World Courant
Hollywood may need floor to a halt in current months in the course of the current labor strikes, with the position of synthetic intelligence within the moviemaking enterprise a key stumbling block between studio bosses and each the writers and actors guilds. However two-time Academy Award winner Alexander Payne (“Sideways”) quipped on the Thessaloniki Movie Competition this week that on the subject of AI, he is all for it.
“If AI may write a script for me, I’d be so joyful,” Payne joked. “I skilled as a director, not a author. To be a filmmaker, you write, direct and edit. However I a lot choose directing to writing. Writing is difficult, and I am gradual at it.”
The Oscar-winning screenwriter is in Thessaloniki to current his newest function, “The Holdovers,” the “Sideways” director’s portrait of a curmudgeonly historical past trainer at an elite New England prep faculty, performed by Paul Giamatti. Slated for a large launch by Focus Options on Nov. 10, the movie bowed to rave critiques at Telluride, with Selection awards pundit Clayton Davis saying it “feels just like the slam-dunk Oscar contender the institution members of the Academy can get behind.”
Talking in Thessaloniki, Payne, whose two Academy Awards got here within the tailored screenplay class, described “The Holdovers” as his “first expertise directing a author.”
“I discovered (David Hemingson, recognized for ‘Whiskey Cavalier’ and ‘Kitchen Confidential’). I gave him the premise, we got here up with the story collectively. He confirmed me many drafts,” he mentioned. “I obtained concerned within the writing, too, although I haven’t got credit score, however the consequence was one thing private to us each. Private to the screenwriter and private to me.”
Requested to elaborate on the methods by which his nostalgic interval piece felt private, nonetheless, the helmer punted on the query, to audible groans and laughter from the viewers.
Alexander Payne is in Thessaloniki to advertise “The Holdovers.”
Focus Options
Payne was nonetheless joyful to gush about his reunion with Giamatti, the star of his critically acclaimed Oscar winner “Sideways,” noting that he’d solid the actor within the lead position “completely from the start.” “The character is known as Paul for a purpose,” he mentioned. “I instructed the author from the start, ‘We’re writing for Paul Giamatti.’ And I known as Paul Giamatti and I mentioned, ‘We’re writing one thing for you.'”
Payne went on to explain Giamatti as “the best actor,” including: “There may be nothing he cannot do. It is like giving a task to Meryl Streep or Laurence Olivier. You are curious to know what this nice actor will do with the position. He actually is that good.”
“The Holdovers” is anticipated to be a primary contender at this yr’s Academy Awards and will land Payne his first directing Oscar. Selection’s chief movie critic Peter Debruge praised the movie, which he mentioned “appears like a misplaced ’70s traditional,” describing it as “a uncommon exception to the criticism that ‘they do not make ’em like they used to.'”
Whereas discussing the movie, Payne fielded a query as regards to making interval films, explaining that “if you open a digicam, you set time in a capsule, you set time in a bottle.” Nostalgia, nonetheless, is just not simple to pin down. “A minimum of politically and socially, it is arduous to really feel nostalgic for any specific time frame,” he mentioned. “With every part taking place on this planet, all you consider is whether or not we’ll ever stay in a time the place we will say the world is shifting in the fitting course.”
The director, who was born in Omaha however boasts Greek ancestry, was additionally grilled about his relationship to the host nation. Payne was granted Greek citizenship final yr and was within the nation this summer season for the Evia Movie Venture (pictured, prime), a sustainable filmmaking initiative run by the Thessaloniki Movie Competition.
Replying to a remark that “The Holdovers” was the “most Greek” movie he is made, the director famous that it is the first film of his that has characters talking (historical) Greek. Requested if he would contemplate making a movie within the Greek language, he mentioned he’d “like to” — however provided that the script was proper, including: “That is all in regards to the story and the screenplay.”
Payne additionally teased a pair of upcoming tasks he is alluded to in current appearances, together with a Western he is conceiving with “The Holdovers” scribe Hemingson and a French-language movie shot in Paris, though within the case of the latter, he mentioned “the screenplay is not fairly prepared but.”
The Thessaloniki Movie Competition runs Nov. 2 – 12.
Alexander Payne Dishes on AI, Returning to Greek Roots in Thessaloniki
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