Logline of “The Holdovers”: A curmudgeonly instructor at a prep school is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit a handful of students with nowhere to go.
Script Can Be Found Here
Summary of “The Holdovers”:
It’s December 1970, and sourpuss teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) at Barton Academy, a New England prep school, has cost the academy an important donor by failing a donor’s son, preventing him from attending Princeton.
Paul, therefore, has to supervise the “holdover” students, the ones who, for some reason or another, can’t go home during the holidays. Among them is Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), whose mother cancels his Christmas plans with him at the last minute because she needs to go on a honeymoon with her new husband. In addition, cafeteria administrator Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) also stays while grieving the loss of her son killed during the Vietnam War.
Paul has the kids bunk in the infirmary, but after a few days, a wealthy father arrives via helicopter to take them on a ski trip with his son and, in effect, rescue them from their holiday fates. Unfortunately, since Angus can’t reach his parents for permission, he is forced to stay behind at Barton. After accidentally dislocating his shoulder, Angus goes to the hospital and lies to protect Paul from negligence. Later, the pair encounter Lydia Crane, the assistant to the headmaster, at a restaurant, and she invites them to join her Christmas Eve party.
Angus, Paul, Mary, and Danny the janitor attend Lydia’s party. Angus and Lydia’s niece, Elise, hook up over fingerpainting. Mary grieves the loss over her son. In an argument, Angus shouts that his father is dead, and Mary reprimands Paul.
Angus, Paul, and Mary take a trip to Boston. After dropping Mary off to be with her sister, Angus and Paul go ice skating and run into Hugh, one of Paul’s classmates from Harvard, who just got tenure. Paul lies about his career, which Angus corroborates. Afterwards, Paul tells Angus that he was expelled for hitting a legacy donor’s son with a car (he framed him for plagiarism). Given that that incident ruined Paul’s career, a Barton connection was able to get him a teaching position there.
While at the theater, Angus sneaks away to grab a taxi but Paul catches him. Angus mentions that he wants to see his father, and so they take a taxi to a psychiatric hospital to visit him. Afterwards, Angus expresses concern that he will turn out like his father. Paul comforts him; he and Danny and Mary celebrate New Year’s Eve.
When school resumes in the New Year, Dr. Woodrup calls Paul to his office where he finds Stanley and Judy, Angus’s parents, who mention that Angus’s visit to the hospital was unauthorized, which led to a violent outburst and that they want to send Angus to military school. Paul is fired.
Paul packs up this things; Mary says good-bye and gives him a monograph. Paul then has a touching goodbye to Angus and leaves in his Nova, spitting out some cognac as he drives away.
What does “The Holdovers” do well?
1. Unique location and time. This is perhaps my own bias, but ever since college, I’ve been fascinated with what happens during winter break (i.e, people who hang around campus instead of going home – what do they do?). What I like about The Holdovers is that the writer is taking a location and then exploring a time at that location when it’s not being used for its “normal” functions.
2. This character description: “Paul, a heap of rumpled corduroy” (p. 2). Really, that says it all.
3. Enter late, leave early. A great example of not repeating information. Here, boarding schooler Angus is about to leave for winter break when he’s summoned for a phone call (p.14).
We don’t need Judy giving the initial news. “You’re telling me this now?” acknowledges receipt and disbelief (with the subtext being “how could you?”). It’s also SUPER telling of his mom’s character; she’s telling him this news at the last minute when everyone else is being picked up. Not only does this selfish action feel indicative of the “me-generation,” but Angus instantly gets sympathy points from the audience.
4. All of the characters have to bunk in the infirmary. The school wants to cut costs so instead of having the kids stay in their normal rooms, the holdovers have to bunk in in the infirmary (until, of course, most leave on the ski trip). With the compression of space, we have more potential for character interaction and conflict (which is what we need in every scene). It’s a smart move production-wise; fewer locations mean lower costs.
5. Surrogate family. Mary and Paul form a surrogate family for Angus; Mary lost her husband in a shipping accident and her son in combat; Paul is a loner without a family; Angus has been abandoned by his family (as Angus notes, they’re “two losers and a grieving mom.”). It’s easy to how there’s a makeshift family happening in the foreground (with a grieving mom) while the iconography of the Christmas story is present in the background (with the Virgin Mary being a new mom; of course, both are named Mary).
6. Angus and Paul are mirrors. Neither Angus nor Paul are particularly likable (they’re wise asses). Angus has a tendency to get into trouble, and Paul is a curmudgeon. As two sides of the same coin, they’re perfect to develop conflict between each other.
7. Fingerpainting at a Christmas party. When Elise takes Angus to the basement during the Christmas party, the cliched activity might be listening to music, watching TV, smoking weed, or whatever else 70s kids would do in a rec room. That Elise and Angus fingerpaint is an indelible detail; it’s childlike (and fitting since Angus gets his first kiss during the scene), and it avoids a more cliched holiday activity such as kissing under a mistletoe.
8. Major character contradiction/revelation for Paul. Once Paul and Angus accidentally run into Paul’s college roommate (and lie about their relationship), Angus learns that Paul never graduated Harvard. This is HUGE since Paul seems so erudite and Paul goes on about how “Barton men don’t lie.” Great characters are like onions – you need to peel back the layers to get to what’s really going on (and, it’s often a smelly, tear-inducing process). No exception here.
9. Lies provide great mileage: When Angus tells Paul that his father died, it sets up more intrigue later for when he attempts to leave the movie theater and THEN we find out his father is in a psychiatric ward. While lying should be avoided IRL, lies provide are often windows into characters’ psyches. Here, Angus lies probably because he’s ashamed AND YET, in a way, he’s kind of telling the truth: his father, in a way, is dead because he’s mentally incapacitated/not fully living.
10. Major character revelation for Angus: It’s revealed that Angus’s dad is in a hospital’s psychiatric ward. Now we know of a potential cause for Angus’s parents’ divorce. We also know a potential reason why Angus is in therapy and on antidepressants (which, contrary to today’s culture, was pretty rare for a teen in the 70s). With both Angus and Paul on antidepressants, there’s a theme of mental illness that together, with Angus’s father, the three of them share.
The strongest aspect about The Holdovers are the thematic similarities among the characters, which contribute to the overall theme of grief/loss. In other words, The Holdovers is the perfect holiday film for the shattered.