“Sideways”: Grapes, Nuts, and Flakes

Quaffed any good pinot noir lately? The grape got new respect in 2004 via Alexander Payne’s Sideways, a box office hit that was also a critical darling. (It was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture, and won for the adaptation of Rex Pickett’s comic novel by Payne and co-author Jim Taylor.) I’ve long used it in my UCLA Extension advanced screenwriting courses as one way to approach various aspects of the screenwriter’s craft. Sideways provided a major boost to the acting careers of Paul Giamatti and his castmates, as well as a shot in the arm to tourism in California’s Santa Ynez Valley. It also upended the wine industry: after the advent of Sideways, merlot was considered by many to be a wine grape non grata.

 In 2024, Applause Books released Sideways Uncorked, described on its cover as “the perfect pairing of film and wine.” There’s no question that the authors know whereof they speak. Kirk Honeycutt was for twenty years a writer and then the chief film critic of The Hollywood Reporter. So he knows the film world inside and out. His in-depth understanding of independent films like Sideways was enhanced by his experience with low-budget maven Roger Corman on Final Judgement, a 1992 priest-and-stripper quickie for which Kirk wrote the original screenplay. (As Roger’s story editor I worked with Kirk on the project. I best recall a little moment in which the accused killer tries to get away from potential danger by climbing aboard a city bus. Roger refused to accept this quirky choice, reasoning that a badass required a motorcycle or something cooler than public transit. Thus my boss firmly rejected what I had found original and characteristic.) 

 In this book, it’s Kirk’s job to explain how Sideways came to be, how it was written, financed, cast, shot, and distributed.  Part of his focus is on the implications of Sideways being an indie film: by not allowing a studio with deep pockets to dictate key artistic choices (like the dream casting of George Clooney and Brad Pitt in the leading roles instead of the less glamorous Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church), Payne preserved his vision of this film as featuring two ordinary down-on-their-luck guys.

 Kirk’s insider stories about the making of Sideways, corroborated by the film’s cast and crew, are augmented by the contributions of his wife, Mira Advani Honeycutt. A longtime wine journalist, she puts her expertise to work in explaining the realities of the wine industry, especially as this applies to the Santa Ynez Valley. She begins by focusing in on the all-important physical properties of the area, what the French call “terroir.”  These are the environmental factors—relating to weather, soil quality, and the like—that determine which grapes can be most successfully planted in a given plot of land. Santa Barbara County’s Santa Ynez Valley offers vastly different climate conditions from Northern California’s famous grape-growing counties, and she traces the history of pinot noir cultivation in the region, showing in detail how this notoriously finicky grape (see Giamatti’s now-famous speech about the special needs of pinot) thrives in its soil. For wine lovers, she also advises on the best wineries for pinot noir in California, Oregon, and elsewhere. Nor does she neglect merlot, which is scorned by Giamatti’s character in the film, but certainly is worthy of having its own enthusiasts. It’s amusing to note that the book is dedicated “to Cinephiles, Pinotphiles, and Merlot Mavericks.”

 Want to know how the real-life owner of a Solvang restaurant made a fortune off the success of Sideways? This book’s for you. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Going for the Gold: The 2024 Oscar Ceremony

        

For years, ever since I can remember, I’ve watched the Oscar telecast. At first it was a chance to participate in my parents’ world by discovering the movies that excited them. I vividly recall how thrilled they were when the modestly-budgeted Marty beat out some schmaltzy epics like Love is a Many Splendored Thing. And decades later, during my father’s final illness, I remember him cheering for Schindler’s List at a time when he was much too frail to actually watch such an intense drama. In 1968, for perhaps the first time, I’d seen all the  Best Picture nominees, and felt that most of them (The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night) significantly touched on the issues that were rocking my own world. My fascination with the 1968 ceremony—which gave golden statuettes to In the Heat of the Night and director Mike Nichols for The Graduate—led me in a highly roundabout way to the writing of my most recent book, Seduced by Mrs. Robinson.

 All and all, I’ve loved the pomp and circumstance surrounding the Oscars. Which doesn’t mean I’ve always agreed with the prize-winners. And certain ceremonies, like that weird mid-pandemic celebration held at L.A.’s Union Station (it was all set up to give its ultimate honor to the late Chadwick Boseman, but Anthony Hopkins spoiled the party) have left me with a bad taste in my mouth. But I agree with those pundits proclaiming this year’s event as one of the best in recent memory. First of all, the nominees were an exciting mix of supersized blockbusters, intimate dramas, and comedies that had something to say. I also appreciated the internationalism of the nominee roster, including the fact that the five powerful films on the feature-length documentary list were all from countries outside the U.S. One of the evening’s most powerful moments came when the Ukrainian director of 20 Days in Mariupol proclaimed that he wished his film hadn’t needed to be made, but that in documenting the Russian invasion of one of Ukraine’s largest cities he was obeying the precept that “cinema forms memories and memories form history.”  I appreciated, too, the carefully crafted words of Jonathan Glazer, Oscar-winner for a uniquely staged Holocaust drama, The Zone of Interest, who decried both the October 7 massacre in Israel and the deaths now dominating the news from Gaza.

 It was also worth noting that German-born actress Sandra Hüller was introduced to many of us via not one but two best picture nominees, The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of Fall. For her performance in the latter, she was nominated for a Best Actress statuette. Though she didn’t win, she aroused my curiosity to the point where I sat down to watch an earlier Hüller-starring vehicle, Toni Erdmann, in which I saw far more of her than I expected. The Oscars can definitely be considered educational.

 But of course an Oscar ceremony wouldn’t be fun without a large dose of silliness. In that category I’d put the evening’s most extravagant musical number, the pink and perky “I’m Just Ken” from Barbie. I’d also include some pretty hilarious gowns, so extravagantly poufy that woe to anyone sitting next to the wearer of one of them. (Paul Giamatti, though, didn’t seem to mind.) Also in the silly category, the very undraped, very muscle-bound John Cena presenting the statuette for Best Costume Design. And, too, something I only THOUGHT was a gag, a social media post from a certain former U.S. President lambasting Jimmy Kimmel’s hosting gig. Yes, it really happened.

 

School Daze with The Holdovers

 I’m someone who has only a small degree of tolerance for Christmas music.  Two weeks before Thanksgiving, I used up my entire 2023 quota (“The Little Drummer Boy”! Baby Jesus songs!) watching The Holdovers. Not that this newest Alexander Payne film is all sweetness and light; Payne’s cynicism about the way folks cope with the human condition undercuts the saccharine nature of his score. But I’m still trying to decide how I feel about this latest entry in the boys-at-a-boarding-school genre. (Think Rushmore, The Dead Poet’s Society, A Separate Peace . . .) The reviewer at the New York Times adored The Holdovers, using it as a jumping off point for his own very mixed personal memories. The reviewer at the Los Angeles Times hated it, accusing Payne of insincerity, and worse. Me? I found it appealing in its best moments and over-calculated in its worst. I liked these characters, but couldn’t bring myself to accept their reality.

 Paul Giamatti, who shone in Payne’s 2004 Sideways, is something of a specialist in playing morose men who can’t quite accommodate to their own time and place. Somewhat like the late Wilford Brimley, he seems never to have been young. As a hapless wine connoisseur in Sideways, he came off as emphatically middle-aged when he was still in his thirties. Now he’s aged into the role of a longtime teacher of ancient history at a tony New England prep school where most of the boys (in their jackets and ties and floppy 1970s hair) have grown up expecting winter-break Caribbean vacations and easy coasting into Ivy League colleges. (Giamatti, the son of a former president of Yale who later became the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, has had his own prep school experience, so he knows the drill.) In The Holdovers he’s fitted out with a cutting wit, a secret sorrow, and a series of small physical afflictions that make him unpleasant company to just about everyone. There is about him from the start, though, a quiet sweetness that I wasn’t expecting, especially in his treatment of the campus’s few women.

 One of them, Mary Lamb, is the head of the school’s  cooking staff.  Like Giamatti’s Paul Hunham, she’s stuck on campus during winter break. And she too has a sorrow, though it’s hardly a secret: her only child, a highly promising graduate of the school, has just been killed in Vietnam. As movingly played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Mary is both sweet and sour: happily, the script doesn’t allow her to be merely a sad-faced bereaved mom. The Vietnam angle does take us by surprise, because there’s little sense that this story is set back in time. But perhaps that’s accurate: on this campus, among these well-parented young men, an overseas war is hardly top of mind. Hell, no—they have no intention of going . . . and their parents will see that their draft boards stay far, far away.

The third member of the trio left behind at Christmas is a first-time movie actor who makes an impressive debut here. Dominic Sessa, an actual prep school grad (class of ’22) plays the classic smart but angry kid with no friends and no family to rely on. Naturally, he and Mr. Hunham develop a prickly but unmistakable bond, one that will take an unexpected turn late in the film. I’m a bit Scrooge-ish about the outcome, but Payne’s sympathy for the walking wounded remains very much intact. (There’s one more such character in the film that I deliberately haven’t mentioned, but suffice it to say that Payne is very well-named.)

 

Babymaking for Royals and Commoners: “Private Life”

The big news out of Britain is that the Duchess of Sussex, better known as Meghan Markle, is with child. Ever since she wed Prince Harry on May 19. 2018, the adoring public (both in Britain and in the colonies) has been checking out her press photos for signs of a baby bump. Now, apparently, another royal baby is on its way.

The Royal House of Windsor seems never to have had any problems with fertility. When Prince Charles wed Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, she too was soon pregnant. (At age 20, she had the advantage of youth and good health when it came to producing a strapping young princeling.) That prince, William, grew up and took a bride, Kate Middleton: she was 31 when she produced the first of her three royal children. But Meghan is now 37, an age at which successful child-bearing can’t always be counted on.

Best wishes to her, needless to say. But I’ve just seen a film in which the gift of pregnancy is not to be taken for granted. Private Life (2018), from the increasingly adventuresome Netflix, was written and directed by Tamara Jenkins. She’s a gifted filmmaker, known for such well-observed family dramedies as Slums of Beverly Hills and The Savages. More important, she knows all too well what it’s like to try – and fail – to conceive a baby. After years of effort, she and husband Jim Taylor (the artistic partner of Alexander Payne) finally managed to become parents.

Parenthood is the desperate hope of Jenkins’ two main characters in Private Life. Vividly played by Kathryn Hahn (as Rachel) and Paul Giamatti (as Richard), they are New York artsy-types who probably waited too long to commit to the idea of childbearing. Now he’s 47 and she’s 41. Their union is strong, but they’re driving one another crazy as they explore the various increasingly unattractive options that lie before them. On the one hand, they’re looking into adoption, which means remaking their lives to appeal to some teenaged birth mother who may just be stringing them along. On the other hand, they’re going through an intrusive series of medical procedures that might seem hilarious if they weren’t so emotionally fraught. 

When they learn that basic biology has thrown them a curve ball, the idea of finding an egg donor first arises. And into their rent-controlled Lower Manhattan flat comes a niece-by-marriage, a spirited young college girl who may be the answer to Rachel’s anxieties about being removed from the genetic process. Sadie is sweet and eager to help, but also has a gift for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Like, for instance, at the Thanksgiving dinner table. She also has parents who are not at all happy about her involvement in this adventure.

I won’t reveal how it all comes out, except to praise Private Life as a slice-of-life in the very best sense. Hahn (whose previous work I don’t know) and Giamatti (who has made the portrayal of middle-aged male disgruntlement into a fine art) are funny, touching, and above all real. And young Kayli Carter is a revelation as the big-hearted, big-mouthed Sadie. By the film’s end, you want nothing but the best for all these nice (but highly troubled) people.

Private Life left me feeling very grateful indeed. I hope the House of Windsor feels the same way.

And my gratitude, plus an imaginary slice of Thanksgiving pumpkin pie, to all Beverly in Movieland readers.