Wine, women, and angst by Justine Elias / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS / October 17, 2004 Drinking and driving in real life is a dangerous mix. For the new movie "Sideways," it may be the recipe for a hit. Critics have already raved about the performances of its stars, and the movie got extra buzz from being chosen to close the New York Film Festival. A road movie set in California's wine country, "Sideways" is the story of Miles (Paul Giamatti) and Jack (Thomas Haden Church), college roommates, now in their 40s, who take a wine-tasting trip just before Jack's wedding. Nothing goes quite as planned - not least because Jack, a fading actor whose last big role was in a soap opera, sees the getaway as a chance to seduce as many women as possible - including a character played by Sandra Oh, wife of the film's director, Alexander Payne - before marrying into a wealthy family. "There are some things I have to do that you don't understand," Jack tells Miles, before embarking on yet another disastrous tryst. "You understand wine and literature and movies … but you don't understand my plight." Payne does. The 43-year-old director - who has captured the quiet desperation of ordinary people in his previous films - knows Jack. "I don't want to make it so concrete," Payne says, "but to me his plight is the torture that men put themselves through to get what they want. It is constantly needing sex, even though it can lead to a lot of pain and suffering. He just can't stop." While Jack is pursuing women, Miles is having troubles of his own. A middle-school teacher and wanna-be novelist who still pines for his ex-wife, he becomes obsessed with finding the perfect Pinot Noir. He comes alive only when talking about wine - or just before he collapses into a drunken heap. "As much as Miles deplores some of his friend's antics," Payne says, "he envies his ability to really live, the way the introvert always envies the sensualist." The sensuality of wine suffuses the film, which was shot on location in the Santa Ynez Valley in Santa Barbara County. "We shot at harvest time, when it was just beautiful," says the director, a wine enthusiast, who adds in all seriousness, "Part of the reason I made this movie was to learn more about wine." The burned-out, pale colors of "Sideways" reflect Payne's admiration for films of the 1970s. "Movies were more human then," he says. "It's hard to single out one movie, it's just a feeling. Movie styles caught up to the way people actually lived. You could show or say anything you wanted, nudity, bad language, anything." Despite the sexual content of "Sideways," most of it is verbal, including a powerfully seductive speech by Virginia Madsen about the appeal of wines. One of the few nude scenes, in fact, was played for laughs. "I didn't think of going against the grain there," says Payne. "I don't even think of what the grain is. I am just making what I think is funny." GETTING THERE Like the best grapes, Payne took a while to mature. After attending Stanford University and UCLA film school, he had several "years of agony" trying to raise money for his first film. He directed shorts for the Playboy Channel, then retreated from Hollywood altogether, moving to a small northern California town. His first three features - "Citizen Ruth" (1996), "Election" (1999) and "About Schmidt" (2002) - were not made in Hollywood, but in his home state of Nebraska. "Schmidt" gave Payne a chance to work with big-name actors, and it brought Oscar nominations for Jack Nicholson and Kathy Bates. After that, A-list leading men were lining up to work with the director, but instead Payne cast Church, best-known for the TV series "Wings" and "Ned and Stacey," and Giamatti, a standout character actor who broke through last year with the lead role in "American Splendor." Neither were known for playing romantic parts. But then, Payne isn't known for making romantic films. "Some have said that he has a kind of bleak, distant view of humanity," Church says. "But this movie shows that he is willing to be sentimental, to show more emotion. When a director is willing to go there, the actors are, too."