'The Holiday' (2006)
PG-13 | December 8, 2006 | 136 mins
Two women, one American and one British, swap homes at Christmastime following bad breakups. Each woman finds romance with a local man but realizes that the imminent return home may end the relationship.
Cast: Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz [+]
Director: Nancy Meyers
Writers: Nancy Meyers
Producers: Nancy Meyers, Bruce A. Block
Cinematographer: Dean Cundey
Editors: Joe Hutshing
Music: Hans Zimmer
Distribution: Sony Pictures Releasing
Iris: I suppose I think about love more than anyone really should. I’m constantly amazed by its sheer power to alter and define our lives.
Amanda: [to Graham] I’m not going to fall in love with you, I promise.
Arthur: In the movies, we have leading ladies, and we have the best friend. You, I can tell, are a leading lady. But for some reason, you’re behaving like the best friend.
Iris: You’re so right. You’re supposed to be the leading lady of your own life, for god’s sake! Arthur, I’ve been going to a therapist for three years, and she’s never explained anything to me that well. That was brilliant. Brutal, but brilliant.
Graham: Yes, I am daddy.
Graham: I’m a full-time dad. I’m a working parent. I’m a mother and a father. I’m a guy who reads parenting books and cookbooks before I go to sleep. I spend my weekends buying tutus. I’m learning to sew. I’m Mr. Napkin Head!
Miles: Iris, if you were a melody… I used only the good notes.
Iris: [to Jasper] Shush. You broke my heart. And you acted like somehow it was my fault, my misunderstanding, and I was too in love with you to ever be mad at you, so I just punished myself! For years! But you waltzing in here on my lovely Christmas holiday, and telling me that you don’t want to lose me whilst you’re about to get MARRIED, somehow newly entitles me to say, it’s over. This – This twisted, toxic THING between us, is finally finished! I’m miraculously done being in love with you! Ha! I’ve got a life to start living.
Arthur: Say a man and a woman both need something to sleep in and both go to the same men’s pajama department. The man says to the salesman, “I just need bottoms,” and the woman says, “I just need a top.” They look at each other and that’s the ‘meet cute.’
Graham: Well, I cry all the time.
Amanda: You do not.
Graham: Yeah I do. More than any woman you’ve ever met.
Amanda: You don’t have to be this nice.
Graham: It happens to be the truth.
Amanda: Really?
Graham: A good book, a great film, a birthday card, I weep.
Amanda: Shut up.
Graham: I’m a major weeper.
Miles: You with me, Simpkins?
Iris: Miles. You really are an incredibly decent man.
Miles: I know. It’s always been my problem.
Amanda: Sex makes everything more complicated. Even not having it, because the not having it… makes it complicated.
Graham: That’s why it’s better to have it… some say.
- This film was written specifically with Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, and Jack Black in mind.
- Miles’s studio setup, seen in the opening scene, with a keyboard, monitors, sound modules, etc., was copied directly from Hans Zimmer’s studio, who composed the film’s score.
- The house used for Arthur Abbott’s house was owned by actress Phyllis Diller at the time of shooting and is located in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, California.
- A few months after the movie came out, the popularity of “house swapping” was on the rise. So much so, in fact, that police in England had to issue a warning against swapping homes with strangers due to identity fraud and murders.
- The example Arthur uses to explain a “Meet Cute” to Iris is from Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938). Strangers Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper meet while shopping. He buys the bottoms and she buys the top of the same pair of pajamas.
- Nancy Meyers specifically wrote the role of Miles for Jack Black after seeing his performance in School of Rock (2003).
- Eli Wallach’s character, Arthur, says, “I haven’t been that busy since 1978”. Six movies were released in 1978 for which Wallach is credited.
- When Miles is humming movie scores to Iris in Blockbuster Video, he does Hans Zimmer’s score from Driving Miss Daisy (1989). Hans Zimmer did the score for this movie.
- Jack Black considers his role as Miles to be his best performance.
- When Iris is watching a movie in Amanda’s house, the film she is watching is His Girl Friday (1940).
- Robert Downey Jr. and Jimmy Fallon auditioned to play Graham and Miles, respectively. Downey said, “We both got called in just as seat fillers… Nancy Meyers needed someone to read with the gals and we’re sitting there going, ‘It’s about to happen for us.’ And I was like, ‘I’ve got to have a better English accent than Jude Law at this point.’ And Winslet said, ‘That was the worst British accent I’ve ever heard.’ And I was like, ‘I’ll check out now, but I’m taking the gummy bears from the minibar.'”
- Amanda’s stack of books on the plane to England are: “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini, “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle, “Atonement” by Ian McEwan, “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” by Doris Kearns Goodwin, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling, “Bob Dylan Chronicles” by Bob Dylan, “The Corrections” by Jonathan Franzen, “Runaway” by Alice Munro, “The Wisdom of Forgiveness: Intimate Journeys and Conversations” by The Dalai Lama and Chan Victor.
- The film includes a (fake) trailer for a movie starring James Franco and Lindsay Lohan opening on Christmas Day.
- Dustin Hoffman’s cameo in Blockbuster Video was unscripted. He just happened to be passing by when he saw a movie was being filmed inside. Being a friend of Nancy’s, Dustin agreed to have a brief appearance.
Videos
The Holiday
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Blu-ray: July 19, 2011
Blu-ray: February 11, 2014