Movie "Sideways" is true to novel's essence

By Moira Macdonald
Seattle Times movie critic

TINA FINEBERG / AP "The book suggests this movie," says "Sideways" director and co-writer Alexander Payne.

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If you want to talk about the perils and pleasures of adapting a novel for the screen, you can't do much better than a pleasant chat with Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, co-writers of "Sideways," a delightfully wine-soaked road movie that arrives at the Neptune and Uptown tomorrow. Based on a little-known (but well-worth seeking out) novel by Rex Pickett, the story follows two 40ish friends — one a failed novelist, one a womanizer about to get married — on a tour of the Southern California wine country, and of their odd but unshakeable friendship.

Payne, who directs the movies he and Taylor writes (which also include "Citizen Ruth," "Election" and "About Schmidt"), read Pickett's then-unpublished novel five years ago, on a flight from Edinburgh.

"Halfway through the plane ride, I thought, I want to make this movie," said Payne in Seattle last week. When the plane landed, "I ran off, picked up the pay phone, called my agent, said, 'We have to do this.' "

"Sideways" the film wonderfully captures the spirit of "Sideways" the novel — the humor, the desperation, the lyrical descriptions of wine, the fuzziness brought on by too much pinot noir and, most of all, the character of the writer Miles, neurotic and fussy yet touching, a man hiding behind a bottle, afraid of life. But when you examine the two works together, you see that the movie's quite different: entire subplots have been removed, names and traits of some characters have been changed, and a new ending has been added. Is Pickett happy with all of this? Absolutely.

	MERIE WEISMILLER Actors Paul Giamatti, left, and Thomas Haden Church, and director Alexander Payne on the set of "Sideways."

"Somebody was asking me, do authors get all freaked out [when their work is adapted]?" remembered Taylor, a Bellevue native now based in New York. "I said, if they're smart, they don't — they just sit back."

"Can you imagine doing one, like 'Harry Potter,' where the author's looking over your shoulder the whole time?" said Payne, in obvious horror. He noted that in the current film of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," the estate of Roald Dahl has control over the screenplay.

In contrast, Pickett had very little involvement with the screenplay. "We never, like, went to him for approval or validation, although when he read it and liked it, we felt very approved and validated, especially when he was nice enough to say that at some places he thought we had improved upon the novel," said Payne.

Both writers stressed the importance, when adapting a book for the screen, of feeling free to make changes.

Anybody who's adapting a book, said Taylor, needs to know when to say "that doesn't feel right," and to adapt accordingly.

"You're making a movie — your movie," said Payne. "Actually, the better the literature, the more you have to change it. Literature succeeds on exclusively literary terms. Pulp literature — 'Jaws,' 'The Godfather' — makes for much easier lateral translation, because [the book] is basically what people say and what they do. But the more something is literary, you really have to change it, and just keep some spirit of it." For "Sideways," he says, "the book suggests this movie."

After the success of "About Schmidt" (which earned Oscar nominations for Jack Nicholson and Kathy Bates), Payne could have cast big names in "Sideways." Instead, he turned to lesser-known character actors: Paul Giamatti, of "American Splendor," plays Miles; former sitcom star Thomas Haden Church makes a larger-than-life Jack. Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh (Payne's off-screen wife) play Maya and Stephanie, a waitress and a wine pourer with whom the men become entangled — with not-always-ideal results.

The film was shot on location in the Santa Barbara County region. Sets were used for two brief shots (the waitress Cammi's home). The rest, said Payne, is real — the motel room Miles and Jack stay in; the Hitching Post restaurant; the tasting rooms. "Everything is absolutely accurate, except for the name of the winery we mock." (The fictitious Frass Canyon winery, where baseball caps and T-shirts are hawked along with barely quaffable wine, is played by the good-sport Fess Parker Winery.)

With "Sideways" behind them, both men look ahead to their next project. Taylor has two writing projects in the works, either of which might become his directing debut: a tale about Civil War re-enactors, and an adaptation of the John Steinbeck novel "The Winter of Our Discontent," which he's been developing with the Steppenwolf theater company.

And Payne looks forward to creating an original script with Taylor, which might have a political theme like their first film, "Citizen Ruth" (a black comedy that satirized the abortion debate). "Something lifted from the headlines. We don't know how direct or indirect or metaphorical or what, but somehow, something that's related to today. It just seems like we have to."

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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