Rex Pickett
A lot of fans of the movie mistakenly believe it was the Immaculate Conception. A director/screenwriter Alexander Payne wrote, with his writing partner Jim Taylor, an original screenplay, plucking it out of thin air. They won every award for Best Adapted Screenplay you could win in ’04/’05 for their efforts. But in the word “Adapted” lies the hidden truth. A lot of fans of the movie mistakenly believe it was the Immaculate Conception. A director/screenwriter Alexander Payne wrote, with his writing partner Jim Taylor, an original screenplay, plucking it out of thin air. They won every award for Best Adapted Screenplay you could win in ’04/’05 for their efforts. But in the word “Adapted” lies the hidden truth.
Sideways is based on a novel I wrote in the late nineties in the depths of despair. I had written/directed two indie films in the eighties, and though the second one got a theatrical release from prestigious Island Pictures, the president of Island decided, just before the movie went into theaters, to butcher it into incomprehensibility by cutting it down by 25%. The results, and resultant box office performance, were not pretty. My then wife, Barbara Schock, produced both films, and also acted in both. It ended the marriage (think Miles (Paul Giamatti in Sideways) and his failed marriage). My mother suffered a massive stroke, was left full left-side paralyzed and wheelchair-bound. My larcenous younger brother brought her home after 3 months in the hospital and, over the course of two years, proceeded to embezzle all her money. I had to leave L.A. and assume control of her care in San Diego, which took two years out of my life. A brutal time.
Broke, I crawled my way back to L.A. and my rent-controlled house in Santa Monica and tried to get back into writing. My only agent had just died of AIDS. I was literally and figuratively nowhere. Then two things I had no idea would leave huge imprints on my life happened: I got back into the game of golf and because golf in L.A. is a nightmare I started taking road trips to the Santa Ynez Valley to play this magical course called La Purisima. Also, because I was so isolated and lonely at the time – and dead broke – I started attending these Saturday afternoon wine tastings at a small wine shop in Santa Monica named Epicurus. There, I met the owner’s right hand wine guru Julian Davies, and we became fast friends. When the owner cut out early Julian would liberally start uncorking wines. The Saturday tastings – featured in the opening chapter of my novel, but not in the movie – gave me an appreciation for the poetry of wine: the way wine connoisseurs talked about it. It also educated me on how wine and the wallet are inextricably entwined.
The golf course in the Santa Ynez Valley is called La Purisima (“the pure one”). I wrote a mystery novel titled … La Purisima. Through a connection it landed me a publishing agent named Jess Taylor. This was a serendipitously huge step in establishing the foundation for what would become Sideways as shortly after signing me Jess moved out to L.A. from New York to become the book-to-film agent at then Endeavor (now William Morris Endeavor). The publishing submissions were handed off to another agent at my NY literary agency Curtis Brown. So, with one novel, written in total obscurity, I now had two agents, on two coasts, and things were decidedly looking up!
La Purisima didn’t sell. Rejection letters trickled in. I dubbed it “the slow morphine drip.” Okay, think Miles and his novel that no one wants, but with his agent holding out hope for one last publisher who has expressed interest. That was me in real life!
I continued taking weekday road trips to the Santa Ynez Valley, but now instead of playing golf I had discovered wine, especially the Pinot Noirs of Sanford (then under Richard Sanford) and Foxen Winery in particular. I fell tangle-footedly in love with Pinot Noir, its femininity, its vast range of expression of terroir, its subtlety, its haunting, ethereal grace. Think Miles’s unapologetic adoration of Pinot Noir, how besotted he is with this one grape, how disdainful he is of Bordeaux varietals, especially the Merlot variety, which had become, by the late nineties – all will be explained in the next blog – tantamount to wine philistinism; i.e., having no palate, no taste.
One mid-week trip I took to the Santa Ynez Valley was with my gregarious, eminently likable friend Roy Gittens, an electrician on my second feature film. Roy loved wine, as much as I, but he wasn’t a connoisseur (think Jack (Thomas Haden-Church) and his undiscriminating palate in Sideways). Roy and I caroused: went wine tasting, golfing, stayed at the Windmill Inn (now the Sideways Inn!), and had a boisterous, roaring good time, two guys getting down, baring their souls to each other about all their dashed hopes and dreams.
Inspired by that trip, I wrote a screenplay titled Two Guys on Wine. It didn’t work. I don’t know why, but it didn’t. My Hollywood agent begged me to read it, but I wouldn’t let him. Then, as the rejection letters continued to come in from New York on my mystery novel La Purisima I started a short story titled The Bullpen (a sobriquet for the small, cordoned-off area at Epicurus where the raucous Saturday afternoon tastings took place). I was writing it in first person from the point-of-view of a character named Miles. Screenplays are all written in third person and are, by design, devoid of personality, devoid of a voice. But in prose, in first person, you stand naked before the reader, with only your voice. When I had finished the short story I had an epiphanic moment the likes of which I hadn’t had in my “writing career.” Two Guys on Wine would be a novel, The Bullpen short story would be the prologue, it would be written in first person in my self-deprecating, soul-baring, sardonic voice.
I wrote the first draft of Sideways in 9 weeks. It was so nakedly personal, albeit fictional, I was afraid to show it to anybody. I finally leaked it to two successful friends in the film business, and they both went nuts for it and exhorted me to give it to my Endeavor agent. I did. He flipped for it. Then, flush with excitement, I gave it to my ex-wife, who had gone on to the American Film Institute to re-invent herself as a film director. She hated it. In no uncertain terms she advised me to “burn it.” A woman I had just started to date demanded to read it. She came over to my modest house, thrust the manuscript back into my hands and hissed negatively: “How could you be so personal?” I never saw her again. Obviously, reactions were mixed: it seemed to be a “love it or hate” it phenomenon. Thank God I listened to my agent.
Sideways was not the Immaculate Conception. Beneath the veneer of a bawdy comedy lies the truth of one man’s soul who dared to journey to a personal place without compromise. I was in such a state of despair when I wrote it I knew if I didn’t make it funny it would be a depressing read. So, at every point Miles was staring into the abyss of failure and cynical about his future I tried to hoist it out with comedy. The garrulous and personable character of Jack was the secret sauce I found to be Miles’s foil. If it was just Jack it would be Merlot. If it was just Miles it would be some inscrutable wine no one could understand. But, together, I made magic with them.
Sideways, the movie, was decidedly not the Immaculate Conception. It issued, unbidden, unapologetically and nakedly personal, from the heart and soul of a destitute writer who literally had nothing, and nothing to lose, when he wrote it.
To be continued …
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