‘Holdovers,’ ‘American Fiction, ‘Oppenheimer’ and more Massachusetts connections to Sunday’s Academy Awards

While no homegrown actors made the Academy Awards cut this year, the annual Oscars extravaganza on Sunday night is still buzzing with major Massachusetts vibes. Boston has its own posse of ‘Oppenhomies,’ and films with local ties tallied 21 nominations in categories including picture, documentary, and screenplay.

The 96th Academy Awards will be presented at 7 p.m. on March 10 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The show will air on ABC and be emceed for a fourth time by Jimmy Kimmel. 

Scituate native Ben LeClair is nominated for an Oscar for producing "American Fiction." LeClair attended the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' “Oscar Season: Best Picture” Event on Thursday, March 7 at The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. (Owen Kolasinski/Academy Museum Foundation)
Scituate native Ben LeClair is nominated for an Oscar for producing “American Fiction.” LeClair attended the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ “Oscar Season: Best Picture” Event on March 7 at The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. (Owen Kolasinski/Academy Museum Foundation)

‘American Fiction’ filmed in Scituate

Produced by Scituate native Ben LeClair, the movie, written and directed by Cord Jefferson, follows a flailing novelist (Jeffrey Wright) who trolls the publishing industry. It was set in Boston and filmed scenes around the city and the South Shore. The two main settings were an old Victorian home in West Roxbury and a beach house in Scituate on Turner Road near Sand Hills Beach. The climactic scene at the Book Awards gala was filmed at The Harvard Club, a private club for Harvard alumni in Boston. The building dates to 1913. “They have a beautiful banquet hall,” said the location manager, Steve Hartman, in the film’s press notes. “It’s the type of place where that ceremony would take place. We recreated what it would look like for a black-tie event – beautifully lit, old, kind of stuffy.” The film notched five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Wright. 

Dominic Sessa stars as Angus Tully, Paul Giamatti as Paul Hunham, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Mary Lamb in director Alexander Payne’s "The Holdovers."
Dominic Sessa stars as Angus Tully, Paul Giamatti as Paul Hunham, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Mary Lamb in director Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers.” (Seacia Pavao/Focus Features)

‘The Holdovers’: That ‘70s glow

Director Alexander Payne gives Massachusetts a 1970s glow for his Boston-set story about a curmudgeonly teacher (Paul Giamatti) at an elite boarding school forced to mind a smart and rebellious student (Dominic Sessa) unable to journey home for Christmas break. Among the shooting locations were Fairhaven High School, St. Marks School in Southborough, Chateau restaurant in Waltham, Continental restaurant in Saugus, Orpheum Theater and Faneuil Hall in Boston, Wakefield Bowladrome, Somerville Theater in Davis Square, Clinton Hospital and Strand Center for the Arts in Clinton. Scenes were also shot in Buckland, Cambridge, Gill, Gloucester, Groton, Medfield, Milton, New Bedford, Shelburne Falls, and Worcester. 

Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein and Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre in "Maestro." (Jason McDonald/Netflix)
Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein and Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre in “Maestro.” (Jason McDonald/Netflix)

The ‘Maestro’ from Mass. 

Bradley Cooper directed and starred as Lawrence native Leonard Bernstein, the legendary conductor and composer. Filming took place at Tanglewood in the Berkshires, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The movie, which is streaming on Netflix, earned seven nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Cooper, and Best Actress for Carey Mulligan for her performance as Bernstein’s wife, Felicia Montealegre.

People take shelter in a youth theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 6, 2022. From 20 Days in Mariupol. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)
A scene from the Oscar-nominated documentary ” 20 Days in Mariupol.” (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)

‘20 Days in Mariupol’ from GBH 

“Frontline,” the PBS investigative series based at GBH in Boston, in partnership with The Associated Press, produced the Oscar-nominated documentary feature about the early days of the war in Ukraine. The film follows video journalist Mstyslav Chernov and his AP colleagues Evgeniy Maloletka and Vasilisa Stepanenko as they become the last international journalists reporting from Mariupol amid Russian troops’ siege. 

Matt Damon as Gen. Leslie Groves, left, and Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in a scene from "Oppenheimer."
Matt Damon as Gen. Leslie Groves, left, and Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in a scene from “Oppenheimer.” (Universal Pictures)

Boston’s own ‘Oppenhomies’

Christopher Nolan’s biopic about the father of the atomic bomb, “Oppenheimer,” leads the Oscar nominations with 13 total, one short of the most nominations for a film ever, and it’s loaded with Massachusetts ties:  

  • Cambridge native Matt Damon plays Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves, the man in charge of the Manhattan Project. Groves also studied engineering at MIT.
  • Nolan adapted the script from Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer.” Sherwin was a nuclear history scholar and former Tufts University professor. In 1988 he taught a course on the atomic age live via satellite from the school’s health sciences campus in Boston with students in attendance from Moscow State University. Sherwin died on Oct. 6, 2021.  
  • Benny Safdie graduated from Boston University College of Communication in 2008. He plays Hungarian theoretical physicist Edward Teller, a hydrogen bomb advocate who would later testify against Oppenheimer. 
  • Oscar-winner and Cambridge native Casey Affleck (“Manchester by the Sea”) makes a cameo appearance as Boris Pash, chief of Army counterintelligence at the Presidio in San Francisco, clashing with Oppenheimer over differing political views.  
  • President John F. Kennedy gets some name recognition for blocking the senate confirmation of Oppenheimer’s nemesis, Lewis Strauss, for Secretary of Commerce. Kennedy was a young senator from Massachusetts during the 1959 hearing, which turned out to be a surprising rejection for Strauss. During his presidency, JFK honored Oppenheimer with the Enrico Fermi Award for scientific achievement.  Lyndon B. Johnson presented the award to Oppenheimer two weeks after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. 
  • Emily Blunt isn’t from Boston, but her husband, John Krasinski, is a Newton native, so she is a local by marriage. Blunt plays Kitty Oppenheimer, Robert’s complicated, volatile wife.
Annette Bening as Diana Nyad and Jodie Foster as Bonnie Stoll in "Nyad." (Kimberley French/Netflix)
Annette Bening as Diana Nyad and Jodie Foster as Bonnie Stoll in “Nyad.” (Kimberley French/Netflix)

Other Massachusetts connections to the Oscars

Former Boston Pops composer and conductor John Williams, a five-time Oscar-winner, is up for Best Original Score for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” … Haverhill native John Cena plays Merman Ken, the male version of a mermaid in “Barbie,” which earned eight Oscar nominations … Falmouth native Julia Cox wrote the screenplay for the Netflix biopic “Nyad,” starring Best Actress nominee Annette Bening and Jodie Foster, up for supporting actress … Dorchester’s Ayo Edebiri and Lexington’s Rachel Dratch lend their voices to animation nominee “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.”