I’ve just finished reading a mind-blowing Variety article by Tatiana Siegel (posted on 3.9 at 10:13 am) that contains chapter-and-verse charges of plagiarism against either Holdovers director Alexander Payne or Holdovers screenwriter David Hemingson, or both.

The complaining, allegedly plagiarized screenwriter is Simon Stephenson, who has a “story by” credit on Pixar’s Luca (’21), an “additional material” credit on StudioCanal’s Paddington 2 (’17), and a “screenplay and story by” credit on an Amazon original feature titled The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (’21).

The particulars are too voluminous to be recounted or even compressed here, but the basic allegation is that Payne read a very similar 2013 script by Stephenson called Frisco, which was on the 2013 Black List roster, and that (this is directly from the Siegel article) “Payne had [read] the Frisco script in both 2013 and again in late 2019, right before Payne approached Hemingson about collaborating on [The Holdovers]. That contention seems to be backed up by emails involving several Hollywood agencies and producers.”

The Siegel article contains a 33-page “Introductory Document” titled “FRISCO and THE HOLDOVERS,” and it pains me to admit that it seems — emphasis on the “s” word — fairly damning in its particulars.

I can only urge HE readers to go over the Siegel article with a fine tooth comb and try to assess the evidence as best they can.

Speaking for myself I find the mere suspicion of the great Alexander Payne (Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, The Descendants, Nebraska, Downsizing, The Holdovers) having deliberately engaged in out-and-out plagiarism just inconceivable. It can’t be what it seems. It just can’t be.

First-rate auteurs and their collaborators simply don’t behave this recklessly and foolishly, especially when there’s a paper trail and chapter-and-verse evidence this vivid and specific. Stealing from a 2013 Black List script is just insanity…self-destructive insanity.

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Showbiz 411’s Roger Friedman is “hearing rumors” that Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry, Stop/Loss) is either hoping or planning to direct a remake of Lawrence Kasdan‘s Body Heat, the 43 year-old, sexually charged, Floridian film noir that existed in a world that didn’t have air conditioners.

Heat costarred William Hurt and Kathleen Turner as thirtysomething lovers Ned Racine, a not-smart-enough attorney, and Matty Walker, a married, heavy-breathing sociopath who’s breathtaking in bed. Ted Danson, J. A. Preston, Mickey Rourke and Richard Crenna (as Matty’s rich husband) costarred.

Friedman speculates that Racine and Walker could be played by some hot hetero twosome. Perhaps Matthew McConaughey and Florence Pugh, he imagines.

But of course, if and when Peirce, a queer filmmaker, manages to arrange funding for a Body Heat remake, the extra-marital lovers would be women…certainly. Given the same-sex storylines being favored in elite film circles these days (Love Lies Bleeding, Drive Away Dolls), there’s no way the new Body Heat lovers would be straight.

Friendo: “First they did the ‘remake every movie with a black person’ and now they’re doing ‘remake every movie with a gay person’ You know what would be good with four gay people? Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.”

But not in theatres, unfortunately. Reactions from last night’s SXSW debut screening assert that it’s emphatically a film to see half-drunk from an eighth-row seat, sprawled.