Alexander Payne’s comeback? The famed Omaha director is back after six years away from screens.

Nebraska’s most famous film director is back after six years away from screens after the most high-profile fiasco in his career. During that time, Alexander Payne had a child, went through a divorce, had several projects cancelled, and saw a labor strike affect the promotion of new films.

The Holdovers, starring Paul Giamatti, has itself been postponed and is currently scheduled for release as a 2023 holiday movie, but Payne had it ready for late 2022.

But Payne’s new film, about three boarding school misfits (also left out in the title) who are unable to go home for Christmas break, is also generating some serious buzz.

Distribution rights to the film were purchased for $30 million, which exceeded the film’s production cost. The film premiered at the prestigious London, Telluride, and Toronto film festivals to critical acclaim. Now, after being postponed, “The Holdovers” is scheduled to be released in American theaters just before Thanksgiving.

Consensus reviewer opinion: This intimate film is about regret, redemption, loss, and the love of mismatched characters who become an instant family, compared to bigger-budget, star-studded films. It may be something that sets it apart.

If the film is as well received by general audiences as Focus Features hopes, its success could make the box office struggles of Payne and Matt Damon’s Downsizing a distant memory.

“Of course. It was disappointing that ‘Downsizing’ didn’t work out and we had to make some adjustments and we’re starting to finish the new movie,” Payne said in a recent interview. “But every filmmaking experience is different. After Downsizing, I never thought, ‘Now I have to make a good movie.’ Rather, I simply thought, ‘What’s next?’ I thought about it.”

“In a way, every movie is a comeback because it’s so hard to make movies.”

The film will be released nationwide on November 10th. It will begin early in Payne’s hometown, with screenings starting November 2nd at the Film Stream Dundee Theater. The official premiere will be held in Omaha on November 11th, with a post-screening Q&A featuring Payne and Payne. Washington Post film critic Anne Hornaday.

For most of his career, Payne didn’t have to come back. His first six feature films all received critical acclaim. Three of his films, “About His Schmidt”, “Sideways”, and “Descendants” were also hits at the box office.

Payne and his longtime collaborator Jim Taylor won two Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay. And as a director, Payne has risen to the rarefied world of directors alongside directors like Quentin Tarantino, Sam Mendes and Christopher Nolan, and produced his own films with stars like Jack Nicholson and George Clooney. After signing a contract to do so, we were able to secure a show spot at a prestigious film festival. he wanted to make

A few things changed after that, before and after the release of “Downsizing.” First, the film, Payne’s first foray into science fiction and serious special effects, cost $100 million to make, including promotion and distribution, but only grossed $55 million at the box office, according to Box Office Mojo. It is said that

Payne’s own life was exposed in public view. Actress Rose McGowan publicly accused him of sexual misconduct on her 30 years ago when she was a minor. Ms. Payne disputed her version of events in a lengthy written response. He has since declined to comment on the allegations. Similar suspicions have not surfaced since then.

Payne’s marriage to Maria Contos, the mother of his now 6-year-old child, recently ended in divorce.

And while Payne struggled to make his next film, the very nature of the big screen continued to change. The market for theatrically released independent films, or so-called “prestige films,” has dried up in the wake of streaming and the pandemic, said Thomas Schatz, a noted film scholar and recently retired head of UK University’s Department of Radio, Television and Film. Austin, Texas.

The studio hopes the success of Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” signals a return of prestige movies in theaters. The next litmus test is Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. It remains to be seen what the return of large audiences will mean for films like “The Holdovers.”

Citing changes in the film market, Schatz said, “There’s certainly a chance that Pain will be a critical success, but I don’t expect it to be an obvious commercial success.” He speculates that Payne will eventually move to Netflix, Amazon Prime or other streaming services to make films similar to the Hollywood films he has made in the past.

Payne says The Holdovers, a small-scale relationship-based film shot in the Boston area in the early winter of 2022, “feels like a return to form for me.”

Kevin Tent, his longtime editor on set and in the editing room, described Payne as a man on a mission. “He was brilliant and hungry to dig in and direct. He was very happy to be back in the director’s chair and I was very happy to be back working with him. He was razor sharp.”

As an antidote to the bloated scope and budgets of “Downsizing,” “The Holdovers” marks a return to the personal “indie wood” filmmaking that Payne was accustomed to.

“All we needed was a small film crew and a good old-fashioned cinematographer,” Payne said. “It’s not that ‘Downsizing’ was a bad experience; it was a great experience. But I realized that I didn’t like creating visual effects.”

Schatz said the new project fits Payne’s “stubborn obsession” with wanting to make the movies he wants to make.

“My very strong impression is that his track record and reputation still gives him great influence,” Schatz said.

A major roadblock to the campaign occurred with strikes by the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. That left Giamatti and other actors unable to promote their films.

For Giamatti, who is receiving the highest ratings of his career, the moment of triumph was dampened by his inability to attend the opening night reception and press conference with Payne.

This delicate story is set in 1970 at Yurihaku’s elite prep school. There, Paul Hunnam, a bitter teacher played by Giamatti, and his lazy but brilliant student Angus Tully (newcomer Dominic Sessa) are held back for Christmas due to accusations from the school. It’s like Mary Lamb, the black cook, played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

Hanam is a lonely man with a secret. Tully feels the pain of being abandoned by her mother and her stepfather. Lam grieves the loss of his son in Vietnam and resents the fact that his son was drafted into the military while his white classmates received free passes. Over the holidays, the traumatized trio form an impromptu family.

“You know me,” Payne said. “I like writing stories about people finding ways to love each other during difficult times.”

The director said he was really happy to be reunited with Giamatti, the unconventional leading man who starred in Payne’s masterpiece “Sideways.”

Because of his background, Payne was able to supervise Giamatti intuitively, sometimes offering suggestions with just a look, the director said. “I’ve wanted to work with him again since ‘Sideways,’ and we were finally able to create the perfect vehicle for him,” Payne said.

“He’s just the best actor. He can do and embody anything. He’s also an excellent human being and very well-read. His brilliance is expressed through his acting, and this I felt it was a very good role for him.”

This is the second time Payne has directed a feature written by someone other than himself and Taylor. The idea for the story came from Paine and was inspired by the obscure 1930s French film Merlus. He then asked veteran television producer and screenwriter David Heminson (Whiskey Cavalier, Kitchen Confidential) to write a script that would bring all of this debris together.

Heminson would give Payne two or three narrative directions. The scriptwriter and director discuss. When Heminson gave Paine the full draft, Paine was happy that Heminson had agreed to write the screenplay, although he proceeded with the proposal “cautiously.”

“I thank God because I’m very happy with his work,” Payne said. “After early drafts, we found that we had a similar sense of what is dramatic, funny, human, and what makes a good movie.”

“Jim (Taylor) and I always had a standard that we never wanted anything to happen in a movie that wouldn’t happen in real life. I’m very allergic.”

For the role of Ram, the cook, Payne auditioned with many celebrities. And he chose the lesser-known Da Vine, whom he had seen and loved as Eddie Murphy’s sidekick in Dollmite Is My Name. Payne has previously criticized the lack of people of color in his speaking segments. The character of Lamb was conceived organically from Heminson’s own experiences at prep school, he said.

Finding the right Tully, a lazy student character, took Payne down an unconventional path, but one he had taken before.

He didn’t like any of the 800 applications he received for the role, so he decided to audition for the role at the school where the movie was being shot.

That’s how they found Sessa, a senior at Deerfield Academy who had “never been in front of a camera before,” Payne said. What he wanted from Sessa was “to be believable as a troubled 17-year-old kid.”

“He just got used to it like a duck to water,” Payne said.

The experience reminded Payne of the casting in “Election,” where non-professionals often won roles because they felt real to the director.

Two of Omaha’s amateur players, Chris Klein and Nicolas D’Agosto, launched impressive acting careers after appearing in “Election.” Payne thinks even bigger things may be in store for Sessa, who is currently a scholarship theater major at Carnegie Mellon University. “He dreams of Hollywood and Broadway,” Payne said. “This is definitely the biggest discovery of my career.”

After filming wrapped in Massachusetts, Payne and his editor Tent (the only editor who worked on Payne’s feature films) traveled to Omaha and barricaded himself in Payne’s downtown condominium for weeks.

They completed the final cut, sound mixing, and special effects while in Los Angeles.

Ultimately, it’s an homage to the character-based 1970s American films that Payne adores. And it’s not just an homage. Most of the camera equipment used in “The Holdovers” was from his 70s era. The film’s sound was also mixed in mono rather than stereo, similar to films of the time.

“The trick I’m trying to do with this movie is that not only is it set in 1970, but it looks and sounds like a movie that was actually made,” Payne said. “Not only to incorporate the social, cultural and political customs and trends of the time as raw material for the film, but also to travel back in time in a broader sense and pretend that we were making a movie in the ’70s.” he said.

Payne, who is inching closer to realizing his dream of becoming a 70’s New Hollywood director, is passing on himself. And if that review is true, he may have gifted movie lovers with a new Christmas movie to enjoy this coming season.