Twenty years after fulminating under the Napa Valley sun as a dyspeptic wine snob in Alexander Payne’s “Sideways,” Paul Giamatti is back with the filmmaker for “The Holdovers,” this time in the unforgiving Massachusetts winter of 1970.
“Everybody’s had a Mr. Hunham type,” says Giamatti of his haughty, dismissive character, an irritable prep school teacher trapped on campus over Christmas break. “I had a biology teacher very much like this guy.” The actor’s familiarity with East Coast academia extends beyond just attending schools like the film’s: His dad was a professor. “My father wasn’t like [Hunham], but there were colleagues of my father who were so pleased by their own wit and intelligence, when nobody knows what they’re talking about. That oblivion is funny to me
But he does relish the meanness he wields in the classroom.
I do think he takes pleasure in being an ass—. He’s presenting as one of those British schoolmaster guys, he’s playing up to that type. They’re performing for you a little bit. That’s what he likes about it. That pedagogy where you convey ideas through a kind of harsh cruelty. But my biggest concern was that it be clear he wasn’t such a bad guy from the get-go. I’ve had to play a lot of unpleasant people like this, and sometimes I feel like I hit it too hard. And I wanted to make sure, because it was important for the tone of this Christmas movie, being about empathy, that as much as the guy’s off-putting you’re on board with it.
We are, because you make Hunham’s antagonism funny. When he’s popping off insults to students, I imagine he thinks his favorite historical figures are laughing with him in spirit.
That’s exactly what I hoped to convey, the great wits of classical history gathered around, and he’s in that lineage. Those are his friends; they’re who is living and vibrant to him. He lives in the wrong century. Profoundly.
Paul Giamatti, in corduroy jacket and bowtie, stands in front of a chalkboard as the curmudgeonly teacher in "The Holdovers."
Everything is sort of there. It’s so well written I don’t know what I bring to it other than what I’m getting from the script. I don’t know, whistling “Ride of the Valkyries” when I’m handing their papers back? That just happened. He thinks he’s whistling a jaunty tune, but it’s Wagner. That was something I thought of, I guess. Alexander asked, “What do you want in [his study]?” I said, I think this guy’s vice is mystery novels. You don’t see them, but they’re all over the place. Crappy paperback mysteries are his porn. Those things can give you a ton of energy and imagination.
That hilarious insert of Hunham encountering a football and confidently flinging it with no skill whatsoever is like a gag from the silent era. Was that scripted?
It was. I enjoyed that. Again, it’s a fantasy, being like Cicero on his morning constitutional around the Forum or whatever. Alexander Payne is a big silent comedy guy. He’s always telling me to watch Harold Lloyd. We had to shoot it a bunch of times, because Alexander kept telling me I was throwing it too well. Then finally, I thought, in his mind, it was a shot put, like out of the Romans.
Twenty years after fulminating under the Napa Valley sun as a dyspeptic wine snob in Alexander Payne’s “Sideways,” Paul Giamatti is back with the filmmaker for “The Holdovers,” this time in the unforgiving Massachusetts winter of 1970.
𝘾𝙇𝙄𝘾𝙆 𝙃𝙀𝙍𝙀 𝙏𝙊 𝙒𝘼𝙏𝘾𝙃 𝙊𝙍 𝘿𝙊𝙒𝙉𝙇𝙊𝘼𝘿 𝙃𝘿 ░░▒▓██ 🔴➤
“Everybody’s had a Mr. Hunham type,” says Giamatti of his haughty, dismissive character, an irritable prep school teacher trapped on campus over Christmas break. “I had a biology teacher very much like this guy.” The actor’s familiarity with East Coast academia extends beyond just attending schools like the film’s: His dad was a professor. “My father wasn’t like [Hunham], but there were colleagues of my father who were so pleased by their own wit and intelligence, when nobody knows what they’re talking about. That oblivion is funny to me
But he does relish the meanness he wields in the classroom.
I do think he takes pleasure in being an ass—. He’s presenting as one of those British schoolmaster guys, he’s playing up to that type. They’re performing for you a little bit. That’s what he likes about it. That pedagogy where you convey ideas through a kind of harsh cruelty. But my biggest concern was that it be clear he wasn’t such a bad guy from the get-go. I’ve had to play a lot of unpleasant people like this, and sometimes I feel like I hit it too hard. And I wanted to make sure, because it was important for the tone of this Christmas movie, being about empathy, that as much as the guy’s off-putting you’re on board with it.
We are, because you make Hunham’s antagonism funny. When he’s popping off insults to students, I imagine he thinks his favorite historical figures are laughing with him in spirit.
That’s exactly what I hoped to convey, the great wits of classical history gathered around, and he’s in that lineage. Those are his friends; they’re who is living and vibrant to him. He lives in the wrong century. Profoundly.
Paul Giamatti, in corduroy jacket and bowtie, stands in front of a chalkboard as the curmudgeonly teacher in "The Holdovers."
Everything is sort of there. It’s so well written I don’t know what I bring to it other than what I’m getting from the script. I don’t know, whistling “Ride of the Valkyries” when I’m handing their papers back? That just happened. He thinks he’s whistling a jaunty tune, but it’s Wagner. That was something I thought of, I guess. Alexander asked, “What do you want in [his study]?” I said, I think this guy’s vice is mystery novels. You don’t see them, but they’re all over the place. Crappy paperback mysteries are his porn. Those things can give you a ton of energy and imagination.
That hilarious insert of Hunham encountering a football and confidently flinging it with no skill whatsoever is like a gag from the silent era. Was that scripted?
It was. I enjoyed that. Again, it’s a fantasy, being like Cicero on his morning constitutional around the Forum or whatever. Alexander Payne is a big silent comedy guy. He’s always telling me to watch Harold Lloyd. We had to shoot it a bunch of times, because Alexander kept telling me I was throwing it too well. Then finally, I thought, in his mind, it was a shot put, like out of the Romans.