Academy Award-winning director Alexander Payne came to the Toronto International Film Festival this year with a feature that feels distinctly from a different era. The Holdovers, a dramedy about a grumpy prep school teacher stuck watching over all the students who can’t make the trip home for Christmas break, is set in the 1970s and evokes the feeling of a film from that era, from the more technical aspects to the melancholic yet comedic story of three very different people finding common ground. In an interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub at our TIFF media studio at the Cinema Center at MARBL, Payne said his goal was to capture that nostalgic ’70s feel and named a few throwback films that served as examples for his own work.
Academy Award-winning director Alexander Payne explained how he went about making his latest film The Holdovers feel like it’s from the ’70s.