Zach Ripps had everyone fooled. As the contact-lens technician for The Holdovers, he did his work so well that it was as if he hadn’t been on set at all. “The first day of shooting,” lens designer Cristina Patterson remembers, “the script supervisor said, ‘I didn’t know Paul Giamatti had a bad eye.’” Neither did the rest of us. Ever since The Holdovers premiered at the Telluride Film Festival last fall, audiences have been asking how the film managed to outfit Giamatti’s curmudgeonly character with his uncommonly convincing lazy eye, which belies the insecurity that lies beneath boarding school teacher Paul Hunham’s gruff surface. The eye baffles even the film’s friendlier characters; halfway through it, an exasperated Angus (Dominic Sessa) asks Paul which eye he’s supposed to look at. The butt of jokes but also a source of significant empathy, Paul Hunham’s amblyopia perfectly captures the tragicomic tone of The Holdovers—and makeup department head Sarah Rubano knew it was essential to get right. She also knew the only person to call for the job, even …