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48 THE LIST .‘

THE GRAPE OF THINGS

ALEXANDER PAYNE, the director of Election and About Schmidt, talks about developing his new film SIDEWAYS, a tale of wine, women and middle-aged men.

‘When I was approaching studios in America, the producer Michael London and I already knew the cast we wanted. We had the script written by Jim Taylor, myself as director, a proposed budget of S16m and the four main actors - Paul Giamatti, Thomas Hayden Church, Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh. A couple of the studios baulked at the cast and would only let me make the film for much less money. Only two, Fox and Paramount, were willing to give the budget I wanted and the cast I wanted. By a hair we went with Fox Searchlight, because they had a slightly better record at marketing films like this.

‘Sideways was the first film since film school that I'd shot outside Nebraska, and the vineyards where we shot in Santa Barbara County in California had never really been on film before. I’m always afraid when I'm making a movie that I might bore the audience. Even the scene in Sideways that people ask me most about, which is where Miles [Giamatti] and Maya [Madsen] are talking about wine, and he's talking about comparing himself to Pinot and she's talking about comparing herself to Cabernet. People have said to me that that's a seminal scene, that it’s a small masterpiece. And I’m thinking, “Oh is it?" It’s a little talky for my tastes, but it’s not my favourite scene in the movie. It’s fine, it’s nice, it’s revealing, it’s the love scene. But I like the scene that precedes it, when they’re on the sofa talking about what his novel is about, and he compares it to a Robbe-Grillet mystery without a resolution. That excites me more.

‘I’ve taken Sideways around Europe, and I call tell you that Italian audiences love the character of Jack: he‘s like Vittoro Gassman in II Surpasso (The Easy Life), a real womanising, sensualist kind of guy. In Greece they really liked him as well. There‘s something of the idea that these two characters Miles and Jack [Church], like the characters in Zorba the Greek or II Sorpasso, are two sides of one man, paddling around together. Both of them are in all of us.

‘Of course the actors keep coming up with stuff that surprises you during the shoot. It’s not so much the dialogue, as from take to take how they do things differently. I feel so lucky as a director that I get to watch actors that way, because it‘s so thrilling to watch someone like Jack Nicholson work, and not just the one take you see in the movie, but in the eight takes you shoot, live and up close.’ (Interview byTom Dawson).

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