I meant to watch Sideways years ago. Somewhere between “I only drink after 5pm” and “Jack & Coke makes a great mouthwash,” it fell off my to-do list. The movie appealed to me for three reasons:

1. I love Paul Giamatti;
2. I love Alexander Payne (director of Election); and
3. I loved wine.

While I preferred hard liquor for getting drunk, I loved wine for camouflage. Wine carries with it a snobbery that provides perfect cover for an alcoholic. I don’t have a problem, goddammit – I’m a connoisseur. A connoisseur constantly seeking samples. Even before I admitted I had a problem, I had a niggling feeling deep in my bowels that all my talk of tannins and the aftertaste of apple and pear was fancy-speak for “refill.” After all, I measured my wine consumption by the box.

Fast forward to 2010, five months into Round 2 of sobriety. I put Sideways on my Netflix queue. I may avoid wine, but hell, I still love Paul Giamatti. I adored his turn as Harvey Pekar in American Splendor, a role which earned him much critical acclaim, but did little for his commercial appeal. Sideways is the flick that put this talented actor on the map. I can see why. Giamatti’s Miles is the kind of guy you can’t decide if you want to hug or run over with a Hummer. He’s smart, amiable, a touch arrogant, beset by rejection, and prone to self-loathing. With his marriage long dead, his closest friendship is his old college roommate Jack, a Lothario who measures wine by its chugability.(Yes, that’s a word. Look it up in a few years, once the dictionaries catch up to me.)

Sideways is a tour de force of drunkenness, adultery, hope, despondency, and love. It’s a great film – but one that is, at times, a bitch to watch sober. The movie revolves around Miles and Jack’s trip through California’s wine country before Jack, an expiring actor, marries into money. The scenery is lush, rolling acres of green, of plump grapes nearly bursting on the vine. Along the way, Miles the struggling writer puts the full force of his talent behind explaining to Jack the deep mysteries of wine: how to judge color, pick up the bouquet, and separate the complexities as you swish the initial sip around in your mouth. Miles doesn’t simply like wine, or even love wine. Miles has a romance with wine. Lacking any significant connections to other human beings, it’s become his significant other – his exhilarating partner when things go well, and his lonely refuge when life turns sour.

Since Miles’ life is a package of Sour Patch Kids, he spends a good portion of the film either stumbling around drunk, or dragging a hangover around like a lead weight. Which I enjoyed watching. Okay, “enjoyed” is too sadistic. What I mean is that watching drunk people can be a boon to my sobriety. A few years ago, I hung out with friends of friends for the 4th of July. At the time I hadn’t had a drop to drink in over a year. Seeing everyone at the party get progressively wasted made it easier to steer clear of temptation. When your friend is telling you how much he loves you in sentences where every second word is so slurred that it’s unintelligible, you wonder, “Whatever made me think this was fun?”

But that’s not sustainable. It becomes sobriety through schadenfreude. For that reason, I don’t think I’ll ever give Sideways a second viewing. It feels too much like watching home movies of your ex-girlfriend with a box of Kleenex and a half-gallon of ice cream nestled in your lap. I’ll get my next Giamatti fixes from Cold Souls and Shoot ‘Em Up instead.

And no, you can’t talk me out of Shoot ‘Em Up. It’s Giamatti with access to high-caliber weapons. How can that be anything less than brilliant??

Uncategorized alcoholism, cinema, film, movies, sideways, sobriety