# Holes (film)

Holes is a 2003 American neo-Western comedy drama film directed by Andrew Davis and written by Louis Sachar, based on his 1998 novel. The film stars Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight, Patricia Arquette, Tim Blake Nelson, Eartha Kitt, Khleo Thomas, Dulé Hill, Scott Plank and Shia LaBeouf.
In the film, Stanley Yelnats IV (LaBeouf) is sent to Camp Green Lake, a juvenile detention camp in Texas, after being wrongfully convicted of theft. The camp forces inmates to dig holes in a dried lake bed under the command of the cruel Warden Walker (Weaver), who is secretly searching for the buried treasure of outlaw Katherine "Kissin' Kate" Barlow (Arquette).
Director Andrew Davis took on Holes to showcase his versatility beyond action films, enlisting author Louis Sachar to adapt his novel into a screenplay. Filming took place over ten weeks in California during the summer of 2002 on a $20 million budget. Shia LaBeouf was cast as Stanley after Davis sought a "young Tom Hanks," though the character's weight loss arc from the book was omitted for practicality. Scenes of hole-digging were carefully staged with different depth levels, and bearded dragons portrayed the venomous yellow-spotted lizards. The film, dedicated to actor Scott Plank, who died after filming wrapped, was produced by Chicago Pacific Entertainment and Phoenix Pictures, with distribution by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista.
Holes garnered several awards and nominations. It won the California On Location Awards for Production Company of the Year and Location Professional of the Year. LaBeouf received recognition with a nomination for Breakthrough Performance at the MTV Movie Awards, while the film earned nominations for Best Family Film at the Critics' Choice Awards and Young Artist Awards.

## Plot

In Green Lake, Texas, the Yelnats family has been cursed to be unlucky, which they blame on their ancestor Elya's failure to keep a promise to fortune teller Madame Zeroni over a century earlier in Latvia. One day, Stanley Yelnats IV is wrongfully convicted of stealing a pair of sneakers donated to charity by baseball player Clyde "Sweet Feet" Livingston, and is sentenced to 18 months of hard labor at Camp Green Lake, a juvenile detention camp, in lieu of jail time.
The camp is in a dry lake bed where rain never falls and venomous yellow-spotted lizards thrive. Stanley meets warden Louise Walker, her assistant Mr. Sir, and counselor Dr. Steve Pendanski. Inmates, nicknamed Zero, Zig-Zag, Armpit, Squid, X-Ray, and Magnet, dig holes daily, earning a day off for interesting finds. After Stanley discovers a golden lipstick tube marked K.B. and a fossil, he's accepted into the group and nicknamed Caveman. When Magnet steals Mr. Sir's sunflower seeds, Stanley assumes responsibility and is taken to Walker's cabin. He finds wanted posters there and learns "KB" stands for Katherine "Kissin' Kate" Barlow, a school teacher-turned-outlaw who once robbed a money chest from his great-grandfather Stanley Yelnats Sr. After admonishing Mr. Sir for his irrelevant report, Walker lets Stanley return to work.
Camp Green Lake's history is revealed in flashbacks as a flourishing lakeside community in the 19th century. Kate romantically bonds with Sam, an African-American onion merchant who helps repair her schoolhouse. When the wealthy Charles "Trout" Walker discovers the two kissing, he informs the other citizens out of jealousy, and they burn down the schoolhouse and murder Sam. In retaliation, Kate becomes an outlaw, hunting down Walker's men and earning her nickname by kissing the men she murders. As her legend is established, Green Lake declines due to the lake's sudden evaporation. Years later, Kate is found by the now-destitute Walkers; before allowing herself to be lethally bitten by a lizard, she boasts neither Trout nor his descendants will find her buried fortune.
In the present, Pendanski mocks Zero, whose real name is Hector Zeroni, but the latter injures Pendanski and flees. After some deliberation, Stanley searches for Hector. The two have difficulty surviving in the desert without water. Eventually, Stanley carries the ailing Hector up the mountain, and regain their strength after finding a field of wild onions and a water source; simultaneously, Stanley unknowingly fulfills Elya's promise to Madame Zeroni and breaks the curse. While camping on the mountain, Hector tells Stanley he stole Livingston's sneakers and threw them over the bridge to evade the police, but they inadvertently hit Stanley's head.
Returning to the camp, Stanley and Hector investigate the hole where Stanley found the lipstick and discover a chest before they are discovered by Walker, Mr. Sir, and Pendanski. They soon realize that Walker, Trout's granddaughter, has been using the inmates to find Barlow's treasure. The adults cannot steal the chest from the boys, as the hole is swarming with lizards, which do not bite Stanley and Hector due to the onions they ate earlier. The puzzled adults wait for the lizards to kill the boys. The next morning, the attorney general and Stanley's lawyer arrive, accompanied by Texas Rangers; the chest Stanley found is discovered to have once belonged to his namesake great-grandfather. Walker, Mr. Sir, who is actually a paroled criminal named Marion Sevillo, and Pendanski, who is impersonating a doctor, are arrested. Stanley and Zero are released, and it rains in Green Lake for the first time in over a century.
The Yelnats family obtains the chest containing jewels, deeds, and promissory notes. They share this with Hector, who uses it to hire private investigators to find his missing mother. Both families live a life of financial ease as neighbors.

## Cast

* Shia LaBeouf as Stanley "Caveman" Yelnats IV
* Khleo Thomas as Hector "Zero" Zeroni
* Brenden Jefferson as Rex "X-Ray" Washburn
* Sigourney Weaver as Warden Walker
* Jon Voight as Mr. Sir / Marion Sevillo
* Tim Blake Nelson as Dr. Steve Pendanski
* Jake M. Smith as Squid (Alan)
* Byron Cotton as Theodore Thomas "Armpit" Johnson
* Miguel Castro as Magnet (José)
* Max Kasch as Zig-Zag (Ricky)
* Noah Poletiek as Twitch (Brian)
* Zane Holtz as Barf Bag (Louis)
* Steve Koslowski as Lump
* Siobhan Fallon Hogan as Tiffany Yelnats
* Henry Winkler as Stanley Yelnats III
* Nathan Davis as Stanley Yelnats Jr.
* Shelley Malil as the Yelnats family's landlord
* Rick Fox as Clyde "Sweet Feet" Livingston
* Nicole Pulliam as Mrs. Livingston: Sweet Feet's wife.
* Eartha Kitt as Madame Zeroni
* Damien Luvara as Elya Yelnats
* Sanya Mateyas as Myra Menke
* Ravil Isyanov as Morris Menke
* Ken Davitian as Igor Barkov
* Patricia Arquette as Kissin' Kate Barlow
* Scott Plank as Trout Walker
* Dulé Hill as Sam
* Roma Maffia as Attorney Carla Morengo
* Allan Kolman as Stanley the First
* Louis Sachar as Mr. Collingwood
* Michael Cavanaugh as Judge Austin Gorg

## Production

Director Andrew Davis chose to direct Holes to show he was capable of making more than action films such as The Fugitive and Collateral Damage. He encouraged author Louis Sachar to participate in the production and adapt the novel into a screenplay. To break down the novel's action into a film, Davis and Sachar storyboarded over 100 scenes on 3-by-5 note cards, each of which had specific time allotments. Sachar said Davis "went through and said, 'Now as you rewrite it, this card should take half a minute, this one should take three minutes, this one should take one minute, and so on.'" Before Sachar was hired, Richard Kelly was given the job to write the screenplay. His draft diverged from the source material, and had a darker, post-apocalyptic take with sci-fi elements. Kelly stated he was naive and was told by the production staff that he was "insane" before being removed from the film.
Holes was filmed in California over 10 weeks in the summer of 2002 on a $20 million budget. When looking for a child actor to play Stanley, Davis asked for an actor like "a young Tom Hanks", and Shia LaBeouf was cast. In the original book, Stanley is depicted as obese, shedding considerable weight as the book progresses. The filmmakers chose to drop this aspect from the movie, as they believed it would have been difficult to convincingly portray the weight loss in a live-action film.
The film was shot in several locations, including Ridgecrest, California. LaBeouf was simultaneously doing work for the Disney Channel show Even Stevens, and worked on the film after taping Even Stevens. To show the seven kids' holes being dug gradually throughout the day, different "phases" were used, for each of which the seven holes were given different levels of depth. For the yellow spotted lizards, fourteen bearded dragons were used, four of which were used for the main parts, and the rest used as "background atmosphere lizards".
The film is dedicated to Scott Plank, who appears in the film and died six months before its release.
The film was produced by Chicago Pacific Entertainment in association with Phoenix Pictures, presented by Walden Media and Walt Disney Pictures, and distributed in many markets by Buena Vista Pictures.

## Music

The film's music includes a new recording of the Grammy-winning single "Just Like You" by Keb Mo', and the Dr. Dre and Mike Elizondo-produced "Dig It" by The D Tent Boys (the actors portraying the D Tent group inmates), which included a video that was played regularly on the Disney Channel. The soundtrack also includes contributions by the Eels, Devin Thompson, Dr. John, Eagle Eye Cherry, Fiction Plane, Little Axe, Moby, North Mississippi Allstars, Pepe Deluxé, Shaggy, Stephanie Bentley, and Teresa James & the Rhythm Tramps. The score was composed and conducted by Joel McNeely.
* "Dig It" – D-Tent Boys
* "Keep'n It Real" – Shaggy
* "Mighty Fine Blues" – Eels
* "Honey" – Moby
* "I'm Gonna Be A Wheel Someday" – Teresa James & the Rhythm Tramps
* "Just Like You" – Keb' Mo'
* "Everybody Pass Me By" – Pepe Deluxé
* "I Will Survive" – Stephanie Bentley
* "Shake 'Em On Down" – North Mississippi Allstars
* "Don't Give Up" – Eagle Eye Cherry
* "Happy Dayz" – Devin Thompson
* "Let's Make A Better World" – Dr. John
* "If Only" – Fiction Plane
* "Eyes Down" – Eels
* "Down To The Valley" – Little Axe

## Release
### Home media

Holes was released on DVD and VHS on September 23, 2003. The DVD version of the film consists of widescreen and fullscreen versions, being a THX certified release.

## Reception
### Box office

Holes grossed $16.3 million in its opening weekend, finishing #2 at the box office behind Anger Management's second weekend. It went on to gross a domestic total of $67.4 million and an additional $4 million in international revenue, totaling $71.4 million at the box office, against a $20 million budget, making the film a moderate financial success. The film was released in the United Kingdom on October 24, 2003, and opened at #9.
As of December 2003, the video sold 3.11 million copies earning a profit of over $56.2 million.

### Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an approval rating of 78% based on 140 reviews, with an average rating of 7/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Faithful to its literary source, this is imaginative, intelligent family entertainment." On Metacritic, which uses an average of critics' reviews, the film has a 71 out of 100 rating, based on 28 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times rated the film three and a half stars of four stars and wrote, "Davis has always been a director with a strong visual sense, and the look of Holes has a noble, dusty loneliness. We feel we are actually in a limitless desert. The cinematographer, Stephen St. John, thinks big and frames his shots for an epic feel that adds weight to the story. I walked in expecting a movie for thirteen somethings, and walked out feeling challenged and satisfied. Curious, how much more grown up and sophisticated Holes is than Anger Management".
Joe Baltake of The Sacramento Bee gave Holes four stars, praising the performances of Shia LaBeouf and Khleo Thomas and the film's emphasis on storytelling over the use of special effects.
Grant Tracey's review in The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier described Holes as a complex and thought-provoking film. He praised its exploration of social issues like institutional abuse, racism, and patriarchal injustice while remaining entertaining.

### Awards

| Year | Award | Category | Nominee | Result |
| 2002 | California On Location Awards | Production Company of the Year – Features | Green Lake Productions | Won |
| 2003 | California on Location Awards | Location Professional of the Year – Features | Mark Benton Johnson (Shared with S.W.A.T.) | Won |
| 2003 | Artios Awards | Best Casting for Feature Film, Comedy | Amanda Mackey Johnson and Cathy Sandrich | Nominated |
| 2004 | Critics' Choice Awards | Best Family Film – Live Action | | Nominated |
| 2004 | Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards | Best Family Film | | Won |
| 2004 | MTV Movie Awards | Breakthrough Performance | Shia LaBeouf | Nominated |
| 2004 | Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards | Best Live Action Family Film and Best Performance by a Youth in a Lead or Supporting Role – Male | Shia LaBeouf | Nominated |
| 2004 | Young Artist Awards | Best Family Feature Film – Drama | | Nominated |
| 2004 | Young Artist Awards | Best Performance in a Feature Film – Leading Young Actor | Shia LaBeouf | Nominated |
| 2004 | Young Artist Awards | Best Performance in a Feature Film – Supporting Young Actor | Noah Poletiek | Nominated |
| 2004 | Young Artist Awards | Best Performance in a Feature Film – Supporting Young Actor | Khleo Thomas | Nominated |