The Holdovers is shaping into one of the most acclaimed movies in Alexander Payne’s filmography, and there are all sorts of reasons for that. There’s the crackling script by David Hemingson, which Payne commissioned after being sent a pilot by the screenwriter many years ago. The nuanced performances of its superlative stars Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and Dominic Sessa, who respectively play a grumpy teacher, a grieving cafeteria manager, and a bratty student left only with each other at their stuffy boarding school over a snowy New England holiday. The nostalgic cinematography, closely evoking character-driven films of the ’70s (the decade in which the movie is set). The care with which Payne steers the tone from spiky comedy to emotional drama.

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As to how an admiring viewer might describe the feeling The Holdovers leaves them with, then? As Payne settles in for this week’s Little Gold Men interview (listen or read below), I mention the word I see thrown around the most: “Cozy.” I’ve heard friends say it; I’ve read it used by critics and even the film’s own distributor, Focus Features. Payne has encountered the term plenty himself—and isn’t sure how to feel about it. So begins a winding, candid conversation about Payne facing his critics—more accurately, maybe, his admirers—and preparing for the opening of his first film since the critical and commercial bomb Downsizing, amid an anxious time for theatrical exhibition.

Vanity Fair: Everyone I know who’s seen this has commented on how light and cozy they felt coming out of the theater. To what extent was that a goal of yours with this movie?

Alexander Payne: I’ve got to tell you, I’m always a little surprised to hear this, “Oh, it’s like a cozy movie, or a warm hug, or putting on a sweater on a cold day and drinking hot cocoa.” Part of that nauseates me a little bit. I thought I was just making a decent movie about people. Well, you’re the first person I’m getting to ask: What is it that felt cozy to you or warm? Is it the texture of the film, or the quality of the human relations presented? What was it?

I think it’s the attention to the dynamics between the characters and the belief that there is something that they can bring to each other that is positive, and sort of affirming in some way. I found it partly cozy because I believed in the connection that you developed between those characters.

We can talk about two things. One is this quality that it has, perhaps, that we can pierce our natural assumptions about others, given new knowledge. That everybody’s got a story. You meet someone, you make certain assumptions fairly or unfairly, usually unfairly. But then the more you get to know the person, the more you see the humanity underneath. And then by extension, in this film, if there’s a feeling that seemingly very disparate people can, with time, discover some common humanity—that’s a nice thing. I wouldn’t necessarily use the word cozy though. Why do you use the word cozy?

Part of it just has to do with the milieu. You’re working in Christmastime, you’re in Massachusetts, you’re in boarding school—

And maybe some of the period flavor contributed to that.

Yeah, the film feels like a throwback, and I know that’s quite intentional on your end.

That part I can relate to, from when I see some films from the early ’70s, perhaps because I was a little kid then and movies were really good then, and put a primary focus on human relationships and how messy life can be. I certainly can feel a certain coziness when I watch a Bob Rafelson movie or a Hal Ashby movie from that period. So on that level, I can understand that. Thanks for letting me explore that with you. I heard it or read it a couple of times, and I’m not quite sure what to make of it. Whether to be complimented or insulted by it. Not insulted, but you know what I mean.

I understand. And another way of posing it perhaps is—it’s a bit of a cliché right now, but movies like this are not made very much anymore, especially on this scale.

And what do you mean by that? What do you mean by movies like this aren’t made much anymore?

You’re going for it, Alexander. I mean something that I know you’ve talked about: this sort of mid-range adult drama, focused on human relationships.

All right, very good. Yep.

For me, as someone who grew up on movies like that, there is something maybe cozy just about being able to go back into a theater and experience a movie like that again, that is considered and thoughtful.

Well, that I can understand. We’re talking now on Tuesday, October 24. The movie opens in theaters this coming Friday. So it’s certainly my prayer that people will go to the movie theaters to see it. [The film opened strongly in a limited release over the weekend.] And my prayer that people are returning to the cinemas more and more to see movies and not just the big movies, but even the smaller, more human movies. My hat’s off to Focus who’s distributing this movie for making a commitment to cinemas for a movie like this, at least for the first month or two…. I couldn’t be happier.

You made this movie independently. Focus bought it out of Toronto about a year ago. Were there challenges in the fact that it is a less crowded market, let’s say, for movies like this than it used to be?

It wasn’t a high budget. My career has succeeded largely because I’ve kept my budgets low, or been forced to keep my budgets low, at least by American standards. By European standards, they’d be considered high budgets, but by US standards, on the low side. But I am happy to report that nobody said anything. The financier guy named Bill Block just liked the script, and believed in me and liked Paul Giamatti, and he was positively predisposed because he himself had attended a boarding school in New England—Hotchkiss. He related very personally to it.

Narratively, the strength of the film is in relationships and how you earn the characters’ moments of connection. How did you figure out the balance of getting there?

That’s David Hemingson, the screenwriter. I gave him the premise. He came up with the story. Well, he proposed three, four, five different stories. I said, “Let’s pursue that one.” He’s just a very clever writer. He readily adapted to the type of stories I like to tell in general, and then what I was looking for in this one in particular. If I helped him in any way in developing the screenplay, it was anytime something would smack potentially of a contrivance or a deus ex machina, or something a little bit too easy, I’d flag it. I’d say, “I get why we need this on a screenwriting level, but let’s see how we can put some narrative Astroglide on the edges of it to slide it into the story a little bit better.” [Laughs.]

With the Christmastime setting, did you have any touchstones in terms of how you wanted to contribute to that canon?

No.

No.

I’m not trying to be disingenuous here. I just don’t see it as a Christmas movie. It’s a movie that could take place only at Christmas because of the nature of it, and it’s melancholy, in that, here are these boys who have nowhere to go at a time where you’re supposed to be with your family. Automatically, there’s a melancholy backdrop to it. The lovely part is how the three main characters find a way to be together during this time where they really should be with family. Within all of that, it just seems like a Christmas movie formula, but I just didn’t see it that way. I’m reading some early reviews like, “Oh, people will watch this every Christmas.” I’m like, “Really? Great.” But I didn’t think about that.

They very well might.

I hope so.

You’ve mentioned now a few things you’ve picked up on in the reaction to the movie. Is that something in your career that you have maybe wrestled with, intent versus execution, and things like that?

I’ve seen the film at four different festivals, and a couple of private screenings. And so I’m starting to get a whiff of it, a sense of how it’s playing. You know the lens. When the laughs come, when it’s sad, when it drags, when it picks up, whatever it is. And that it’s basically playing well is first and foremost a relief. We put so much work into making a film, and so that it basically is playing well is a relief. And then a little ego stroke put in there too. You can’t deny that.

But more than that, I’m happy when people say they were touched by this or that aspect of it, that it made them think about something. There are some emotional parts; they appreciate that some of the emotional effects are produced without sentimentality, which is something I consciously go for. I hate feeling manipulated, myself, in movies, but you still want to have emotional effects. How do you calibrate that? It’s pleasant that some of those things seem to be working.

How have you found reading reviews of your work over the years? Because it sounds like you’ve read a few for this movie.

Yeah, not all by any means, but I really appreciate reviews written by thoughtful critics. I’m not one of those filmmakers who say, “Well, I never read critics. Why would I do that? They’re parasites!” That’s such an ungenerous and incorrect way to see film criticism. It could be that you don’t want to read most of it, because now every Tom, Dick, and Harry is out there writing something, and uploading it and pressing send, and why would you want to read everything there? But when you’ve got thoughtful film critics—I mean, I can learn something from a good review. It could be positive or negative about the film. But I can learn something about how my film is fitting into film culture in general, or something where I did a little bit too much or a little bit too little. And then film critics can champion lesser known films and bring them to a bigger audience. Or even champion a big film to a film snob audience: “You might be avoiding this particular Marvel film or big action film, but actually you should see it because it’s a very, very good movie.”

I remember years ago, on my first feature, Citizen Ruth, I got basically pretty good reviews for a very low-budget, small feature that nobody saw. But Joe Morgenstern at The Wall Street Journal didn’t like it so much. I read why. I read his review, and I went, “Huh. Yeah, I could have thought about that a little bit more.” When I met him, I said, “Mr. Morgenstern, I read your negative review of Citizen Ruth. I just want to say, I agree with you on some of the things.” We became pretty good professional friends after that. It’s nice when filmmakers can be friends with film critics, but still keep your respective jobs separate. We can talk about stuff, but still, when it comes time to reviewing one of my movies, I respect you for being completely honest about it as though we weren’t friends. I’ve been lucky enough to have some relationships like that.

How do you look back on a movie like Downsizing, where the reception was more mixed? What was that experience like, especially given that you do like to engage on that level?

Engage on what level?

The critical level.

Oh, yeah. Well, you can’t win them all. The odd thing about that one is that Jim Taylor and I had put so much time, perhaps too much time, into the screenplay. Part of that was my insistence. Also the timing of where we were in culture. If we had that idea now, it would probably be better served by a limited series than by a feature. It’s such a big idea, and we were trying to cram so many ideas both to support the larger satirical narrative and the effect on the banal lives of the people affected by this large idea. There was almost too much going on: 20 pounds of story and eight pounds of sausage casing. Some tenuous shifts, episodic shifts, and shifts in tone would’ve been more forgiven by different episodes of a limited series. But anyway, it was fun to make. Even though the movie tanked, it was a triumph just to get it made. It smarts a little bit when your movie tanks, but then you just mourn it for a minute, and say what you tell yourself after a failure or a success, which is: “Next!”

The next being The Holdovers, of course. Do you worry about the state of theatrical for movies like this? I know you said you’re really excited by and pleased that it is getting a strong theatrical release, but it is a very different market even than when Downsizing came out. How do you read it?

It’s funny, Focus had bought this film, they’d acquired it a year ago at the Toronto Film Festival. Some of my collaborators are like, “We have to tell them to rush it out and get it in theaters now, and this would be a good environment.” And to their credit, they said, “No, we should wait a year.” Not only so that we have the time to develop thoughtful marketing materials and a thoughtful publicity plan, but people will be more used to going back to the theaters in a year. And they were just 100% right. We’ve got more people going back to theaters now. Perhaps the pump primed by Oppenheimer and Barbie and Taylor Swift and Flower Moon now on the date we’re talking. You still have to go somewhere on a Friday and Saturday night. What do you do? We’re supposed to stay home all the time?

The thing too that I really insist on for a movie like this being in theaters is an audience. It’s not so much seeing the movie big, but it’s the presence of your fellow audience members, and having that community experience, especially with a comedy. A movie is really not complete without an audience. What finishes a movie is not the color timing or the final mix, but rather the presence of an audience. If it’s going to be a big theatrical success or a small one, whatever it is, we’ll find out—but I’m just so glad that many people at least will be able to see it with an audience.

This interview has been edited and condensed.