“Iris, 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.” — Arthur (Eli Wallach)
In The Holiday, the veteran screenwriter Arthur Abbott (Eli Wallach) recalls writing for leading ladies during a period when headstrong heroines were a Hollywood trademark. To school Iris in the ways of these admirable women, he sends her to the video store to rent some classic Hollywood films. After studying actresses like Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday, she starts to get the picture.
Winslet and her co-stars recognized a similar classic instinct in their writer and director. “The great dialogue in The Holiday harkens back to an old Tracy/Hepburn film,” according to Burns. “The situations may be exaggerated, but you feel like you’re seeing real people deal with real issues. Nancy is especially good at finding the humor in that drama.”
And like those halcyon-days comedies, Meyers’ protagonists revel in the ageless battle of the sexes. “Nancy asked me to watch a lot of Cary Grant movies, because he was a master at enjoying his leading ladies,” says Law. “He was able to draw humor and vulnerability from them by being a very solid male presence, but with his own vulnerability.”
Even more satisfying, says Law, is the fact that The Holiday embodies all the virtues of those classic films while still being completely contemporary. “Nancy strives for a timeless feeling in a cutting-edge, modern film,” he added. “There’s no hiding the fact that we’re making it today.”
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