Alexander Payne On ‘The Holdovers’ Plagiarism Accusation, Theatrical Designs For An ‘Election’ Sequel & Chances Of A TV Return – Sarajevo
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: Alexander Payne has lambasted a report from earlier this year that the script for his five-time Oscar-nominated film The Holdovers, which he directed from a script by David Hemingson, was plagiarized. “It was the stupidest thing in the world,” Payne told us at the Sarajevo Film Festival when asked about the Variety report earlier this year, which dropped on the eve of the Oscar ceremony.
In the piece, Luca screenwriter Simon Stephenson accused The Holdovers script of being plagiarized from his 2013 Black List screenplay Frisco. “It was irresponsible of Variety to report on that without having read the scripts and comparing them themselves,” claimed Payne. “Do you think The New York Times would have done that?” He added: “I haven’t heard anything more about it and I wish him [Stephenson] well but there was just no merit to it.
I mean, I didn’t even pay attention to it because kooky accusations come out of the woodwork all of the time and this didn’t even bother me but then it kind of kept coming, I thought, ‘Well, that’s dumb.’ “Meanwhile, I’ve spoken openly about the film I did steal the idea for The Holdovers from and it was a 1935 French film [Marcel Pagnol’s comedy-drama Merlusse].
That’s where I stole it from – I didn’t steal it from that guy.” Payne, who took part in a Sarajevo masterclass on Sunday during which he teased his Election sequel and a Western film he has in the works with Hemingson, said that he and his Election writing partner Jim Taylor were still at the early stages of putting together the movie. “Jim and I are still conceiving it,” he told Deadline, while confirming that Reese Witherspoon, who plays main character Tracy Flick in the 1999 title, was still attached to the project.
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