Why Everyone Needs to Go See ‘The Holdovers’

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This Week

Grab some tissues and go see The Holdovers.

A good week to be a Broadway fan in New York.

What are they doing to Sesame Street?

I can’t keep laughing about this movie.

Obsessed is heading to BravoCon!

I Love This Movie So Much

To quote the most influential keeper of the calendar that we have as a society, Mariah Carey, “It’s tiiiiiiime.”

The clock had just struck midnight on Nov. 1 when America’s only true royal—the Queen of Christmas—posted a video on social media of her in a block of ice wearing a festive gown, defrosting. As the familiar xylophone twinkles that open “All I Want for Christmas Is You” plunked, she burst free, as official a declaration as there can be that the holiday season has begun.

The start of the holidays, at least for me, also means “it’s tiiiiiime” for something else: to be crying all the damn time.

Look, I don’t make the rules. I didn’t design the human body and the ridiculous, frustrating ways it processes and displays emotion. So, as much as I don’t know why we need oxygen to breathe or whenever I hear someone cough, I then have to cough too, I also don’t know why so many of us spend the months of November and December in a permanently weepy state. But sniffles are as much a soundtrack to the season as sleigh bells and Santa’s ho-ho-hos. I find it necessary to embrace this reality and, in fact, even enjoy it. That’s why I recommend that everyone start out his holiday season in the perfectly melancholy way: by going to the movies and watching the new film The Holdovers.

The Holdovers opened last weekend in limited release and goes wide on Nov. 10, which gives everyone a week to adjust to their holiday edition of seasonal affective disorder and stock up on Kleenex.

The film, which reunites writer-director Alexander Payne with his Sideways star Paul Giamatti, isn’t a tear-jerker, per se. But it has a steady pulse that beats on that exact heartstring responsible for feeling emotional because of the complexities of the human experience—that constant state of feeling “touched” or being “moved” that’s distinct from an outpouring of pain because of something devastating or traumatizing. The holidays, for example, aren’t either of those things. (Well, I suppose they can be.) But they do seem to trigger a constant ennui, always bubbling under the surface.

Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, a teacher at Barton Academy, a New England prep school for spoiled rich kids. With a lazy eye and cranky countenance that suggests a scowl has been tattooed onto his face, he has a reputation for being the most unpleasant and unforgiving teacher at school—a toughness that he feels his bratty, entitled students deserve. As punishment for not catering to the school’s request that he round up the grade of a senator’s son, he’s given the undesirable assignment of supervising the students who will be remaining at Barton while the rest of the school and staff leave for Christmas break.

That ragtag crew eventually dwindles to just one boy, Angus (Dominic Sessa), whose mother and new stepdad decided to go on holiday vacation without him, leaving him alone and bitter—a classically combustible combination for a teen boy. The situation creates a forced intimacy between Paul, Angus, and Mary (an Oscar-worthy Da’Vine Joy Randolph), the cafeteria manager who stays at the school to prepare Angus and Paul’s meals and mourn her first Christmas without her son, a Barton alumni who was killed in the Vietnam War. (The Holdovers is set in the ’70s.) To everyone’s chagrin and eventual resigned acceptance, they become a bizarre family unit, eating, watching TV, and going on outings together.

The Holdovers is a very funny film, with Payne mining great humor from Paul and Angus’ acclimation to this de facto father-son relationship that neither one of them asked for or is particularly suited for. But I feel like I spent the entire movie with a small puddle of tears pooling in my eyes, just on the edge of falling. There’s something about the film and its aesthetic—the browns and tweed of the characters’ ’70s wardrobe blandly popping against the white New England snow—that lures you into a sort of emotional coziness, warming your heart to a temperature that’s prime for just feeling.

In many ways, The Holdovers is a movie about how foundational and formative relationships with fathers are: how they can define us, break us, and certainly shape us. It’s also an ode to what it takes and how it feels to resist and rebel against that certitude. I’m incredibly lucky to have a wonderful father with whom I have a great relationship, one that means a lot to me. Films like The Holdovers have a way of bringing an awareness of and gratitude for that relationship into great, almost overwhelming focus, like an emotional telephoto lens. It’s responsible for a lot of what makes watching the film a misty-eyed experience.

But I found there to be something incredibly profound about the parallel journeys Paul and Angus are on. They are cantankerous for different reasons, but it turns out that's armor, not a weapon. They are two men at different phases of their lives who have learned to be guarded and unpleasant as a survival mechanism; vulnerability and optimism has betrayed them.

As my colleague Nick Schager suggested in his review, The Holdovers is ultimately a film about “loneliness, kinship, and sacrifice.” We see Paul and Angus being complacent in their lives of solitude, scaring off any attempt made at them of connection and kindness. But just because they are gruff as they ostracize everyone around them doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt them to do so. Being alone isn’t a prescription that keeps a person from sadness and regret. Through the relationship between Paul and Angus—and in every scene with Mary—The Holdovers demands compassion and empathy, requiring you to question how open and generous you are when it comes to showing that sensitivity. Are you capable of doing this for yourself? For others?

I’ve been thinking a lot this past week about people who are like self-protectively alienating Paul and Angus, and have been a bit “in my feelings” about it. The main cause of this brooding existentialism was Matthew Perry’s death. The surrealty of it meant considering and writing about his character, Chandler, on Friends and what resonated with me about him over the years. I think the gift Perry gave us with his take on that role is that he understood the humanity behind the shield of sarcasm, revealing how beautifully smarm and a little cynicism sits next to emotion, joy, and love. It’s remarkable that the sitcom “funny guy” became the Trojan horse for the entire show, the vessel for all the emotional growth that happened across the series. That’s what hits so deeply about The Holdovers too: It exposes how misguided we are—cruel even—to discount the complexities and the bruises beneath a person’s grouchines or wryness.

So why not get this season started with a bang—which is to say, a good cry.

A Great Week to Be a Broadway Geek

The gay millennial in me was thriving this week. To be fair, I’m always skipping around looking for reasons to be living his best flamboyant life, but the world really staged a pride parade tailored directly to me.

Listen, I’m not sure where we’ve landed in the whole “are you going to be canceled for being a Lea Michele fan” thing. She’s just come off a celebrated, deservedly fawned-over run in Funny Girl added a new chapter to her career, which had been stalled because of reports of her allegedly problematic on-set behavior. But I will not turn down an opportunity to hear her sing—the woman can sing—which is how I found myself at her sold-out Carnegie Hall debut.

It was a supercharged version of a concert she had been touring before joining the cast of Funny Girl, which I may or may not have taken an Amtrak from New York to Philly just to see. Who could say? Think of it as Lea Michele: The Eras Tour, as Michele tells stories about her career, from her first audition for a Broadway show when she was 7 up until scoring the kinds of raves actors dream about while playing Fanny Brice this past year. Each mention of a new milestone gets a new song.

She entered the concert from the back of house, belting “Don’t Rain on My Parade” on her way to the stage, just as she had at the Tony Awards in 2010 when Gleehad just finished its smash first season. She stopped halfway down the aisle to sing a verse directly to me! There is an argument to be made that she was perhaps singing to her best friend Jonathan Groff, who was across the aisle from me. But again: Who could say?

Groff joined her on stage for a duet to a mashup of “Touch Me” from Spring Awakening into “Somewhere” from West Side Story, and then performed his “You’ll Be Back” number from Hamilton with retooled, Lea-specific lyrics while Michele went to pee. Her grand finale was “My Man,” the song added to the Funny Girl film for Barbra Streisand, which basically launched the roof of the Carnegie Hall over to the spire of the Empire State Building, where it’s apparently still dangling as we speak.

Once a Gleek, always a Gleek—covering the show was a pivotal part of my start as an entertainment journalist—and the Gleek was really Gleeking at this concert.

That the Gershwin Theater was also celebrating the 20th anniversary of Wicked on the same night was wild to me. I am someone who got pulled over by cops while riding in a car with my best friend when I was a junior in high school, because she had been speeding while we screamed along to “Dancing Through Life” on a Wicked karaoke CD while driving home from theater rehearsal.

Wicked, suffice it say, is foundational for me. And, while I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since that encounter with a very confused police officer, I do love that stars Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel have been given this victory lap together after so many years of misogynistic rumors about their friendship. But it seems like Galinda’s “ball gown!” wand still is malfunctioning:

Letters of the Day Are W-T-F

In this edition of “Who Asked for This?”, it seems that Sesame Street is going to get a major retooling for its 56th (!) season. The Hollywood Reporter revealed that the “reimagined” Sesame Street will scrap its tried-and-true magazine-style format for a narrative-driven approach that will stretch across episodes. Because that’s what toddlers famously crave from their entertainment: plots.

And so I look forward to the future episodes where all the muppets rally around Zoe and say they were the ones who cut the LVAT wire, Bert drives Ernie to the woods and wastes him, and Elmo starts cooking meth in his basement.

You’ve got to love the entertainment industry’s devotion to “fixing” things that aren’t broken.

I Can’t Believe This Movie Is Real

There is, frankly, not enough attention being paid to the fact that John Travolta and Katherine Heigl are going to star together in a musical romantic comedy that will be written and directed by the scribe behind Green Book. The title is—wait for it—That’s Amore! (Exclamation point theirs.) Travolta will be playing a man named Nick Venere. And Heigl? Well, her character’s name is Patty Amore, of course.

Obsessed Heads to BravoCon!

This weekend, The Daily Beast’s Obsessed is going to be at BravoCon in Las Vegas, where over 150 Bravo stars will participate in panels, fan meet-and-greets, superstar tapings of Watch What Happens Live, and, inevitably, fight off hangovers. Not only will we have reporters on the ground, but we also will be sending out three special editions of the Obsessed newsletter. Expect recaps of the previous day’s news and shenanigans, scoops from our interviews with the talent there, behind-the-scenes gossip, and wild tales of what it’s like to be amidst the fun—and the mayhem. So be sure to monitor your inbox!

More From The Daily Beast’s Obsessed

Remembering what made Matthew Perry so great. Read more.

The new Mario video game is tearing friends and family apart! Read more.

Thought you’ve seen every possible way to kill off a character in a horror movie? Enter: Suitable Flesh. Read more.

Priscilla: Does everyone already know that Priscilla Presley was 14 years old when she met Elvis? Yeesh. (Now in theaters)

Quiz Lady: Awkwafina and Sandra Oh are so irresistible, even their mediocre movie is worth watching. (Now on Netflix)

Invincible: It turns out even superheroes suffer from paralyzing parental trauma. (Now on Prime Video)

The Marsh King’s Daughter: A transparent attempt to be the next Where the Crawdads Sing-esque hit. (Now in theaters)

What Happens Later: It brings us no pleasure to report that Meg Ryan’s new rom-com is highly disappointing. (Now in theaters)

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