Sideways (20th Anniversary WI Film Fest screening)
I forgot how much I loved this movie until seeing it again. (In the post movie Q&A, Payne implored the audience to watch their favorite movies again, as you often grow to like it more, as you see things you missed the first time) Seeing it in a audience was such a great way to experience this film. Comedies are so great when you are in a room full of people laughing at every little moment. Alexander Payne is one of my favorite contemporary directors, and films like Sideways, which came out right during my formative movie-going years post adolescence and early college, really had a huge impact on my likes and tastes.
One interesting observation that stood out, and was part of the post movie Q&A with Alexander Payne, was talk of the editing of the film, and how it was used throughout many scenes to heighten the drama or comedy. And that is something that I think can get lost with a lot of directors working on comedic films. You have to utilize the art form to its fullest, and movies that don’t can really suffer. I don’t want to pick on Paul Feig, because he is a delightful director and all around great person, but I feel movies like his lack some of that spark, in part due to being a bit more like a stage play or improv performance, and the art of camera movement, dissolves, wipes and all sorts of other editing techniques are absent in a way that are detrimental to the finished product.
I also enjoyed how Payne spoke of the process of creating works adapted from books, how he and his writing partner would read the source material multiple times taking lots of notes, and then just shelve the book and write the screenplay from memory. To give the film its own original “take” or to allow them to utilize the medium of film to adapt something that was created for the medium of literature.
Another interesting observation came from the host, who had mentioned watching “About Schmidt” the night prior and remarked that when Jack Nicholson’s character drives past a theater, the Marquee says “Sideways” is the movie playing. This was a little easter egg Payne had put in the film, as he knew that Sideways was the next project they were planning on working on.
The final hilarious tidbit was when someone asked what the “hardest day of filming” Sideways was. He didn’t have an answer initially, but then after a few moments, and during another question it came to him.
In the final “adventure” of the film, where Miles has to rescue Jack’s wallet from the home of the waitress he had slept with (and been caught by the angry husband), the moment when (which is beautifully shot from inside the car in one take) the naked and angry husband chases Miles to the car, and collides with the window in comedic fashion, during one of the takes, the window shattered on impact! They had to make sure everyone was ok (luckily all was good) and replace the window from the 2nd saab convertible they had for filming. They used 2 cars one for exterior shots and a modified one for shots from inside the car, and had someone handy on set swap the windows out in about 45 minutes. Watching that scene again, you can see the terror on Giamatti’s face as the guy impacts with the car window, and you have to imagine that some of that has to be real fear!
Anyway, it was a great experience, and I am very happy to have been able to see one of my favorite films in a huge audience.
