Write On: 'The Holdovers' Writer David Hemingson

Director Alexander Payne’s new film The Holdovers, is set in the
1970s and tells the story of a grumpy ancient history instructor
(Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep school who’s forced to
remain on campus during the Christmas break to babysit the
handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually, he forms an
unlikely bond with one of the students, an oddball troublemaker
(Dominic Sessa), and the school’s cafeteria lady (Da’Vine Joy
Randolph), whose son was recently killed in Vietnam. 

We speak to screenwriter David Hemingson about getting a very
unexpected call from Alexander Payne (which at first he thought
was a prank!) asking him to write the screenplay after reading
one of his original TV pilots. Hemingson talks about his journey
to craft just the right characters for the story, how to make
their arcs feel authentic and give them meaningful, emotional
lives.  

“The movie is a love story. I wanted these people to fall in love
and do right by each other. Different people, from very different
backgrounds with different problems and histories but they find a
way, almost impossibly, certainly improbably, to come together
over this small period and fall in love with each other and kind
of save each other. I want to believe that’s possible,” says
Hemingson. 

He also talks about bringing his own personal experience to the
story even when it’s emotionally challenging. 

“I need to get to the place where I am very heartbroken about
what’s happening on the page and really feeling it. There’s an
honesty to it,” he says. 

To go deeper into the screenplay, take a listen to the
podcast.