Exploring the Art of Casting and Directing Actors

Director Alexander Payne discusses his new film, The Holdovers, with fellow Director Jason Reitman in a Q&A at the DGA theater in Los Angeles. In the conversation, he discusses where the inspiration for the story originated, his favorite aspects of each of the three lead actors’ performances, and the filmic inspirations that contributed to the tone of the story. The film tells the story of Paul, a cranky history teacher at a boarding school in the 1960s, forced to chaperone a handful of students with nowhere to go over Christmas break. There, he forms an unlikely bond with a troubled student and the school’s head cook, who lost her son in the Vietnam War. See photos and a summary of this event below: https://dga.org/Events/2024/January2024/Holdovers_QnA_1123.aspx