A wine-tasting road trip through California's famed Central Coast takes an unexpected detour as Miles (Paul Giamatti) and Jack (Thomas Haden Church) hit the gas en route to their mid-life crises. The comically mismatched pair soon find themselves drowning in wine, women...and laughter!
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In this intoxicating, intelligent comedy, director Alexander Payne (Election, About Schmidt) serves up "one of the best movies of the year" (Entertainment Weekly) about the ups, downs and sideways journeys of life. A wine-tasting road trip through California's famed Central Coast takes an unexpected detour as Miles (Paul Giamatti) and Jack (Thomas Haden Church) hit the gas en route to their mid-life crises. The comically mismatched pair soon find themselves drowning in wine, women...and laughter!
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With Sideways, Paul Giamatti (American Splendor, Storytelling) has become an unlikely but engaging romantic lead. Struggling novelist and wine connoisseur Miles (Giamatti) takes his best friend Jack (Thomas Haden Church, Wings) on a wine-tasting tour of California vineyards for a kind of extended bachelor party. Almost immediately, Jack's insatiable need to sow some wild oats before his marriage leads them into double-dates with a rambunctious wine pourer (Sandra Oh, Under the Tuscan Sun) and a recently divorced waitress (Virginia Madsen, The Hot Spot)--and Miles discovers a little hope that he hasn't let himself feel in a long time. Sideways is a modest but finely tuned film; with gentle compassion, it explores the failures, struggles, and lowered expectations of mid-life. Giamatti makes regret and self-loathing sympathetic, almost sweet. From the director of Election and About Schmidt. --Bret Fetzer
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A wine tasting road trip to salute Jack’s (Thomas Haden Church) final days as a bachelor careens woefully sideways as he and Miles (Paul Giamatti) hit the gas en route to mid-life crises. The comically mismatched pair, who share little more than their history and a heady blend of failed potential and fading youth, soon find themselves drowning in wine and women (Sandra Oh and Virginia Madsen). Emerging from a haze of pinot noir, wistful yearnings and trepidation about the future, the two inevitably collide with reality.
SIDEWAYS was helmed by the critically acclaimed Alexander Payne, who wrote the screenplay with his longtime screenwriting partner Jim Taylor based on the novel of the same name by Rex Pickett. Payne and Taylor won a Golden Globe in 2003 for the screenplay of ABOUT SCHMIDT and share Academy Award®, Independent Spirit Award and Writers Guild of America Award nominations for the adapted screenplay of ELECTION, for which Payne also won a Best Directing Independent Spirit Award. Payne's directorial and screenwriting debut was the Laura Dern-starrer CITIZEN RUTH, which won the Sundance Jury Prize in 1996.
On the road trip of a lifetime are Paul Giamatti, whose leading role in last year’s AMERICAN SPLENDOR earned him the National Board of Review Award for Breakthrough Performance by an Actor, and Thomas Haden Church from television’s "Wings" and "Ned and Stacy" and the feature film 3000 MILES TO GRACELAND. Along the way the men are joined by Virginia Madsen (DUNE, THE RAINMAKER) and Sandra Oh (UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN, LAST NIGHT).
SIDEWAYS was produced by Michael London (THIRTEEN, HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG) with George Parra, a seasoned assistant director on such films as LEGALLY BLONDE 2 and ABOUT SCHMIDT, as co-producer. The director of photography is Phedon Papamichael (MOONLIGHT MILE, IDENTITY). The editor is Kevin Tent and the production designer is Jane Ann Stewart, both of whom worked with Payne on ABOUT SCHMIDT, ELECTION and CITIZEN RUTH.
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The misadventures begin when Miles (Paul Giamatti), an un-recovered divorcé and would-be novelist with a wine fixation, decides to gift his old college buddy and washed-up actor Jack (Thomas Haden Church) with a celebratory trip to the vineyards of the Central Coast the week before Jack's wedding. The two couldn't be an odder couple. Jack is an over-sexed charmer; Miles is a sad-sack worrier. Jack is looking for his "last taste of freedom;" Miles is just hoping to not get even more depressed. Jack is fine with cheap Merlot; Miles pines for the perfect Pinot. Indeed, the only thing they seem to share in common is the same heady mix of failed ambitions and fading youth.
And yet, as they make their way up the coast, Miles and Jack soon find themselves drowning in wine and women (Sandra Oh and Virginia Madsen). When Jack falls head-over-heels for a local wine pourer and threatens to call off his nuptials, Miles tries to keep his friend on the straight and narrow. But Miles's own romantic encounter with a wine-savvy waitress interferes and sends them both careening headlong into reality.
Now, the wedding approaches and with it the certainty that Miles and Jack won't make it back to Los Angeles unscathed or unchanged . . . if they get there in one piece at all.
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