You know, people are so curious about that. For the most part it was. I would say 95% of the time, because you just can’t remember your lines if you’re drinking alcohol. I would say about 95% of the time it was grape juice or this fake wine, which was horrible. It’s like they make it and then they extract the alcohol. It’s really terrible. But the grape juice could get… You know, it’s such a high sugary content it starts giving you gastro-intestinal fits and then you’re asking for anything else. We would, late at night every now and then, Alexander would want to open some wine for the cast and crew just as a reward for a good day’s work.
From what you can gather about how the film’s being received, how will the 25 and under crowd like this movie?
They are probably going to be the harder demographic to get in, because it’s wine and everybody is 40ish. But I think once the word gets out that the movie is funny - funny is transcendent - it will traverse all demographic barriers if people embrace it as a funny movie. But also what I think is going to attract 25 and over is that it is poignant and that there is drama. And at the end it is romantic and hopeful, which is a little bit of a departure for Alexander. I think “Schmidt” was hopeful but on a much subtler level.
Can you talk about working with Paul Giamatti? The casting and chemistry in this movie really worked.
I really have to defer entirely to Alexander. I did not know anybody other than Alexander. I met him on “Election.” We had just met. I had already signed to do another movie but I loved the script so much, I asked to meet with him. We met and just talked and then he remembered me a few years later and invited me to audition for “About Schmidt.” And it was actually all the way to the end, it was between Dermot Mulroney and myself for that role. I wrote and directed a movie that was at Sundance last year, and right when he was posting “Schmidt” I was scouting in Nebraska for my movie. The Nebraska Film Commissioner said, “I told him you were going to be here and when I had you with me, he wanted us to call him.” So we called him in New York and Alexander got on the phone with me. Riding around in a van in the middle of nowhere Nebraska and he was like, “You’ll never know how close you came to playing that part. But you have my word we will meet again.” And last summer they just called me in Texas and said he was casting “Sideways” and he wanted to see me. I flew out and we met, and that was it. He just called me to do the movie.
My point is, circuitously, Paul I did not know. Alexander is the only person I knew. And I never met with Paul through the process, nor Virginia [Madsen] or Sandra [Oh]. And I think Alexander just understands the nuance of personality and how he’s going to integrate that into the character. And he knows how people can kind of be woven into the same fabric and have that fluidity. When he called me and asked me to do the movie, in the same conversation he said, “I would like to give your phone number to Paul, and here is Paul’s phone number.” The first time we spoke, Paul said we talked about 3 ½ hours on the phone. He was in New York and I was in Texas, and there was just that spark. It’s like a dear, dear, intimate friend that’s been floating in the universe and you didn’t know until you meet him. And then there’s just this quick-start friendship.
Did you have any trepidation about doing a love scene with Sandra Oh, the director’s wife?
Huge. Gigantic. Towering. You know, he attempted to put me at ease about that from day one. And then Sandra was very sweet about it. Wasn’t it John Huston’s character in “Chinatown” who said, “You never know what you’re capable of until the circumstances prevail, and then you’re capable of doing anything.” It’s one of those scenarios where no, I never imagined that I’d be directed in a love scene – not even a love scene because it’s kind of a hard-core sex scene because it’s kind of just purely played for this carnal venting. At first Sandra and I are like, “Let’s make it funny because that’s safe.” Then he just kept pushing us to make it more real and more sensuous. One of the takes he used is somewhere in the middle. I really don’t know which one. Alexander certainly would. But yeah, it’s a little awkward. But he told me straight up when I first met with him, “That’s going to be my wife. That’s going to be Sandra.” It’s just one of those things. Everybody is a professional. It’s just part of the story. It’s just a piece of it.
