“The Holdovers” writer-director Alexander Payne discussed the state of the film industry while at the Lumière Film Festival (via Variety), criticizing filmmakers for the lack of midbudget movies for adults in Hollywood nowadays.
“One thing with these lower budget, humanist, anthropocentric — whatever what you want to call them — comedy dramas [they make now], is that I miss the mid-range, more expensive adult dramas with visual scope,” Payne said. “Where is ‘Out of Africa,’ where is ‘The English Patient’ today?”
He continued, “Of course, the most difficult thing is always the screenplay. We can criticize financiers and studios and distributors for not making those movies anymore, but I criticize directors and writers for not making them.”
The “Sideways” screenwriter explained that writing and casting are key. Payne turned down George Clooney (whom he later worked with on “The Descendents”), Brad Pitt, and Edward Norton for Oscar-winning film “Sideways” as “they were not right for that movie.”
“In our screenplays, our barometer is: Could this happen in real life and not just in a movie?” Payne said. “We don’t like contrivance and gimmicks in movies. We like to have a very strong sense of place and we like to take a documentary approach to fiction filmmaking, and that starts with the screenplay and with the emotions of the characters.”
And those characters can not be distracting to theatergoing audiences, according to Payne.
“Movie stars who, by that time in their career are perceived more as stars than actors, still want to be seen as actors,” he said, explaining that actors need to embody the characters and not vice versa. “The most important aspect is casting.”
Payne’s latest film “The Holdovers” is set for a limited theatrical release from Focus Features on October 27. It reunites Payne with his “Sideways” star Paul Giamatti, here playing a curmudgeonly New England prep school teacher who remains on campus over the Christmas Break alongside one of his students.
