-Our first guest tonight is an Academy Award-nominated,
Emmy-winning actor you know, from movies like "Sideways"
and "Cinderella Man," as well as the show "Billions."
His podcast,
Paul Giamatti's "Chinwag" with Stephen Asma,
is available on YouTube
and wherever you listen to podcasts.
He also stars in "The Holdovers,"
which is in theaters now nationwide.
Let's take a look.
-There was an incident when I was at Harvard
with my roommate.
-And?
-He accused me of copying from his senior thesis.
Plagiarizing. Ahh.
-Well, did you? -No!
He stole from me.
But that blue-blooded prick's family
had allies on the faculty.
I mean, their last name is on a library, for Christ's sake,
so he accused me in order to sanitize his treachery,
and they threw me out.
-So you got kicked out of Harvard for cheating?
-No, I got kicked out of Harvard for hitting him.
-You hit him? What, like, punched him out?
-No, I hit him with a car.
-Please welcome back to the show,
Paul Giamatti, everybody!
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
It's so lovely to have you back here.
-It's a real pleasure to be back.
Thank you, sir.
-You were scheduled to be here the first day
of the writer's strike.
You were May 2nd, which was the first day
we canceled shows.
-And everything shut down. -Everything shut down.
-Bad luck. -Ol' Bad Luck Giamatti.
-Ol' Bad Luck Giamatti.
Bad penny. -Yeah.
-No, it was really --
-Well, I'm glad.
The nice thing is, we will talk about your podcast,
which we were going to do then, but we're also,
we have this beautiful movie to talk about.
I love this so much. -Thank you.
And this is a movie, it's called "The Holdovers."
And it's about the kids who have to stay
at a private school over the holiday break
because they don't have anywhere else to go.
-Nobody wants them, yep. -You're a teacher.
And this was actually filmed at a school,
the rival school to where you actually went?
-Which I'd forgotten.
We we filmed in five different schools to create one school,
and one of them we shot at was this Deerfield Academy
in Massachusetts, outside Boston.
And I'd forgotten it was the rival school
to where I went, which was Choate.
-Right. -So when I was there --
I had these kind of horrible flashbacks
while I was there,
I was like, "Oh, my God, I remember this place,
going to swim meets,"
which, anybody who was on a swimming team,
it's the most miserable sport in the world.
-It's the worst. Yes. -It's the worst.
And you're in the bus and it's winter
and it's dark out and you're leaving and you're wet
and you're chafed and you're like...
And you've had your ass kicked in the backstroke event,
and it's just horrible.
-It's horrible!
Also, the way there is even worse, because it's cold out
and you know, you're about to get wet.
-That's right, so it just is all bad.
And that was this vivid, vivid memory of that.
-This is an interesting, because it's a period piece,
but it's also a period you were alive for.
It is the '70s. -Yes.
[ Laughter ]
Thank you for pointing that out!
-I'm just saying, you played --
-It was weird, because people kept saying,
"Oh, it's a period film.
I'm like, "That's not possible."
I'm like, period is like, horse and carriage
and bows and arrows and stuff.
It's not the pipes and smoking in the movie theater.
I remember that.
-The kid actors are like, "Ha ha ha. Payphone."
You're like, "That's not that old!"
-Exactly. [ Laughing ]
In fact, the kid had a little trouble with the phone.
There's a scene where the kid gets on the phone
and he was a little like, "How do I do this?"
And I was like, "You've got to be kidding me."
-You've got to be kidding me.
Well, he's a wonderful actor.
It's a really great, really great cast.
And Da'Vine was here yesterday. -Da'Vine, yes.
-Your wonderful costar.
She was talking about Alexander Payne,
who directed you in "Sideways."
He does not have a place for the actors
to go watch themselves between takes.
He basically just stands at the camera,
and you don't get to see your performance
until it's done.
-Which is unusual. -Do you like it?
-I do. I like it much better.
-Yeah? -Because it kind of,
it makes it like, two different workspaces.
It's like, everybody is over here doing the grunt work,
the actors, and everybody is over here
having their choco-chinos, and they're sitting at the thing
and going, "His hair looks weird, his hair looks funny."
All this kind of [bleep].
It's just like, it eliminates all that [bleep].
-A good thing to eliminate.
-It's a really good thing to eliminate.
And then he talks to you.
He's off-camera and he talks to you,
and it's very relaxed and intimate-feeling.
-It's a very relaxed and intimate-feeling movie, as well.
We were talking backstage, it feels as much like a movie
that was made in the '70s
than that takes place in the '70s.
-Indeed, and that was the idea, yeah, yeah.
-There's a really wonderful scene --
because I remember the first time
I saw one of my teachers run.
And you play a teacher and you're running,
you're chasing a student down the hallway.
And it's so shocking, the first time you see your teacher,
like, chasing something, because it reminds you --
you're like, "Oh, they are human beings."
-They are human beings.
-And they're bad at running. -Yes.
And this guy's really not...
-How much thought did you put into the run?
Because it's a really good run.
I didn't have to think about it very much.
-That's how you run?
-Yeah, you know.
That's kind of how I run. -Okay, alright.
-I take it all back. It's a great run.
-The knees are going, everything.
-You know, it was a swimmer's run.
I can tell you swam in your youth.
-Thank you. Thank you very much.
-Your track coach watched you run once
and was like, "We're going to get you in the pool, Paul."
-I tried to be a wrestler, and that did not work at all.
-Well, that actually, you might have found something worse
than swimming, though. -Worse, much worse.
Because then you have to lose the weight.
Wearing the garbage bags to sweat.
-Spitting in cups. -Spitting in cups.
-Your ears are always [bleep] up.
-Horrible, horrible, horrible.
-And nobody wants to go. -No, who cares?
No, nobody wants to go see swimming, for Christ's sake.
-Swimming is the worst. -Swimming is the worst.
Wrestling, at least somebody might get hurt.
Somebody might, you know --
The worst thing that's gonna happen,
you're going to whack your fingers on the edge of the pool
and be like, "Ahh."
-But wrestling, it's bad.
-I think the problem when I was growing up, like,
because then wrestling was all of a sudden,
it was like, world wrestling, right?
And then when you go watch high school wrestling,
you're like, "This really stinks."
-Nobody's doing anything!
-There aren't even, like, ropes to jump off.
-Nothing, and everybody's kind of still for a really long time,
and nothing's really happening.
-Like, "I feel like this is holding.
I'm watching holding."
Talking about swimming, I went and saw Olympic swimming,
so I watched the highest level of swimming in London.
-Boring. -Boring.
Now, great on TV,
because again, the only good vantage point is underwater.
-Oh, that's true.
-Because otherwise, you're just watching, like, seven splashes.
-You're just watching this, really slow.
Like this.
-"Oh, I liked that splash."
-And also, the pool, the atmosphere of a pool sucks.
It's like, it's kind of hot.
It's loud and weird. It smells like chlorine.
-Yeah, no. -No, horrible.
-It's like, when you walk into a baseball stadium,
you're like, "Oh, I love the smell of fresh-cut grass."
-Yeah, totally.
-But no one's ever like, "Ah, the pool."
-"Ah, the smell of the wet bathing suit."
-It is pointed out by the character in the film,
the kid, that your character has a lazy eye.
-Yes. I can't remember what the actual word for it.
-Oh, yeah, I guess it's not.
But my question is,
was this an effect?
Was this a technical? Are you not allowed to say?
-I'm not at liberty to discuss it.
I'd have to kill everybody in here if I talked about it.
-It's a very interesting --
-I'm capable of it. I'm capable of it.
-Nobody here doubts that.
-I'll try. I'll chase everybody.
It'll be really terrifying.
-This is a weird case where I feel like
we'd have to give you a head start.
[ Laughter ]
-That is weird.
It was done in a very --
-It's very subtle and good, and we weren't sure,
but then we looked, and so I just --
I want to ask, there's a contact lens tech.
-Yep. -I've never seen that
in the credits of a movie. -Really? Because it happens.
It's not an unusual thing.
-And I'm assuming Zach Ripps is one of the best.
-Zach Ripps is --
No [bleep], Jack --
Zach Ripps is top drawer. He's the best at his job.
-If you've got Zach Rips on your contact lens,
you've got a movie.
-Pop in and out. -That's how you got a movie.
Well, let me tell you, we're going to talk about,
we are going to talk about your podcast when we come back.
But I really, I can't stress enough,
I think this is a wonderful holiday film
to watch with family, and I can't recommend enough.
And we're going to be right back with more
with Paul after this.