The Holdovers/Production

The Holdovers is the second collaboration between director Alexander Payne and actor Paul Giamatti, following Sideways (2004). Payne conceived the film's concept after watching Marcel Pagnol's 1935 film Merlusse, and contacted David Hemingson to write the screenplay, which was originally a writing sample for a television pilot. In June 2021, Miramax acquired the distribution rights. In early 2022, Da'Vine Joy Randolph and Carrie Preston joined the cast.
Filming began in Massachusetts on January 27, 2022. Location manager Kai Quinlan, who previously worked on other New England-set films like Spotlight and Black Mass, drew on her Massachusetts upbringing for the film. For the fictional Barton Academy, the crew filmed on location at five real Massachusetts schools: Groton, Northfield Mount Hermon, Deerfield Academy, St. Mark's School, and Fairhaven High School. (Dominic Sessa, starring in his first film role as Angus, had attended Deerfield in the class of 2022.) The film also shot at the historic Somerville and Orpheum theatres, and on the Boston Common. Payne later said that capturing the 1970s aesthetic was relatively easy, because "change comes slowly to New England."
Category:Production