Daily Dialogue — July 31, 2012
MAYA: Can I ask you a personal question?
MILES: (bracing himself) Sure.
MAYA: Why are you so into Pinot? It’s like a thing with you.
Miles laughs at first, then smiles wistfully at the question. He searches for the answer in his glass and begins slowly.
MILES: I don’t know. It’s a hard grape to grow. As you know. It’s thin-skinned, temperamental, ripens early. It’s not a survivor like Cabernet that can grow anywhere and thrive even when neglected. Pinot needs constant care and attention and in fact can only grow in specific little tucked-away corners of the world. And only the most patient and nurturing growers can do it really, can tap into Pinot’s most fragile, delicate qualities. Only when someone has taken the time to truly understand its potential can Pinot be coaxed into its fullest expression. And when that happens, its flavors are the most haunting and brilliant and subtle and thrilling and ancient on the planet.
Maya has found this answer revealing and moving.
MILES: I mean, Cabernets can be powerful and exalting, but they seem prosaic to me for some reason. By comparison. How about you?
MAYA: What about me?
MILES: I don’t know. Why are you into wine?
MAYA: I suppose I got really into wine originally through my ex-husband. He had a big, kind of show-off cellar. But then I found out that I have a really sharp palate, and the more I drank, the more I liked what it made me think about.
MILES: Yeah? Like what?
MAYA: Like what a fraud he was.
Miles laughs.
MAYA: No, but I do like to think about the life of wine, how it’s a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing, how the sun was shining that summer or if it rained… what the weather was like. I think about all those people who tended and picked the grapes, and if it’s an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I love how wine continues to evolve, how every time I open a bottle it’s going to taste different than if I had opened it on any other day. Because a bottle of wine is actually alive — it’s constantly evolving and gaining complexity. That is, until it peaks — like your ’61 — and begins its steady, inevitable decline. And it tastes so fucking good.
— Miles (Paul Giamatti), Maya (Virginia Madsen), Sideways (2004), screenplay by Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor, based on a novel by Rex Pickett
Thanks to Michael McFadden who found this link to the “why are you so into Pinot” part of the scene.
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is subtext suggested by lizswan. Today’s suggestion by Teddy Pasternak.
Trivia: According to W. Blake Gray of the San Francisco Chronicle, the producers had originally wanted to use a bottle of Petrus as the treasured wine gathering dust in Miles’ apartment. But Christian Moueix, the chateau’s owner, read the script and decided to pass. So, instead it was a bottle of 1961 Cheval Blanc.
Dialogue On Dialogue: From Teddy:
In the book, Miles explains to Jack why Pinot Noir is so special. This happens in the car while they’re driving to the Santa Ynez Valley. After calling the grape “thin-skinned”, “finicky” and “elusive”, Jack wonders: “Similar to a high-maintenance woman?” Payne and Taylor expanded the speech, moved it to the date with Maya and added the layer of subtext.
According to Rex Pickett: “In the first draft, Miles’s self-absorbed speech rhapsodizing about Pinot Noir was met by silence…” “Second draft: same deal. Silence. It didn’t feel right to me. In the margin I wrote to Payne and Taylor: ‘Wouldn’t it be lovely if Maya had a complementary speech.’ That’s all I wrote.” ” I didn’t write it; I only nudged them to write it. Then, in post-production, Payne wanted to cut it. He’s gone on record in many interviews opining that he hates sentimentality. He thinks it dates movies. I remember being in the sound mix the day they were mixing that scene. Knowing that this was his last chance to change anything, Payne was pacing up and down the aisles complaining, if memory serves, that [Maya’s] speech on wine had to go…” “…because it was too mawkish. I remember telling him that he would be a fool to cut it, that he had seen it too many times in the editing room, that he had lost objective perspective, that anyone would find it maudlin after 100 viewings, but that the audience would be seeing it for the first time, with fresh eyes, with open hearts. Others in the mixing studio chimed in with the same opinion.”
I love this film. It’s a terrific screenplay based on a terrific book.
That was a genius choice: Move the Pinot Noir speech from Jack and Miles to Miles and Maya. Worked to perfection in the scene.
[Note: Evidently MovieClips used to host the Pinot Noir scene, but no more. If anyone can find it online, please email the URL and I’ll update the post.]
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