Taglines: In search of wine. In search of women. In search of themselves.
Writer – director Alexander Payne’s fourth feature film (following Citizen Ruth, Election and About Schmidt) starts with two old friends setting off on a wine-tasting road trip… only to veer dizzily into a wry exploration of the vicissitudes of love and friendship, the damnable persistence of loneliness and dreams and the enduring war between Pinot and Cabernet.
The misadventures begin when Miles (Paul Giamatti), an un-recovered divorcé and would-be novelist with a wine fixation, decides to gift old college buddy and washed-up actor Jack (Thomas Haden Church) with a celebratory trip to the vineyards of the Santa Ynez Valley the week before Jack’s wedding. The two couldn’t be an odder couple. Jack is an over-sexed charmer; Miles is a sad-sack worrier. Jack is looking for his “last taste of freedom”; Miles just wants to taste perfection in a bottle. Jack is fine with cheap Merlot; Miles pines for the elusive, perfect Pinot. Indeed, the only thing they seem to share in common is the same heady mix of failed ambitions and fading youth.
And yet, as they make their way up the coast, Miles and Jack soon find themselves drowning in wine and women. Jack falls head-over-heels for a local wine pourer (Sandra Oh) and threatens to call off his nuptials. Miles begins his own romantic encounter with a winesavvy waitress (Virginia Madsen). Both men careen dangerously and comically toward mid-life crises. Now, the wedding approaches and with it the certainty that Miles and Jack won’t make it back to Los Angeles unscathed or unchanged… if they get back there at all.
Sideways is a 2004 American independent black comedy drama film directed by Alexander Payne and written by Jim Taylor and Payne. A film adaptation of Rex Pickett’s novel of the same name, Sideways follows two men in their forties, Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti), a depressed teacher and unsuccessful writer and Jack Cole (Thomas Haden Church), a past-his-prime actor, who take a week-long road trip to Santa Barbara County wine country to celebrate Jack’s upcoming wedding. Sandra Oh and Virginia Madsen also star.
A Journey Sideways
“There are some things I have to do that you don’t understand. You understand wine and literature and movies… but you don’t understand my plight.” – Jack
The comically bittersweet plight of the everyday man lost in the muddle of modern life has become fertile territory for writer / director Alexander Payne in his three acclaimed feature films to date. From Jack Nicholson’s suddenly widowed insurance executive in About Schmidt to Matthew Broderick’s flummoxed school teacher meeting his match in a young student played by Reese Witherspoon in Election to a pregnant Laura Dern who finds herself unexpectedly at the center of a fierce battle over abortion rights in Citizen Ruth, Payne’s provocative films have probed with razor-sharp wit the manners and mores of contemporary Middle America.
With Sideways, Payne takes up the story of two more hapless — yet ultimately hopeful – failures: Miles and Jack, whose trip to the Central Coast to drink wine, swing golf clubs and relax in the sun results in mad lust, frank betrayals, bodily harm… and an unexpected reconciliation with the ups, downs and Sideways journeys that seem to make up the measure of a life.
Through the story of Miles and Jack – a modern-day odd couple on a last hurrah bender – Payne focuses in on a different and not often explored landscape: the middle-aged man, who faces the future fueled only by his few remaining dreams, his lingering loves, and that rare perfect bottle of wine shared among friends.
Payne first encountered the alternately tender and tart story of Miles and Jack when he read Rex Pickett’s novel Sideways in 1999, before he became a two-time Oscar nominee for ELECTION and ABOUT SCHMIDT. He was immediately drawn to their tale. First, there was its irresistible setting against Santa Barbara County’s intimate wine tasting rooms – a magnet for an amateur wine lover such as Payne. But more than that, Payne was intrigued by the simple, and at times absurd humanity of the story, which touches on the contemporary desire for success, love, bliss and connection, all in the middle of a vacation that is sliding downhill fast.
“I am most moved by stories like Sideways that are about human beings and human nature, that are about flawed people and ambiguous moments that don’t necessarily come to any neat closure,” Payne says. “Perhaps too many films in this current era have eschewed humanity for slickness. I’m interested in revitalizing the American cinema of the 70s, with its emphasis on real people and real struggles – and I think we desperately need human movies right now.”
Payne continues: “The characters of Miles and Jack are kind of throwbacks themselves. They’re living in the past – Jack with his washed-up career and Miles with his failed marriage and dreams of being a writer. It’s as if the rest of the world has moved on without them, but suddenly they’re faced with the prospect of having to get on with their lives, and to me, that is both funny and serious.”
The characters of Miles and Jack were born in the mind of novelist Rex Pickett during a similar –thankfully somewhat less eventful — wine-tasting spree he himself took with a friend a number of years ago. “I found myself introducing my friend to wine and telling him all these crazy stories,” Pickett recalls. “As we got a little more looped, I was cracking up my friend and he said ‘you should write about this.’ I jokingly told him I would write something called ‘Two Guys on Wine!’ But when I came back, I knew I had to start writing about these two characters: Jack, who was based on my friend, and Miles, who is based loosely on me.”
For Pickett it was the amusing and sometimes heartbreaking way in which Miles and Jack make mistakes in their lives that made them so real and intriguing to him. “I believe people really feel for these guys because they’re failures,” he says. “We all have aspirations to live bigger and more glamorous lives yet so very few of us are able to reach those goals. I think deep down we all want Jack to get to his wedding without ruining everything and we want Miles to give into love and not analyze himself to death”
Pickett’s personal fascination with California’s wines also wove its way into the story – especially as the divergent lifestyles of Miles and Jack became reflected in the age-old debate between Pinot and Cabernet, the one being complicated, layered and difficult to produce, the other far more hardy and easily pleasing. Says Pickett: “Jack is a guy who would put anything down his throat. But Miles is into Pinot which is both one of the most complex wine grapes and yet potentially one of the most disappointing. In a sense, Jack chooses to be indiscriminating and Miles chooses to be disappointed. Yet there’s no doubt they’re both in need of redemption.”
Ironically, Pickett first started the story as a screenplay, and when that didn’t seem to be working, turned it into a novel. He shared an early draft with a long-time friend, producer Michael London. London immediately thought of Alexander Payne, taking the story full circle.
“Alexander loves flawed characters,” London explains. “I knew he would like the idea of two guys who go to such an idyllic place on what should be a very happy trip only to find pain and misery as a result of their self-induced misadventures. And I had a feeling that Alexander would be able to take these wonderful characters and add even more depth and humanity to them.”
London also foresaw a more practical reason why Payne might connect with Miles and Jack’s struggles. “Alexander was close to the age of the guys in the story, as was I. You come to a point in life where you’re smack in the middle of your existence, with as much behind you as ahead,” says the producer. “It’s a big moment. You’ve made real decisions and you can no longer hide behind fantasies of what you hope your life will be like in the future. That’s what this story is about and I thought Alexander would have insight into it – not to mention that he also has a great affection for wine and the wine country.”
Payne, who at the time was just finishing Election and about to embark on About Schmidt, continued to keep Sideways on his mind through those films. Despite his changing career, his commitment to Miles and Jack never faltered. In adapting the novel for the screen, he and writing partner Jim Taylor found the main characters’ comic repartee ready-made for film dialogue.
“This was probably the easiest adaptation we’ve ever done,” says Taylor, who typically takes turns with Payne typing at a single computer with two keyboards. “We drew a lot of the language from the book, because Rex already has such a cinematic way of writing.”
But the best part came in the “research.” “I drank a lot of wine in the making of this film,” admits Payne. “I went up to Santa Barbara County and met many winemakers and got to know as many of the wines as I could. I really fell in love with the area’s beauty and I knew that I really wanted the film to get that part of things right. I always wanted Sideways to be a bit of a love letter to the wine country as well as a portrait of these two guys.”
Sideways (2004)
Directed by: Alexander Payne
Starring: Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Sandra Oh, Virginia Madsen, Marylouise Burke, Jessica Hecht, Missy Doty, Alysia Reiner, Shaun Duke, Stephanie Faracy
Screenplay by: Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor
Production Design by: Jane Ann Stewart
Cinematography by: Phedon Papamichael
Film Editing by: Kevin Tent
Costume Design by: Wendy Chuck
Set Decoration by: Lisa Fischer, Barbara Haberecht
Art Direction by: T.K. Kirkpatrick
MPAA Rating: R for language, strong sexual content and nudity.
Distributed by: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Release Date: October 22, 2004
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