Hey all, welcome back to another Film fancies episode on you’re listening to radio revel. This time around I chose a film I saw this past weekend called The Holdovers. I wasn’t quite sure how to approach this film, but as I began doing some research, I found a curious slant to the story that kept me from talking about another film or series that might have been a bit more interesting. Let’s get down to it then!
My first thought after the 20 or so minutes of exposition of the film was “this is going to be pretty formula”. Actually, when I saw the trailer for the film, I pretty much expected a formula film, that is, a film that follows a particular, well-worn formula that basically changes the names and places and details but tells a story that has already been told in other films. This time around, and what attracted me to the movie, the film would give us a private boy’s school, a grouchy professor and a problematic teen.
I like this type of film, you kind of know what to expect from it and the pleasure is seeing how the script writer and director and the actors tell the story in their own way. You expect to see the conflict between the professor and the teen in various situations, then see them open up to one another, revealing personal secrets that show they have more in common than meets the eye, then something happens and there is a relationship-changing event followed by an emotional parting of ways. Almost the fare of those B movies, of which there are thousands, that are aired any Saturday afternoon during the post-lunch siesta period.
So, yes, a grumpy professor finds himself having to watch over five interns at a boy’s school who for various reasons can’t go home with their families for the Christmas holidays and are stuck staying at the school. The only people left behind to spend those holidays in the institution are that professor, the five boys, the cook and a janitor who shows up from time to time. A little twist happens early on when four of the boys are whisked away on a ski vacation in a helicopter at the hands of one of the boys’ wealthy father. The troublesome teen can’t go along because his parent’s can not be located to give their permission.
So, now we’ve got into the meat of the film, which will be about the professor and the teen opening up to one another, secrets are revealed through their constant conflict, with the cook as a kind of peace maker, though she only moderates the professor, hardly interacts with the teen. We see the professor’s efforts to be less grouchy, in his own particular way, while the teen makes an effort to accept the adult support the professor offers in lieu of support he should be getting from his mother and evil stepfather.
The movie ends with these two protagonists breaking rules together, until the moment that the professor is forced to leave the teen and the school behind, with the formula, teary, yes, literally teary-eyed farewell scene and the professor accepting his fate as he heads out onto the road towards his own uncertain, but surely positive future. There is justice in the relationship, someone wins, another only loses to win something else, the end credits roll, and you turn to the person who saw the film with you and say “well, it was formula, but it was very well done so who cares?”. The film got an 8 on my scale, with an extra half point added because of the reappearance of a prop at the very end, so 8.5.
Now, I’ve emphasized the fact that this movie was formula for a reason. Really, the whole script, the setting, the transitions, the characters, the costumes and set decorations, even the weather, all of these have been used countless times to tell more or less the same story. It takes place at Christmas, for heaven’s sake! There is nothing original to be offered in a Christmas film!
It actually looked like a post-grad project from a prestigious film school with excellent actors and director filling in the gaps. The whole thing was that transparent. That it was modestly budgeted at $13M (with a $30M rights buy) shows how easy a film the producers thought it would turn out being. There was absolutely nothing new in The holdovers, but it was a delightful, sometimes moving motion picture.
That’s where things get interesting here. As I was looking about for what others have said about the film, maybe noting down actor’s names (a mention must be made to Da’Vine Joy Randolph who won a well-deserved Oscar for the Best Supporting Actress, for example), I happened upon the “news” that the film, more specifically, the screenwriter, has been accused of plagiarism. That’s kind of nasty. There was a full write-up in Variety, with a 33-page PDF produced by the wronged party explaining the accusation in detail.
Now, plagiarism is a serious thing in the creative world. On the most basic level, plagiarism is understood as being using someone else’s creative work while pretending that it is yours. For the Everyman out there, plagiarism, that is, copying text into your essay without citations will get you flunked from a class. That’s why we learn about footnotes and bibliographies. You can’t just take someone else’s words and slip them into your essay without giving them credit for having written those words. That’s just not done…. well, it’s done, but it’s not something you should do.
So, if the accusation of plagiarism is valid in the case of The holdovers, then proving it would be as simple as comparing the two written texts (we’re talking about scripts here, so it’s written down) and demonstrating how one has lifted word-for-word material from the other and not given credit where credit was due.
The problem with the accusation, after having read through the 33-page PDF with examples, is that what the two scripts actually share are a number of formulas, from structure to character type, from transitional devices and beats to dramatic action flows. Otherwise, there is no plagiarism as I didn’t see any word-for-word stolen texts among the examples given, despite the accuser asserting that the material was stolen line-by-line.
Accusing the scriptwriter of plagiarism because he used the basic, accepted and financially safe standards of this type of movie would be equal to accusing a high school hell student of plagiarism for using the basic 5-paragraph essay format to write a 5-paragraph essay. Complicate it more in that the assignment was to write a 5-paragraph essay on The scarlet letter. There will be more than one overlapping, unoriginal sentence or paragraph among the students in that literature class that could be considered plagiarism. And the number of interpretations of that oft-studied novel, usually taught in that same class, is pretty limited, so those will repeat across the board as well.
I personally can’t put much value in this particular accusation. It’s true that the script supposedly stolen from had passed through the hands of the accused a couple of years earlier. Therein the seed for the accusation. However, the growth of that sprout could only take place thanks to the somewhat exalted article presented in Variety. The 33-page PDF does not, for example, demonstrate any line-by-line copying of actual text, I only see that both scripts fit into a well-worn schematic design. On one site some smart-ass even showed, with the same scheme, how The holdovers was plagiarized from Aliens.
What the text comparisons did show me was how much better developed and written the script for The holdovers was compared to the supposed original. Now knowing more details about the “original” (air quotes there!) script, I really doubt I would have even bothered to watch the film. It had little that would have caught my eye and the dialogues I read were pretty mediocre. That said, I haven’t read the entire script and it did land on a recognition list of scripts of value that never got made into movies (it’s third on the list with a 39 superimposed), so someone thought it was at least ok.
So, my take on the supposed plagiarism is this: it wasn’t. The holdovers does not shine for any pretensions at originality. It instead stands on an often-used foundation used in countless other films over the past, let’s say, 90 years. It tells a story that is believable, touching, interesting, sometimes funny, always realistic. There are no superheroes, there are no special effects, there is no particular message. It’s just a tale about several people thrown together within certain circumstances and how they navigate those circumstances together.
Ignore any scandal you may hear about the script. It didn’t win, but it was nominated for an Oscar which is a recognition in itself (the one that won, Anatomy of a fall, was light-years better, even though it was also anchored in standard formulas!). And just a note, the subtle way in which the filmmaker gets us ready for a film set in the very early ’70s is really cool. Watch for it at the very beginning of the film.
Well, that’s what I’ve got to say about this movie. See you in a couple of weeks with another going-on-about another film or series.
Cheers!
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