Director Alexander Payne has addressed the plagiarism accusations levelled against his movie The Holdovers earlier this year.

On the night before the Oscars in March, Variety reported that Luca screenwriter Simon Stephenson had accused The Holdovers and its scribe David Hemingson of plagiarising his 2013 screenplay Frisco.

The Sideways director spoke to Deadline about the allegation at the Sarajevo Film Festival on Sunday.

“It was the stupidest thing in the world,” Payne stated, before claiming, “It was irresponsible of Variety to report on that without having read the scripts and comparing them themselves. Do you think The New York Times would have done that?”

Payne insisted there was “no merit” to Stephenson’s emails to the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and that it “didn’t even bother” him at the time.

“I haven’t heard anything more about it and I wish him (Stephenson) well but there was just no merit to it,” he continued. “I mean, I didn’t even pay attention to it because kooky accusations come out of the woodwork all of the time and this didn’t even bother me but then it kind of kept coming, I thought, ‘Well, that’s dumb.'”

The Election filmmaker, who worked with Hemingson on the script but didn’t receive a credit, added that The Holdovers was inspired by the 1935 French comedy-drama Merlusse.

“Meanwhile, I’ve spoken openly about the film I did steal the idea for The Holdovers from and it was a 1935 French film,” he noted. “That’s where I stole it from – I didn’t steal it from that guy.”

The Holdovers, starring Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars and BAFTAs and won the category at the WGA Awards.

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