Master of the "Sideways" glance by Todd Gilchrist / FILMSTEW.com / October 26, 2004 Sometimes, a journalist’s initial meeting with an actor or director they’ve admired exceeds their expectations by a wide margin; such was the case for example when I first met Quentin Tarantino. On the other hand, there are times when artists and creative types just don’t quite live up on a particular day to the persona their roles or films have created; such was my recent experience with Alexander Payne, the director of two bona fide classics whose latest film, Sideways, counts as a third. It’s not that he’s a clumsy oaf who dumb-lucked his way into an acclaimed directing career. Rather, Payne appears to be a highly introspective man, one given to careful consideration of every phrase he utters. While this kind of attention to detail is evidently responsible for the tenor of his work, it also makes for an extraordinarily difficult time when you’re tasked as a reporter with collecting juicy behind-the-scenes tidbits. It’s even more frustrating when you’re particularly enthusiastic about getting the message out about just how special a film like Sideways actually is. “Sideways is not all about wine,” Payne clarifies right off the bat during a recent interview with FilmStew. “It’s a story about people and romance. There’s a buddy thing. It’s a road trip.” “I like specificity in movies,” adds the director of About Schmidt, Election and Citizen Ruth. “If elements are going in a film of mine, I like them to be true and specific, from being in Santa Barbara county where we were shooting to the whole wine thing. But I never think of a ‘general’ audience. An audience is made up of individuals who know a lot. Everyone has his or her own niche.” From this fitful beginning, the discussion between Payne and the roundtable of assembled journalists soon takes on the feel of a panel discussion, which each individual questioner gingerly laying out their subsequent trains of thought with an eye towards not offending the filmmaker. It is eventually observed that Payne seems to prefer adapted works rather than writing his own (his script doctoring for Jurassic Park III notwithstanding). But, he replies, that is always his approach to a project, regardless of where the source material comes from. “I think no matter if I were doing Adaptation or something original, I would always seek out specificity and a connection to location,” Payne insists. “The genesis of the movie idea can come from your brain, [but] there’s often more going on in a novel than in a screenplay. It’s just a richer form.” “Then, Jim [Taylor, writing partner] and I can find our own voice through our dialectic with the novel,” he continues. “It’s a process of getting rid of stuff and asking other questions the novel didn’t. We’re finding threads that perhaps were presented but not elaborated on in a way that reached us more. That’s how we’re able to work and find our own voice within an adaptation.” Adding a too-perfect example of a forebear whose body of work was marked by a similar pattern, he says, “A great example for me is Kubrick. He’s like a fantastic, innovative director who 95% of the time did adaptations. I think he’s one of our great comedy directors.” In Payne’s case, the secret to his success may well be that his interest in any given material comes not from what he wants to do, but rather what he definitely doesn’t. Past and present projects maintain a curious throughline, wherein the filmmaker tackles subjects and locations that he, in real life, can’t stand. “I don’t even really like road movies,” he says of Sideways’ thoroughfare narrative. “With Election, I wasn’t interested in making a high school movie. But the characters and the situations just happened.” At the same time, Payne admits that shooting a movie in southern California wine country gave him the chance to explore a few aspects of filming that he did particularly enjoy. “The whole crew and I had a really rich time making the film and a lot of it was because of the locale,” he recalls. “The sun was shining and it was harvest time and we were out in the fields.” “I loved shooting outside,” he continues. “I’m not so crazy about shooting inside and I hate shooting in sound stages. Still, I’ve had more fun than I have ever had in the rest of my life making movies. The studios can yell at me, a set can fall over, but I don’t care, because it’s all within the context of making this movie. I feel so lucky and so happy; what else is there?” The subject of Sideways, ironically enough, is Miles Raymond, a wine connoisseur and aspiring author who’s anything but enthusiastic about his own life. As played by Paul Giamatti, who last portrayed celebrated crank Harvey Pekar in 2003's American Splendor, Miles is a sad sack whose penchant for wine seems to be little more than a slippery slope towards alcoholism. But Payne says he didn’t cast the depressive actor for his past performances. “I just saw Miles Raymond as so different from Harvey Pekar,” he says in response to suggestions the two characters are extremely similar. “Maybe Paul Giamatti himself has a certain connection to the tragic side of life that comes through in some of his performances, but who also is funnier? I mean, I just love that guy.” “I think he’s such a great actor,” Payne continues. “I hadn’t really seen any of his movies before I cast him; I saw American Splendor when I had met, auditioned but not announced my selections. I went to go see it and I liked it, and I liked him in it, but all I could think of was how different Miles was.” In the film, Miles takes his failed-actor friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church) to Santa Barbara to soak up the sun and suck up some wine, but all Jack wants to do is find a fling before he signs away his bachelorhood and gets married. Payne says he was largely unaware that his two main Sideways characters might be perceived as, respectively, a misanthrope and a misogynist. “I have no idea because I never thought about that as a danger,” he says. “I just thought of it as a funny movie, and they’re strange and funny and human. I never really thought about [them being unsympathetic]. I just follow my nose and try to make a movie I would want to see.” At the same time, Payne admits that part of the purpose of his characterizations is to reveal some human truths that seem too often overlooked in mainstream movies. “Don’t we want someone to reveal those things no matter how ugly?” he asks. “To me, the most violent scene in the movie is where Jack calls his fiancé and says, ‘Oh, we’re probably going to get in late; I wanted to check in now and say goodnight,’ and he’s going off to f*ck.” As the interview begins to wind down, Payne slowly emerges from his creative cocoon, asserting his hope that the communal on-set atmosphere will translate to audiences. “We had a real creative community spirit while making this film where everyone is included,” he remembers. “They feel included and are contributing great ideas. There was great esprit de corps making this film, and I would want this film by extension to also be inclusive of the audience, like just the thing of setting up emotion and setting up gags.” “I don’t like to manipulate the audience any more than you have to,” he maintains. “If they find something moving, then great, but I don’t want to clobber the audience with things.” With that, our time with Payne unceremoniously ends. But not before the 43-year-old native of Omaha, Nebraska – whose next project is appropriately enough titled Nebraska - incidentally sums it all up for us, lending a satisfying coda to a less than superlative interview session. “I want to bring the audience in,” he asserts. “I want an inclusiveness.”