{"id":670569,"date":"2026-10-31T05:28:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T05:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/670569\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T05:28:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T05:28:15","slug":"alexander-payne-hit-with-suit-claiming-the-holdovers-was-plagiarized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/670569\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexander Payne hit with suit claiming ‘The Holdovers’ was plagiarized"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A screenwriter is suing director Alexander Payne<\/a>, alleging that the Oscar winner rewrote his script \u201cFrisco\u201d to become \u201cThe Holdovers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Simon Stephenson, a screenwriter behind \u201cThe Electrical Life of Louis Wain\u201d and \u201cLuca,\u201d is accusing Payne of copyright infringement in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in a California federal court. In court documents obtained by The Times, Stephenson alleges that he wrote \u201cFrisco\u201d based on his experiences as a pediatrician and uploaded it to the industry platform \u201cThe Black List,\u201d where it was ranked the third-best unproduced screenplay in 2013. <\/p>\n

The same year, the suit alleges agents for Stephenson sent the script to Payne, who declined the project. They sent it a second time in 2019, and Payne passed again, according to the civil complaint.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut in 2022, he finally made Stephenson\u2019s screenplay,\u201d the lawsuit reads. \u201cUnder Payne\u2019s direction, Stephenson\u2019s children\u2019s hospital became a boarding school, the cynical pediatrician became a cynical teacher, and the precocious patient became a precocious pupil. The film earned its credited screenwriter career-defining Academy Award and BAFTA nominations, and the Writers Guild Award for Original Screenplay. Unfortunately, that credited screenwriter was not Stephenson, and the film was not called Frisco. It was called The Holdovers.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Hemingson<\/a>, the creator of ABC\u2019s \u201cWhiskey Cavalier\u201d and a veteran television writer for shows including \u201cKitchen Confidential\u201d and \u201cHow I Met Your Mother,\u201d was also named as a defendant in the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Holdovers<\/a>\u201d is Hemingson\u2019s first produced feature film.<\/p>\n

Representatives for Payne, Hemingson and Focus Features did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

In 2023, Payne told The Times that a pilot written by Hemingson, as well as the 1935 French film \u201cMerlusse,\u201d written and directed by Marcel Pagnol, served as inspiration for \u201cThe Holdovers.\u201d Both were set at a boarding school. During a 2023 post-screening Q&A interview at the Toronto International Film Festival, Payne was asked how he came up with the idea for the script, and he said it had come to him a decade before.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had the idea for the movie for about 10 years, but didn\u2019t have either the discipline to research it, or I hadn\u2019t gotten around to it,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd out of the blue, about four or five years ago, I was sent a pilot, set in a prep school and a boarding school, and I called the writer and I said, \u2018You\u2019ve written a very fine pilot, which I don\u2019t wish to direct, but would you consider taking on an idea I have that takes place in that same world?\u2019 And he did, and this is what worked out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hemingson has the sole screenwriting credit on the film. Before \u201cThe Holdovers,\u201d Payne is credited with penning most of the scripts that became his acclaimed films. He won Academy Awards for the adapted screenplays of \u201cSideways\u201d<\/a> (written with Jim Taylor) and \u201cThe Descendants\u201d<\/a> (written with Nat Faxon and Jim Rash), but he told The Times that he took a more supervisory role on \u201cThe Holdovers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Alexander <\/p>\n

Alexander Payne<\/p>\n

(Frankie Alduino \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

\u201cHe would run two, three, four different scenarios by me, and I would put the kibosh on him until we finally said, \u2018Yes, this one,\u2019 \u201d Payne said<\/a> in a 2023 interview. <\/p>\n

In March 2024, Variety reported<\/a> that Stephenson exchanged emails and calls with the Writers Guild of America\u2019s senior director of credits Lesley Mackey, alleging he needed to discuss a \u201ccredits-related issue\u201d on a high-profile film. In one email, Stephenson wrote, \u201cthe evidence the holdovers screenplay has been plagiarised line-by-line from frisco is genuinely overwhelming – anybody who looks at even the briefest sample pretty much invariably uses the word \u2018brazen.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

About a month after the accusations made headlines, Hemingson won the 2024 Writers Guild Award<\/a> for original screenplay for \u201cThe Holdovers.\u201d In his acceptance speech, Hemingson said he\u2019d been a \u201cproud member of the Writers Guild for 28 years\u201d and thanked his wife and sons \u201cwho supported me for the six grueling years it took to conceive of and write \u2018The Holdovers\u2019 and for it to go from from page to screen.\u201d He also thanked the cast for bringing his characters to life and accepted the award in memory of his mother, and his father \u201cwho gave me my love of the written word and taught me the value of integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that in life, things often arrive right on time. It took 28 years of reflection and experience and ups and downs for me to be able to tell this deeply personal love story,\u201d he said. \u201cTook a brilliant cast and a brilliant director to bring it to life at this time when we\u2019re all so in need of connection.\u201d <\/p>\n

At the 2024 Sarajevo Film Festival, Payne shot down allegations that he\u2019d lifted major elements of the script from Stephenson\u2019s \u201cFrisco,\u201d calling the accusation \u201cthe stupidest thing in the world.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A screenwriter is suing director Alexander Payne, alleging that the Oscar winner rewrote his script \u201cFrisco\u201d to become…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[128647,283995,321,283992,283994,93,1043,253091,283991,61,60,3535,80366,130271,215826,283990,10103,283993,742],"class_list":["post-670569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-academy-award","tag-boarding-school","tag-celebrities","tag-david-hemingson","tag-electrical-life","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-frisco","tag-holdovers","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-lawsuit","tag-payne","tag-screenwriter","tag-script","tag-simon-stephenson","tag-times","tag-writers-guild-award","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}