’s notes about Alexander Payne and his films, along with a few of my thoughts.
In case anyone hasn’t seen his back catalogue of films, here is a summary of them:
Citizen Ruth 1996 About abortion rights.
Election 1999 with Reese Witherspoon as the conniving, ambitious and devoid of principles high school student Flick, and Matthew Broderick as her teacher Mr. McAllister. Flick aspires to be student president.
He has considered doing an Election 2 as there is a book, but he would have to create a role for Matthew Broderick.
About Schmidt 2002 Jack Nicholson as a recently retired man who embarks on a journey to his estranged daughter’s wedding.
He said that working with Jack Nicholson made him a better director.
Sideways 2004 Two middle-aged men on a week-long trip through California’s wine country, just before one of them is due to get married.
A segment of Paris, je t’aime 2006
The Descendants 2011 George Cooney as a land baron who tries to reconnect with his two daughters after his wife is seriously injured in a boating accident.
Nebraska 2013 with Bruce Dern as an ageing father who makes a trip from Montana to Nebraska to claim a million-dollar sweepstakes marketing prize.
Downsizing 2017 A film that bombed at the box office ($70 million budget and $55million at Box Office due to poor advertising of concept. AP thinks it would have been better as a series). It stars Matt Damon as someone who believes he will live a better life if he is shrunk to five inches tall – a concept being sold in the film as being something that will save the planet (miniaturised people using far fewer resources) and make participants wealthy. It also brought with it ethical concerns about illegal immigrants being forcibly miniaturised.
A note on mobile phones
I said last night about how much directors need to consider time and place because of mobile phone access. Had it been a modern setting, Angus would have had a mobile phone and could perhaps have contacted his parents and gone off on the helicopter with the other students. That would have resulted in a quite different film!
The concept of mobile phones in films was something Darren would talk about and it’s something I watch out for. You can see the benefits of setting a film in a world without them.
SOME more information about THE HOLDOVERS
Alexander Payne on Paul Giamatti (from Indiewire interview):
One thing that the movie has in common with ‘Sideways’ is that Paul is a phenomenal lead and also a phenomenal team player,” said Payne. “The friendship that he was able to forge on screen with Thomas Haden Church 20 years ago — they were two disparate human beings as actors and then two disparate characters. That’s fine work by both actors to find that and make that work. Same thing here, too. Here’s Mister Experienced with Mr. Fresh-Off-the-Boat actor and Dominic’s got the chops, as untrained as he is, but Paul — this sounds corny — is a generous actor in that he, when you’re looking at him, what he gives you is 100 percent real.”
Filming style – I didn’t mention this in the introduction as I didn’t want to distract from the story and have everyone looking out for his filming style (and then I forgot to mention it in the discussion afterwards!), but Alexander Payne uses a lot of dissolves and zooms. He told Indiewire that this probably helped the film to feel as though it was shot in the 70s.
Some quotes about DOWNSIZING
Some comments about Downsizing - this is what I was looking for towards the end of the discussion when we talked a little about the state of the world. As usual I had too many notes with me! I enjoyed Downsizing and found it a fascinating film. It’s such a shame it didn’t do well at the box office.
“I liked the idea of trying to solve the world’s greatest problem through something as preposterous as miniaturization. But when you think about it, there’s no better solution. If we are going down—and it sure looks that way—what are we supposed to do? Colonize another planet? Allow plague, food riots, starvation and natural disaster to just kill us all off?”
“Now, with our horrible times, we need horror films like we did in the ’50s,” he says. “No other genre does a better job of conveying a type of collective anxiety. You look around and think it’s probably a good idea to remake Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
And finally, as always, I’ll bring it back to animals and what I said last night about dogs’ left gaze to look at the right side of a person’s face (something we also do with each other). What I don’t think I said is that dogs only do this with people, not other dogs. It seems that it’s now been discovered that some monkey species do it too.
The only animals in last night’s film were a squirrel being fed behind a fence and a stuffed bear in the office at the school. As I said, I’ve noticed he doesn’t seem to work with animals, but that’s okay, I like that no animals are being expected to perform for the camera. And so, even in a film with very few animals I somehow manage to mention them (and the left gaze bias to the right side of the face was relevant :- ) ).
Best wishes
Julie
Steveandkerry Riddell
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Julie McMorran
Sent: 27 February 2024 12:33
To: monday-nigh...@googlegroups.com <monday-nigh...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: A bit more information about The Holdovers