John Dies at the End

With a few notable exceptions, most mainstream horror films are predictable as the cinematic landscape is littered with unimaginative remakes like Evil Dead (2013) and Carrie (2013) or a seemingly endless assembly line of sequels to lucrative franchises like Paranormal Activity. As always, it’s up to independent filmmakers like Don Coscarelli to come up with unique and original horror films. His claim to fame comes from the much beloved Phantasm series of films, but in recent years his output has slowed down considerably with his last effort being Bubba Ho-Tep in 2002. So, it is great to see him resurface in 2012 with John Dies at the End, an adaptation of David Wong’s gonzo cult novel of the same name. The end result resembles a souped-up episode of Supernatural as if written in the spirit of esoteric hybrid genre films like The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984) and Big Trouble in Little China (1986).

The film begins with our protagonist David Wong (Chase Williamson) extolling the merits of replacing an axe and then the blade itself because, hey, that can happen when you’re trying to dispatch a zombie skinhead with a swastika tattoo on his tongue and who won’t stay dead even when his head has been chopped off. This is Dave’s dilemma. He’s a twentysomething that once saw a man’s kidney grow tentacles and free itself from the body, but, y’know, that’s another story.

Dave meets a reporter by the name of Arnie Blondestone (Paul Giamatti) and tells him a story about a crazy adventure he and his friend John Cheese (Rob Mayes) went on at three in the morning. They investigate a young woman’s claims that her boyfriend, who’s been dead for several months, is harassing her. So, Dave and John go over to her house not expecting much only to discover a freezer in the basement that’s full of meat, which proceeds to assemble itself into a large meat monster looking for its nemesis, one Dr. Albert Marconi (Clancy Brown), a popular television infomercial psychic.

Dave and John are amateur paranormal investigators who met a couple years out of high school. Dave was a jaded skeptic who met a Jamaican man known as Robert Marley (Tai Bennett) at a party. He was able to read Dave’s mind and this, understandably, rattles Dave as Rob espouses the notion that he can see into the future. These arcane insights into the universe come courtesy of a substance known as Soy Sauce, a black liquid that allows one to perceive time in non-linear fashion as well as alternate dimensions. Dave and John are eventually enlisted by Marconi to prevent a sentient organic computer known as Korrok from spreading his brand of evil across multiple dimensions.

Dave is the audience surrogate, taking us through this crazy world where he can be talking to John on the phone while his friend is dying in a nearby room (in a sly parody of a similar scene in David Lynch’s Lost Highway), or a man’s moustache can detach itself from its owner’s face and flutter around the room like a bat. In other words, some pretty crazy shit. Throughout it all, Dave tries to make sense of these other realities opened up to him thanks to the Soy Sauce. Chase Williamson and Rob Mayes are well cast as Dave and John, grounding the film with their engaging performances. Each one of them brings a different energy with the former portraying Dave as a skeptic and the latter instilling John with an infectious optimism. It is a lot of fun to see them bouncing off eccentric characters played by the likes of Angus Scrimm, Clancy Brown and Paul Giamatti.

John Dies at the End is chock full of clever and amusing dialogue, like the police detective (Glynn Turman) that doesn’t believe in other dimensions, but does believe in hell: “The grease trap of the universe … It is not just some place down there. Oh no, it’s right here with us we just can’t perceive it. It’s kinda like the country music radio station. It’s out there in the air even if you don’t tune into it.” This is just a sample of the kind of wild observations and theories that run wild throughout this film making it more than just some instant cult film for stoners to mull over between bong hits. For an indie film, John Dies at the End looks as slick and polished as any studio effort. Coscarelli’s years of experience makes this film look more expensive than it is as he effortlessly shifts from comedy to horror to science fiction in a way that is very entertaining.

John Dies at the End started as a webserial written by Jason Pargin (under the pen name David Wong) that began appearing online in 2001. He described it as a “150,000-word novel for people who consider a 140-character tweet too much.” It was eventually edited into a manuscript and published in paperback form in 2007. Filmmaker Don Coscarelli discovered the book via Amazon.com’s “Amazon Recommends” function on their website. He read Pargin’s book, loved it, tracked down the author and bought the film rights. One of the things that drew Coscarelli to David Wong’s novel was that underneath the comedy and horror was “some philosophical thoughts running throughout that are quite captivating.” It tapped into his interest in multiple dimensions: “When I read these ideas from great sci-fi authors about inter-dimensional travel and then from the great scientists about multiple membrane universes layered on top of one another, I just find it compelling … when I can work those kinds of themes into a wacky horror film, all the better.”

Actor Paul Giamatti was a fan of Coscarelli’s films starting with Phantasm (1979) back when his brother snuck him in to see it as a kid. While in Prague filming The Illusionist (2006), he met director Eli Roth who was there making Hostel (2005). They talked about Giamatti filming a cameo, but it didn’t pan out and the actor told Roth how much of a fan he was of Coscarelli and how he would like to work with him. Roth knew Coscarelli and introduced the two men. They planned to work together on a sequel to Bubba Ho-Tep. However, they couldn’t get financing for it and moved on to John Dies at the End. Coscarelli and Giamatti approached several major Hollywood studios for financing, but none of them understood the script and so they realized that independent backing was the way to go. Due to the film’s limited budget, Coscarelli cast two unknown actors as the leads. Both Chase Williamson and Rob Mayes had never acted in a feature film before, which was a bit of a risky gamble for Coscarelli, but he surrounded them with veteran actors like Clancy Brown and Giamatti. Williamson was a student in the University of Southern California’s drama department and on his first day of filming he had to do eight pages of dialogue with Giamatti!

John Dies at the End received mixed reviews from mainstream critics. In his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote, “It has the loose, goofy feel of a project that a bunch of college students (or dropouts, in Dave’s case) might dream up during a long weekend of beer and bong hits. And yet at the same time it looks like a real movie – artfully shot, cleanly edited and very much in control of the laughs and scares that arise from its insanely convoluted set of premises.” The Village Voice’s Nick Pinkerton wrote, “The loquacity and temporally shuffled narrative is off-the-rack Tarantino; the bizarre mind-benders, ‘Lynchian’; the horror-comic asides combining the mundane and the fantastic, ‘Raimi-esque’; the grab bag borrowing of avant-garde techniques, straight up Natural Born Killers.” In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Robert Abele wrote, “Flaked with offbeat witticisms, cheese ball effects and fanboy splatter gore, the surreal John Dies at the End has the vibe of a shaggy dog story, which works both for and against it.” Finally, Rolling Stone magazine gave it two-and-a-half out of four stars and Peter Travers wrote, “Go for the freaky fun of it, though a little soy sauce on the side sure wouldn’t hurt.”

John Dies at the End is one of those films that you either dive in and go on the ride with, trusting that Coscarelli knows what he’s doing, or resist and give up – it’s a cinematic litmus test for one’s ability to deal with a lot of weirdness being thrown at you. It’s sink or swim time as the film doesn’t wait for you try and catch up. He’s always had a kinship for offbeat subject matter, be it a funeral home with a portal to another dimension in Phantasm or Elvis Presley teaming up with an elderly African American man who thinks he’s John F. Kennedy to stop an evil monster in Bubba Ho-Tep. John Dies at the End certainly fits comfortably in his wheelhouse as it refuses simple summarization, piling on one bizarro encounter after another. There’s a wonderful unpredictable energy to this film that is refreshing and makes all the soulless remakes and sequels look safe and tired by comparison.

SOURCES

Collis, Clark. “Paul Giamatti and Director Don Coscarelli Talk About Their Demented Horror-Comedy.” Entertainment Weekly. January 22, 2013.

Gencarelli, Mike. “Don Coscarelli Talks about John Dies at the End and Bubba Ho-Tep and Phantasm Sequels.” Media Mikes. April 9, 2013.

Labrecque, Jeff. “Sundance: Bubba Ho-Tep Director Back with a Vengeance.” Entertainment Weekly. January 24, 2012.

McIntyre, Gina. “John Dies at the End: Paul Giamatti, Don Coscarelli on Cult Cinema.” Los Angeles Times. January 22, 2013.

Pace, Dave. “Q+A: Don Coscarelli on John Dies and Independent Filmmaking for 30+ Years.” Fangoria. April 11, 2013.

Walton, Brian. “John Dies at the End’s Paul Giamatti and Don Coscarelli.” Nerdist. January 15, 2013.

The Ides of March

The Ides of March (2011) is the kind of mid-sized budgeted film that Hollywood studios don’t make anymore. It used to be a mainstream staple during the 1980s and into the 1990s, but with the collapse of the American economy in the 2000s, the studios tightened their belts and invested in sure-fire cash-cows like remakes, reboots and sequels. It’s a shame because, in some respects, George Clooney’s film is a spiritual cousin to one like Tim Robbins’ Bob Roberts (1992), only playing it straight whereas the latter film was a satire. It’s no secret that Clooney is a politics junkie – his filmography is littered with topical efforts like the short-lived television show K Street (2003) and films like Syriana (2005) and The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009). The Ides of March, a drama about an idealistic staffer whose morals and integrity gets tested when he finds out that his boss, a Democratic presidential candidate isn’t what he appears to be, fits comfortably within Clooney’s body of work.

Filmed and released before Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012, I wonder if The Ides of March was an expression of Clooney’s disillusionment with the President’s first term in office. So many people had high hopes when Obama got elected in 2008. There was the same kind of hope in the air when Bill Clinton first became President. However, in no time the honeymoon was over as Obama repeated butted heads with the Republicans who chipped away at any and all policies that he tried to push through the system. The Ides of March, with its backroom dealings and power-plays, affirms what most of us already know – the American political system is a corrupt machine fueled by money and is one that chews up and spits out idealistic people who want to make a difference.

Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling) is a junior campaign manager that believes his boss, Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney), a Democratic presidential candidate, can make a positive difference in Washington, D.C. It’s one week away from the Ohio primary with Morris and Senator Pullman (Michael Mantell) in fierce competition with each other. Pullman is trailing Morris in delegates, but if the senator wins big then he can turn things around. Stephen works closely with Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Morris’ right-hand man who has seen his share of campaigns and is mentoring the young man. Paul is the world-weary campaign manager who’s seen it all before. He knows how to bullshit Morris and deflect persistent journalists like The New York Times’ Ida Horowicz (Marisa Tomei) who work the campaign trail looking for newsworthy scoops.

Stephen becomes attracted to and gets romantically involved with a beautiful intern named Molly (Evan Rachel Wood). Everything seems to be going swimmingly for him until he gets a phone call from Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), Pullman’s campaign manager who tells Stephen that he’s working for the wrong man and he should come work for him. Tom lays out a pretty convincing argument – good enough that it rattles Stephen. This is the first of several complications that make the young manager question his beliefs as they pertain to Morris’ campaign.

2011 was a very good year for Ryan Gosling as he starred in two very different and well-received films, Drive and The Ides of March. With the latter, he graduated to the big leagues acting opposite heavyweights like George Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti and held his own. In fact, Gosling shows decent range as Stephen goes from idealistic staffer to someone whose belief system is shaken to its core. Make no mistake, he isn’t naïve, but rather idealistic and really believes that Morris can make a difference. Gosling plays a credible campaign manager, getting the lingo down cold and conveying the kind of confidence that allows Stephen to help manage Morris’ campaign. Initially, he’s on top of the world and things look great, but when the campaign hits a roadblock and he faces a personal moral dilemma, Gosling does a good job showing Stephen gradually unraveling. It’s a juicy role that allows the actor to shift gears from moments of levity to romance, with his initial meet-cute with Molly, to drama when things go bad for his character.

Gosling is ably supported by veteran actors like Hoffman and Giamatti, who turn in typically solid work as the two warring sides that fight for Stephen’s political soul. Each guy has their own agenda, their own angle that they play and Stephen has to figure out whose side he’s on. Hoffman and Giamatti are given powerhouse speeches to sink their teeth into and devour, which is what you want to see these skilled actors do. The cast is really an embarrassment of riches and unfortunately talented actors like Jeffrey Wright, as a senator that can put either candidate over the top, and Marisa Tomei, playing a tough-talking reporter, are given way-too little screen-time, but like the pros they are, make the most of what they’re given.

Evan Rachel Wood is quite good as the young, gorgeous intern with a deep, dark secret. Initially, Molly seems like a wise-beyond-her-years woman, but there is a fragility that lurks underneath the surface and comes out when Stephen discovers her secret. The fall-out is devastating for her and Wood does a nice job of showing how it affects her character. George Clooney has the slick patter all successful politicians peddle in down cold. With his good looks and perfect smile, the veteran actor is well-cast as a presidential hopeful.

Clooney has directed several films now and this one may be his most assured with striking images like Paul and Stephen having a conversation in silhouette, dwarfed by an enormous American flag hanging behind them. The symbolism is apt as the two men are small cogs in the massive political machine. Clooney thankfully resists the urge to include traditional thriller elements, like car chases and assassinations in favor or a more realistic approach.

The origins for The Ides of March lie in the unsuccessful run for Congress that George Clooney’s father, Nick, made in 2004. Clooney remembered his father talking about how “uncomfortable, embarrassing and at times humiliating,” he felt asking for campaign money. Clooney also saw his father struggle and “lose pretty terribly. No matter how pure you try to keep it, you’re always going to have to take meetings with people you don’t like. I got a real sense of how ugly it is – and that was just for a congressional seat.” Furthermore, Governor Morris’ proposal to outlaw the internal combustion engine in ten years so that the United States would not have to rely on foreign oil came from columns that Nick wrote for the Cincinnati Post. Clooney and Grant Heslov began working on a screenplay about a “bait and switch” conservative Republican who opposes the death penalty after getting the presidential nomination.

In the summer of 2004, young writer Beau Willimon wrote the first draft of his play Farragut North, which was based on his experiences working on the staff of presidential hopeful Howard Dean in Iowa. It was a fictionalized look behind the scenes of a presidential campaign. The play premiered in New York City in 2008 and then moved to Los Angeles where it eventually came to the attention of Clooney and Heslov, partners in their own production company. After reading it, the two men felt that they could merge their ideas with Willimon’s play.

In translating the play into a film, Clooney and Heslov made several changes, most significantly that Governor Morris, the candidate, became an actual character as opposed to the play where he did not exist. They also changed the name because Clooney found Farragut North, “a little too specific.” It became The Ides of March because the primary in the film took place on March 15. The new title also referenced some of the Shakespearean themes in the film. Even though the play is set in Iowa, Clooney and Heslov moved it to Ohio. Clooney said, “Ohio has always been the key state. I put it in Cincinnati because I know it really well.” It also didn’t hurt that the state gave the production tax credits.

Principal photography was originally planned for 2008 and then Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. Clooney and Heslov felt that it wasn’t the right time for such a cynical film. After a year, the optimism over Obama’s election began to wane enough that they decided to make the film. With the pedigree of Clooney as director, he and Heslov had no problem getting the cast they wanted. Ryan Gosling was drawn to the film not only because he was intrigued by the character of Stephen and the story, but also the chance to work with Clooney. Philip Seymour Hoffman was attracted to the script and its insights into human behavior. Paul Giamatti also thought the script was “incredible well written. The rhythms are really specific, and the language.” Clooney jokingly said that he took on the role of Morris because no one else wanted to, “It’s not the most fun part.” He knew what “I wanted the candidate to do and be. I also seemed right for the age of the character.”

To prepare for the film, Clooney told production designer Sharon Seymour to watch several campaign documentaries and they talked about how the design should look realistic. She also talked to political consultants from Ohio and Washington about the look of political campaigns and how everyone wants their candidate to look the best. They also took a page out of Obama’s successful advertising campaign by creating posters for Governor Morris in the same style as the President’s when he was making a run for the White House.

Clooney got his cast and crew in the mindset of the film by encouraging them to watch several campaign documentaries, including The War Room (1993), which examined Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign; Journeys with George (2003), George W. Bush’s 2000 run for president; and By the People: The Election of Barack Obama (2009). Stuart Stevens, a Republican campaign strategist, political advisor and media consultant, was also brought in to help the production. Clooney said, “We would send him things and say, tell us where we’re going wrong. Tell us what you would do in this situation.”

Principal photography began during the late winter in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. Clooney shot on location where much of the story was actually set. Three weeks into filming, the production moved to Detroit where all the interiors for the Pullman and Morris headquarters were shot. In addition, several downtown and suburban locations were used.

The Ides of March received mostly positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars and praised Clooney’s directing: “He draws back from action and plunges into intrigue. Here he conceals certain of Stephen’s inner workings … to great effect, as the young man reveals an amorality that surprises even the hardened pros he works under. The last shot of the film, a closeup of Ryan Gosling, held for a long time, is chilling.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film an “A-" rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “The Ides of March has true storytelling verve, but it also plays like a rite of exorcism. It pulses along like an update of The Candidate fused with a political Sweet Smell of Success – it’s got that kind of nourish fizz.” The Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan found the film to be “an intelligent, involving picture that feels all too real – until it doesn’t.” Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “With Clooney’s connivance, and in a film stuffed with savvy work by veteran players, Gosling lures the movie’s emotional center away from Morris and into Stephen’s mind, where angels swim and demon’s lurk.”

USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and Claudia Puig wrote, “Gosling’s Meyers is a complex blend of idealist and opportunist. While he truly believes in the populist candidate he works for, he is not above seduction – sexual or professional.” However, in his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote, “More likely, though, you will find it more comforting than inspiring. It deals mainly in platitudes and abstractions, with just enough detail to hold your interest and keep you hoping for something more.” The Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday wrote, “Clooney does a good job opening up the ideas Willimon first explored onstage, but the result is still a pessimistic truth so universally acknowledged that it doesn’t bear repeating however stylishly.”

The Ides of March is a film about the hard choices and compromises as it shows the kind of deals politicians have to make if they want to advance to positions of power. The higher the position, the bigger the deal that has to be made because the stakes are higher. And when you’re running for president the stakes are the highest. American politics is not for the faint of heart. It is chock full of negative advertisements, backroom deals and compromises. Knowledge is power, especially insider information, which can be used to muscle people out of influential positions and manipulate powerful politicians.

To be fair, The Ides of March doesn’t tell us anything new about American politics, but it isn’t trying to do that. The film tells an engrossing story with intriguing characters and that is enough. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Clooney’s film ends on a deliciously ambiguous note as Stephen is armed with a potentially damaging piece of information and whether he uses it or not is left up to our imagination. It seems beside the point because what really matters is how he has changed over the course of the film. He’s gone from an idealist full of warmth and humor to someone colder and more ruthless, having witnessed just how ugly politics can get (and he hasn’t even gotten to the White House!). The question that film leaves with us at the end is, has Stephen become absorbed by the system or is he going to wreck it from the inside?

SOURCES

Cornet, Roth. “Interview: Grant Heslov on The Ides of March, George Clooney and Politics.” Screen Rant.

The Ides of March Production Notes. October 7, 2011.

Kiesewetter, John. “George Clooney Tapped Cincinnati Roots to Make Ides of March.” Cincinnati Inquirer. October 2, 2011.

Sideways

Alexander Payne is part of an exciting wave of filmmakers who grew up during the 1970’s and were subsequently influenced by the films from that era. His contemporaries include the likes of Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, and David O. Russell to name but a few. And like his fellow filmmakers, Payne eschews the Hollywood trend of placing an emphasis on special effects and trendy actors in favor of character-driven, comedy-drama hybrids populated with character actors like Laura Dern, Matthew Broderick and Kathy Bates.


Payne’s About Schmidt (2002) continued his fascination with American cinema in the ‘70s by featuring one its biggest (and most prolific) stars, Jack Nicholson. His next film, Sideways (2004), continued the road movie motif from Schmidt and combined it with the buddy film. Jack Cole (Thomas Haden Church) is a failed actor about to be married. He decides to go on one last week of uninhibited fun with his best friend, Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti), a grade school teacher and struggling author. They go on a wine-tasting tour through California’s Central Coast and squeeze in a bit of golfing as well.

Miles is an avid (nay-elitist) wine aficionado while Jack is completely ignorant of wine beyond what tastes good to him and what doesn’t. Miles is trying to get his book published with little success and he’s grown cynical and defeated as a result. Initially, he comes off as an unlikable loser not above stealing money from his mother. Jack counters Miles’ repressed nature by coming off as something of an instinctive kind of person who indulges in his raging id. He was on a hit television show... 11 years ago and is now relegated to doing voiceovers for commercials. Along the way, Jack and Miles meet Maya (Virginia Madsen), a beautiful waitress who Miles knows from way back when, and Stephanie (Sandra Oh), who works at a winery and catches Jack’s eye.

Jack and Miles are complete messes as human beings. They lack direction and are hypocrites. Miles says he’s an author but his book is going nowhere, while Jack is getting married but hits on anything in a dress. They are hardly a sympathetic pair. And yet Payne is able to get a lot of comedic mileage from them. Miles is a wine snob who rambles on about the taste, color, and so on, only to have Jack sum up his opinion simply, “I like it,” which comically deflates Miles’ pontificating. They have an intriguing dynamic. While they lie to others – Miles to Jack’s friends about the status of his novel and Jack being nice to Miles’ mother when he clearly wants to get back on the road – they are no pretenses between each other. These guys are getting to the stage in their lives where they’re looking back as opposed to looking ahead. Jack sees marriage as an institution that will stifle his freedom while Miles has a very negative outlook on life, finding any excuse not to ask Maya out despite obviously liking her because he assumes that it will go nowhere.

An interesting thing happens during the course of the film. At first, Miles starts off as an unsympathetic character while we warm up to Jack’s funny repartee as the charming rogue. Halfway through the film they flip roles and it’s Jack who is exposed as a pathetic womanizer and Miles becomes more sympathetic thanks to Maya’s influence. She humanizes him and is easily his intellectual equal. She knows her wine and this clearly impresses Miles. She’s smart and beautiful so why is she even wasting her time with a sad sack like Miles? She gets to know him beyond his looks and liquefies the pretension of his character. Maya pierces his wine-speak armor that he throws up all the time with her easy-going nature and Miles realizes that he doesn’t need to constantly impress her. There is a nice scene where they get to know each other and it is great to see two skilled actors getting a chance to act and really delve into their characters. In this scene, we finally see someone thaw out Miles and get him to open up, stop worrying and thinking so negatively. They use their mutual love for wine as a way to share their passions and aspirations with each other. It’s a beautifully realized scene because you are seeing two people starting to fall in love with each other. Like a fine wine, Maya allows Miles to breathe and he gets better as time goes on. She’s a romantic who is able to cut through his cynicism and soften his hard edges.

Fresh off the success of American Splendor (2003), Paul Giamatti is one of those actors who make it look effortless as he inhabits the characters he plays so completely. Miles is a neurotic mess; a depressed cynic who is definitely a half glass empty kind of guy. Giamatti is able to tap into his character’s deep reservoir of pain and anger. In a couple of shots early in the film, Payne hints at Miles’ past when he looks at old photographs in his mom’s room. They evoke happier times with his father (now out of the picture) and wife (now divorced). Giamatti’s sad expression in this moment conveys more than any words could. During the course of the film, we find out more about why Miles is so miserable and a lot of it has to do with self-loathing, which explains why he tries to sabotage things with Maya. In some ways, Miles is a variation of Giamatti’s take on the equally acerbic Harvey Pekar in Splendor.

Ever since the short-lived television sitcom Ned and Stacy, Thomas Haden Church has been an untapped resource and with Sideways he was given the role of his career. As Miles’ crass, philandering best friend, he plays Jack as a middle-aged frat boy who still calls women, “chicks.” Haden Church has never been afraid to play abrasive, bordering on unlikeable, characters and he expertly does the same here as a guy who presents a jovial façade but underneath lurks a lot of pain and an insensitive mean streak. Haden Church’s dead-panned delivery of smart-ass lines works well against Giamatti’s uptight straight man. Together, they make an excellent team. After years of playing supporting character roles, it’s great to see Haden Church and Giamatti starring in a film. They play so well off each other that you’d swear they’d acted together before. Haden Church and Giamatti are very believable as long-time friends from the way they interact with each other.

For years, Virginia Madsen has been biding her time in direct-to-video hell and so it is great to see her in a high profile role like this one. From The Hot Spot (1990) to Candyman (1992), she’s always been an interesting actress to watch and with Sideways, Madsen is given strong material to sink her teeth into and she delivers a nuanced performance. Sandra Oh has been quietly building a nice body of work over the years and was unfairly overlooked in the numerous awards that have been lavished on this film. Granted, of the four main cast members, she has the least amount of screen time but she makes every moment she has count.

Producer Michael London was a former Los Angeles Times journalist and studio executive who had become frustrated by the studio development process of shepherding a film from script to screen. He bought the rights to the unpublished semi-autobiographical novel Sideways by Rex Pickett with his own money and gave it to Alexander Payne to read in 1999 while the filmmaker was promoting Election. Payne found himself drawn to “the humanity of the characters” and how it tapped into his desire to make films about “people with flaws,” and “unfulfilled desires.” He was not a wine expert but always liked it and thought that the subculture would be fun to explore and act as a backdrop to the relationship between Jack and Miles. However, he was committed to making About Schmidt next and so he and London kept optioning the book over the years. Then, he and his long-time writing partner, Jim Taylor, wrote the screenplay for free. Payne and London drew up a budget and financed pre-production themselves thereby allowing themselves the kind of creative control they wanted. They only began approaching movie studios once they had the script, budget and a preferred cast in place. Four studios were interested with Fox Searchlight winning out.

Based on the reputation of his previous films, several big name actors campaigned for roles in Payne’s film. Both Brad Pitt and George Clooney were eager to play the role of Jack and met with the filmmaker but it ultimately came down to Thomas Haden Church and Matt Dillon. Edward Norton expressed an interest in playing Miles and Payne seriously considered him for the role. With the exception of Sandra Oh, his wife at the time, all the actors auditioned for Payne and London. Haden Church had auditioned for both Election and About Schmidt (narrowly losing out to Dermot Mulroney on the latter) and even though Payne did not cast him in those films, he had been impressed with the actor. When it came to Sideways, Payne felt that Haden Church “kind of is that character,” and cast him as Jack. At the time, he had moved away from acting and when he read the script in May 2003, thought to himself, “I have no shot at this whatsoever, but I have to answer the call of duty. If I get a chance, then I gotta take it.” When Paul Giamatti auditioned for the film, he had not read the whole script, just an excerpt – the scene where Miles talks about his love of Pinot Noir wine to Maya. The actor found Miles’ obsession with the wine to be “an interesting theme for this guy” who was constantly “striving for transcendence through the wine and the wine milieu, and it just keeps collapsing in on the guy because he’s such a wreck.” After casting Giamatti and Haden Church, Payne insisted that they spend some time together before filming, hanging out and practicing their dialogue so that characters’ friendship would be believable.

The setting of the story was very important to Payne as he brought a documentary sensibility to capturing the people that inhabit the area. Before shooting, he spent four months living in the wine country of California, taking notes so that it would be accurately depicted in his film. The actors spent two weeks of rehearsals with Payne, “shooting the shit and indulging in good food and wine,” according to Giamatti. With a budget in the range of $16-17 million, Sideways was shot over 54 days in the Santa Barbara area. For the look of the film, he drew inspiration from the photographic style of Hal Ashby’s The Landlord (1970), screening it for his director of photography, Phedon Papamichael (Moonlight Mile), in order to study the softness of colors and the lack of sharp, vivid lighting that he wanted in his own film.

I think it’s safe to say that Sideways received almost universally positive reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and wrote, “The characters are played not by the first actors you would think of casting, but by actors who will prevent you from ever being able to imagine anyone else in their roles.” Time magazine’s Richard Corliss felt that it was “by far the year's best American movie.” In his review for the New York Observer, Andrew Sarris wrote, “Mr. Giamatti gives off soulful sparks with Ms. Madsen, a 41-year-old sultry-noir-dame veteran with generally unappreciated acting gifts. Maya, like Miles, is still recovering from a previous failed marriage, which helps make Sideways even more of a movie for grown-ups.” USA Today gave the film four out of four stars and Mike Clark wrote, “This is a building-block movie: Its stand-out excellence becomes apparent only gradually.” In her review for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote, “But it takes more than courage to push actors to their limits of their talents, which Mr. Payne does here. You need to understand that the truth of both a human being and a screen performance doesn't exist only in grace and beauty, but in small fissures and cracks.” The Washington Post’s Desson Thomson wrote, “Church, best known for his character Lowell Mather in the television show Wings, is a revelation. He turns a cad into an unforgettable and, dare I say, lovable rogue.” Finally, in his review for the Village Voice, J. Hoberman wrote, “Maya and Stephanie are vivid, fetching abstractions; Jack and Miles are male archetypes, as well as the two most fully realized comic creations in recent American movies.”

Payne’s film harkens to Bob Rafelson’s classic character-driven films from the ‘70s, like Five Easy Pieces (1970) and The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), featuring prickly protagonists. Payne rejects traditional mainstream tastes in favor of presenting unsympathetic characters and a conclusion that refuses to wrap things up neatly. He even employs multiple split-screen montages and snap zooms, which were very much en vogue during the ‘70s. Miles is the voice of reason while Jack is the voice of fun in Sideways. However, Miles understands who he is and is honest with himself and his lot in life unlike Jack who continues to live a lie, or rather play a role. Jack lives in a bubble and they always break. Miles doesn’t have to worry about that because he bursts his bubble on a daily basis. These men are idiots and it is the women who are smart and truthful. The men lie, cheat and are forced to face the repercussions of their actions. This provides them with a chance at redemption as embodied in Miles who learns to loosen up and finally let someone new into his heart.

SOURCES

Biga, Leo Adam. “A Road Trip Sideways.” The Reader.

Donnelly, Joe. “Here’s What Happened, Sweetheart.” October 21, 2004.

Epstein, Daniel Robert. “Alexander Payne.” Suicide Girls. October 21, 2004.

Goldstein, Patrick. “Moving Sideways to Stay on Track.” Los Angeles Times. December 16, 2003.

Robinson, Tasha. “Thomas Haden Church.” A.V. Club. April 7, 2008.

Ross, Matthew. “In Vino Veritas.” Filmmaker.

Stein, Joel. “He’s Got Good Taste.” Time. October 25, 2004.