The Big Picture

The Holdovers’ story started as a TV pilot about a boarding school but transformed into a movie script after being discovered by Alexander Payne. The film draws inspiration from the writer’s own experiences and explores themes of wealth inequality and the challenges faced by working-class individuals. Despite the initial shift in medium, The Holdovers has received critical acclaim and may lead to Oscar nominations for the writer, David Hemingson.

Getting a movie off the page is rarely a straight line. What one writer envisions while typing away at the coffee shop is more likely to change entirely if and when it finally makes it in front of a camera. Occasionally some works will start as written for an entirely different medium and transform into another before being completed. Rather than adaptation, the origins shift before initially being constructed. Before it became a celebrated novel, Lonesome Dove was developed by writer Larry McMurtry as a movie for John Wayne. Similarly, before writing the recently released The Holdovers, writer David Hemingson had not a movie but a TV show in mind for a story about boarding school, until that pesky Alexander Payne approached with something else in mind.

The Holdovers A cranky history teacher at a remote prep school is forced to remain on campus over the holidays with a troubled student who has no place to go. Release Date November 10, 2023 Director Alexander Payne Cast Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Dominic Sessa, Carrie Preston Rating R Runtime 133 minutes Main Genre Comedy Writers David Hemingson Production Company Miramax, CAA Media Finance

What Is ‘The Holdovers’ Based On?
David Hemingson may not be as known by name as other writers working on 2023’s most prestigious movies, but his work certainly has. His career as a writer began with children’s television with credits on Disney TV shows including 101 Dalmatians, Hercules, and Pepper Ann before transitioning to sitcoms geared towards adults, like Just Shoot Me, How I Met Your Mother, and Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23. Hemingson also created TV series himself: a legal drama entitled The Deep End, most recently the action procedural Whiskey Cavalier, and an adaptation of Kitchen Confidential with Bradley Cooper as an Anthony Bourdain stand-in. None of these shows lasted longer than a season, but his most personal work never even got off the ground.

In between various TV writing gigs, Hemingson wrote a pilot set at a 1980s boarding school and followed the relationship between an underprivileged kid there on scholarship and his father who teaches at said school. As relayed to GQ, much of the pilot was autobiographical for Hemingson. Hemingson used his experience to build a world that could sustain a TV week-to-week and created an ongoing conflict between students of different class backgrounds. The pilot was never picked up or produced, but like many others like it, served as a good representation of Hemingson’s skills as a writer for prospective jobs on other TV Shows. What Hemingson couldn’t have dreamed of was his script grabbing the attention of a two-time Academy Award-winning writer with a movie pitch he’d be perfect for.

What Drew Alexander Payne To David Hemingson’s Script?
Image via Focus Features

With the exception of Nebraska, Alexander Payne has been the co-screenwriter on all of his films prior to The Holdovers. It would seem only natural for Payne to develop his own script after being inspired by a 1930s French film Merlusse. Though not a remake, the two films both center around a teacher having to watch over students staying at a boarding school over the holidays and what they can learn from one another. The idea stuck with Payne for a while as one of many potential projects for the director to make (one of which recently included last year’s The Menu) but there was one problem: he had never been to boarding school. What would become The Holdovers thus remained on the back burner until a particular script landed on his desk.

Payne came across Hemingson’s pilot, liked it, and while he didn’t want to make it, he felt this may be the person to bring his idea to life. Hemingson received the call from Payne and initially believed it to be a joke (a prank by his friend Bob) but instantly agreed to write the script. He was so excited at the chance to work with the acclaimed filmmaker, Hemingson wrote the film on spec (deferred compensation) because “who wouldn’t?” As he told GQ, “If Alexander Payne calls you up—out of the blue, ostensibly—and says ‘do you want to write a movie for me?’ The answer is always yes.” Though there was no formal agreement, the two began to trade ideas with Paul Giamatti already in Payne’s mind for the teacher, soon The Holdovers began to take form,

‘The Holdovers’ Still Tells David Hemingson’s Story

Although The Holdovers became a different story than Hemingson’s pilot, his experiences proved to be a great inspiration for the film. While no longer a literal father and son story, Paul Hunham (Giamatti) becomes something like a surrogate father to Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), with Hunham being a figure much like Hemingson’s uncle. He confessed to GQ that some of the specific language Hunham uses in the film (“entitled degenerates,” “snarling Visigoths”) were phrases he took from his uncle verbatim. But that also provided a certain psychology Hemingson could understand about both his uncle and the character, that his nature comes from a place of love. He went on to say, “It’s like being in a writers room. If they’re insulting you in a writers room, it means they love you. If they’re being polite to you in a writers room, you have something to worry about.”

There were some direct pulls from Hemingson’s life that made it into The Holdovers as well. Early in the film Tully is one of five students remaining on campus under Hunham’s watch, which would have made for a different movie (one Hemingson and Payne feared could be too similar to Dead Poets Society.) To remove the other four boys, Hemingson was inspired by an experience he had at Yale when a party bus pulled up to start the festivities for a friend’s birthday. Inspired by the conveniences of the absurdly wealthy, Hemingson wrote a character whose father sends a helicopter to pick up his son for a ski trip (going back on his punishment of leaving his son at school), and all the boys are invited. Tully’s parents are unavailable to give permission when the helicopter arrives thus leaving him behind. Payne initially said this was too convenient, but Hemingson relied on his experience and argued that was the point.

Ultimately, The Holdovers became a movie for Hemingson to explore this kind of wealth inequality. While not intending to be an anarchic take-down of the upper class, The Holdovers weaves in the frustration of people who have no other choice but to work hard for the smallest victories living alongside people who can take it for granted. Early in the film, the school’s cook Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) reveals she only works that job so that her son’s tuition would be covered. But Mary remains with Hunham and Tully because she lost her son in Vietnam, her son who was relying on the G.I. bill to go to college. As Hemingson said to GQ, “There are all these kinds of coded things that people acknowledge or don’t acknowledge. Old money versus new money versus scholarship versus somebody whose family name is on the library.” This is the undercurrent that pulsates through The Holdovers.

It’s impossible to say what would have come of Hemingson’s prospective TV show, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if the characters and themes from The Holdovers turned up. Despite being commissioned by Alexander Payne to write the movie, David Hemingson still made it his own and does not seem to be complaining. The Holdovers has received critical acclaim and some box-office success with accolades expected to come as the year begins to wind down. The movie, Giamatti, and Randolph are all favored for nominations, as is an Original Screenplay nomination for Hemingson himself. In a weird twist of fate, the TV show that never got made may lead to some of the biggest honors of Hemingson’s career thus far. Should he get the Oscar nomination though, he will only be the SECOND writer from Nickelodeon’s The Adventures of Pete & Pete to be nominated for a screenplay Oscar (Joe Stillman was the first with a nomination for Shrek in 2001.)

The Holdovers is currently only available in theaters.