Speaking "Sideways" with Payne by Ethan Nahte / THE ONION A.V. CLUB / November 5, 2004 Some people believe that the sign of a good director is one who can tell an interesting and intriguing story on film without the use of special effects, explosions or fast-paced action. Some films, such as Conan the Barbarian or The Empire Strikes Back, are meant to be filled with adventure and action, with a minute amount of attention paid to the characters. Other films, such as On Golden Pond or The Final Cut, are meant to rely on plot and character development with a bit of humor and very little action. These stories tend to be harder to tell and maintain an audience’s interest at the same time, especially in this day and age of MTV type editing where the typical image lasts for 2 seconds before abruptly changing to another angle. One of the newest directors to come along and successfully tell a human-interest tale is Alexander Payne. He has a small handful of credits to his name, and his own name may not be a household name - yet. Whether you saw the film or not, odds are that you remember the ads and the glowing praise surrounding the film About Schmidt that starred Jack Nicholson a year or two ago. That was the directorial work of Payne. Now, he has returned with another delightful film featuring Thomas Hayden Church (Wings) and Paul Giamatti (American Splendor) [See my review of Sideways for full details]. In a nutshell, Giamatti is Church’s Best Man. His gift to his buddy is a week of driving and touring southern California’s wine country. What is meant to be a relaxing, educational and tasty trip becomes a journey of introspection, self-loathing, bitterness, comedy and love. Once again, this was a roundtable interview where a group of journalists sit around and throw questions at the subject, taking turns when you can manage to get a word in edgewise. MEDIA: So how was it to leave Omaha (Payne’s home)? ALEXANDER PAYNE: For me it wasn’t such a big deal because I never really set out to be the “Omaha Guy” or the “Omaha Director.” It just happened. In my early films, I wanted to go back home and shoot, but now I want to make films all over the place. M: (Joking) It would’ve been hard to move this story to Nebraska. AP: Pretty hard! I mean, there is viniculture they say in all 50 states. I don’t know what’s grown in Alaska. It wouldn’t have worked. M: So how much time did you spend researching, not only the wine country, but the wine? AP: Jim Taylor and I did a little bit of research to write the script. Mostly that was based on the novel then we made it up. Before shooting was when I had to do more hardcore, real research. That was about 4 or 5 months. We shot beginning September 29th (2003). I had moved up there in May and visited all of the wineries in Santa Barbara County. All the wineries with tasting rooms and I visited other wine makers. I scoured the whole region for locations. It took a long time. We were covering an area basically like the size of Rhode Island. M: Are the locations the same as in the book? AP: Even to the point of driving up the [hwy.] 101, pulling off and tasting at Sanford. Going on up to Buellton and staying at the Windmill Inn. Walking down the 246 to The Hitching Post. All of that is exact to reality. We followed Rex Pickett’s lead a lot. Hero Realm: Did any of the wineries or locations asked to be or not to be associated with the book or movie? AP: Did anybody say “no?” No. We had really, really good luck getting the locations that we wanted for this one. M: It would be a lot of free publicity for them. AP: You’d be surprised how people can get pretty conservative. When I started to make About Schmidt I approached both Mutual Of Omaha and Woodmen Of The World. Mutual didn’t want to have anything to do with it. Very conservative company. They just get scared. They just don’t know. What they objected to in that one was a scene when Schmidt leaves his office and he notices that they’ve thrown away his old archives. They said “We’d never do that.” I said “I know, but it’s a comedy.” M: Were you a wine connoisseur at all before making Sideways? AP: I would say an “enthusiast” and a “wine liker.” I had a subscription to “The Wine Spectator” and owned some wine books. I’m sitting on a few cases that I bought years ago and stashed them away. I really looked forward to making this film as a way to learn more about wine and to hang out. To push through that barrier of just reading about wine and ordering it at restaurants and buying it. Hanging out with wine makers and walking through the vineyards with wine makers and tasting grapes, having barrel samplings… I’d never done any of that before. That was a lot of fun. M: So you were somewhere between these two characters - The one who knows a lot and the one who knows virtually nothing? AP: Right. I would say so. Doing all that stuff made it [wine] romantic and unromantic. It kind of demystified it some. It was a lot of fun to make. M: How did you find the book? Did someone bring it to you? It seems like you and Jim Taylor have some running thread with 4 straight films that are so dead on with human observation. AP: Thanks for saying so. Jim and I both would certainly aspire to that. It came to me. I didn’t find it. It was found by Michael London, the producer. I have to give him a lot of credit. He had been friends with Rex Pickett, the novelist. Michael had gotten aholt of the novel and had sent it around to studios. Everyone had said “no,” of course. They started thinking about what specific directors might be interested and Michael thought of me. There’s an article in “Premiere” [Sep. 2004] this month with Rex describing the process. Long story short, it came to me in 1999. It sat on a stack for a few months. I finally got around to reading it in August of ‘99 and just went nuts for it. Then I asked them to wait until About Schmidt. I thought maybe I could make Sideways first but the wheels were already in motion to make About Schmidt. So I committed to make this one after that. But I was paying for it. Every year, the producer and I were sharing the payment for the option of the book. Then later, Jim Taylor and I wrote the script on spec - not being paid - then Michael and I capped [capitalized] the movie out of our own pockets. Each of us threw $10,000 into a kitty and got an office and hired a casting director. Then we went to the studios with our little package. M: How did you choose Thomas Hayden Church for the film? AP: I was unfamiliar with his TV work. I still am, although I believe I’ve seen half of one Wings. He had auditioned for me for Election and he auditioned for About Schmidt. He makes a big impression, that guy. So I always remembered him. My casting director and I asked him to come in for this one and it all worked out. I’m sure glad it did. M: Had you seen American Splendor before [casting]? AP: I saw it but it was only after I auditioned Giamatti. I think after I auditioned him but before I made my final decisions about casting. It was fun. He’s great in that movie. It didn’t really help sway me because I was already convinced. You notice by looking at his films that he’s so different. He can really do anything, this guy. He’s really good. I know that now from working with him. I mean every take is just unbelievably great. He hits all of his marks. Recites all of his dialogue exactly as it’s written. Total pro and helluva nice guy. M: He knew nothing about wine? AP: Nothing about wine and nothing about golf. M: How much did you add to the novel? Was the golf scene in the novel? AP: It’s in the novel. I thought about dumping it actually. It’s one of the biggest laughs in the film. I never would’ve known that. I thought about getting rid of it because I sort of hate golf. I had never played. I played 3 times since I had to direct it, so I had to go play golf. I think it’s even stupider now than I did before I played. I just can’t get into it. It takes so long. I’d rather play tennis or something. But all of that stuff is from the novel. The naked guy. The naked couple running after. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to adapt the novel is for that scene where he steals the wallet and gets chased by the naked guy because that’s just funny stuff that I know America wants to see. M: How many shots did it take to do the car crash? AP: We did that twice. We had 3 different cars, including one which we called the Saab Camino. We took a Saab and cut it in half and behind the back seat we built a platform, like an El Camino, with wheels so we could put a camera on it and shoot from behind. M: Did you have Giamatti and Thomas spend any time together before the movie started? AP: Absolutely. That was crucial. I’ve never really had time to rehearse for my films before because my budgets have been so low. You have to pay actors per diem and hotel if you have to haul them out before starting shooting. Previously I’ve only had maybe 4 or 5 days max to start rehearsing actors. This time I insisted we have 2 weeks before we shoot. Not to rehearse, per se, but to get them together. You guys go out and wine taste; you guys go out and play golf; you guys go out and… So if you didn’t believe their chemistry or relationship, the movie is just going to stink. They really hit it off. M: Could you tell it paid off? AP: Totally! They had to get in sync with each other. It was a 140 page script - a 140 minute movie. They really had to do rehearsal alone, without me, to get their rhythms going. It was natural and fast. They had to speak fast in this movie, no dilly-dallying. M: All 4 of your films have gotten great reviews, but none of them have made Spider-Man type money. Do you have to fight for everything still with your budget? AP: I have to fight less. It’s never easy, but it’s less hard now. This will be my 3rd film in a row now, I think this one’s going to make money. It cost $16 million. Garden State has made $20 something and I would imagine this is going to make more than Garden State. I keep that in mind when budgeting a film. I keep my budget’s as low as possible and to keep my shooting style as disciplined as possible so my movies don’t go over budget. If I want to keep making nonstandard fair I can’t afford for my movies to lose money. I had $16 million to make this with and it was just fine. M: Did you send all 4 of your cast members to wine school? AP: Yeah, in a way because where we were shooting, in Santa Barbara County, it’s just everywhere. Every restaurant you walk into is “Here, try this wine.” It’s wine culture. We were in wine country. You can’t avoid it. And they are good actors, so they can just take the dialogue and sell it convincingly. M: How many bottles of wine would you say were consumed? AP: In the making of the film and including the Halloween party - thousands! Fox is a great studio to work for except their legal department, their auditing department and clearance departments are so brutal at micromanaging, that they make it hard on the film making process. I bring this up because one of their things is “no liquor.” Traditionally, in other movies, you can’t put liquor on the budget. That wasn’t going to work for this film. M: Did you have to get clearance to use the particular labels of wine? AP: Oh, yeah! You have to ask the winemakers. They were pleased as punch. There was no product placement involved. We were never paid or given free wine. It was really my call. One wine I show a close-up of, Whitcraft Pinot; beautiful pinots, I only met the guy, Chris Whitcraft about 5 weeks ago. I came up to him at a tasting and said “Oh, are you Chris Whitcraft? I’m Alexander Payne. I’m doing the film about wines and did a close-up of your wine.” He said [in a blasé manner] “Oh, really? That’s good.” HR: Were there any wines that weren’t allowed, as in the scene where Giamatti spits the wine out? AP: That’s the only fictitious wine. He trashes that wine. It tastes like the back of an L.A. school bus. We shot that wine at Fess Parker, who make very respectable wines, but they have that big kind of tourist friendly environment that worked for that scene. But we made up that wine. M: You employ sort of an old-fashion visual style with some of the moments on the road with the music and the split screens… AP: What do you mean by visual style? The split screen is very ‘60s. M: It’s sort of themed like a ‘60s type moment. AP: One of my ideas for the film is that it would somehow combine the feeling of an American film of the late ‘60s/early ‘70s with an Italian comedy of the late 50s/early ‘60s. For the look of the film I just wanted it to have that charactery, human feel basically like a ‘70s movie, like a Hal Ashby movie. Also from Ashby came a consciousness of using a lot of long dissolves. There’s even an Ashby connection to the split screens because the split screen sequence was very much inspired by The Thomas Crown Affair, which Hal Ashby was one of the editors of. HR: Where did you find the composer for the great soundtrack to this movie and is it coming to on CD? AP: It’s coming out on New Line Records because Fox doesn’t have a record company. New Line, who had done such a good job with putting out About Schmidt, that I said “Oh, let’s let New Line do it.” It should be out soon. The composer is Walt Kent. He’s done all my movies. I asked him to do it in this jazz vein. HR: He did a great job on it. AP: I think so, too. Thanks a lot for saying so. I’m always proud when the music is complimented. I’m pretty old fashion in how I make films. I don’t use a monitor. I don’t like Steadicams. It’s basically just a tripod, dolly and handheld. As regards to sound, I really don’t like to use Surround speakers. It’s almost a mono film. It’s almost not even stereo. It’s kind of like you’re watching a movie at a revival house. It’s kind of the feeling I wanted to give it. Anytime there’s Surround, it’s like “Oh, we could do a cool effect like this!” then we use the Surround speakers. But basically, movies were better when they were in black and white and in mono. M: How was it working with your wife in this film? AP: It went pretty well. She had to obey me (laughing)! M: Was it your idea or her idea? AP: To cast her? It was my idea. I’m really kind of anti-nepotistic. I wouldn’t have hired her if I didn’t think she was perfect for the part and I think she was. M: She certainly carries off that last scene with Thomas… AP: Where she beats him? I gave her one direction, which was “I need to see 1600 years of Korean rage against the oppressor.” She goes “Oh, okay.” M: Do you have your next project thought out? AP: I have an inkling of an idea, but I still have a little to do for Sideways - the tour and interviews, the DVD extras. Probably after the first of the year, Jim and I will get writing. M: Would this be something from another novel? AP: It would be something original. M: I swear, in parts of Jurassic Park III I could tell which parts had your hand in it and which parts had your humor and those that did not. AP: Thanks for saying so. They pretty much hired us, we wrote them a whole new script and then they got rid of it all. All of our jokes and all of the character stuff. We were hired to make the people human beings and to give a reality to it and they took it all out and made a theme park ride out of it. M: Did they use anything of yours? AP: Oh yeah, the part where Bill Macy’s character says “How do you know so-and-so” and the guy goes “Through our church.” That’s our line and how the wife (Tea Leoni) is always going “Eddie, Eddie where are you?” It could’ve been directed funnier. I’m not going to be sour grapes or anything, but I will be a little bit it just saying, not just funny, but we created people and made it a little more believable, somehow. What would it really be like to be on an island off the coast of Costa Rica? Probably insects would be moment-to-moment would be the thing that bothered you the most. We had a whole insect “thing” and they had insect spray and later the insect spray “paid off.” They were not interested. Which, by the way, is why Spider-man 2 is so good. They followed the screenplay and made it a good, human movie. I loved it. I thought it was a really, really great movie. M: Would you ever like to direct a film with that kind of budget attached? AP: Sure, if it’s the right story. I don’t have any prejudice about scale or budget or anything. It’s all what’s appropriate. M: Have you been approached to do any kind of F/X movie? AP: I went in on a meeting for Charlie’s Angels. I had a bunch of rewrite ideas for a screenplay but it kind of turned them off. Like, one Angel, we wanted to give her an abortion. I don’t think they would go for that. I thought about pursuing a British book and a play, one of these big things like Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket. The thought of all those meetings with “…his arm could be articulated this way.” That’s just too much. It’s hard enough to get real people to do stuff.