Reading Sideways

“It’s very possible his film will be better than my book.”
- Rex Pickett

To cite the common adage: truer words were never spoken. Sideways is one of those rare exceptions in which the film is far better than the novel.

I saw the film Sideways a few months after it was released in 2004, and I loved every minute of it. I had just started getting into wine at the time so it was wonderfully relevant for me, and I reveled equally in Paul Giamatti’s fine performance and the darkly humorous story.

I always meant to read Rex Pickett’s novel, since most of the time the novel is much better than the movie; I had grand expectations. Though the book slid under my radar for a few years, last week I stumbled across a second-hand copy. You can’t get much for 99 cents anymore, and given that this was a book I really wanted to read – and that I had previously considered paying the full $20 cover price for it – I thought it was a steal.

Turns out, I’m glad I only paid a buck for this book. I really couldn’t have justified paying much more. Put simply, the novel is terrible. Its prose is horribly prosaic and bland; though Pickett does include the odd colourful expression or snippet of witty banter, his language is mind-numbingly dull, enlivened only by profanity and a few awkwardly recited, serial romance sex scenes.

The many references to wine, while a novelty at first, quickly grow just as tired and dull as the rest of the prose. Miles’ discussions of wine range from trite, clichéd ululations of a snobby alcoholic attempting to justify his consumption, to painfully technical descriptions that I swear were lifted straight from the Oxford Companion. How different this is from the screenplay; though the film does sidestep the wine motif to some degree – wine becomes more of a backdrop than a main focus of the movie, though this happens in the book as well – the vinous references it does include are well-chosen and articulated.

The pinnacle of the film’s discussion of wine is the honest, thoughtful conversation between Miles (Giamatti) and Maya (Virginia Madsen), in which Pinot Noir is deftly employed as a metaphor to develop these two characters. My consternation with the novel was complete when, as I sluggishly neared the end of the novel, I realized that this scene is wholly absent – it was the creation of screenwriters Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, not Pickett.

Indeed, Payne and Taylor should be commended (nay, exulted) for their Herculean feat of turning such a drab, pointless story into an engaging, meaningful script. (And it turns out that actually, they did receive this commendation, in the form of an Academy Award for Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay.)

The first halves of film and book follow each other fairly closely, but then the novel careens wildly off into an increasingly nonsensical series of neurotic, depraved escapades. Payne and Taylor did a marvelous job reigning in this mad bull and stitching together a coherent, streamlined plot from these torrid fragments.

Aside from prose and plot, the film also mercifully diverges from the book on several other fronts as well, such as the completely different characterizations of Maya and Terra. (In the case of the latter, even her name is altered). While the film is very successful in providing substance to these characters and drawing out the audience’s sympathy for them, throughout the duration of the novel they remain static and inscrutable; the reader’s ambivalence towards them is total.

Another major alteration that needs to be considered is Miles’ prize bottle: a 1961 Cheval Blanc in the film and a 1982 Latour in the book. Both are prestigious Bordeaux, which in itself seems strange for Miles’ character, given his ardent love for Pinot Noir – why wasn’t he holding on to a bottle of 1985 DRC?

The Latour is a First Growth and therefore higher on the Bordeaux totem pole than the Cheval Blanc; it would also be more readily available than the legendary ’61. Owing partially to its age and corresponding rarity, the Cheval Blanc is a cult wine, and only hardcore wine geeks (or the extremely wealthy) would own a bottle. I suppose this could be the reason for the film’s choice of this bottle over the Latour: they wanted something that would speak to Miles’ resolute wine geekhood, and the ’61 fits nicely with his depiction in the movie. However, the novel’s choice of the ’82 Latour also makes sense with Miles’ character: in the novel he is presented as a man masquerading a serious drinking problem with an interest in wine; he could have easily picked up an ’82 Latour one drunken night at the wine shop in an attempt to impress his fellow oenophiles.

Interestingly, the difference between Miles’ Bordeaux is the only instance in which the film’s version isn’t clearly the better of the two.

I could continue to rant about the book’s many faults, but I’d really rather just start the process of forgetting about it. Incredulously, it almost feels unfair pitting the novel against the film; they are on such different levels. I’ll leave off by stating that my predisposition towards liking this novel made it all the more shocking that I ended up hating it so much.

There remains only one thing for which I must blame the film, even though it’s really not the film’s fault this happened: to this day, it seems that people still can’t write about Pinot Noir or Merlot without making a fucking Sideways reference.

American Wine, Wine