I was in a director's roundtable discussion yesterday, and they were all talking about storyboarding.

And fortunately, the question never got to me because I would have had to say, I never storyboard.

I just kind of think of stuff.

You know, even that the lovely shot in the film, I think it's lovely, where the boy confesses to the man at the restaurant about what happened to the father and why he's in the

asylum. It starts on a tight close-up and slowly zooms out. I didn't think about that until the morning

I was driving to set. I thought, oh yeah, what about that first shot of the Godfather? Oh, yeah,

that would be a good thing to steal today.

Okay. Oh yeah, that would be a good thing to steal today. Hello and welcome back to the Directors Cut, brought to by the Directors Guild of America.

In this episode, three very different people bond over Christmas break and director Alexander Payne's comedic drama, The Holdovers.

The film tells the story of Paul, a cranky history teacher at a boarding school

forced to chaperone a handful of students with nowhere to go over Christmas break.

There, he forms an unlikely bond with a troubled student and the school's head cook, who lost

her son in the Vietnam War.

In addition to the holdovers, Payne's other directorial credits include the feature films

downsizing, Nebraska, election, and About Schmidt.

Payne is a two-time DJA Award nominee for outstanding directorial achievement in feature

film for his 2011 feature The Descendants and his 2004 feature

Sideways. Following a screening of the film at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles, Paine spoke with

director Jason Reitman about filming The Holdovers. Listen on for their spoiler-filled conversation.

First of all, good evening.

Thank you for coming.

And first things first, where's first assistant director, Rod Smith?

...