Ray Richmond: It’s easy to take Paul Giamatti for granted, and you shouldn’t

Ray Richmond
·6 min read
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The first time I ever saw Paul Giamatti on a movie screen was when he played the role of radio station villain Kenny (a.k.a. Pig Virus) in the autobiographical 1997 Howard Stern epic “Private Parts.” He was so good, so stressed out, so slimy that I thought he nearly stole the movie out from underneath the star who was playing himself. I made a point of keeping an eye out for Giamatti from then on. And I haven’t been disappointed. The man is one of our consistently finest actors for he past quarter-century, even if he has just a single Oscar nomination to show for it:  a supporting bid for 2006’s boxing biopic “Cinderella Man.”

It’s been well established that Giamatti should have received at least one more Academy Award nom (if not a win), for his work in “Sideways” in 2004. The guy is as adept at comedy as he is drama, which is itself a rarity. This is one reason why Giamatti has no trouble finding work. Take a gander at his IMDB page and you may be shocked at the sheer number of projects he’s worked on. Since breaking in as Heckler #2 in the 1990 Linda Evans romcom “She’ll Take Romance,” he’s appeared in 118 different titles, from Man in Sleeping Bag on “NYPD Blue” to co-star Chuck Rhoades in 84 episodes of the Showtime drama “Billions.” The guy works like all the time – and when he’s not working, he’s still somehow working.

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But it’s also a given that Giamatti is destined, perhaps forever, to be taken for granted. It isn’t just that he’s an everyman. He’s got a chubby little face and a rapidly receding hairline. He’s kind of short and squat. He looks an awful lot like the dude who stocks the shelves and uncovers hard-to-find titles at your local Barnes & Noble. He always has a furrowed brow and seems perpetually annoyed about something or other. His voice has a nasly quality that can be grating. In other words, he will never be mistaken for a hunky leading man. All he does is deliver the goods almost effortlessly every time. You believe what he’s saying. There’s a genuineness to each role he plays that’s palpable.

And this is why you should be careful before dismissing Giamatti’s steady performance – chock full of sharp wit and and intense vulnerability – in Focus Features’ “The Holdovers,” his second film with director Alexander Payne and a tour de force of a performance that’s nonetheless easy dismiss in favor of showier performances from some of his competitors. I’m talking about Cillian Murphy in “Oppenheimer,” Leonardo Di Caprio in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Bradley Cooper in “Maestro” and Colman Domingo in “Rustin,” the four performers who happen to be in front of him in Gold Derby’s early Oscar Best Actor handicap. (He’s running first in the Comedy/Musical Actor race at the Golden Globes.)

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Having attended a screening of “The Holdovers,” I can speak with some authority that Giamatti’s work is pitch-perfect, and it grows on you in the days after seeing it. In it, he portrays Paul Hunham, a curmudgeonly instructor at a snooty New England prep school who is forced very much against his will to remain on campus during Christmas break in 1970 to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. He comes to form an unlikely bond with one damaged and brainy agitator (newcomer Dominic Sassa in a dynamic performance) and with the school’s grief-stricken head cook, who just lost a son in the Vietnam War (Da’Vine Joy Randolph).

Sassa and Randolph turn in wonderful work, indeed. But the glue that holds the enterprise together is Giamatti, who is such a believable cranky academic that he might consider trying it on in real life. His frustrated educator is cynical in a way we can all understand, evoking disdain for his pretentious colleagues. It earned him rave reviews for the film’s premiere at Telluride in September and stands to generate more once “The Holdovers” is released in theaters in L.A. and New York on October 27 and then wide on November 10.

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It’s promising that Giamatti, Payne, Sessa and Randolph (as well as the film itself) are being shown such respect weeks and months before it hits theaters. In Gold Derby’s combined Oscar odds, the film is fifth in the Best Picture race, while Payne ranks sixth for Best Director and Sessa ninth for supporting actor. Randolph, meanwhile, suddenly finds herself the Oscar frontrunner for Best Supporting Actress in an admittedly somewhat weak field. It will be interesting to see if that holds.

As for Giamatti, it isn’t as if the awards overlords have been ignoring him. He has that lone Oscar nomination, even if it only seemed to be a make-up for his “Sideways” snub in 2005. And he won both an Emmy (2008) and Golden Globe (2009) for his seminal role portraying John Adams in the HBO miniseries “John Adams.” But there remains the lingering feeling that he’s never really received his due. A second Academy Award bid would seem inevitable this time. And a win? A longshot to be sure, but you never know.

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