The producer of “The Holdovers” talks about the Best Picture nomination

Mark Johnson is a veteran producer who won the 1989 Best Picture Oscar for his film Rain Manone of many collaborations with director Barry Levinson (the duo received a second Best Picture nomination in 1992 for his film Boogie). Just over three decades later, Johnson received his third Academy Award nomination for Focus Features. RetainersIt is his second film with director Alexander Payne after 2017 Downsizing.

The film takes place in 1970 during the Christmas holidays at a boarding school in New England. Retainers Oscar-nominated star Paul Giamatti stars as history teacher Paul Hunnam, who must take care of an angry Angus (newcomer Dominic Cessa) because he can’t travel home to be with his family for the holiday. Adding to the lone trio is Da’Vine’s Academy Award nominee Mary Lamb’s Joy Randolph, the grieving school cook who recently lost her son in Vietnam.

“Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that resonates as much as this,” says Johnson, who adds that he’ll hear from “five or six people” at the end of the weekend who have recently seen — and loved — the film. Here, he takes a look at the production and explains why the project, which was sold to distributor Focus Features a year before its release, was worth the wait.

When did you join this project?

Alexander and I have known each other for a while, and he asked me if I would produce DownsizingWhich is what I did. He and I are very proud of that, but I don’t think he wants to repeat that experience. He wasn’t crazy about visual effects and things like that. But we get along very well and work together very smoothly. None of us are very mercurial, and things have happened that somehow need to be taken care of. I fooled him enough that he said, “Why don’t you come produce this?” He showed me Retainers It was over a year into the script before we actually started shooting it. One of the distinguishing features of the pre-production stage (the process) is the amount of time spent on the script. It’s never quite done, and so on.

Do you remember the big changes that went into the script between reading it for the first time and starting filming?

Perhaps one of the characters who benefits the most from this time is Mary, who becomes increasingly important to the film. I’m kind of an anxious producer. I would get a draft and say, “This is great, let’s go make it.” And he was like, “No, we’ll work on that a little bit more.” There’s a scene I’ve always loved All that jazz, when Joe Gideon (the Bob Fosse-inspired protagonist played by Roy Scheider) is putting together a movie and one of its beleaguered producers says, “Oh my God, the studio’s screaming at me.” And Gideon says, “Yes, but let me show you another clip.” And I showed it to him, and the producer looked at it and said, “Damn, it is.” He is Better.” This process works, but it’s as frustrating as it can be.

There are three sacred stages in filmmaking for Alexander. One of them is the development stage, that is, how long it takes to prepare the text correctly. The other is to spend enough shooting days. There are people who can shoot his films in less time than him, but he needs that time to work for him. Then thirdly, editing. It takes longer than most directors. But the proof is in the pudding. He is right on all three.

Focus Features purchased the film in 2022, more than a year before the film’s release. Did that give Alexander more time to fix it?

There are very few filmmakers who won’t continue editing their films until they’re released. There are famous stories of people cutting negatives in the old days the day before a movie was released. But yeah, he was allowed to check it out and show it to some family friends and (make changes). It might just be something like the snow tone is too low, we need to turn it up or something else. Of course, at one point you can lock the movie. In theory, it is closed. But you can always change it until you have to edit it. We made some changes when everyone thought we were done.

Speaking of snow: I imagine shooting a movie during the New England winter can be a producer’s nightmare.

exactly. We could have shot it in August, it would have cost us a fortune to put snow in it, and I’m not sure it would have looked real at all.

I’ve read that people told you that they recognized their boarding school, that they went to the fictional Barton Academy. But in reality several Frankenstein schools were placed in one location for the film. Was this a common practice in your production career?

The second film she produced was… NaturalAnd there’s a very simple scene where Glenn Close’s character looks out the window, while Robert Redford is walking on the sidewalk. Well, we shot Glenn at the window in Buffalo, New York. Six months later, we shot Robert on a sidewalk in Venice, California. It’s a fun trick you can do in a movie.

Barton Academy does not exist. There were six, or maybe seven, different schools. At some point, we would be filming a lot at a certain school, at the Groton School, and then for a variety of reasons (the administrators) decided against it. It was during the coronavirus crisis, so a group of strangers at school probably didn’t appeal to them.

This was clearly a reunion for Payne and Paul Giamatti, having worked together Sideways. Although Da’Vine Joy Randolph isn’t a complete newcomer, this feels like her breakout role. And of course there is Dominique Sessa, who has never been in a movie before. How did you feel when Daphine and Dominique got that much attention for their performances?

When we started filming, we were doing scenes in the dormitory while we were at Dominic’s actual school. He stayed there and slept in his residence. Why go somewhere else, right? It is a nice. He’s so good in the movie, I’m not sure he knows it, it certainly hasn’t crossed his mind. Honestly, going into it, we knew how good his screen test was, but would he be able to do it in a 45-day shooting schedule? Would he be able to do it with 75 people and a camera looking at his tonsils? He stood up and did it, and it was pretty cool.

Alexander introduced me to Daphne and reminded me that I had seen her there Dolomite is my name. She is mostly known for comedy. Mary really invented it; That accent she created in the movie was really hers. We didn’t know what it would look like. The three of them look very much like the characters they play. None of them had a partner or anyone who came and visited. They were there, they came to work, and they did what was asked of them. And it’s great to watch them become a family in the film and behind the scenes.

When you were making this, did you have any idea that you might add it to your Christmas movie list? Because this feels like the kind of movie people will come back to every year.

My hope is for everyone to see it. But no, it never occurred to me. When you make something, you just want it to be good. You want to be entertaining. Years ago when we used to Rain ManOne of the crew members turned to me mid-shot and said, “You know, this movie is going to win an Oscar.” I remember thinking, “I can’t even begin to think about that. I’m worried he’s the center of attention.”

The interview has been edited for length and clarity