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This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. Our guest Paul Giamotti stars on the film The Holdovers which was on many critics

lists of 2023's best movies. His performance just won a golden globe for best

actor in a comedy film. Our producer Sam Brigger spoke with Giamotti before the

award ceremony about the movie and his career. Here's Sam. In the holdovers

Paul Giamotti plays a pompous and lonely classics professor named Paul Hunnam at a New England boarding school for boys in 1970.

He's almost universally disliked by other faculty members and by students because of his impossibly high academic standards

and merciless grading.

The students also mock him behind his back because he has a lazy eye and bad body odor. The body odor is uncontrollable, the result of a rare disease

commonly known as fish odor syndrome. But he doesn't do himself any favors in the way he treats

the students as he does here in this scene, handing out his students

graded final exams.

I can tell by your faces that many of you are shocked at the outcome. I, on the other hand, am not because I have had the misfortune

of teaching you this semester, and even with my ocular limitations, I witness firsthand your glazed uncomprehending expressions.

Sir, I don't understand.

That's glaringly apparent.

No, it's...

I can't fail this class. Oh, don't sell yourself short, Mr. Coates. I truly believe that you can. I'm supposed to go to Cornell.

Unlikely.

Hunnam also flunked a former student, the son of a major donor, dashing his chances

to going to Princeton and going against the wishes of the school's headmaster.

...