For David Hemingson, a veteran of the TV world who collaborated with Alexander Payne for the first time as the writer-producer of his Christmas found family dramedy The Holdovers, one of the great challenges of working in film is achieving a certain level of economy in the storytelling.
“Especially in an Alexander Payne film, economy is everything. Because there’s subtlety and there’s nuance, but there’s also bigger comedy, and then there’s pathos,” he says. “So it’s like, how do you economically line things up so all of the Alexander Payne elements land?”
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In conversation with editor Kevin Tent about his work alongside Payne on the film, Hemingson goes on to observe that the duo “as a team do that,” with Payne driving things as one of the great “visionary” filmmakers of our time. “And me, as a screenwriter on this one,” he adds, “I was trying very hard to get there.”
Recently bringing Tent his second Oscar nomination and Hemingson his first, The Holdovers watches as friendship blooms between a cranky prep school history teacher (Paul Giamatti), one of his more troubled students (newcomer Dominic Sessa) and a grieving cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) when all three are left on campus together over the Christmas break in December of 1970.
For Tent, who has edited Payne’s films since the very beginning of his career, one of the more unique aspects to the experience on this particular film was grappling with its music. Oftentimes, he suggests, he’s able to grasp what a project needs musically and even hear its score in his head before its ever put to picture, though that wasn’t the case here. In the case of The Holdovers, he wound up working with a mix of elements, between Mark Orton’s score, a number of “’60s cues” and period authentic Christmas music. What was amazing to him about the latter material was just how much of a defining role it came to play in shaping the “style of the film,” once brought into play by associate editor Mindy Elliott.
Hemingson adds that when he first watched the film with the holiday music laid in, he thought to himself, “Goddammit, this is so inspired,” given the degree to which it “leavened” the film and “gave it that holiday tone.” Then, he says, when Orton’s score was introduced, “which can be a little sad, a little more wistful…it served both the pathos and the comedy to have that.”
For more from Hemingson and Tent’s conversation on The Holdovers and Tent’s shorthand with Payne after decades of collaboration, click above.
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