The Holdovers, the most recent Oscar nomination from Alexander Payne, is currently mired in controversy after Simon Stephenson, a co-writer of Disney Pixar’s Lucy, accused the film of plagiarising. Stephenson claims that his 2013 Black List spec script Frisco and The Holdovers have a lot in common.
According to a thorough defense provided by Variety, Stephenson contends that Payne most likely had access to his work because the screenplay for The Holdovers, which is nominated for an Oscar, closely resembles his own Frisco scenario.
Although David Hemingson is the only person credited with writing the script for The Holdovers, Stephenson claims that there are too many narrative similarities between the two scripts for them to be coincidences.
In The Holdovers, a grumpy prep school history teacher is entrusted with teaching a 15-year-old student, while in Frisco, a paediatric allergist becomes friends with a youngster who is terminally ill while on vacation in San Francisco.
Stephenson has contacted Focus Features, WGA West, and the agents for Payne, Hemingson, and himself, but he has not heard back. The WGA normally doesn’t look into allegations of plagiarism pertaining to spec scripts, but Stephenson’s claim has caused considerable debate among the organization.
According to Variety, Payne may have been familiar with Stephenson’s script before to The Holdovers’ development, based on a paper trail of communications. To bolster the accusations, a note written by Stephenson comparing the two scripts was leaked.
Payne declined a screen credit despite having previously admitted to having influenced the writing for The Holdovers.
The scene in which Paul Giamatti’s character narrates a story about plagiarism and changes the course of their life is, ironically, one of the few plot lines from The Holdovers that Stephenson asserts differs from Frisco. This narrative twist adds layers of irony to the ongoing issue.
In the midst of the controversy, The Holdovers is up against Anatomy of a Fall, Past Lives, May December, and Maestro for the Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
In addition, the movie has been nominated for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), Best Actor (Paul Giamatti), and Best Film Editing.
Twitter Reactions
This is a mind-boggling plagiarism accusation.
Guy who has a script that's nothing like The Holdovers, says they are actually the same via this list of correspondences. https://t.co/G6b5nu3yqV pic.twitter.com/Ic9UyxQ0xu
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 10, 2024
Alexander Payne's The Holdovers accused of plagiarism, writer calls screenplay 'forensically identical' to his
[👮♀️] https://t.co/1IBGjgiLHX vía @EW— Alberto Olmos (@alb_olmos) March 10, 2024
Told you key elements of The Holdovers were lifted from Dune https://t.co/Zx3sav4xbI
— Chris Keall (@ChrisKeall) March 11, 2024
"Writer Simon Stephenson has accused 'THE HOLDOVERS' director Alexander Payne for plagiarizing his script from a screenplay Stephenson wrote in 2013.
Stephenson laid out the similarities below."
(via: https://t.co/8iWYfRdMhd) pic.twitter.com/6bP7CxtXh7
— Agents of Fandom (@AgentsFandom) March 10, 2024
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