At long last, Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti are back together again. It’s been nearly 20 years since they paired up for arguably Payne’s best feature Sideways which had Giamatti playing writer and wine enthusiast Miles on a disastrous trip to wine country with Thomas Haden Church. Now, the Cinderella Man Academy Award nominee stars as a curmudgeonly prep school professor in Payne’s throwback ’70s dramedy The Holdovers in a role that was made for him. Collider’s Steve Weintraub spoke with Payne at our TIFF media studio at the Cinema Center at MARBL where the director discussed crafting everything around Giamatti.
Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti are finally back together with The Holdovers, a project that the director wrote mostly for Giamatti.