NEW YORK (AP) â When made âSidewaysâ with Alexander Payne, he stayed in a little house in the middle of a large vineyard. At the end of a day of shooting, he would drive home in darkness, with the California hills around him.
Giamatti was then a respected character actor, but this was one of his first times as the lead. And he couldn't believe it.
âI remember Alexander saying, âYou two guys are going to do it,ââ recalls Giamatti of himself and Thomas Hayden Church. âAnd we were like, âSeriously?â"
In the years since, Giamatti, 56, has remained a leading man, albeit an unlikely one. His ability to carry a movie is now, well, kind of obvious. That goes for indie gems like and âWin Winâ or acclaimed series like âJohn Adamsâ and
But two decades later, âSidewaysâ remains lodged in Giamattiâs memory. âI remember every second of making it,â he said on a recent afternoon in Manhattan. Wide as his travels have been since â âHamletâ at Yale, Jerry Heller in âStraight Outta Compton,â seven years on âBillionsâ â heâs not experienced anything quite like the natural, ensemble feel of âSideways." Until, that is, he reteamed with Payne for
âIâve never done anything like it again," says Giamatti, âexcept this is the closest thing to it.â
âThe Holdovers,â playing in theaters and available digitally, marks the long-in-coming reunion of Giamatti and Payne. Just as in âSideways,â their alchemy produces something wry and moving. The setting â a 1970s boarding school â has moved from California sunshine to snowy New England, and from pinot to whisky.
But a faint connection between to the two movies is there. Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, an irascible classics professor, widely disliked by his students, whoâs forced to spend Christmas break with a handful of students. The movie, a broad comedy at first, peels away a tender humanistic drama around the trio of Hunham, a bright, less well-off student (Dominic Sessa) and the schoolâs grieving head cook (DaâVine Joy Randolph).
For Giamatti, the bookends of âSidewaysâ and âThe Holdoversâ inevitably prompt reflection on the distance he's traveled in the intervening decades.
âAll the stuff in between, I mean the life changes, the professional stuff â itâs just insane. My whole life changed. I got divorced. Massive change,â Giamatti says. âI never talked to Alexander about this, but I thought there were similarities between the two characters. But itâs a guy 20 years on from the other guy. And probably thereâs a lot of me 20 years on going into it.â
Hunham, like Giamattiâs struggling writer Miles Raymond of âSideways,â is a prickly misanthrope stuck in a midlife stasis. In Giamattiâs hands, the dialogue of an erudite grouch sings. One example: âChrist on a crutch, what sort of fascist hash foundry are you running?â
âI kind of like this character better, for some reason,â Giamatti says. âHeâs not as self-pitying. Heâs got a little more zest. He, like, enjoys being the a--hole that he is.â
Payne and Giamatti have talked for years about making another movie, including a private-eye film ("Itâd be so great,â says Giamatti) and a Western (âIâm like, I would do anything in a Westernâ). But it wasnât until Payne got together with screenwriter David Hemingson with the idea of loosely adapting the 1935 French comedy âMerlusseâ that they hit on the right project.
âI wanted to work with that guy again for 20 years,â says Payne. âIâve been lucky to work with a lot of terrific actors, but we had a really terrific professional relationship making âSideways.â I was waiting for the right thing â and created it. I told David Hemingson: Weâre writing for Paul Giamatti."
âHeâs just the best actor,â Payne adds. âHeâs the finest actor. Not casting aspersions on others, I just think thereâs nothing he cannot do.â
The part of Paul also had connections to Giamattiâs own upbringing. His father, A. Bartlett Giamatti, was an academic. Aside from being president of Yale and commissioner of Major League Baseball, he was a professor of English Renaissance literature. His mother, Toni, taught at the Hopkins School, the New Haven, Connecticut, prep school. The younger Giamatti, himself, attended the boarding school Choate as a day student.
âI think itâs why he was like, âYouâll get this character. This is sort of written for you.â Because he knows I went to a school like that and I had a background like that,â says Giamatti. âHe even knows Iâm interested in Roman history. A lot it was kind of a big gift of like: You kind of know all of this.â
Asked for an example of how he and Payne work together, Giamatti describes a scene from âSidewaysâ when his character runs into his ex-wife and learns sheâs newly married and pregnant. Miles, crushed, struggles to keep up a cheery facade.
âWe had done three takes or something, and he came up to me and said, âDonât stop smiling. Whatever you do, whatever she says, you canât stop smiling,'" says Giamatti. âThat was one of the best examples to me of how an actor and a director can work together. He saw something I was doing and he just kept pulling it out of me."
On âThe Holdovers,â Giamatti and Payne had their first argument. In a scene toward the end of the film, Paul is in a tense meeting with the parents of Sessaâs character. In the middle of it, Giamatti decided to sit down â an instinctual choice that, he felt, showed Paul was breaking protocol.
âHe came up to me and he said, âTalk to me about sitting down,ââ recalls Giamatti.
They discussed Giamattiâs reasoning and as they began to shoot it, Payne announced: âSitting down, I buy it.â But by then, Giamatti had rethought it. He asked to try it standing up. Each had come around to the otherâs idea. Giamatti decided he liked standing better.
âAnd that was the biggest disagreement we had,â says Giamatti, laughing.
During , Giamatti and his castmates (Randolph and Sessa have also been widely celebrated for their performances), werenât able to promote the film. Normally, missing out on interviews wouldnât be something Giamatti would lose sleep over.
âBut it was funny, I kept saying to my girlfriend, âI actually want to be talking about it. I think Iâm frustrated that I canât,'" Giamatti says.
Twenty years ago, Giamatti was surprisingly passed over for an Oscar nomination for âSideways.â This time, many are predicting heâll receive his first Academy Award nomination for best actor. (He was nominated for best-supporting actor in 2006 for âCinderella Man.â)
âThat would be lovely if it happened. Iâm not counting on anything,â Giamatti says. âBut for the first time, I do feel like putting myself behind it because Iâd like it to get acknowledged in some way. Whether itâs me or not, thatâs fine. If the movie does, if (Randolph) does, if Hemingson does or Alexander does â itâd be great if somebody does."
If Giamatti is nominated for best actor, it would be an overdue acknowledgement of one this eraâs finest actors, one whoâs long imbued everyman characters with wit and warmth. Calling them âschlubsâ wouldnât do justice for the justice he does them. So good at it is Giamatti that you might mistake the very down-to-earth actor for a regular guy, too.
But don't be fooled. Take Giamatti's new podcast, , in which he and author Stephen Asma follow their fascinations with things think Sasquatch. Regular guy?
âIâm not. Iâm really into weird (expletive),â Giamatti says, cackling. âIâve always been into really weird (expletive). I said to my friend, âIâm tried of not talking about Sasquatch and sitting on the fact that Iâm fascinated by UFOs and ghosts.'"
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The story has been updated to correct that Giamatti has been nominated for a best supporting actor Academy Award.
Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
